A Sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on May 8, 2022 by Revd Dr Sam Wells
Reading for address: John 10: 22-30
I was four years old. I was in Bath, the city nearest to the village where I grew up. We were at the top of Milsom Street: the main shopping area. My older sister, all of seven, set out to cross the road; but she’d only thought seriously about the cars coming from the right. When we got to the middle, a car sped towards us from the left. My sister panicked, let go my hand, and scooted across in front of the oncoming car to the pavement beyond. I was left alone in the middle of the road. I did what I have always done in a crisis ever since: nothing. I stood still as the car shrieked to a stop, touching distance in front of me. Eventually, my heart thudding, the car driver gesticulating (in retrospect probably more petrified than I was), I ran at top speed to join my sister. We were glad to see each other again. In the confusion of emotion, we resolved that these things were probably best not shared with our parents.
I’ve taken funerals for children whose similar stories turned out differently.
Of all the dilemmas of parenthood, one of the most poignant is to work out when to hold tight and when to let go. If my parents were still alive to hear me tell of that moment etched on my childhood memory, I suspect they might wonder where they were in the story, and conclude that day they’d perhaps erred a little too much on the side of letting go. As a child, each of us has corresponding contrasting impulses. From quite early on we perceive the utter isolation of being totally alone, and try to put in place relationships that mean it will never come to pass, and develop strategies that enable us to survive should it ever do so. Yet at the same time, any child who’s been lifted up by away from a place of temptation, conflict or danger knows what it means to wrestle out of that grip and be determined to shape their own destiny and face life’s challenges in their own way.
Back in the days when I was single, and was pondering whether I was called to remain so or instead to meet a partner and raise children together, I was deeply struck by a story I read in a book by the American pastor Raymond Bakke. Leading a church in urban Chicago, he and his wife decided their children needed to experience the city for themselves, not just from behind their parents’ trouser legs. So in turn, when each child reached the age of ten, Bakke would give them $10, drop them off on the far side of town, and let them find their way home any best way they could. This was the seventies, so there were no mobile phones. Those children were little fish swimming in a big urban sea. It was a rite of passage: Bakke and his wife would answer any questions their child had, talk with them about the day a few weeks ahead, and prepare a celebration for their homecoming. Needless to say, it was a transformative experience for each child: a kind of baptism, in which the children discovered when and how to trust other people, what they’d learned from their parents, how to rely on themselves, and what it feels like to depend on God.
The baptism of a child has many poignant moments. The parents and godparents are asked to make a public declaration of faith that’s unusual in our culture, where it’s rare to make public declarations of faith in anything other than the likely success-rate of a vaccine or the veracity of a witness in a libel trial. The pouring of water on the baby’s head evokes the daily bathtime of a parent’s care and the liberative parting of the Red Sea to free the Hebrews from slavery. The anointing of oil commissions this tiny tot for a unique future, affirming that God creates each one of us for a purpose, and we eventually find that purpose in God. The candle displays the conviction that God lights a fire in each of us at baptism that may burst into flame as we find an adult faith later in life. But for all these resonant moments, for me the most poignant of all is when as the priest I ask the parent to hand over to me their precious child, their child that in some cases they’ve waited years for, made sacrifices for, prayed for, longed for, nurtured from tiny birth to stocky infanthood, who is to them more precious than the rest of the world combined. And as I ask them to hand this child over, I look into their eyes as you do when you receive a priceless gift from someone, and as they search my soul to ask if they can trust me with this bundle of infinite worth, I search their soul to enquire if they really know what they’re doing.
And what are they doing? The answer lies in this morning’s gospel reading. Jesus is contrasting three kinds of characters – the wolf who comes in and steals, perhaps the Roman occupying army; the bad shepherd who fails to protect and guide the sheep, perhaps the Jerusalem leadership that was soon to connive for Jesus’ demise; and himself, the good shepherd, who knows each of his sheep by name, whose sheep recognise his voice, and who lays down his life for his sheep. Here Jesus makes perhaps his greatest theological claim in all the gospels: he says, ‘The Father and I are one.’ But notice the context in which he does so. He repeats the phrase that’s crucial to what we’ve been doing together this morning in baptising Freddie. He says, ‘I give my sheep eternal life. No one will snatch them out of my hand.’ Then he says the same thing in a different way. ‘What my Father has given me is greater than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father’s hand.’
