Threads through Creation
Sermon preached on Sunday 10 September 2023
11am Eucharist with Baptism
‘‘The night is far gone, the day is near.’
I hope you will find time to look at our exhibition Threads through Creation – there are panels all around us with so much light and colour. It is a wonderful interpretation of the first chapters of the Book of Genesis, of the creation of the world and the Garden of Eden. Light emerges from darkness as the universe begins and then all the elements of creation: the eras of evolution if you like: waters, plants, fish and birds and animals. The final panels show Adam and Eve and the garden. It’s an extraordinary work of imagination and craft, the many coloured threads catching the light of morning and evening. Do look at it over the next few weeks while it is here.
I think we often need in the Christian life to remind ourselves that faith in God is not all about me, my needs, my concerns. Faith connects us back into the totality of things. The Bible sometimes speaks of our individual lives as a thread among threads, woven by God, a thread easily broken and yet precious and singular. One of the reasons our individual lives are so precious and singular is that they connect in to everything around us. We come from the splendour depicted in the threads, and, we may hope that we go to that greater splendour when we die, to a greater belonging and harmony than we can ever imagine here on earth. Our reading from Romans reminds us that the whole point of Christian behaviour, of Christian obedience and the pursuit of goodness is love. Love is the fulfilling of the law. We come from love, we live in love and when we die, we die into God’s love. All the threads come together. The light and the shade. Day and night. Each unique thread coming together to make up the whole.
Today as we welcome Isabella into the church in her baptism we give thanks to God for her uniqueness. Already by her creation and her birth she is a bearer of light and love and hope, for her parents and family. She is a unique thread in their family pattern and in the whole community they belong to. And she comes today to have that belonging made explicit and made Christian. She is a child of God, and she receives her name today, and her place in the kingdom of heaven. The thread that her life represents is consecrated today, given its unique colour and light and beauty – and, no that doesn’t mean she has to be a little angel from now on. The garden of creation, the world we live is full of joys and temptations – things to explore and delight in, things to name and discover, things to turn away from as well as things to embrace. Each of the latter panels in the Threads through Creation shows the snake: there is real evil and chaos in the world, and baptism is about saying No to evil, darkness and death: and yes to light love and life.
Isabella today also becomes a member of the Christian Church. That means there is nothing to prevent her coming to faith for herself as she grows, learning about God and creation, and Jesus, and being supported through her life not only by the family and friends, but by the unseen world of angels and archangels, the world of which this visible world, in all its beauty, is in the end a copy and a shadow.
The light of Threads through Creation point us to the light beyond the light, the meaning behind the meaning, heaven behind and beyond the beauty of earth, and this is Isabella’s inheritance too.
Our Gospel reading is a reminder that for all its beauty the life given to us by God, the life proclaimed by God’s Church is no picnic. Even in the Church (I’m tempted sometimes to say, especially in the Church) there are sometimes quarrels and disagreements and sometimes difficult boundaries have to be drawn –
processes put in place to safeguard the faithful from abuse and wrong behaviour. It is the same for all our institutions – as I said, Threads through Creation shows the great snake falling from heaven, ready to sow chaos and strife on earth, and we can hardly help but be aware of chaos and strife with war in Europe, with our most revered and important institutions often seeming to fail; the collapsing concrete in schools is not only a disaster in itself but a metaphor for what happens when our politicians and others fail to be vigilant. Truthfulness, honesty, moderation – the simple, basic essential duties of citizenship are part of what it means for love to be the fulfilment of the law. And, in case you wondered, we go to Church Sunday by Sunday not only for ourselves and those we love but for our (sometimes exasperating) families and difficult neighbours also.
So Threads through Creation reminds us of our vocation as human beings and as Christians. We are children of the light, not of darkness, children of God. We can afford to live honest and good lives, loving God and our neighbour, because this is the way to fulfil the promise of creation, to have our eyes set on heaven. The sacraments of baptism and holy communion are moments of transformation, when we realise God is very close to us and longs for us to persevere in the way of goodness and come to salvation, to fulfilment.
Day by day, every day, salvation is nearer to us now than when we first believed. So put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and wear the thread of light that is woven into your being: for the light that God shines on us all in baptism, the light we are called to reflect is the light of the first moment of Creation itself. The light that shines for Isabella from today onwards, is the very light that came into being in the beginning through the word of God: saying to her today and every day, saying to each of us all through our lives: Let there be light.