Sermon given at our 9.30am service, Sunday 4 February 2024

I want to tell you about three men and a baby.

The first man is Philip. We read about him in today’s gospel.

The second man is Thomas Aquinas. It is his saint’s day today.

The third man is called Ethan.

And the baby is also called Ethan, the newly baptised among us today!

Listen as we explore what ‘Trust’ means, what it looks like and where we find ourselves in the two-way connection of trust between God and ourselves. What are the building blocks of Trust? How does God fulfil our trust? What does it mean to truly work on sustaining our trust in Him and overcoming the blockers we put in the way.

The baptism of Christ led him into his full time ministry and calls us to be baptised into the Christian family and our way of living a Christian life.

As Christmas marked the birth of a child so the Feast of the Baptism of Jesus marks a new beginning for that Christ-child, the start of a ministry, the beginnings of something beautiful and something good. Baptism is new life, a new day. And, as such, is an appropriate way in which to begin a New Year. 

The Dominican Paul Philbert once remarked that we should never let the waters of baptism dry from us. We should always, in other words, keep ourselves irrigated by the waters into which we were baptised.

We see a story about servanthood, starting with Mary as she answers her Lord, 'here I am the servant of the Lord'.

We see Joseph becoming a servant to his Lord's instructions and by serving Mary.

The shepherds are the lowliest servants of all and are the first to be visited by the angels with the good news.

And greatest of all we see God's beloved Son being born in a lowly stable to begin his life of servanthood.

Where is God in all this suffering mass of humanity? God is with us under the rubble.

What happens between the moment of that angelic announcement to Mary, and the moment of Mary going into labour? St Luke gives us a clue in one word…

We have in the story of John the Baptist a kind of equivalent to a trailer.

John, we are told, came as a witness. He came as someone who was telling us about someone else. He’d seen stuff he wanted us to know. And he was clear he wasn’t the main event. He wasn’t the Messiah. But the Messiah was coming, and he was pointing the way.

So, we have the character of John pointing us toward the person of Christ.

We also, through the Isaiah reading, get a little of the plot. They’ll be proclamation of good news! Captives will be freed! Prisoners released from darkness! Those who mourn will be comforted! They’ll be joy instead of mourning. Praise instead of despair. Ancient ruins will be rebuilt. Places long devastated will be restored. Ruined cities, renewed.

That’s a kind of movie I’d want to see. It’s the kind of movie we’d all like to see.

The Prophet Isaiah begs God to tear open the heavens and come to a warring earth, but how will he come?