Think about that word, ‘snatch.’ It’s a childish word. It’s what we say to young children who are arguing. ‘Don’t snatch baby Jesus from Mary. Joseph and Mary were friends.’ But the word connects with our deepest fears about a child: that something, someone – some disease, some stranger, some disaster will snatch that child from our hands.
We want to create an entirely safe, completely protected world around a child, where no sickness, no hardship, no danger, no threat can jeopardise its security, wellbeing, growth and development. But the truth is such safety is impossible. When a parent comforts a child who’s just had a nightmare, and says, ‘I’m here. I’ll always be here’ they’re not telling the truth. But beyond being impossible, such safety isn’t even desirable. One of the reasons covid has been so devastating in this country compared with many African countries is that in most of Africa, people are routinely exposed to so many diseases they become largely immunised to them by an early age, so covid was pretty small fry; whereas here we hide children from disease, meaning they’ve got no protection when a new and virulent one comes along. Raymond Bakke was a brave man when he asked his children to find their own way across Chicago; but he wasn’t a fool. Eventually we all have to find our way through uncharted, unknown and potentially hostile environments, and the earlier we learn that this is what life involves, and develop the capacity to navigate it, the better.
So when, in the baptism ceremony, the parent hands their precious child over to the priest, it’s not the case that they’re transferring the baby from the assured security of home to the precarious embrace of the church. Because the painful truth is, a parent can never say to a child, ‘No one will ever snatch you out of my hand.’ The parent does have to let go eventually, however foolish the child’s choice of lifestyle, however ghastly its friends, however dangerous its career, however unspeakable its choice of life partner. Suffocating with self-serving love is just as dangerous as letting go too early; and invariably counterproductive.
But the point is, Jesus can say, ‘No one will ever snatch you out of my hand.’ Jesus does know your child by name. Jesus does lay down his life for your child. Jesus will embrace and walk with your child forever. ‘Ah but,’ we understandably say, ‘Who is this Jesus who claims to be and to do all these things?’ Jesus says, ‘I and the Father are one.’ In other words, Jesus says, ‘I am inseparably bonded to the essence that is before and beyond this present existence. When I say, “Nothing can snatch you out of my hand,” that means not just the conviction of now, but the embrace of forever. Your child’s destiny is as secure as being held and cherished by the eternal loving hands of God.’
In infant baptism the parent hands the baby to the priest; one of the most difficult and trusting things a parent can do. But it’s not handing over from security to danger. It’s handing over from the love and care of a parent, which for all its passion, sacrifice, commitment and attention can never be permanent, impermeable or total, to the love and care of God, which can be and is all of those things, now and always. That’s why I find looking into the parent’s eyes at that moment so profound. Because they’re handing over their child from now to forever. It’s perhaps the most significant moment of our lives, besides the moment of our death. Because death is the other moment when we transfer from now to forever. And here’s the crucial thing: just as Raymond Bakke was saying ‘My child is way better off having faced the fear and danger of the city from an early age, and thenceforth living in the light of it, not in denial of it,’ so young Freddie’s parents in handing him over to be baptised are saying, ‘This is a rehearsal for a final goodbye, the separation of death. It’s a statement that if we can face the truth of this handing over from now to forever, we can face the final one too.’
Because in the end, the Christian faith is simply this. God chooses not to suffocate us with love, but to hand us over to existence. That means God lets us go into a world of danger, temptation, distress and challenge: all of which lie inside that little word, ‘snatch.’ But when we turn to the risen Christ, we see one whose hands bear the nail marks of love, nail marks that say, despite everything it costs, ‘I will never let you go.’ That could be a tragic gesture. What turns it into the entry into eternal life is what we discover in Jon chapter 10: Jesus and the Father are one. Baptism is the moment we recognise our mortality, and Christ’s divinity.
If we are safe in Christ’s hands, we are safe with the essence of all things forever. Nothing can snatch us out of those hands.
Nothing, never; whatever, forever.
