Baptisms are often times when people give gifts to a new
arrival in a family, traditionally things like silver bracelets, cups or
spoons, or perhaps something more obviously religious like a Bible or prayer
book. Whether or not there are any physical presents given, there are always
less tangible gifts being offered on a day like today, the prayers and good
wishes of those who are here – both family and friends of the one being
baptised and those who are members of our regular congregation too.
In the old folk tales, the gifts given at christenings are
often very significant. They are magical gifts given by magical godparents to a
child destined for great things – grace, strength, goodness, a loving heart–
things that will make a real difference to their lives.
What we are doing here today isn’t magic, but we hope that
it will give Daisy gifts like that too, the tools she needs to live well. We
hope it will remind those who care for her that she is God’s child too, and
part of a community that cares; they aren’t on their own. We hope it will
remind them that when she gets in a mess, as we all do, there is always
forgiveness and a new start; the waters of baptism tell us that it all comes
out in the wash, in God’s love. We hope it will help to set a good direction
for her life, pointing her towards all that is good and life-giving. These are
the most valuable gifts given in baptism, gifts that will keep on giving
throughout her life.
As it happens, today is a double celebration. It is also our
Patronal festival, the feast day of the saints to whom this church is dedicated,
St Peter and St Paul. In a way, Patron Saints are a bit like the church’s own
godparents, and they have gifts to give us too, inspiring us through the
stories of their lives. We heard snippets of those stories in our readings this
morning, but I probably need to do a bit of unwrapping if we are to discover
the gifts those stories contain, because they aren’t always obvious.
The Gospel reading featured the first of our Patron Saints,
St Peter. It is set just after the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus – that
is very significant, because Peter hadn’t exactly distinguished himself when
Jesus was arrested and killed. He’d been so sure of himself beforehand. He’d
been by Jesus’ side throughout his ministry as he had travelled around teaching
and healing. He was a bluff, strong, impulsive man who said what he thought,
often without thinking too much about it first, but he saw himself as loyal and
brave, as Jesus’ best friend. But when the soldiers came for Jesus he’d deserted
him, like all the rest. Worse than that he had denied even knowing Jesus at
all, not just once, but three times by the time the cock crowed next morning. Some
friend he turned out to be!
It looked like the end of everything, but three days later
the disciples started seeing Jesus again, risen from death. It should have been
pure joy for Peter, but… he couldn’t forget how badly he had let Jesus down,
how far short he’d fallen. How could Jesus ever trust him again? How could he
ever hope for Jesus’ friendship and love again?
So Peter went back to something he did know how to do, or
thought he did. He went fishing. But even his old skills seem to have deserted
him. He fished all night, but caught nothing. Just as he and the others were
about to give up, though, a figure appeared on the shore and called to them to
cast their nets on the other side of the boat. Rather sceptically they did, and
to their surprise, the nets were filled with fish, so many they could hardly
drag them in.
Peter twigs straight away that it is Jesus, and jumps
overboard to swim to shore, but after breakfast, Jesus takes him aside for the
conversation he has been dreading. This is where he is going to get torn to
shreds for his disloyalty and cowardice isn’t it…? But that’s not what happens.
Instead Jesus asks him three times if he loves him, and three times, hearing
that he does, he tells him “Feed my sheep, feed my lambs”…Look after those who
will follow me in the future, it means. Be the leader of this group. And that
is what Peter becomes, a towering figure in the early Church, and for the
Church ever since.
Jesus had called him the Rock – that is what Peter means in
Greek – but it wasn’t the loud, bold confidence of the old Peter he was
pointing to, but the much deeper resilience that came through getting it wrong,
really wrong, and discovering that wasn’t the end of everything, but the
beginning. He discovered that the weaknesses and the failures in our lives
often matter far more than the apparent strengths and triumphs. As he learned
to see himself anew - fallible, but forgiven - he also learned to see others
anew as well, recognising God at work in those who didn’t fit the mould of
success his society had given him.
Our other Patron Saint, St Paul, is another man who doesn’t
look at first sight like someone you’d want to follow. The first reading was
about him, though in it he was called by his Hebrew name, Saul. He’d been one
of the most bitter and sworn enemies of Christian faith. He sincerely believed
that it was a dangerous perversion of the beliefs he had grown up with, and
that it ought to be stamped out firmly. He was a man on a mission when he set
out for the Syrian city of Damascus, but it was a mission of destruction. On
the road to Damascus, though, he saw a blinding light, and heard a voice,
calling out “why do you persecute me?”
He couldn’t understand it at all. He thought he was doing
God’s work, and yet here was a voice, apparently from heaven, challenging all
that. It wasn’t just his physical sight that he lost that day; nothing looked
the way it should anymore.
But along came someone – one of the bravest people in the
Bible – to change all that. Ananias, the Christian who God sent to pray for his
healing knew perfectly well who Saul was when he set out to visit him. He knew
he was someone famous for persecuting the church, but he went anyway, because
here was someone in need of his love and prayer. No wonder later on St Paul
wrote so much about love – that famous passage often heard at weddings is his “
If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels but have not love I am
nothing…Love is patient and kind… Love believes all things, endures all
things.. Faith, hope and love abide and the greatest of these is love.” He had
discovered this for himself, as Ananias responded to him not with the hatred he
might have expected, but with kindness and care.
Peter and Paul both got it wrong, spectacularly wrong, before
they got it right, but that was how it had to be.
And that’s often the way with us too. It’s when our lives
fall apart, when we have to let go of the shiny self-image that we have clung
to for dear life, that we start to really appreciate those around us. We open ourselves
up to the help that those around us offer – we have to. That help may come from
unexpected sources, unlikely people, places we’d never thought to look, as
Paul’s help did in the shape of Ananias. We discover the love that was always
there, the love of others and the love of God, which we were too tied up with
ourselves to notice before. And having discovered it by accident, perhaps we
learn to search for it deliberately, looking at all those around us as children
of God, places where God is at work, people who just might have gifts to give
us, gifts that we need. That is what Peter and Paul learned – the hard way –
through their lives, they each came to realise in their different ways that God
was far more generous than they had thought, giving freely of his love to all,
even to those they thought were failures or beyond the pale, and intending that
all people should be gifts to one another too, gifts to be treasured and
welcomed.
So, today is a day full of gifts, whether they come wrapped
in shiny paper or not; the gifts that come from the saints who inspire us, the
gifts of love and prayer we give to Daisy, the gift that she is to us and to
the world, the gifts that we can all be to one another, and learn to find in
one another if we have eyes to see. I pray that not only Daisy but all of us
will go home today laden with gifts to sustain and bless us.
Amen.
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