Tag: Holy Spirit

Sunday 10th January 2021

Simon’s reflection for the Baptism of Christ.

St Louis of France used to sign his documents not, “Louis IX, King” but “Louis of Poissy.” Someone asked him why, and he answered: “Poissy is the place where I was baptised. I think more of the place where I was baptised than of Rheims Cathedral where I was crowned. It is a greater thing to be a child of God that to be the ruler of a Kingdom: this last I shall lose at death, but the other will be my passport to an everlasting glory.”

I wonder if we remember or celebrate our own baptisms in the way that St Louis of France did. In similar vein, Martin Luther said we should think of our baptism every time we wash our face. We’d be thinking of our baptisms a lot in these days if we did!

The reason that many of us have been baptised of course is that the Church over the centuries came to be believe that Jesus, Himself, instituted it. There have been many questions in the Christian tradition about how to understand baptism. Does the act of baptism itself strengthen us through the action of the Holy Spirit to become the children of God? Is it a means of grace or just a sign of God’s love and acceptance? Is it just about individual repentance and faith? Should we baptise infants? I’m sure you can think of many others.

This Sunday as we celebrate the feast day of the Baptism of Christ, we are taken back to the roots of the Christian practice of baptism in Jesus’ acceptance of the baptism of John but also in the difference between the baptism that Christ would bring and the baptism of John.

The practice of John the Baptiser in calling the people of Israel to Baptism was really something that was extremely radical. Before that, baptism was probably only known as a rite for non-Jews who wanted to become Jews; an act of repentance and acceptance into the chosen people. To call on people who were already Jews to be baptised was a profound challenge to any sense of self-righteousness or entitlement people might feel by simply being descendants of Abraham and John’s call certainly gave offence for that reason to many of the religious leaders.

John called the people to the wilderness; the place where the faith of Israel was originally nurtured. He called them to a renewed sense of dependence on God. Participation in John’s baptism was a sign of a person’s willingness to change and of God’s willingness to forgive. It was also a baptism of preparation for something that God was about to do. It was about getting ready for a new age. John wore the clothes of the prophet Elijah who was expected to appear before the messiah and his message was that one was coming who would bring a greater baptism than his; a baptism not just with water but also with the Holy Spirit.

Many people in the early church puzzled themselves about why Jesus asked John to Baptise him. They reasoned that he was a greater figure than John and also that he had no need of repentance.

Yet Jesus’ request for baptism from John at the start of his public ministry shows in a profound way what his ministry was to be about. In his divine humility, he identifies with those he came to save. As St Paul puts it, he became sin, who knew no sin, in order that we might be saved.

As Jesus is baptised, the heavens are rent open, the lines of communication between God and humanity re-established. The Holy Spirit, who hovered over the waters at the time of creation, descends anew and the divine voice affirms who Jesus is as God’s Son  and as the suffering servant from the prophecies of the Book of Isaiah and tells us to listen to Him.

This is not a god who just shouts at us from the sidelines but God who meets us in Christ in the mess of human life and who is absolutely drenched in our humanity for our sakes. The God who becomes one with us, because he wants to help us to be at one with Him.

Because of Jesus’s baptism, our baptism is not only about repentance and preparation but also about the assurance of God’s love, about belonging to God and belonging to each other as the church, a reminder that God’s love came before our decisions of faith and was not something we had to earn but something freely given because we are his. Baptism becomes a bridge between God and us.

Jesus goes on in his deep trust that He is God’s beloved to withstand the trials in the wilderness. These difficult times are a bit like a wilderness experience, reminding us of who we really need and depend upon.  We all need resilience and endurance. With Jesus baptism comes the assurance that we too are loved by God and the promise that God is alongside us as well as the challenge to listen to Christ and to follow Him in all we do.

 So, on this feast day of the Baptism of Christ, we should take all this to heart and dust off our baptism certificates. We should remember and celebrate the dates, give our children and God-children if we have them reminders or gifts on theirs. If I took Louis of Poissy’s practice, I would sign myself Simon of Peacehaven, what would be yours?  Amen.

