John Sherbourne

By Haddon Willmer.

At the art class I go to each week, we were given Christmas as a theme for our next attempt. I dislike tinsel, though like most people I get entangled in it every year. It comes in many kinds and it seems churlish to do a Scrooge on it, saying ‘Humbug’.

But how to paint a picture doing justice to Christmas as told in the Gospels? This is daunting if one is not a skilled painter; and even more daunting when one is a mere human being, twenty-first century style.

But the choice seemed to me, either to try, even if it turned out a failure, or to keep clear altogether, and paint another summer landscape, where the sunshine in unambiguous.

My try was derived from the drawing on the left which I made years ago for a Christmas card:

But since then, I have written a whole-congregation nativity play based closely on the text of Matthew, leaving nothing out, including the genealogy and, controversially as it turned out, Herod the killer, and even more shockingly, Rachel, the mother who would not be comforted. The shock was rendered powerfully by some mothers in the church. And now, in the era of IS-Daesh and our responses which are too near to being Tit for Tat, it is impossible, it seems to me, to tell the Christmas story and leave out the dark side, the murderous ambiguity of Herod.

The message of the angels, Glory to God and peace on earth, must indeed be sounded in the picture, for it is joy to the world. But the frustration of the message in the world cannot be denied. On the nether side of Herod’s sword, there is death for the little ones, while on the other side, in the light from heaven, there is the Saviour born in a manger, all set for his flight into Egypt and his eventual deathly collision with the powers of the world who had taken over from Herod.

The Christmas story does not take us out of the real world. The picture tries to set up a blunt collision between the grace of God in the coming of Jesus the Saviour and the rule of Herod, the dark and the light.

So this is what I have painted, in my rough way:Besides this, I wanted to trace the journey of the Wise Men, from their seeing the star, to their meeting with Herod in Jerusalem, their finding the Baby King and giving him what they had to give, and then returning to their own country, ‘by another way’. Tracing the line of the journey helps to give the painting a more interesting structure than a mere dark-light confrontation would achieve. But as I have been doing it, I have thought about the Wise Men. Customarily they are portrayed as wise because they came to Jesus and, from that point, we extrapolate positive outcomes for them. Naturally then, many are mystified by the gloomy downbeat way T.S.Eliot ends his poem, ‘The Journey of the Magi’ (http://allpoetry.com/The-Journey-Of-The-Magi ). I wouldn’t put it quite as he did, perhaps because my thinking is so much in Herod’s shadow. The Wise Men saw what they came to see, and then could do nothing but return to their own country by another way. They could do nothing about Herod. They could not take the good news back to Jerusalem and persuade the scribes to sing ‘Joy to the world’ with them. They fled for their lives. Their trajectory ends in weakness and frustration. Is that a parable for how we are in the world, a parable too uncomfortable to be entertained?

One last thing. The light of the glory from heaven fades out in Herod’s darkness, but all the same it is a dynamic pressure, like rays streaming from the sun, driving on to the last spark. I haven’t shown that well though I have tried it. And Herod’s terrible sword is deliberately drawn so that Rachel is mostly on the dark side – understandably – but not entirely: her back is in the light, the mercy from on high is upon her, although she in her darkness does not, cannot know it.

The Christmas story is full of hard sad challenging mysteries. Why do we celebrate it with such superficial frivolity?

I have just read a deeply moving, illuminating book, The Drama of Living: Becoming Wise in the Spirit (Canterbury Press, 2014). It is so good I would like to persuade all my friends to read it.

The author is David Ford (left) until recently Regius Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, not only a learned, influential theologian, but also an adventurous pilgrim of faith.

This is not a book directed at other theologians, but at anyone who is engaged in the drama of living. It is written in a plain, attractive style. It does not talk in academic code, and explains any technicalities simply and effectively.

All the same, it is a challenge worth rising to. I don’t pretend it is a doddle: it is not for reading on the beach, when you are sleepy in the sun. Give yourself the best possible conditions to hear it.

I presume to offer two helps to reading this book well, with enjoyment and benefit.

The first is to read chapter 5, on ‘Loving: Intimate, Dramatic, Ultimate’, as a taster. It begins with the unusual love poems of Siadhail, celebrating married love, then considers ‘the larger life of love’ in the world, where we all live with ‘the vocation to love’, and ends with more from the Gospel of John which centres on God’s loving and our living in that love.

The second help is to read it in a group of friends. This book has been made out of the many and varied conversations and joint projects David Ford has engaged in throughout his life –with friends and colleagues and in communities, such as L’Arche. They have been thinking and growing together. So it is in the spirit of the book for us to read it together, to help each other get the most out of it, and to share the drama of living together.

A group could read it in under three months ( a chapter at a time, every two weeks). I would not minimise the commitment of time and attention that would require, but I am sure it would be well worth the effort.

I would be glad to convene a group if it is wanted. Please get in touch by email: willmerhaddon@gmail.com

You can view a video of David Ford talking about the book at Westminster Abbey here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNIAlvxtZh8

 

“Rediscovering what it is to be human and that every human being matters.” 

Poor Alexamenos

Guy Dammann opens his review of Donizetti’s opera Polituo (in the TLS, 5 June 2015) with this startling paragraph:

In an age in which the greatest threat to Christianity comes, not from competing religions, but from apathetic acceptance of its basic values, it is interesting to reflect on how astonishing the beliefs of early Christians must have seemed to their sceptical contemporaries. How bizarre it must have seemed to the citizens of the Roman Empire, no less than to the Vikings nearly a century later, that these people chose to worship a god who allowed himself to be reviled, tortured and executed by his enemies. How profoundly different must have appeared the believers’ desire to supplant the martial and heroic modes so crucial to the extant order of society, with a world view based on the idea of self-sacrifice and universal forgiveness.

