There are occasionally small perks to being a clergyman! Before Christmas I went into Hamleys toy store after a meeting in central London to buy my nephew’s Christmas present and I got chatting to a friendly sales assistant who was lamenting the loss of meaning behind all the consumerism. After a few moments he presented with a complimentary model of Noah’s Ark and wished me a merry Christmas. So when my family came to visit, just before I went on holiday, this Ark provided a few moments amusement for my little nephew Michael. He has one at home so he knew to put all the animals in, two by two, and then he pushed it slowly around the living room carpet.
I’ve always been fascinated by the story of Noah. It strikes me as strange and terrifying, a story of fear and uncertainty. Not really a children’s story at all. So as this little Ark went around the living room floor I found myself reflecting again on what Noah’s experience must have been like. What would it be like for every previous certainty and security to be swept away and find oneself adrift with nothing but the hope that God will eventually bring this nightmare to an end? Noah must have wondered whether even God was to be trusted, given how capriciously he had just behaved. All Noah had was his hope that eventually he and his family would be brought to a new land, a place of security and stability.
The story of Noah is so appealing I think, not just because the animals make for good children’s toys and songs, but because that experience of total dislocation is one that we all fear and do from time to time experience in our lives. Many over the last few months have experienced the sweeping away of former certainties as their professional and financial stability have been submerged in the flood of an economic crisis. Those fears are often something people keep contained within themselves for fear of upsetting family or losing face in a competitive community such as ours. But if that is a nightmare that you are facing, then know that in this church you are not alone and there are people with whom you can share those anxieties.
Then while I was away I saw another sense in which many people in our world are forced to live with fear and uncertainty. If we can fear redundancy or a drop in our living standard, many people in Cidade de Deus, the slum district of Rio de Janeiro where I spent much of the last two weeks, can live in fear of their lives if they were to cross the drug traffickers who have for so long controlled that community. Spending time with our USPG Mission Partner Fr Nicholas Wheeler I was introduced to people who have grown up with totally different expectations about the kind of securities people can expect in their lives. And the Lent Course run by the Church in that diocese is going to be looking at the role the Church can play in contributing to basic public security.
So there, Hampstead and Cidade de Deus, are two extremes of life experience, both with their own fears and uncertainties. But of course there are other fears and uncertainties that unite us as common to the human condition, the floods that could consume any of us. And I think the most poignant visit that I made with Fr Nicholas was to a woman called Marissa who, for all the poverty and gang violence is going on around her, was struggling in her own battle against breast cancer. How sadly familiar that kind of flood of uncertainty is to many of us in this church. On Ash Wednesday we were reminded that we are dust and to dust we will return. So the experience of Noah is really the experience that lies at the heart of us all, that we are mortal, that we cannot sustain ourselves for ever, that in the end we like Noah have nothing but our hopes.
So we can see why St Paul found Noah’s experience to be a helpful one in describing what happens in baptism. Life is a flood of fears and anxieties and baptism is something that draws us through that into something else. Too often I think religion is viewed more as a kind of life jacket to keep your head above water in the storms of life. People describe it as a comfort or a consolation. But baptism is something far stronger than that. It’s not just palliative, it is redemptive, because it is the revelation by God of who we really are which we grasp onto in baptism, which we are to grow into in our Christian lives and which will be brought to fullness beyond the grave.
Baptism says that we are not accidents of an evolutionary system, a bundle of molecules that have taken on a particular formation for a limited period of time, we are – each one of us – citizens of the Kingdom of God, created by God to share his life of love. The problem with our practice of infant baptism is that it has made us think of a christening as simply a thanksgiving for the gift of a new human life. In fact it is a thanksgiving for the gift of eternal life, a citizenship that will not pass away. And that’s not simply about hope for something beyond this life, it should be a liberation to live life fully and freely here and now, to know our belonging to the kingdom of God amidst the fears and anxieties of life. For whatever reason Jesus was baptised (and that question has puzzled theologians for centuries) it was certainly a confirmation of his identity as God’s beloved son and perhaps therefore gave him the confidence of faith to live freely for others amidst life’s trials, even his trial to an agonising death.
So the question for us all to ask this Lent is “what difference does my citizenship of the kingdom of God make in my life?” “And how might I find a more liberated way of living through embracing that identity that has been given to me in baptism?” Addressing those questions does itself require a certain kind of dislocation, not the dislocation of fear that was is Noah’s experience, but the dislocation of contemplation that was Jesus’ experience of 40 days set apart in the wilderness.
And if embracing our citizenship of the Kingdom is arrived at through dislocation we can see how the practice of pilgrimage has grown up as a spiritual discipline in the Christian tradition. Journeying away from home can help us find our true home. And in my own life, journeying to the place on Earth that was the home of Jesus Christ was a very powerful way of receiving him more deeply into my life. So I’m very excited for those of you leaving on pilgrimage for the Holy Land this week because it will give God opportunities to do things in your lives that will speak to you more deeply of his love and of his kingdom.
But we can all this Lent experience the dislocation of contemplation to help us receive our citizenship of the kingdom. We have our usual Lent groups to look at the ethical pattern of our lives. On Tuesday mornings we have an extra opportunity for silent prayer and meditation in the side chapel from eight until nine. Perhaps you can call in for 10 or 15 minutes before going to work. On 4 April we have a quiet day at Edgware Abbey on the theme of journeying about which you can find more details in the letter at the back of church. And on Fridays at midday we will be reflecting on Christ’s last journey, the Way of the Cross using the posters around church of which we have donated a set to Fr Nicholas’ church in Rio de Janeiro. Receiving our citizenship of the kingdom is partly about embracing our solidarity with all who bear the name of Christ, and particularly those whose lives are afflicted by hardships, be that the Palestinian Church or the people of Cidade de Deus. We are not citizens in isolation; we who share the one bread are one body. When I presented the stations of the Cross to the congregation of Cristo Rei, Cidade de Deus, I said that we would be praying the stations with particular intention for them and their community during the season of Lent and their churchwarden responded by saying that they too would pray for us, their sponsoring church, in the fears and anxieties that we face so many thousands of miles away. They are certainly appreciative of our money and our gifts. But in helping us to receive God’s kingdom we can be as grateful for their prayers.
So we have many ways to mark Lent but one intention: to make our faith more than just a set of habitual practices. Lent is the time to go deeper, to get to the heart of what it’s all about, to understand the difference that baptism makes. It is the time to hear Christ’s words that “the kingdom of God has come near”. Now, as we all move forward in pilgrimage – literally to the Holy Land or metaphorically into God – let’s reflect on what citizenship of that Kingdom really means to us.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.