A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on Sunday 9 January 2022 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Readings of address: Isaiah 43: 1-7, Luke 3: 15-17, 21-2
Every good story is based around a broadly threefold structure. There’s the setting of the scene, during which you identify an anomaly, an obstacle, or a quandary; there’s the overcoming of that obstacle, by the power of detection, the receipt of new information, the muscle of a superior strength, or the disclosure of a secret; and finally, there’s the new reality on the other side of the crisis. To be a good story it needs either the mystery to be intriguing, or the resolution to be absorbing. It’s a great story if both are. The heart of most stories relates to the gradual or sudden revelation of what constitutes the mystery at the heart of the story.
Take the 2020 Netflix series Bridgerton, set in the high society of Regency London. It starts out as a remix of Pride and Prejudice, with the two highly eligible main characters obviously attracted to one another, but standing aloof from any emotional association for reasons yet to be disclosed. Daphne cannot lower herself to the demeaning process of making herself marketable to a lofty suitor – a pride that makes her reluctant to acknowledge her longing for Simon. Simon’s true motives are more complex, and unveiling them becomes the true subject of the drama. Drawn to Daphne as he undoubtedly is, there’s something preventing him from acknowledging his love. When forced to give a reason, he says he’s incapable of having children. It never feels like a satisfactory explanation. We’re simply drawn deeper into the mystery. Simon’s unwillingness to risk conceiving a child curses his relationship with Daphne even after they marry. Gradually however we discover Simon’s oppressive upbringing at the hands of his demanding and ice-cold father. Finally, when close to despair, Daphne comes upon a collection of letters Simon wrote to his father when still a child, all in immaculate handwriting, all expressing profound love and an insatiable desire to please – and all rejected, in most cases, unopened. Finally Daphne understands what’s at the root of all the pain and grief. Simon cannot bear to impose the suffering on a child he experienced himself. All is understood, all is forgiven, all is transformed. The story ends with the birth of their first child, the living representation of reconciliation and hope.
I want you to think of the Old Testament as a story of this kind. The scene is this: Israel settles in the Promised Land, having been rescued from slavery and given a covenant. The problem that arises is this: Israel can’t stay faithful to the covenant. The obstacle to be overcome is this: Israel finds itself in exile in Babylon, 500 miles to the east. The surface question is, how on earth is Israel going to get back home? The deeper question is, how are Israel and God to be reconciled?
The difference between the Old Testament and Bridgerton is that the TV series follows a conventional pattern of scene-setting, problem, obstacle, resolution, and happy ever after – whereas the Bible is a much more complex assortment of angles on the same story and detours from it. So you really need a guide to direct you to the key parts of the Old Testament. The good news is that we do have such a guide. It’s called the New Testament: in particular, the gospels. The gospels are saturated with quotations from the Old Testament, and these quotations point to what the authors regard as the key moments in the Old Testament story. One of the most crucial passages in the Old Testament, in fact arguably the most crucial passage in the whole of the Old Testament for understanding the gospels, comes in the first seven verses of Isaiah 43.
These seven verses are so arranged that the first verse mirrors the seventh, the second mirrors the sixth, and the third the fifth. What these pairs of verses give us is a miniature version of the whole Old Testament story. We begin and end with creation. God calls us by name, and creates us for glory: think of this as the creation of the universe, but also as your creation as a human being, with a purpose to reflect God’s glory and answer God’s call. Then, after creation, the next great event is the exodus from Egypt: note the words about passing through the waters and the sense of being formed as a nation. Then the third great event is the return from exile: we don’t even know if this had taken place when these words were written, but it clearly had before someone collected a host of writings together and called it the Bible. Those are the three great events in the Old Testament, and woven through them is the language of God’s promises: I call you by name, I am with you, I am your Saviour, I made you for my glory. All this is the language of covenant. The covenant between God and Israel is the consistent theme that unites the three great Old Testament events.