This has a lot of truth and a weighty punch. It is worth reflection. Even when you don’t fully agree with it, does it not open our eyes and alert us afresh to reality?

In comfortable Britain, are we living in an age where there is an ‘apathetic acceptance of the basic values’ of Christianity? Is that where the greatest threat comes from?

Could it even be that the unexamined substratum of the Church is ‘apathetic acceptance’?

Do we, in the church, or in this age, have any sense of Christianity as ‘bizarre’? Is our age as different as Dammann suggests from the Roman Empire and the Vikings? Aren’t the ‘modes’ that are now counted as ‘crucial to the extant order of society’ still martial and heroic? We still fight for security and success with weapons, and even more with money and propaganda and celebrity. Power and prestige go to the victors in various kinds of competition. The survival of the fittest not only explains how the world is as it is but forms our moral sense and drives us with fear and ambition.

So many people who are at home in this present age still find Christianity bizarre and impractical and laugh it away. Christianity won’t work in the ‘real world’.

To some, these hard-headed atheists seem too crude and strident. They don’t want to go so far. They are gentle friendly people, insulated from the martial and heroic world, so they have a sense that the ‘basic values’ of Christianity merge with common decency and with easy agnostic spirituality. The world they are can’t avoid in the working week is characterised by cut-throat skulduggery, profiteering and harsh inhumanity, but they can escape to find their own life in home and friends and leisure, where a different spirit reigns. And there, if they want, they can think themselves Christian in an imprecise and undemanding way.

‘Sceptical contemporaries’ look at this sort of people, and never see anything bizarre. There is nothing for them to make savage fun of, nothing like what an anonymous satirist found in poor Alexamenos, whom we know about because a cartoon (above left) dating from around 200 AD, was excavated in 1857 on a plastered wall, on the Palatine Hill, Rome.

The writing says: Alexamenos worships his god. Who is his god? A crucified man with an ass’s head. The sceptical contemporary quickly concludes: Alexamenos is a pathetic idiot.

Paul talked of ‘the foolishness of Christ crucified’ (I Cor. 1.23). He gloried in it, not ashamed of it. His was a paradoxically, counter-cultural, joyous faith in a strange power and wisdom of God played out in the life and death and raising of Jesus.

Does what we do and are in Church suggest that we choose ‘to worship a god who allowed himself to be reviled, tortured and executed by his enemies’?

How far does the age we live in base itself on ‘the idea of self-sacrifice’? Even Christians, who may give the idea a bit more than an apathetic, acceptance, try to keep self-sacrifice within reasonable limits. Or we find we are unable to rise to its challenge. And the idea of ‘universal forgiveness’ has seemed and still seems to many Christians, as well as to others, to go too far. Are there not some wrongs which are unforgivable? Wrongs which we find ourselves unable to forgive? We fear for morality if there is universal forgiveness. What do we really think about how far the love of God reaches? Will the God who went through the Cross get blocked by anything?

Are we called to have a world view based on the idea of self-sacrifice and universal forgiveness?

Three weeks ago we reported on a conference that Haddon and Hilary Willmer had attended the title of which was Faith in Dark Places. The conference focussed on the question of poverty in Leeds. However, one comment made by Anglican Clergyman/writer David Rhodes namely  “Why the rich …rich ?. Why does a rich always wants to be richer. If you are a billionaire, why is it you always want more money ? And I think this is something like some people on the street and its addiction.wealth is something to be ashamed of” forms the basis of an eight minute video shot at the meeting and available here http://www.emaan.tv/poverty-wealth-is-something-to-be-ashamed-of/

David Rhodes, the author of Finding Mr Goldman was one of the speakers at a recent conference at St Edmunds Church, Rounday which examined Faith In Dark Places: Myths and Lies about Poverty. Here Haddon Wilmer who was among the 130 people who attended the day of talks and workshops reviews Rhodes’ book describing it as “very unusual, mysteriously Christian, just the sort of thing Alpha and the rest of us could do with.”

Finding Mr Goldman: A Parable by David Rhodes (172 pages, SPCK, 2015).

‘David Rhodes pulls no punches in offering a vivid parable of false riches and ultimate redemption.  This sparkingly well-written fiction entertains unerringly at the front door while the truth slips in through a side window.’ (Adrian Plass)

So let yourself be entertained, as I have. Like a parable it nudges and hints, alerting and inviting us to human possibilities.  Read it, let yourself be nudged, don’t try to tie down the meaning, walk with Mr Goldman.

I won’t spoil the fun by telling even a bit of the story. Some things it points to are:

The reality of the person apart from possessions, power, pretension – Mr Goldman is dependent on his money and power, and on his own achievement in making a great empire, so he is nothing to himself without it. He cannot imagine another way of being apart from his wealth-laden self, nor does he want to, nor can he risk it.

What is done to persons warps them, turning them away from and against themselves. And what people do to themselves, as they try to escape or revenge themselves for what they have suffered, makes everything worse than ever.

Is there grace and opportunity to undo what we have become? Can I unlearn the way of being me I have built up so arduously through living in my way for so long? Can there be release?

How does release come from encounter with those who are poor, weak, and despised, and yet are generous? From those who suffer harm and yet go on loving?

Can those who have been made inhuman by what they have suffered and done recover their humanity?

