Sermons

Second Sunday before Lent
Sunday 11 February at 10am

Simon Cowling
Readings: Luke 8. 22-25

I like the story of the small boy who came home from church one morning having seen baptisms for the first time. Such was his interest that he proceeded to baptise the three family cats in the bath.

The cats were of various ages. The first one, a kitten, bore it very well; and so did the young cat. But the old family cat rebelled. It struggled with him, clawed and scratched him, and got away. With considerable effort the small boy caught it again and proceeded with the ceremony. But the cat acted worse than ever. Finally, unable even to get a small amount of water on the cat, the small boy dropped it on the floor in disgust and said: "Fine. Be an Atheist!"

Cats don't like water. Nor did the people of Israel. More specifically, they were afraid, very afraid, of the sea - whether it was the inland Sea of Galilee where Jesus and his disciples find themselves in this morning's reading from St. Luke's Gospel, or the Mediterranean Sea whose size was indicative of the vast terrors it held for any who ventured on it. The turbulence of the sea, as it says in one of the psalms in the Old Testament, made sailors lose courage, causing them, 'to stumble and stagger like drunken men.' So deep-rooted was this fear of the sea among the Jewish people, that in the final book of the New Testament, the Revelation of St. John, the writer, in describing his vision of the new heaven and the new earth, says quite simply: and there was no more sea. No more sea was part of what constituted a world made perfect.

The significance of Luke's account of Jesus calming the waters which we heard just now is summed up in the final verse of the reading. The disciples, who had been fearful for their very lives, suddenly experience the great calm that descends on the Sea of Galilee. They see Jesus in a new light. They are, Luke tells us, amazed and afraid at the one who can give orders to the winds and the waves which then obey him. Why amazed? Why afraid? Because Jesus, by demonstrating his authority over the forces of chaos represented by the stormy waters, has confronted the disciples with the reality of his saving power, a power that they know can come only from God; for it is only God who stands between order, and the chaos represented by the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee.

The baptism service is full of imagery, some of it relatively straightforward, some less so. In the Prayer over the Water which Lesley will say in a moment, we will thank God for the gift of water to cleanse us and revive us. I would guess that all of us can relate to the cleansing and reviving properties of water, whether it's after a morning in the garden, a session in the gym or a long journey. But the Prayer over the Water also has these words: We thank you that through the deep waters of death you brought your Son and raised him to life in triumph. Here the imagery is much more troubling, much more challenging. Yet seen in the light of Luke's account of Jesus stilling the waters, the imagery not only makes sense, it becomes vital, absolutely central, to our understanding of how God is at work here, now, in this service of baptism.

In his letter to the Romans, St. Paul reminds his fellow Christians about what baptism means. It is, of course, about new life in Jesus Christ. That new life is brought about, as Paul puts it, by being baptised into union with Christ Jesus. However that union must involve sharing his death before we, like him, can be raised by God and so live that new life in him.

The Prayer over the Water reminds us that the water in which Harriet, Thomas and Emily will be baptised symbolises, among other things, the danger and the chaos that made the disciples so fearful for their lives when they pleaded with Jesus to wake up on that small boat on the Sea of Galilee. More than this, the water symbolises the death that Jesus himself eventually suffered for our sake on the cross. More even than this, by reminding us that God brought Jesus through the waters of death, the water of baptism symbolises the authority and the saving power of God, seen in Jesus Christ by the disciples on the storm-tossed boat, and experienced by us today through his Holy Spirit. We pray that the same Spirit will richly bless Harriet, Thomas and Emily - and all of us as we welcome them. Amen.

© St Edmund's Church, Roundhay