Baptism of Gabriel Pierre Philippe Daudy
Chapel of St Mary Undercroft, Palce of Westminster
Saturday 23 October 2004
You don’t have to live very long in the Portsmouth area to become aware of the close links between our part of England and France – particularly with Normandy. It is not just the ferries crossing the Channel. Some of these links go back centuries, for example between Hayling Island and Jumieges; and the Abbot of S. Wandrille is an Ecumenical Canon of Honour (Chanoine Oecumenique d’Honneur) of my Cathedral. And one of my treasured possessions is a bishop’s crosier which I inherited from a former Bishop of Ely; by some strange – and perhaps rather shady! – trade-route, involving perhaps the French Revolution, it found its way to England, but I am reliably informed that it was made in Limoges in the thirteenth century.
Today, we are celebrating a much more visible – and, in time, audible – example of England and France. Clement, which means kindness, and Kate, Katherine, which means purity, produce Gabriel, the archangel, the figure who is always responsible for good news, even, as in the case of Mary in Nazareth, when the news is something of a surprising challenge.
Surprising challenge is a good theme for a baptism, especially after hearing today’s gospel-passage, read by Clement’s mother, with those strong verbs – go, make disciples, teach (Mt 28: 18-20). There is a sense of movement into an unknown future; not one that can be controlled by the personal organizer, or by clever risk-assessment. A human being is a human being is a human being….and not a plaything, nor an object of manipulation, and certainly not the butt of parental frustrated ambition. A human being, we are told, is made in the image of God, which means having the capacity to love, to create, to reflect, and to have a conscience, in a way not shared by anything else in the created order. No wonder, then, that the prayer that has been central to all baptism and confirmation preparation across all the centuries and all Christian traditions has been the Lord’s Prayer, with its explicit awareness of the Name, the Kingdom and the Will of God, not just in heaven but on earth; and our ‘earthly’ awareness bringing with it a dependence on God for bread today, forgiveness for yesterday, and protection in the future.
So we gather together in order to try to put all these things into words, and from some quite different perspectives and different kinds and degrees of faith. But instead of words, and even words and music, we are led to something else – water. Water is a primal element that speaks about God in three ways. Gabriel began his life in a womb – and baptism is about re-birth, a new kind of life, in Christ (Jn 3:5). Then, Gabriel will become aware as he gets older of water – and the world – as a place of drowning, of potential danger; and baptism is indeed about drowning, about dying and rising (Rom 6:3-11), in order to live again; there will be many lessons to learn about that in the future, swallowing a bit of pride each time. And Gabriel will already know about washing, as indeed we all are on a day when the heavens keep opening! Being born again looks forward; dying and rising is about the present; being washed clean (I Cor 6:11) is about letting go of the past.
None of these truths is easy; they’re not for immediate digestion. For most of us, they are lifelong experiences, and they can be easy, and they can also be quite tough. The beauty and wonder of this afternoon’s celebration involves us all, whatever may be the reasons that have drawn us to this sacred place, where people have come to pray for many reasons and through many ages. A sacred place, however, is only a focus of God’s presence, not a confinement of it. And that means taking Gabriel’s baptism out into the world wherever we go, because we find ourselves touched by it as well.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