Is there a grace in and through death?  From where we are now in this life we find it hard to think there could be. In (often unadmitted) fear of death, we hold on to this life, pretending it is more satisfactory than it is because it seems to be all we’ve got.

Entering life through death has to come to us through parable. Is it not always parable?  Truth here is not a simple fact. No matter how much we believe or think we  know, we can relate to it only  by letting it stand as parable, teasing us with its ‘now you see me, now you don’t’, so that we have to be always searching, sometimes finding, but never holding fast. As Sheppard says, at the very end of the book, ‘Don’t ask. Just keep walking’. This is even after Mr Goldman has seen God.

Entering into life through death is not accomplished in a moment. Mr Goldman walks into many encounters with strange people and surprisingly with God in disguise, resulting in disconcerting self-discovery. His possessions are prised from his obstinate grasp, and his pretensions exposed. It appears in the end that this devastating judgement comes from the love which is the beginning and end of God’s creation. And so there is forgiveness for Mr Goldman. And as he comes into its light, he is able to forgive those who hurt him and set him on his evil road.

This parable gets us to think about who we are and how we are living in the realities of the world today. And who God is and what God is doing, in roundabout obscure ways and in encounters that can shake us to the roots. And it leaves us with the question, who really is Sheppard?

In his article,  Stepping Out – Community and Social Action  (Moortown Baptist News 13 February 2015) Graham says that one of several things we need to do as a Church is ‘to develop the level of support, prayer and recognition for the individual witness, work and service of people at Moortown Baptist Church. These expressions are a vital calling in themselves.’

How could this be done?  

First, we need to recognise that the primary and constant form of Church engagement in society is what the members of the church community do every day of the week.

That amounts to far more time than can ever be given to activities run directly by the church.

It involves everybody in the church whether they choose it or not. We are all deeply, intimately, involved in ‘society’ in many different ways.

To recognise it we need to look into it – to ask questions together about it.

The first step would be to  take note of where the Church is in society through its members as dispersed during the week.

That could be done through a fun ‘getting to know one another in a new way’  exercise –  even by a bit of a party.

Here are some questions we could ask ourselves, and each other:

Where do you work? What are you responsible for in the world outside Church? From where you are,  how do you see society, its blessings, its potential and problems? Do you think you are useful  to God and to people through your daily work, or are you an ineffective bystander or just a victim of a society that doesn’t work well for the common good? Are you part of a team, doing something good or useful?

Don’t  say, I am a pensioner, I don’t work.   Pensioners don’t get paid, but like the stay-at home Mum, they work voluntarily and often very hard at humanly constructive and essential jobs.   And they have a distinctive and valuable understanding of ‘society’ coming from their experience.

Where do you live? Who are your  neighbours? What do you do for and with them? What do you care about in your small and larger neighbourhoods? What good do you do? What good do you receive?  What do you learn about living socially in our world as it is today?

What family do you live with or see often? How do different family members experience living in their corner of society? What does the experience of your spouse, your children, your parents show you about the potential and the problems of society?

By asking questions like this, we could build up a picture and a map of  the church we are, in this society now.  And, once we have the facts, we could move on to evaluation.

What do we see and understand about society because of our involvement in it? What is sad, frustrating, a challenge for change?   What good is already being done, and how could more be done?

Who are we, not as private persons, but as social beings and citizens? What am I, not in and for myself, but in the eyes and experience of others, (family members, neighbours, employers, clients, strangers,  even organisations)?    Am I valued for worthwhile service, or am I seen as a nuisance, a parasite, even a menace?

What allies and helpers do we find in doing good, and what blockages and negative neighbours?   How can we make better alliances and turn negatives into positives?  How do we keep going even when negatives persist powerfully?

Recognising ourselves as persons and as Christians who are inevitably socially involved, and evaluating our involvement is not an individual private exercise. It is not introspective narcissism. It is something we can and should do as Church together.  

We can and should  both appreciate and encourage one another in our present engagements. We can learn more about the reality of society  by finding out how others see and experience it. (I have a comfortable individual existence; through people around me, I know life is hard, and society a cruel, clumsy, unhelpful thing. It is other people  who give me an agenda for social engagement, who tell me there is something more to live for than my own personal fulfilment.) If we talk honestly, we can help one another to evaluate whether what we are doing in life in society  is right and worthwhile, or whether it would be better to change to doing something else. We can help each other through times of weakness, discouragement, perplexity and even disastrous mistakes and failures (which are quite likely for people living in the real world and trying to make a good difference).

So we can practise Hebrews 10.24,25: Consider how to stir  up one another  to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together…’     We will do more than encourage each other to do good works as individuals, as though we live in isolation. We meet together to do the stirring, and in our meeting together we discover good works to do together. And  it will go further: when we meet each other in church, as Christians who are citizens, responsible to God for the welfare of the city (the global world) where God has placed us, we will stir each other up politically.   For if we hear the cry of the needy world and want to do something to help, we will want to recruit all available resources, including the government, the economy, culture. There will be no cordon sanitaire, no fire-break, between our being Christian and our being citizens. That means, we won’t as Church, live through this election season as though there is nothing in it which should concern us.

If  we, as Church, work like this, we will learn from the inside  how our faith and obedience to God in Christ really works out in everyday life. We will have a realistic faith, which gets a degree of living visibility in society because it is rooted in practice, and is not just words (which is what we necessarily deal in in our meetings in church). We will be discovering faith in ways that can be communicated to other people more adequately, because we are doing things in the same world as other people, and doing them in such a way that the faith and life of Christ has body, as well as spirit. So it becomes accessible to people who want that kind of practical everyday reality. Our life of faith will not be an individual cultivation of spirituality, but a social life, where the society which is other people and Jesus Christ, the first-born amongst many brethren.