Think of these three pairs of verses as like a plinth that holds up the statue of the middle verse, verse 4. Verse 4 is the secret at the heart of the Old Testament. Imagine it like Simon’s childhood letters to his father in Bridgerton. When Daphne discovers and reads Simon’s letters home all is revealed and everything finally makes sense, and she loves him like never before, and understands and forgives all the confusion of the preceding episodes. Isaiah 43 verse 4 is like that. It’s the moment when everything in the Bible, for the first time, makes sense. Here are the most revealing and perhaps the most important words in scripture: ‘You are
precious in my sight, and honoured, and I love you.’ Here’s the whole reason for creation, the whole purpose of the exodus, the whole agony of the exile. God’s whole life is shaped to be with Israel.
I want now to shift our focus from 2500 years ago in Babylon to today. What does it mean to baptise Esme today? It means to hear God saying these very same words to her that God says to Israel in exile. You are precious, honoured, and loved. Words at the heart of the Old Testament. Words at the heart of the Bible. Words at the heart of the universe. Let’s look at those three words to see what they are truly telling us, and truly saying to Esme.
We’ll start with ‘precious.’ Precious means something of infinite value. It means I don’t know whether to put it on the mantelpiece in the centre of the room where everyone can see it and admire it, or whether to hide it in many layers of velvet cladding so it can never get broken and lodge it in the deepest vault of the safest bank so no one could ever steal it. That’s how precious you are. Precious means intricate, deftly and finely woven or crafted, with a design that would need a microscope fully to enjoy, with a subtlety and delicacy beyond the skill or imagination of any but the most accomplished artisan. Precious means unique, inimitable, astonishing; it means I would give up everything else just for this.
Now let’s turn to honoured. Honoured means respected, cherished, even revered. More subtly it means, ‘I understand you are not me; you have your own rhythm, identity, metabolism, style, history. The point of our relationship is not to make you a pawn of my ambitions, a clone of me, an agent of my desires. It is for you to become all that you are called to be, as I become all that I am called to be. Honoured means I cherish you. I don’t seek to change you, use you, become you. I enjoy you for the wonder that you are. I treasure the privilege of being in relationship with you.
The third and last word is loved. Loved means a movement of the heart and an act of the will. It means something is moving in me, beyond my thought, decision or resolve, that draws me to you, regardless of your virtue, or even reciprocation. I interpret your actions in the best light, I light up with life in your presence, I’m overjoyed at the very thought of you. But love also means sheer determination and selfless resilience. I change your nappy however smelly it is, I stay in touch with you however little you seem to value it, I stretch out my hand to pull you out of the swirling torrent even though we’ve never previously met.
And here’s the thing. We need all three words. You might think the third word contains the other two, but the truth is… it doesn’t. Think of a domestic argument where one party says, ‘But I love you.’ The other party says, ‘If you love me but don’t honour me, it’s not the love I want.’ Think of the minority-ethnic employee who’s told, ‘You’re a precious part of this organisation,’ but privately thinks, ‘You don’t honour my traditions, you don’t love me, you just need my skills and glad my being here helps you tick some boxes.’ Think about the war veteran who comes back from the Remembrance Day parade and thinks, ‘Yes, you honoured me today, but the rest of the year you’re ashamed of the war I fought in. I’m not precious, I’m an embarrassment; I’m not loved, I’m kept out of sight, because my life-altering injuries don’t support the victorious story you want to tell.’
Precious, honoured and loved. We need all three words. Not loved without being honoured. Not honoured without being precious. Not precious without being loved. These three words are at the epicentre of the Old Testament.
Now look what happens when the adult Jesus makes his appearance in Luke’s gospel at the start of his ministry. Heaven is opened: in other words, we’re about to discover who God really is. A voice from the cloud speaks. ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’ In other words: you are precious, honoured and loved. The love God has for Israel – the key to the whole Old Testament – is now fulfilled in Jesus.
And that’s reflected in what happens when we baptise Esme today. Baptism is God saying to her, ‘You are precious, honoured and loved.’ All three. It’s what Esme’s parents say to her every day. It’s the fruit of baptism and the most wonderful gift. You are precious, honoured and loved. It’s the secret of everything. God created the world and came among us in Christ and will be with us forever, because God’s whole being is devoted to saying, ‘You are precious, honoured and loved.’ It’s what we want to say to each other. It’s what we long to hear a community say to us. It’s the gospel of Jesus Christ. And it’s revealed in Jesus’ baptism. And ours.
