Baptism and Confirmation at St Mary's Bramshott
7 November 2004
Who can we trust?
Readings: Rom 8: 31-39 / Matthew 22: 15-22
A few weeks ago I was in a tax-free shop at Heathrow airport and having identified what I wanted I went to the counter where no fewer than three attendants started to try to interest me in buying a magnificent box of chocolates: a colourful cheap offer. They looked at me and I looked at them. I was dressed in clericals, and I said to them: ‘we are both in sales aren’t we?’ They said, laughingly, ‘we are: and can we interest you in this bargain offer – they are very good?’ I replied, ‘yes – I will take you at your word’: and asked something to the effect that I might try something out on them one day in relation to what I stood for!
I suppose that I am in sales, and that if I am, then we all are. But we are not in the business of convincing as many people as we can to buy a box of chocolates. Ours is a more subtle exercise. We are trying to live a way of life that points to why we believe we are here in the first place, and that belief is not about elaborate packaging, or glossy covers, or even colour ritual or lengthy sermons. It is simply to say that God put each one of us here; and he wants us to know it; and he wants us to do something about it.
At a confirmation service, the question that gets asked, the question, between the lines of the service is, ‘what does God ask us to do’? As usual, the answer is to be found in the words of the confirmation service, in such questions as ‘do you turn to Christ?’ ‘Do you renounce evil?’ ‘Do you believe and trust in God …?’ It is all about trust. Trust is not a word that is easy to use nowadays, because people who ask to be trusted often do so because they want our votes (if they are politicians) or our money (if they are telling us something). Because we get let down – the votes and the money don’t always end the way we hope or except – we stop trusting others, as we do with those close to use if we get hurt. But trust is still the name of the game. Tonight’s two readings illustrate this vividly.
First of all, St Paul writing his Letter to Christians in Rome, in one of the most magnificent passages he ever composed, tells his hearers that God is not out to get us when things get hard. He is on our side. Nothing can separate us from him, nothing in all creation – not even our cruellest acts or our most stupid behaviour. It is a good passage for a confirmation, particularly as for some of us it is too frequently confined to occasions like funerals or Remembrance Sunday. We can trust God, because he will not let us down. Life cannot always be exciting or up-lifting, as on a happy occasion like tonight. It can become boring and routine; and it can also be difficult and trying – or even, in the light of last night’s train crash, or the news of the deaths in the Black Watch regiment in Iraq – tragic. God gives us the freedom to feel, to know, to choose; and to have a conscience. Unlike a bird, or a cat, we know what we are: Christian faith is clear about that. It only leaves us to discover who we are. The starting point is trust, which is the foundation of any significant relationship at all. If we start by trusting God, then we can begin to start trusting others. But others are like us, not like God, who is perfect. Weak human beings like us, who do not always keep our word and cannot always ‘deliver’ every single vision we have of how to make our business or family or hobby an astonishing and permanent success.
That brings us to the gospel passage. Here, Jesus is being interrogated by the Pharisees, a well-organised group within the Jewish community, with whom he shared a great deal, particularly believe in the resurrection. But they are too impressive, too powerful, and too well-connected for him – after all, they managed to fix the High Priest succession in their favour, and many other things besides. In the following chapter, Jesus finally lashes out at their sheer hypocrisy.
The Pharisees asked Jesus a question about paying taxes to the Emperor. The coin with which every adult male (and I am afraid it was only males) paid the poll tax to the Roman Emperor had the Emperor’s head on it. If Jesus comes out in favour of using the coin in this way, then he lays himself open to criticism from extreme religious conservatives that God is not above everything, but the Emperor is. If, on the other hand, Jesus comes out against using the coin in the way it is supposed to be the case, then he lays himself open to another criticism, that of being disloyal to the Emperor. These details are about much more than ancient history. They are about our attitudes to the world we live in. Are we to put our trust ultimately in worldly power, however great, or in God? The coin has the image of the Emperor Caesar on it – but we have the image of God on ourselves. That is why Jesus deals with the trick question in the way he did: give to political authorities what is due to them – but make jolly sure you do the much more important thing of giving your final loyalty to God. What I am is a human being. Who I am is a Christian.
Trust, again by putting that trust where it belongs and not misplacing it. Trust not in what we say, but in our attitudes. For the culture that we live in, we need to realise that there is no legal contract here. There is no chance of taking God to court for not living up to what we require from him, or what we have worked out in advance that we must get from him at all costs, as if the relationship between us were that of consumer and producer – when a much more accurate description would be between disciple and master.
All this is not exclusive and severe. It is liberating, because to follow Christ is perfect freedom, the freedom not only to know what we are, human being, but who we are – made in the image of God, made for love, mercy, truth and forgiveness. Nothing can separate us from him; and no token of earthly power, a coin, a cheque-book, or anything else can be a substitute for rendering to him what is his due. That is why, under girding tonight’s service of confirmation, is baptism and holy communion. Baptism is about a new beginning, of which confirmation is a kind of booster dose, and holy communion is about nourishment along that journey of faith, of trust, to which Jesus beckons each one of us.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