So we learn and deepen our faith in Christ through our engagement in society rather than trying to intensify our spiritual life in Church and occasionally have a bit of a social add-on. We get going, not by sitting in church asking ourselves how we can engage more in society, but by recognising seriously that we are already engaged in society. We are with God in Christ in the world, which is where God’s love takes him.

 

 

 

The play was fun: clownish, witty, satiric by turns. But we did not laugh much, because it had us working out where the play was going, what was being said, and how we should respond to its challenge.

The play is a funny way of reading Acts – could we take it as a model for our groups? Three people on holiday…  Julia the assistant minister in a Church, busy and keen, but frustrated with it all; Chris her younger brother, an actor, cynical about Church and faith, not least because he has been reacting for years against his bossy sister, with her ‘saintly’ status’; he does not like being called ‘gofer’; and Tony, an historian, an enthusiastic reader of Acts, and guide books about historical places, and distraught because his wife has got fed up and left him.

They do the usual things, sun too much, drink too much, argue and apologise – and for the whole week, they do a very unusual thing. They dip into the book of Acts, and they act it out – it is not only Chris who can improvise.

They don’t act it to make the past present, as in a historical costume drama; they let the story tell itself in the idioms of contemporary living. So the disciples don’t walk from Jerusalem to Emmaus (Luke 24), they ride in a car, with a Frisbee as the steering wheel, and Jesus is an unknown hitchhiker they pick up. They lend themselves as a medium for the story to tell itself again. Does the story do that, or does it get lost in the fun?

The play states the problem:  Our Church today is not like the first century Church we hear about in the book of Acts in the New Testament. A lame man lay helplessly begging at the Temple gate every day. Peter said to him: I don’t have any silver and gold, but what I have, I give: In the name of Jesus, rise and walk (Acts 3). The man started dancing. In the play, the lame man holds out his hand, croaking his request:  ‘Miracle’. He asks for what he really wants, the restoration of capacity for a full, free life. Julia says to him: ‘I can’t do miracles but what I have, I give you’. She puts some coins in his hand; he throws them back at her.

The play encounters the mystery in Acts: the surprise of Holy Spirit, the free God beyond our management. Here, we cannot describe or control: we must wait for the Spirit, let ourselves be contradicted and converted and carried by the Spirit.

Philip in Samaria was like Julia, busy running a big and lively church, and then the Holy Spirit told him to get on the road in the desert where there was nobody (Acts 8). He obeyed, though it seemed a stupid career move.  And there he met the eunuch, travelling back to Queen Candace’s court in Ethiopia, reading the prophet Isaiah but not understanding it. When Philip explained it, he believed in Jesus and was baptised, and went on his way rejoicing. And so Christian faith very early was taken to Africa – the Spirit gets unlikely things done.

Acts tells how the first Christians came to see that the God who came to them in Jesus is the God of all peoples of the earth; and so Christians must be able to break through all the high walls that divide people from each other. So the play tells the story of the ‘second most significant meal’ in the Bible (the first is, of course, the Lord’s Supper). Christians are not different from other people: we love our own high walls, treasuring our identity and security. And Christian leaders may have a special investment in keeping the walls high. Conversion is necessary; and conversion is hard to come by.

So it was for Peter, the faithful Jew (Acts 10). Peter is hungry, sleeping on the roof in the heat of the day, and in his dream, he sees a sheet comes down from heaven – and, horror! – it is full of unclean creatures (according to the rules in Leviticus 11, including for example, the horse, the pig and the ostrich). Yet the chef says: Come, Peter, kill and eat. Peter will not: I have never eaten anything unclean. The chef is angry as chefs can be: No one calls my food unclean. Eventually Peter does what he is told. He crosses the boundary and eats, and thus is made ready to go to Cornelius when that Gentile soldier wants Peter the Jew to share the way of Jesus with him and his people.

As the play comes towards its end, the theme of reconciling welcome across the deepest divides is expressed in two ways. In Acts, Paul comes to Rome, where he lives in his hired house for two years, welcoming all who come to him, Jew and Gentile, ‘preaching the kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Christ, quite openly and unhindered’ (Acts 28. 31). Acts is an artful literary work, deliberately given an ending which is open, wrapping nothing up. It leaves its readers to carry on the story. And in the play, there is a movement of reconciliation for the three people, as they break bread and drink wine on the beach. Chris is still sceptical, but he will not be left out when the bread is given, he will eat with the others knowing what he is doing. Tony has a message on his phone from his wife, asking if he is open to having a conversation, since she has been having second thoughts about breaking up; and Julia, in an extraordinary crisis of penitence, breaks down and cannot drink the wine, because she does not respect and love her companions on holiday and so does not help them to be respectful to her  (I would like to have the script – I cannot remember the actual words here, and they are vital, as the play is so sensitively and precisely phrased throughout).

There are too many good things in the play than I can mention here. The puppet jailer in Philippi is fun (Acts 16). Cutting is the scene where the Christians pray for Peter in prison; they are so pious, unbelieving, unexpectant, engrossed in their religious exercises that they don’t have the free intelligence to hear Peter banging at their door, but are rather annoyed at their useless prayers being disturbed.

