Making God’s Name Known

This is a special day in the life of our congregation.  It is Mothers’ Day, a day to honor all of our mothers and the mothers everywhere who nurture and care for God’s children as they grow and develop into responsible adults.  It  is also a special time as we are baptizing four people into the household of God.  In baptism they, their sponsors, and all of us affirm our ministries of compassion, justice and peace.  We are called to go forth into the world reconciling all people to unity with God and each other in Christ’s name.

Jesus prayed for his disciples: "The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one, so that the world may know that you have sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

This is part of a prayer that the Gospel’s author uses to portray Jesus as a person whose life reveals divine glory and the very name of God.  It is the setting for a review of his ministry and his vision for the church and the world.

The gospel of John emphasizes that Christ is present with us now.  To live where God is means to live deeply rooted in the present, while always going forward to a newness of life.  There is great hope and promise: unity with God, even as God and Christ are one, and a life of fulfillment in God's love.

This is both a gift and a challenge.   God’s love is a given; it is unconditional and available to everyone.  We cannot afford to hide behind a naive, childlike faith that fails to ask questions.  Nor can we allow our faith to be manipulated by the standards of the contemporary world.  Our world, by its enlightened understandings of science, literature, philosophy, and technology, constantly challenges religious belief.  I submit to you that the real challenge of these new developments is asking us to enlarge our understanding of God.

The Gospel challenges us to be instruments of God's unity and God's love.  It is easy enough to proclaim Jesus as Lord and Savior, and Jesus' prayer and promise of the unity of all believers in God can give us comfort and hope.  But part of the challenge of unity and love is about forgiving our enemies, meeting violence with nonviolence, entering into dialogue rather than forcing others to submit to our point of view. 

How contrary this is to the ways of our world.   Lives of meeting violence with nonviolence and entering into dialogue with those who differ from us comes across as foolishness to a world that continues to meet violence with violence, and that advocates confrontation as a way to deal with opposition.

 

Jesus made known God's name.  We come to know God by having faith and trust in God as Jesus did.  For us who profess the Christian Faith this means behaving in a loving and understanding way and working for unity and reconciliation among all people.  We must also make God’s name known so that the love with which God loves us will be in them, and we in them.

A significant part of our Christian faith is our continued nurturing and spiritual growth through the sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Eucharist.  As our Prayer Book states, “Baptism is the sacrament by which God adopts us as his children and makes us members of Christ’s Body, the Church, and inheritors of the kingdom of God.”  “The Holy Eucharist is the sacrament commanded by Christ for the continual remembrance of his life, death, and resurrection, until his coming again.”

Baptism is both God's gift to us and our response to that gift.  It is a time for giving a person his or her Christian name.  It marks a person’s initiation into the community of the Church, the fellowship of the Holy Spirit.  It is about God’s relationship to us, our relationship with God, and our relationships with one another.  It also looks toward continued growth into the stature of the fullness of Christ. 

Baptism is more than a momentary experience using water and the sign of the cross.  It is the beginning of a journey of a life-long relationship with God and the people of God.  As St. Paul wrote in his second letter to the Corinthians, those who are baptized are called upon to reflect the glory of God as they are transformed by the power of the Holy Spirit, with ever-increasing splendor. 

The life of a Christian is necessarily one of continuing struggle, yet it is also one of continuing experience of the grace of God.  In this new relationship, the baptized person lives for the sake of Christ and for the world that he loves, while waiting in hope for the realization of God's new creation when all people will be reconciled to God.

As we continue to grow in the Christian life of faith, we demonstrate that humanity can be regenerated and liberated.  We share a common responsibility to bear witness to the Gospel of Christ,  and we acknowledge that baptism has ethical implications that motivate us to strive for the realization of God’s kingdom on earth, working for peace and justice with love and compassion for everyone.  Amen.