Sermons from St Faith's
Clothed with Christ
Fred Nye, June 23rd, 2013
Perhaps it’s yet another sign of getting old, but I’m
finding find history, and particularly archaeology,
increasingly absorbing. From cave paintings and long
barrows to the pyramids, ancient monuments can tell us
not only how our ancestors lived, but also how they
thought about themselves, and their gods. ‘Sermons in
stones’, as you might say.
If you visit the legendary palace of Minos in Crete,
which dates from about 1500 BC, you will see several
so called ‘lustral basins’. Used for ritual washing
and purification they are elaborate sunken chambers,
pillared and porticoed. In one of them a number of
clay jars were found, thought to have contained myrrh
for anointing the worshipers. But only one set of
stone steps leads down into the chamber, so you have
to leave by the way you came in. Purified and perfumed
you may have been, but afterwards you had no option
but to return to the messy old world which you had
been trying to escape.
On the island of Cyprus you will come across something
which at first glance is rather similar. On the site
of the ancient cathedral at Kourion, dating from
around 450 AD, there are the remains of an early
Christian baptistery. In it you will find another deep
sunken chamber, but this time filled with water and in
the shape of a cross, with steps leading down into it
on one side, and out again on the other. It is the
pool in which Christian converts were baptised. But
this time the surroundings are far from sumptuous: the
baptistery itself is dark and cramped; hardly more
than a narrow corridor.
Imagine for a moment that you are being baptised in
that church 1500 years ago. It’s Easter Sunday, all
the baptism candidates are adults, and you have all
received months of preparation and instruction. When
the moment comes to be baptised you’re stripped of
your clothes, and lead forward into that dark
corridor. Then there’s nothing for it but to stumble
down the steps, into the cool clear water. Your head
is plunged under the surface, and you come up gasping
for air, your feet searching for the steps in front of
you.
And then the scene changes dramatically. Ahead are
bright lights, and the sound of music and singing. The
presiding bishop dresses you in a pure white robe, and
you enter the cathedral, to join the whole Christian
community celebrating together Our Lord’s
resurrection. And, for the very first time, you
receive the bread and the wine of the Eucharist.
The symbolism in our baptism today may have lost some
of that drama – but what God is doing is no different.
That dark baptistery is a reminder, not perhaps a very
fashionable one, that left to our own devices we
can so easily fall victim to our own self-interest, or
self loathing, to all those shadows of the soul
that are so destructive to ourselves and others. We
all need the grace of baptism in which God forgives us
and accepts us, just as we are, and stripped of all
pretence. The unconditional love of God for us his
children, takes us from one realm to another, from
darkness to light. Unlike the lustral basin, the font
sets us free. But the change can come as a shock, and
most of us don’t like too much change, even if it’s
for the better.
There was an old superstition that if a baby cried at
the moment of baptism, it was because the Devil was
being driven out. I don’t buy that. I prefer to think
of that cry as the inrush of the Holy Spirit, the
first startled breath of a new child of God.
The cool clear baptismal waters restore and refresh us
and give us new life, and we enter a different world
where everything and everyone are seen through God’s
compassionate eyes. But it would be a mistake to
pretend that His kingdom has already come here on
earth. Our society is often very far from just or
compassionate, and it can be a struggle to keep on our
feet and maintain God’s values in a fallen world. Any
parent of young children or teenagers will know this
only too well, and will also know that the need to
pray for our children never ends. But in this struggle
we gain strength from the Cross, which shows us just
how much God was prepared to sacrifice himself for us,
a constant reassurance that love will win.
My favourite symbol is the baptismal robe. After the
water had been poured over our youngest granddaughter
at her baptism, the priest wrapped her in a brand new
shawl. It was like that precious moment at home when
each evening she is lifted from her bath and wrapped
in a fluffy warm towel, surrounded by love, and
cradled in love. But there is more to it than
that. St. Paul puts it like this – ‘As many of
you as were baptised into Christ have clothed yourself
with Christ’. In following Our Lord, through prayer,
our membership of the family of the church, and above
all through the strength and nourishment we receive
week by week at the Eucharist, we are helped to be a
little bit more like him. Sometimes I try to think of
the baptismal robe as a tunic, the same sort of tunic,
seamless and woven in one piece, that Christ himself
wore on his way to Calvary. Our prayer is that if we
can clothe ourselves in his Christ-like graces, above
all in his love and compassion, then we can become at
last his new creation.
Every day, each Christian soul embarks afresh on the
journey from darkness to light, and from the values of
a fallen world to the new life in Christ. Today as
newly baptised members of God’s family, Klarissa and
Charlie are our pioneers. And may God bless them, and
us, on our journey towards the light and music of his
love.
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