I can’t omit the remarkable conflation of Acts 2 and Acts 28. Near the end of the evening we are taken back to the beginning of Acts, the day of Pentecost, not mentioned before. The secluded frightened disciples in the upper room are shaken with earthquake, wind blowing, and tongues of flame descending; and then it morphs into the storm which broke the ship Paul and Luke with 274 others and cast them up on the island of Malta, where they were welcomed by the people.

The picture above shows the cast of Fantastic Acts (left to right) John Holden-White, Edith Kirkwood and Daniel Starkie who are accompanied on this seven week tour by Technical expert Dave Robinson.

The Riding Lights Theatre Company is based at the Friargate Theatre in York. Each year it tours extensively giving over 500 performances, runs a Summer School, publishes books, sketches and plays and runs workshops in schools, theatres, village halls and even prisons.

There are many ways we can support the Riding Lights Theatre Company but probably the most effective is to become a member. “Members” it says in the Fantastic Acts programme,”are our lifeblood, making possible the work we do, across the UK, every year”.  To see a full list of tour venues or to find out more about Membership you can call 01904 655317, email info@rltc.org or visit the Company’s website at www.ridinglights.org

To view a larger version of any of our gallery pictures simply click on the image.

On holiday in Shetland, we enjoyed better weather than Leeds.  On Sunday we walked  from  the guest house, along the beach, past the blue and red houses and came to Lerwick  Baptist Church an attractive serviceable building with very friendly people in it.

The Church is looking for a new minister.  The sermon was preached by Aubrey Jamieson, below, Superintendent of the Fishermen’s Mission in Lerwick – fishing is a big and dangerous industry in Shetland. It was about Baptism and because it was clear, informative, and challenging I wanted to pass it on to my friends.  Like me, you may not agree with everything in it, but it is worth taking very seriously. So here is the slightly abbreviated text which Aubrey has given us.

Baptism

Over the summer Moraig and I have been meeting with the three baptismal candidates and thinking together of what Baptism means and what is involved.

I want to use what we have been studying as a basis for our thoughts this morning looking at Baptism under four main headings. Why be Baptised? What does Baptism mean? What happens when we are Baptised? And finally Who is Baptism for?

So then – Why be Baptised?

Firstly and fundamentally, because Jesus commands us. When He was about to ascend to His Father he said in what has become known as the Great Commission – Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

It’s as simple as that. Jesus commands us to be baptised. Because Baptism is not about feelings. There are those who would say –‘I don’t feel the need to be baptised’ or ‘I don’t feel it’s the right time’.

But if we belong to Jesus, if we claim to be His disciple, if we are seeking to follow Him then we must take the challenge of Baptism seriously.

A phrase I often heard growing up in the church was ‘Baptism is not essential for salvation but it is essential for obedience’.

Jesus said to His disciples in John 15 v 14 – You are my friends if you do what I command you.

If we claim to be His followers, if our desire is to be obedient to Him we need to take seriously the command to be baptised.

But Jesus not only commanded us, He also set an example. We read in Matthew’s gospel and chapter three of how Jesus came to John at the Jordan to be baptised. John at first was reluctant saying –‘I need to be baptised by You and do You come to me?

But Jesus replied in verse 15 – Let it be so now: it is proper for us to do this to fulfil all righteousness. So John consented.

And verses 16 & 17 tell us what happened – As soon as Jesus was baptised, He went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lightening on Him. And a voice from Heaven said – This is my Son whom I love, with Him I am well pleased.

This was the first of three occasions when the Father spoke from heaven, the other occasions being at the Transfiguration and as He spoke in John chapter 12 of His death.

This in itself showing that Jesus was perfectly in the Father’s will.

In one sense Jesus had no need to be baptised. He had nothing to repent of. He was the sinlessly perfect Son of God. The prophet Isaiah reminds us that – He committed no violence nor was there any deceit found in His mouth. But Jesus knew that in taking this step He was submitting Himself to the will of God.

Jesus did not submit to Baptism with a view to washing away His sins. Rather in His baptism he took His first step towards the cross by identifying with us in our sinfulness.

In contrast when we are baptised, we as repentant sinners are identifying with Jesus in His sinlessness.

But like Jesus, when we are baptised we are doing what God requires. We are doing what pleases Him.

Jesus commands it. Jesus set us a wonderful example. But notice also we have the example of the early church.

Because in the early church Baptism was not an optional add on to be considered at a later date if at all. No, it was a fundamental part of the process of becoming a Christian.

Right back on the day of Pentecost Peter declared in Acts 2 v 38 –Repent and be baptised every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your  sins may be forgiven, and You will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

As we look through the book of Acts we find numerous references to Baptism.

In Acts 8 v 12 we find Philip the evangelist baptising believers in Samaria. And then later in the chapter the Ethiopian official was led to Christ by Philip and was baptised.

After his dramatic encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road the Apostle Paul was baptised by Ananias in chapter 9 v 19.

The Roman centurion Cornelius and his non Jewish friends were baptised by Peter in Acts 10 v 48.

When we turn to chapter 16 we find Lydia the business woman believing and being baptised by Paul. And later in the chapter after a dramatic series of events he baptised the Philippian jailer and all his household.

In chapter 19 Paul baptised some disciples of John in Ephesus.

The evidence of Scripture would suggest that in the early church there was no such thing as an unbaptised believer.

When it comes to baptism there are those who would perhaps think that it’s just the Baptists doing their thing.

But when we turn to the Word of God we find that Christ commanded it, that He showed us by example and that the early church practised it. For them baptism was an integral part of the Christian life. It was a given. It was an essential.

