First, I would like to welcome the family and friends of Jahmaica who is being baptized today. You are truly welcome and I hope we can all greet you after the service. Some of our Anglican worship may seem strange – this is a traditional Morning Prayer Sunday – yet our foundation remains Jesus Christ.
In today’s first lesson from 1 Corinthians, Paul reminds the church of Corinth that “no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ”.
It is a very strong foundation; it resists the divisions in the Corinthian community, or in our communities, and does not let them bring separation and division. Our foundation is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ alone. And we are full of joy that young Jahmaica’s parents have chosen that foundation for their daughter in asking her to be baptized. And it is their responsibility and ours to encourage her to root her life in the foundation of Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ is “our sure foundation” in the words of the hymn. Jesus Christ is a strong foundation. All our work and ministry as Christians is built on that foundation. It enables us to remain strong in adversity, in unhappy political climates, in situations of stress and anxiety. Our foundation is not like that of the Leaning Tower of Pisa, soft and uneven, causing us to be always leaning and ready to fall.
Part of our having Christ as our foundation is respect for his words and teaching. Those words are sometimes extraordinary, as in today’s Gospel; and those words can be lived and fulfilled only if we choose Christ as our foundation.
Look at those extraordinary commands, causing us to go beyond the ordinary expectations of society: Do not be vengeful, rather turn the other cheek, give both coat and cloak, go the extra mile. Give to all who beg from you and do not refuse someone who wishes a loan. Do not love just your friends, but love your enemies; pray for those who persecute you.
What is being said here is that our human love, imperfect as it often is, when it has Christ as its foundation, is to reflect the universal and unconditional love of God: the God who sends rain on both the just and unjust, who loves all equally, whatever they have done, whatever has happened in the past.
The natural human impulse is to love those who love us, or with whom we have a special link through family and friendship. Certainly, love of family and friends is very important and commended by God. But Jesus is saying we need to go beyond the familiar; indeed, all the way over to loving our (so-to-speak) “enemies”, those who do not share our deepest values and may even have worked against us. Perhaps those “enemies” do not even want to speak with us or have anything to do with us, after all, they are enemies. But even there, we can pray for them.
And that might be a challenge for this upcoming Lent: make a list of people you do not like or have treated you poorly, personally known or not: and make that list into a prayer list; that God’s all-seeing and cleansing love may be with them also.
Or, try to reach out to a difficult person, perhaps in the workplace or the family or amongst friends: reach out with kindness, listening and understanding, reflecting God’s unconditional and non-judgemental love.
In the Baptismal Liturgy today, we shall all renew our Baptismal promises after we say together the Apostles Creed, which began life as the Baptismal Symbol or Declaration, as we shall do it today. What are those promises: to continue in worship, fellowship and prayer; to resist evil and repent when we have failed; to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ, by word and example; to exercise a Christian ministry of service and see Christ in all whom we meet; to seek justice and peace amongst all people and respect the dignity of all human beings; and to respect the fullness of God’s creation, including the whole natural world, including the environment.
Many people do not make such promises and some who do, do not live by them. They are the promises that, though God’s grace, enable Jesus Christ to be our foundation, and enable us to love with the unconditional love of God, transforming our broken and sinful world into a better place for God’s grace and love to flourish.
Unfortunately, the world often seems to be going in the opposite direction – narrow nationalism (loving only those who are “like us” in some way), racism, religious hatred, excluding the stranger and building walls. Jesus accepted not just Jew, but also Samaritan and Gentile. Paul’s early churches, including the Corinthian church, brought together people from enormously different backgrounds: Jew and Greek, men and women, slave and free, rich and poor, single and married, labourers and intellectuals. Yet all share the foundation of Jesus Christ and, as such, old divisions are ended and reconciliation is accomplished.
We pray that this parish and all our churches will practice this love that goes beyond hostility or grudging acceptance to true embrace and friendship. That is the life that should result from our Baptismal Promises, our Baptisms, our participation in the Eucharist, our common prayer – all through God’s grace.
Next Sunday is our annual Vestry meeting and at the end of the service today the Vestry Reports, Financial Report and 2017 proposed Budget will all be available for you to take home to study. Please bring them back next week for our meeting. I suggest we study them with the theme we have been talking about, our foundation in Christ as a parish: thankful for what we have managed to accomplish, reflecting on how we might better strengthen that foundation, and how we might better to work from it, through God’s grace, in our ministry to one another, to those who visit, and to the world around us, near and far. Christ is our sure foundation. Thanks be to God. Amen.
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