Trinity Sunday
31 May 2015
Dear Jamie,
I
hope that in the years to come you and I will come to know each other better. But in the event that we do not, I want to
tell a few things about what happened to you today at Saint Faith’s. It may help to read this letter with your
mother and father so that they can share their story about today and answer any
questions you may have.
Today
you were baptized and became a member of the Christian community. We are a very old community reaching back two
thousand years. It is a community that
has included and still includes people from every continent, from every
language, from every culture. It is a
community of women, men and children, a community of rich people and poor
people, a community of people who try to do good things and sometimes
fails. But when we fail, we are not
afraid to say that we have failed, to ask for forgiveness from those we may
have hurt and to try again to do the right thing.
Many
people will try to tell you what we believe and often they use very long words
that are not always helpful. It’s not
that these people are trying to be unhelpful; it’s just that our story is both
simple and complicated. Let me tell you
the simple story first.
We
believe that God is love. Because God is
love, God decided, billions of years ago, to create the universe so that God
would be able to share this love with all sorts of creatures, even creatures
that no longer exist in our world such as dinosaurs and pterodactyls. God is still creating our world as continents
move across the surface of our planet and as all creatures, human and
non-human, continue to evolve in ways that are still a mystery to us. Every day we are learning more about how God
is at work in our world, but there is still so much to learn.
We
believe that God is love. Because God is
love, God tries in many ways to show us how we ought to live together, humans
and non-humans. Thousands of years ago
God sent a teacher named Moses who led a community of people we call the Jews
from slavery into freedom. Moses shared
with the people ways that they could live together in peace and harmony. But people, being people, don’t always like
to follow someone else’s rules, even if those rules might come from God. So, two thousand years ago, God had a new
idea; God would come into our world to show us how to live. God chose to dwell in a Jewish man named
Jesus of Nazareth. For three years Jesus
taught people about God’s love and compassion, about sharing and caring, about
peace and justice. When Jesus died at the
hands of some powerful people who did not like what Jesus was saying and doing,
God did not let Jesus’ death be the end of the story. God raised Jesus from the dead and gathered
around Jesus a community of men and women who would share the message throughout
the world.
We
believe God is love. Because God is
love, God gives people courage to speak and act like Jesus, to love and be
compassionate, to share and care, to work for peace and justice. Some of these people have chosen to speak and
act like Jesus as members of the Christian community and to invite other
people, young and old, to join them in continuing God’s work.
Today
your mother and father brought you to Saint Faith’s so that you could join us
in the work God began in creation, renewed in Jesus and continues through the
Holy Spirit. Because your parents love
you, they brought you here so that you could become part of a community who
tries every day to make God’s love known wherever they go.
This
is the simple part of the story, our story, your story. The hard part comes in the days ahead. Loving the world in the same way that God
loves the world is not easy; it’s never been easy. Loving the world in the same way that God
loves the world means standing up to bullies, saying we are sorry when we hurt
other people, caring for those who are hungry and homeless, treating every
person with respect (even the people we don’t particularly like), making good
decisions about how we use the resources of this planet. Loving the world in the same way that God
loves the world means trying to do these things twenty-four hours a day, every
day of the week, every day of our lives.
And when we fail, we don’t give up.
We pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and start over again. God is very patient with us; after all, God
has been working on this project for billions of years!
Sticking
with this work is not easy; some people give up after only a little while. I hope that you won’t be one of those people,
but, even if you were, it doesn’t mean that God does not love you, that we, the
Christian community, don’t love you. You
can always pick up where you left off.
Jamie,
today the people at Saint Faith’s promised to support you in any way that they
can. You can trust their promise. You can trust the promise that any Christian
community, wherever you may go, wherever you may live, will support you in any
way they can. That’s how we do things;
that’s how we’ve been doing it for almost two thousand years.
Jamie,
I want to share with some words from a song written by David Haas. I’ve changed a couple of words just for
today, but they are my wish for you:
“You are God’s work of art, created in Jesus the Christ. You have been [given the light of
Jesus]. Walk as [a child] of [that]
light. Keep the flame of faith in your
heart, and may you meet [Christ wherever you go.] Blessed be our God, who chose you in the
light of Christ.”
Your friend for ever,
(The Rev’d Dr) Richard Geoffrey Leggett
Rector of Saint Faith’s Anglican Church
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