Secondly, what does Baptism mean?

It means that we belong to Jesus. It is a dramatic way of declaring that we belong to Him.

Someone has suggested that the only prop required is a large quantity of water. Because the Greek word ‘baptizo’ from where we get the English word ‘to baptise’ means to dip or to immerse. Even in non-Christian literature the word means, ‘to plunge, sink, drench or overwhelm’.

So the word baptism implies in itself a large quantity of water rather than a few drops in a basin.

In the early church baptisms most likely took place in rivers, lakes or pools as they still do in many places today. Indeed three or four years ago when we ourselves were between buildings and meeting in the Community hall on two occasions baptisms were held at the Sands of Sound beach.

Many churches of course now have baptistries as we do. The congregation are asked to imagine that the water is like a grave.

So when we are baptised we identify ourselves with our Lord Jesus who died and was buried for us. For a second we will disappear, like Jesus off the face of the earth.

The most common method of baptism is to be taken backwards into the horizontal position signifying death and the grave.

Then like Jesus we symbolically rise from the dead.  Paul in his letter to the Colossians speaks in chapter 2 and verse 12 about having been buried with Him in Baptism and raised with Him through your faith in the power of God, who raised Him from the dead.

It has been described as an outward symbol of an inward experience.

So when we are baptised we are in effect saying- ‘Lord, you died and were buried for me, Lord you rose again for me. I identify myself with you in your death, burial and resurrection. I belong to You.’We belong to Jesus and we will also live for Jesus. Paul speaking to the Romans in chapter 6 of his great epistle in verses 3, 4 says – Don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death?   We were therefore buried with Him through Baptism into death in order that just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

Baptism is more than a dramatic statement of belief, it is much more than simply a one-off event, far more than just ticking a box.

Paul describes it as rising to live a new life.  So it has great implications as to how we live, our thoughts, our attitudes, our actions indeed all of our lives.

When Paul was giving the Colossians rules for holy in Chapter 3 of his epistle he says in verse 3 –For you died and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.

I read a story of two young women who having previously lived a very wild and riotous lifestyle were converted and came to faith in Christ.

Sometime later they received an invitation to one of the wild parties they would formerly have attended. The reply they put back was – ‘We are unable to come because we recently died’.

It may seem an amusing story but nevertheless it portrays a deep and vital spiritual truth.

As we go into the water we declare our resolve to die to our old way of living and we rise out of the water we are declaring our desire to live for Christ and follow His pattern of living.

We are having done with the old and grasping on to the new. If any man be in Christ the old has gone and the new has come. And baptism is a powerful demonstration of this.

It is in fact no exaggeration to say that baptism is a revolutionary act.  It is a declaration that, come what may – I will live for Jesus. As the Apostle said – For me to live is Christ.

We belong to Jesus, we will live for Jesus and we are also made clean by Jesus.

When Paul was telling the story of his conversion to the crowd in Jerusalem in Acts chapter 22 he relays the words of Ananias in verse 16 – And now what are you waiting for? Get up, be baptised and wash your sins away, calling on His name.

The baptistry does not only symbolize a great watery grave but also a bath, a place where symbolically our sins are washed away.

Of course no water on the body can ever wash away sin but rather our faith in Jesus is expressed in baptism.

Peter spoke of this in his first epistle chapter 3. He was speaking of how Noah and his family were saved as it were by water. The water buried the earth in judgement but they also lifted Noah and his family up to safety.

But although Peter says in verse 21 – this water symbolises baptism that now saves you also –he goes on to clarify when he adds – not the removal of dirt from the body but the pledge of a good conscience towards God. It saves you by the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Of course only the blood of Jesus can cleanse us from all sin. Baptism is a sign that we are made clean by Jesus.

Sometimes we come across people who perhaps came to faith a long time ago yet they delay their baptism on the grounds that they are not yet good enough for God. They look on Baptism as if it was some special sign of Christian maturity.

But in many ways the reverse should be the case. Because it is in Baptism that we acknowledge that we are not good enough, that we constantly stand in need of Christ’s cleansing. Because baptism is for sinners, albeit those who have repented. Baptism is a sign that we are made clean by Jesus.

What does baptism mean?  It means we belong to Jesus. It means we intend to live for Jesus. It means we have been made clean by Jesus.

Thirdly What happens in Baptism? Firstly we confess that Jesus is Lord. Romans 10 v9 – If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead you will be saved.

Paul writing to his young co-worker Timothy exhorts him in chapter 6 verse 12 to Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and for which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.

When did Timothy make this good confession before many witnesses?   Probably when he was baptised.

Because Baptism is a great moment of nailing your colours to the mast. It is declaring that we belong to Jesus. We proclaim whose we are and whom we serve.

Experience has shown time and time again that the very act of baptism forms a tremendous opportunity for the gospel. As candidates confess their faith in Christ and proclaim their allegiance to Him it is a very powerful witness to those who come into the service.

Those of you who have been in church a while can no doubt recall that some of the most powerful, the most moving and the most challenging services you have ever attended have been services of believer’s baptism.

As the candidate confesses and then witnesses to that confession through the waters of baptism something very powerful takes place and others, even non- believers take note. What happens in baptism? We confess Jesus as Lord.

And then God blesses us with His spirit. When we give ourselves to Christ God blesses us with the gift of His Spirit. Through His Spirit He comes to live in us and becomes the source of our new life, a life marked by a new power, a new peace and a new joy. Baptism is a sign of the presence of God’s Spirit.

