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Ephesians 4.1-16, John 6.24-35
“We must grow up”, says St Paul in the Bible reading we heard. He’s writing to a little group of Christians in the very earliest days of the Church, just a couple of decades after Jesus’ death. They weren’t meeting in a fine building like this, but probably in someone’s house and much of their new found faith felt new and strange. The Gospels hadn’t been written yet, so they only knew whatever stories about Jesus were circulating orally. Most of the time they had to puzzle out what it meant to be a Christian as they went along. And because they all came from different faith backgrounds and cultures – some were originally Jewish, others had grown up worshipping pagan gods and goddesses - they didn’t all think the same way about it. It must have been very confusing to be pitched into a new situation like this. It must have felt like baby steps all the time.
Anyone who’s ever had to do something new – a new job, new house, new responsibilities, new hobbies, new relationships – will know what that feels like. Being in church can feel fairly strange if you’re new to it. If that’s you today, please relax, no one expects you to know what’s going on. Most of us regulars don’t either…! New things always feel strange. Becoming parents for the first time is one of the strangest and most terrifying of the new things we can do, as I’m sure Emily and Evie’s parents could tell us. Children don’t come with a manual or a help menu you can click on. Why are they crying? What do they want? It’s all guess work for a while. And if the early days of parenthood is sometimes strange, then just imagine what it’s like for the child, born into a world where everything is totally unfamiliar. They’ve never seen grass, trees, sky, never felt the wind blowing. As they grow they constantly experience new things – new sights and sounds, new textures – sand between their toes, waves crashing on a beach – and new people too. One of the joys of being around children is watching those first encounters - you get to see the world as if it was new again – but for the child it can be scary. How do they know what is safe and what is dangerous? No wonder children sometimes baulk at new experiences or won’t try new food.
But St Paul tells his readers that they should “no longer be children”. They need to develop the wisdom of adulthood to cope with a world in which there are many dangers, many challenges. In particular he wants them to have a grown up faith, one which they own, one which makes sense to them, one which connects with their real lives, not one where they unquestioningly accept things others have told them. They especially need that adult faith in their situation, because it was dangerous to be a Christian at this time. The Romans had crucified Jesus, and they were killing and persecuting his followers too. But we don’t grow up simply by wanting to. Growing is a process. It takes time and work. There’s no way of leapfrogging over the effort of learning new things, the fear that goes with trying new things out and of getting them wrong sometimes too. It’s an exciting process, but there’s no magic about it. That’s why it’s important that we realise that what we are doing for Emily and Evie is just a first step. Baptism – Christening – isn’t the end of the journey. It’s just the beginning.
And to sustain Emily and Evie and all of us who want a grown up faith, our Bible readings today tell us we will need two things. The first is company. St Paul knew that those Ephesian Christians needed each other. They needed to be like a body, knitted together by its ligaments and tendons and muscles.. Each one had gifts to give to the others. Emily and Evie have gifts to give to us, but all those here have gifts to give to them too, the gift of love, of prayer and wisdom and experience, the gifts we have gained by learning from our mistakes, in the hope that might mean they won’t have to make them too. Here at Seal church there is a whole community of people who care about your children, and about you, their parents. We want to help them, and you. We want to get to know you and support you. Feel free to drop in on us at any time, to join in with anything, to ask for support, to make suggestions, to be part of our family. We need each other – all of us – if we’re to learn and to grow into the people God wants us to be. Christian faith isn’t a faith for rugged individualists, who think they can and should go it alone; it’s for those who are willing to discover the joy of belonging to others and sharing life’s ups and downs with them.
So, we need each other, says St Paul. That’s the first thing.
The second thing we need if we are going to grow up in faith comes in our second reading, from John’s Gospel, which I’ve just read. It is food. Emily and Evie won’t get far in life if you don’t feed them and you wouldn’t dream of letting them go hungry physically. But as the people in the story find out, physical food isn’t all we need. This passage comes just after a very famous miracle, the feeding of the 5000. Jesus has fed a huge crowd with five barley loaves and two small fish, the packed lunch of a small boy in the crowd who decides to share it with others. Such a small amount ought to go nowhere in feeding such a large number, but according to the story, they are all full up by the end, and there are twelve baskets of leftovers. Make what you will of that, but the crowd were pretty impressed by it. There was such a thing as a free lunch, it seemed. And if there had been one free lunch, perhaps there would be another one. So when Jesus moves on the crowd trail after him. But Jesus tells them that it’s not just the bread that fills their bellies they need. More important than that is the bread that will nurture their souls, bread from heaven.
And what is this bread from heaven? It’s the bread that he brings through his life and his teaching, through his death and his resurrection, through the things he says and does, and the way he lives. This is what will truly nourish them. For Christians this whole idea is summed up in the bread we share at Communion , as we will do later in this service. It’s a weekly reminder that we need to feed on Christ. We need bread from heaven too. Those who first followed Jesus were nourished by Jesus’ example. As they followed him and shared his life, they learned to love their enemies, trust God, see themselves more clearly, to serve others rather than grasping for power, just as he had done. As they saw him crucified and raised from death, they learned that God was with them even when everything seems to be going wrong and falling to pieces, that there could always be new life and a new beginning, however unlikely it seemed, that hatred and suspicion don’t have the final word, the last laugh. These things were like rich food which kept them strong, satisfying hungers far deeper than the hunger of a tummy rumbling for bread and fish. And those who follow Christ today still find that. When we are hungry for meaning and purpose, hungry for resilience to get through tough times, hungry for strength to keep on loving when it is hard to do so, we can turn to Christ and to one another and find the food we need.
Today as we baptise Emily and Evie, we pray that they’ll grow up to be the people God is calling them to be. We pledge our support for them. We offer them our company on the journey, and we pray too that they will be nourished with the food that they truly need – Christ himself – so that they will never go hungry.
Amen
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