It is not too many years ago that it was quite unusual to have what we call infant baptisms as part of the main service as we do these days and are doing this morning. It was more usual for them to be conducted quietly around the font on, for example, a Sunday afternoon.
Thus it was when our sons were baptised. At our second son’s baptism around the font his elder brother, who was and is a couple of years older than he, was restive and straining at the leash while we as good’ parents were trying to restrain him – until the vicar said “It’s all right. Let him go. It’s good that he should get used to looking around his father’s house. He will come back.” And so we let him go, he wandered around a bit and then of course came back.
I hope that in due course Alexander and Marcus will often spend time looking around their father’s house.
“It is good that he should get used to looking around his father’s house”. Wise words; wiser than mine, no doubt but thinking of such things this week it has occurred to me that it si good that we should have fun in our father’s house which too often I think we take too seriously.
It was, top me, noticeable at the Memorial Concert which we held in this church for Sir Alan goodison ten days ago that while inevitably there was much that was serious, there was also fun and laughter in some of the contributions, not least interestingly perhaps in our Vicar’s contribution. We can do with fun. Jesus was not always as serious as we sometimes make him out to have been as the actor Alec McCowan demonstrated many years ago now when night after night at a West end theatre he recited St Mark’s Gospel and brought out in it humour which had been missed by many of us.
I want to suggest that this is a fun day, a day full of fun for at least 3 reasons.
The first, and least important reason is that – while some of you may have had fireworks last night or on Friday night – this is really Guy Fawkes day. Guy Fawkes is somewhat played down these days, partly perhaps because tit is now over 400 years since the gunpowder plot was discovered and partly I think because in these extraordinary and politically correct days in which we live the authorities tend to frown on fireworks and become somewhat paranoid about them,
But when I was a boy, it was indeed a funday; we looked forward to the evening when we would have our sparklers which, when lit, we would twirl around and make patterns of light. It was fun watching the grown ups light Catherine wheels, rockets, squibs and so on and enjoying the sight and feeling the heat of the bonfire.
I was tempted to buy a sparkler or two yesterday and bring them to church today but thought that that would be pushing the thought of fun in church a little too far but we can in imagination before God imagine the fun in celebrating the thwarting of explosions and fire all those years ago.
The second and more important reason for fun today is that Alexander and Marcus are shortly to be baptised, two more are – as the New Testament would put it – being added to our number.
We rejoice greatly at this and amongst the serious aspects of baptism which not for a moment do I decry we can also see fun in it; reflected in our perhaps unkind laughter as a child squawks or makes grimaces as water is poured over his head and maybe goes into his eyes, and reflected also in the applause for the two children which we shall doubtless express later in the service. Fun too at the family baptism parties which may – I don’t know – be held after the service.
It is somewhat paradoxical that in remembering Guy Fawkes we give thanks for the thwarting of an explosion and of fire while in the baptisms we are effectively giving thanks for the lighting of fires. We pray that the Holy spirit will light a fire, a flame in the hearts and minds of Alexander and Marcus and that strength and wisdom will be given to their parents and godparents – and to the rest of us so far as relevant – to nurture those flames in those boys as they grow older and that they will have fun nurturing those flames.
How to nurture them? Well, I am sure that they will find a way, but a good beginning may be to feed into them gradually Jesus’ words in this morning’s gospel “The first commandment is this, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one and you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength . The second is this love your neighbour as yourself’ “. Jesus effectively repeating words of Deuteronomy but adding the important You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’
It is not unwise to remember the other words of Deuteronomy that we should teach them to our children and talk of them while we sit our house. [I wonder how much some of us do the latter?!]
The third and final reason for fun which I want to mention today is perhaps one which you may be surprised to hear me say as it relates to something that most of us do at least once a week. We come for hat we call Holy Communion. We are all invited – all invited – to share a meal together with our host who is also our friend, as the hymn says “What a friend we have in Jesus”.
Whenever of an evening for example, we go to dinner at a friend’s house and whether or not it is an occasion with a serious side or we hope for some amusement, some laughter, some fun if you like with our mutual friend the host and his or her other guests, who, if not previously known to us are now also our friends, if it has been a good evening we shall eventually leave and go home strengthened by the fun of being together with friends.
When we come together for Holy Communion we do so, of course, remembering the symbolism of the bread and the wine which is served for us and remembering what Jesus Christ has done for us but I have little doubt but that Jesus wants us to go home strengthened also by the fun of being all together with Him.
And in that strength we shall each and together be better able to preach the Gospel, the Good News of God’s love for all.
And when as in this part week, we hear or read again of arguments from both sides of the fence as to whether or not there is a God, arguments put often with sincerity and force on both sides and we are asked for our opinion we may be the better able to respond with Mother Teresa’s words on a famous occasion “I think that we could do with more love” and return to our prayers.
It is with love that Alexander and Marcus are being baptised today, with love that, surely the flame in them will be nurtured by parents and godparents and with love that whatever happens they will be protected by God, not from the unavoidable chances and risks of life may be but from the soul’s destruction.
Derek Spottiswoode