Some would say that baptism is more than just a sign of the Holy Spirit’s presence. And there are texts which would seem to suggest that the Spirit is active in and through the rite of Baptism. Peter’s appeal on the day of Pentecost in Acts 2 v 38 was –Repent and be baptised everyone of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Baptism taken from this perspective is like a believer’s personal Pentecost.

However we believe that God’s Spirit is given at the time of conversion and is not bound by any ceremony. When we read the story of Cornelius and his friends in Acts chapter 10 we find that they were baptised after God had poured out His Spirit upon them. Their baptism was a sign that this had already taken place – an outward sign of an inward grace, if you like.

But one thing we can be very sure of is that God will bless the act of obedience by a fresh infilling with His Spirit. I said to the candidates as we met with them, they could be absolutely sure that God will bless them in the stand that they are taking.

However nervous they might feel beforehand, I know that when they take their stand of obedience and follow Him in His appointed way that God will bless them with His Spirit.

When you are coming forward for baptism you can look to God to bless you and I can testify like so many others in this room that You will not be disappointed.

In Baptism we also become members of His church. In Galatians 3 v 26, 27 we read – In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of You are were baptised into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female, for all of you are one in Christ Jesus.

Paul’s mention of ‘faith’ leads him on to speak about baptism which in turn leads him to speak on the church in which we are all one in Christ Jesus. Baptism is God’s way for us to join the church, the body of Christ.

Because when we are baptised we identify ourselves not only with Jesus but also with His people. The New Testament knows nothing of baptised ‘lone rangers’.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 12 v 13 –For we were all baptised by one Spirit into one body-whether Jews or Greeks, slave or free and we were all given the one Spirit to drink.

That is why in most Baptist churches, baptism and church membership are closely linked. Through Baptism we become members of the church of Jesus. And we give expression to this as we become members of our local fellowship. It’s the natural next step.

Some churches would actually refuse to baptise if the candidate is not also requesting membership. We would not go as far as that, recognising that sometimes people come to us from other Christian denominations that do not practise believer’s baptism, feeling challenged about it.

We would want to help them in their desire to be obedient to Christ recognising that they may continue to be identified with their local body of believers.

The main point being is that we are involved with a local expression of the body of Christ. That we identify ourselves with a bible believing local church.

But sometimes, even with our own people, those who have come to faith through the witness of the fellowship here, it would seem that there are artificially long gaps between coming forward for baptism and joining the church.

The New Testament model would seem to be –that they were baptised and added to the church. Perhaps we have inadvertently created artificial borders here. In the early church Baptism was the rite of passage into church membership. They believed, were baptised then they belonged.

Because when we are born again of God’s spirit we belong to each other. And that has great implications as to how we behave, how we act one towards another.

In Philippians 2 v 4 Paul says – Each of you should look not only to his own interests but also to the interests of others.

In Romans 12 v 13 we are reminded to share with God’s people who are in need and practice hospitality.

These are but examples of so much of the New Testament’s teaching about our corporate life together.

When we belong to Christ we also belong to one another, we are members of His body. And baptism is a powerful expression of this.

Fourthly, who is Baptism for?

The bible makes it very clear that Baptism is for believers. That faith is absolutely central to Baptism.

In Acts chapter 8 we find the story of Philip and the Ethiopian Eunuch and of how Philip came alongside him and explained the scriptures to him.

In verse 36 the Eunuch exclaimed –Look here is water, why shouldn’t I be baptised?

Philips answer in verse 37 was very clear – If you believe with all your heart you may. The official answered – I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.

The only prerequisite to baptism is faith in Christ. Because without faith baptism will be of no effect. It will be completely meaningless, it can do absolutely nothing for us.

My Dad in law used to say – ‘If you baptise an unbeliever you only make them wet’’. It can do nothing else for them.

Baptism must be accompanied by faith or it is not the baptism of the bible.

This throws up some difficulties for those who come to faith in Christ who were perhaps sprinkled as infants. In their words –Should they be baptised again?

There are those who cite the references to whole families or entire households believing and being baptised as evidence that young children must have been included.

But to assume that very young children were included is perhaps to read too much into the silence of scripture which is dangerous, when scripture is elsewhere abundantly clear.

While not wishing to discredit the practises of other Christian groups I would have to say again that baptism which is not accompanied by faith in Christ, expressed by the candidates themselves, is not the baptism of the bible.

Baptism without faith is a fairly meaningless exercise.

But when it is accompanied by repentance toward God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ then it is so rich and full of meaning and symbolism and it is so exciting and dynamic.

As we respond in obedience to God, following the example of our Lord Jesus we declare that we belong to Him, that we will by His grace endeavour to live for Him, that we have been washed and cleansed by His precious blood.

We identify with Him in His death, burial and resurrection as we die to our former way of life and put on the new

We take our stand confessing that He is Lord of our lives. We become united and identify with each other as fellow members of His body and in turn God blesses us with His Spirit.

Wow it surely can’t get much better than that.

Finally in closing as we consider all these things that I’ve so inadequately scratched over this morning:   If you’ve not been baptised perhaps you’ve never thought all that much about it. Or maybe it has come before you many times and you’ve always put it aside.

Maybe you need to adopt the words of the Ethiopian when he said –Why shouldn’t I be baptised? The old version says – What doth hinder me to be baptised?

And we need to answer that before God. Maybe it just been a lack of commitment on our part or the fact that we have just believed and then drifted along.

Maybe it’s because of some baggage that we are carrying, fear of offending family or friends of another tradition.