Sunday 1st November

SIMON’S REFLECTION FOR THE FEAST OF ALL SAINTS

Reflection

In the church, we keep feast days for some of the special saints of church tradition; the household names that we all know. We have days for St Peter, St Luke, St Frances, St Andrew, Mary, mother of our Lord, St Margaret and many others.

All Saints’ Day was not originally a day to remember these well-known saints, but was for those saints who had no special saint’s day of their own. It was for “the rest of the saints.” On All Saints Day then, in a sense, we are remembering the unknown saints; “the great multitude that no-one could count” described in the Book of Revelation.

I find this very poignant on many levels. For one thing, since the Reformation, the Anglican tradition, recognises names of its more modern Christian heroes but has no mechanism for giving them the title “saint.” More than that though, it is good for us to remember that we do not know the names of many of our benefactors. There is an anonymous tide of good will and good deeds inspired by the Holy Spirit that has brought the Christian faith to us through the generations and from across the world.

There is a bit of a parallel in this with our thinking about our heroes of the past year. I wonder who your heroes were? Captain Tom raising all that money for the NHS. Joe Wicks putting us all through our paces with his daily workouts. There were many people who did great things to help others, some of whom became known and for example recognised in our honours lists. There were, however, also a mass of people like doctors, nurses, good neighbours, essential workers, care home staff and others from all walks of life, who behaved selflessly and sacrificially in their service of others. Some of them were recognised and honoured but many are unknown to us though we have cause to be grateful.

The idea of a mass of unknown saints brings the saints a bit closer to us. When you make a statue or a stained- glass window in someone’s image, they suddenly seem less human and seem more distant from our everyday experience and who we are. But the saints were human just like us. They didn’t have any power that we don’t have. That’s the point. Because of what Jesus has done for us, the power that was in Jesus, can be in ordinary women, men and children just like us.

It can also be at work in us alongside our human fallibilities and failings. As St Paul wrote: “We hold this treasure in clay vessels.”

If the gospel just stopped with the great saving deeds of Jesus, we might wonder how the world could be changed for the better but it doesn’t stop there. We read on in the Book of Acts, how the power that was at work in Jesus, was at work in the people of the early church. We read on beyond the words of the bible to see many lives since then that have pointed us back to Christ. Sometimes that has happened in an extraordinary way but also sometimes in a more ordinary every day, way through “little” acts of love and service in Jesus’ name.

The New Testament recognises this by using the word “saint” in two ways. It uses the word to denote the named ones, the known heroes of the faith but it also uses it to denote “the rest of us” as St Paul, for example, often uses the word to refer to all Christians.

Of course, the saints we revere were extraordinary in one sense. It was not that they were already perfect or sinless but their lives were so centred on God and they had such a passion for God that they became transparent to God in an extraordinary way. Paul Tillich wrote: “The saint is saint, not because he is “good” but because he is transparent from something that is more than himself.” What makes them particularly transparent to God and what makes them speak most powerfully to us is their shared humanity.

Our gospel reading today could be read as a sort of manifesto for discipleship. Jesus tells the crowds who it is who will be blessed in the age to come. I wonder if we were asked who we thought was blessed in our own age and society, would it look anything like Jesus list? Would we include the poor, the meek, those who mourn, the persecuted? I suspect not.

The saints learned to embrace a different set of values to the values of the world. With their ordinary humanity they embraced the values of Jesus rather than the values of the world.

A rich businessman once said to St Theresa of Calcutta: “I would not do what you do for a million dollars.” She replied: “No, neither would I.”

On all Saints Day, we remember the saints and we remember that we are called to be transparent to God just as they were and that we are called to be saints too and to allow in our hearts, the Holy Spirit’s work of transforming us to God’s ways of doing things and God’s way of being.

Pope John Paul once wrote: “We need heralds of the gospel who are experts in humanity, who know the depth of the human heart, who can share the joys and hopes, the agonies and distress of the people, but who are at the same time contemplatives who have fallen in love with God. For this we need saints today. Amen.