Advent is a season of ever rising expectation, and hope. Isaiah had a message of hope for his embattled people and its monarchy a shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, he proclaims, and he goes on to envisage a new age of justice and righteousness and peace, when the earth shall be as full of the knowledge of the Lord as the sea is full of water. And John had a message of hope too the time was coming, coming soon, when those ancient prophecies would be fulfilled, and the new age would dawn. He could see it coming, coming very soon, and he baptised in the river Jordan all those who wanted to be ready with him. And we have a message of hope, as we remind ourselves year by year that in Jesus that new age has dawned, though it has yet to be fully realised. What a wonderful day on which to bring William for baptism! What a wonderful focus his baptism makes for our own preparations.
I don’t know what particular hopes and expectations William’s parents may have for him. Most of us hope that our children will turn out to be at least moderately gifted in all sorts of ways. We do our best to provide them with opportunities to discover and fulfil their potential, whatever that may be, and we try to protect and support them both physically and emotionally as they grow up into that potential, but what we hope for them more than anything else, as we hold them in our arms, is that, whatever the chances of life may throw at them, they will find the secret of true happiness. You will do all you can for William, but you have come this morning to give thanks for what God has already done. It is our conviction that the gifts of which we remind ourselves symbolically in this service of baptism, have more to do with his future happiness than anything else with which he may have been endowed, or which you may give him as he grows up.
So what are those gifts? First then, we shall mark William’s forehead with the sign of the cross, as a reminder that in planning for William’s future happiness God has already taken the first and most important step by dying on the cross to break the power of sin before ever it can even begin to take hold. In that certain knowledge all of us can plan with confidence for the future, knowing that whatever may happen to us, we need never be crushed by the forces of evil. So the first great event which we recall this morning is all of God’s doing we can neither add to it nor take anything away Jesus our Saviour died on the cross to break for ever the power of sin and death. We thank God for that as we mark William with the sign of the cross, our badge of faith.
The second gift, as William is dipped into the water of baptism, symbolises our response to the love which God has shown to us. As each of us passes through the water of baptism, we share in Christ’s victory as the power of sin is washed away, and with him we are born again into a new life, which is not on the downward slope to decay and death, but ever rising as we grow into our new life in the risen Christ, that life of peace and joy, love and harmony which the prophet glimpsed in our first reading. Over the coming years William and his parents will share his wonder as he discovers the fascination of the extraordinary, beautiful world of which we are life-long trustees, but to-day he is baptised into the life of that other world, no less real than the world he is already beginning to explore, that world of deeper truth and a more profound reality to which you as his parents and godparents, and we as his Christian community, will gradually open his eyes, that other world of which we are citizens for ever.
As he grows up he will be called to fight valiantly for the values of that world, and for those battles, as Bishop Peter reminded us last week, he will eventually need the whole armour of God. He is not yet ready for all that, but to-day we give him his first banner in the form of a candle to remind him to walk by the light of Christ, and so to shine as a light in the world to the glory of God, for that is something which we can all do, however young or old we may be.
In a few minutes we shall welcome William into the fellowship of our community, and that leads me to say just one more thing. William’s grandmother knows very well how our Sunday School teachers are struggling week by week to play their part in fulfilling our responsibility for the Christian education of our children in desperately cramped and unsatisfactory accommodation. The PCC is working on a scheme which will considerably extend that accommodation. The proposals are not yet ready, but if we are serious about welcoming William and all our children, we need to recognise that quite soon we will all have to contribute generously to a major building programme.
But that’s for another day. For to-day it is our privilege and our joy to welcome William with the cross of salvation, the water of baptism, and the light of Christ three great symbols of the love and saving power of the God who has entrusted William to our care, three great symbols of the love and saving power of the Christ-child, whose coming into our own lives we are preparing to celebrate in this season of Advent.