Perhaps it just a fear of standing up in front of everyone.

Whatever it is, it’s not worth missing out on Baptism for.

It has been exciting to spend a few evenings recently with three young people whose lives God is at work in. They each have different stories to tell, they come from different backgrounds and experiences.

But they are united in the fact that they each want to be obedient to God and express their faith in Christ by going through the waters of baptism.

What doth hinder you from being baptised? If we wait till we have all the answers or feel we are good enough then it will never happen.

The only prerequisite for baptism is that we believe with all our heart.

We read that after the Eunuch and Philip came up out of the water, Philip was suddenly taken away but the eunuch went on his way rejoicing.

I trust that there may be someone here this morning who after taking that first step of obedience will go on their way rejoicing. And we as fellow members of Christ’s body will rejoice with you.

May God speak to someone here this morning and bless the step that they will take to His glory and His praise. Amen

(Note: I gratefully acknowledge much help in preparing this message from –‘Baptism, Belonging and Breaking Bread’ – Paul Beasley-Murray, BUGB 2010)

Aubrey writes, We had a wonderful baptismal service last Sunday with the three candidates and around 250 of a congregation including many un-churched.

This picture, taken in August, shows Aubrey Jamieson – Superintendent of the Fishermen’s Mission in Lerwick speaking at a memorial service to mark the anniversary of the Sumburgh helicopter disaster. The crash of the Puma helicopter on 23 August 2013 claimed four lives.

Elsewhere on the MBC website you can read a vivid report of a great evening’s entertainment with the Riding Lights Theatre Company. But surely the play was more than a recommendation of the Golden Rule, ‘do unto others as you would have them do to you’?

For more than two hours we sat inches away from people under the threat of imminent and likely physical death or challenged to make a life choice that involved letting one’s self die irrevocably.

The Golden Rule is sensible ‘give and take’ practice. We give in order to get. We give because it will help or oblige the other to give back in return.  It is easily understood. It makes sense even to small children and is a key stage in their socialisation. It cuts down grabbing. It leads us all to model good social practice, because it says to each of us, make your action a good example, so that if others do likewise, everyone will benefit.

The Golden Rule is wise guidance. Most of the time many people live well together because this Rule is respected even if it is not explicitly quoted. But some of the time, some of the people walk in the valley of the shadow of death. No one has guaranteed security that the ordinary ways of living well will not fall apart. When they do, it will be for us like living in Eyam, in 1665, with the plague killing the villagers one by one, remorselessly from day to day. They did not understand it. They could not stop it. They didn’t even know when it would burn itself out, as plagues often do, or what their individual chances of survival might be. Death defined their life situation. They could not run from Eyam, because the plague might already be in them.

No one could give them the help they really needed: stop the plague. Others might shun them or pray for them, but they still had to go through the valley without guarantee of escape.

The drama shocked us out of our comfortable normality, because we live from day to day without being really in the valley of the shadow of death. Where we are, the Golden Rule works well enough. But the people in the play found a different rule to live by. They had to if they were not to fall into a black hole of despair and nothingness. They transcended ‘give and take’ and got nearer to simply giving. The villagers decided to seal themselves up with death in Eyam in order to do what they could to stop the plague spreading others. And they did it in faith and obedience to God in Christ, who is more than the teacher of the Golden Rule. He is leader in sacrificial giving, in loving even when he is not loved in return. Beyond the Golden Rule, is the prayer of St Ignatius Loyola  (1491-1556):

Teach us, good Lord, to serve you as you deserve;

to give and not to count the cost;

to fight and not to heed the wounds;

to toil and not to seek for rest;

to labour and not to ask for any reward,

save that of knowing that we do your will.

This is not an unproblematic prayer; it is in danger of being too tough, demanding and heroic.  But the last two lines are authentic following of Jesus and they point to a way and a wisdom which differs from the Golden Rule. They pray for freedom from the expectation of reciprocity and reward and so they empower people for situations where there is no earthly everyday reward for doing good.

As the plague fell upon them, so that every house was filled with anxiety or sorrow, all that was left to  the villagers was the perhaps wavering knowledge that they were doing God’s will – it was no good asking for any reward because they were staring death in the face.

So it was, in different ways, for the other stories told in the play.

Some could see death coming to them, and they accepted it with their eyes open, in fellowship with God and in solidarity with others. The monks of the Notre Dame de L’Atlas Monastery in Algeria  refused to give up living with their Muslim neighbours who had become their friends and with whom they learnt to pray,  although the civil war between the Algerian army and the Armed Islamic Group got ever closer and more dangerous to foreigners and Christians. They were slaughtered.

For Katie Davis, there was no threat of  physical death, but a call to choose a way of life and a commitment to people which involved dying to self.

Katie’s parents thought she was throwing her life away when she stayed in Uganda, rather than come home and get on with her education, having done ten months there. Her boyfriend thought she had done her bit, enough to get it out of her system, but she was caught for life. What held her? Orphaned children who wanted a Mom, not just institutional care. They latched on to her. And God held her: “I think that’s definitely something that I was made for,” said Davis, 22, a devout Christian who idolizes Mother Teresa. “God just designed me that way because he already knew that this is what the plan was for my life — even though I didn’t.”

All these people did indeed practice the Golden Rule. They do not speak against it.  But I think they say there is and must be something more, something more difficult to explain and more difficult to practice and yet essential for human beings who are called to accompany and image God in the world. Their stories do not show that the Golden Rule is ‘the single most important thing in life’. I think that Jesus inspired them with something more than the Golden Rule.