What a Day to be baptised!
As I write, the world-wide Anglican community prepares for its annual celebration of Trinity Sunday. We remind ourselves again of a wonderful mystery: God has made himself known to humankind as one unseen, divine and eternal Creator, but as three (tri-) Persons - ‘Father’, ‘Son and ‘Holy Spirit’. I’m also preparing for and looking forward to the baptism of a child – as part of the same Trinity Sunday ‘Family Service’. But, oh dear, how lightly and presumptuously most of us regard our baptism, our ‘christening’!
Nevertheless, I’ll try my best in the service to emphasise that baptism is God’s way of generously welcoming us to live life as God longs us to do. Each sincere and faithful follower of Jesus, the Jesus who was and is himself ‘God-with-us’, a true and unique human Person, is taught also to trust God as a loving ‘Father’. Our Father in ‘heaven’ that is, in that unseen dimension of reality which, if we did but know it, is so close to us. And ever since Jesus withdrew his visible presence from us, God our Father has given the gift of his Holy Spirit - who is also ‘God-with-us’ now, an inner creative Personal presence of new animating life.
Now here’s the wonder of wonders. When someone is baptised in the name of God – the Father, the Son (Jesus) and the Holy Spirit – by that means God extends a welcome by name to that individual, a welcome to live with his help a deeper God-given life that can have no end.
But suppose I make light of that welcome and, despite having once been baptised, live in a negligent and heedless way? God is amazingly patient, but no-one can be sure for how long. Perhaps this year could be the year each baptised person in our parishes decides on new priorities.
The Rev’d Dr Richard Hines
(01945) 587742