A Letter to Emily: Pentecost 2019

In keeping with my practice of writing to the baptizand, here's my letter to Emily who was baptized on Pentecost.

Click here to listen to the Letter as read at the 10.00 Eucharist.

Pentecost

9 June 2019

Dear Emily,

            Today is a special day for you, for your family and for all the friends of Jesus we call ‘the church’.  For you and your family today is special because you are being baptized.  From today on you will be one of Jesus’ friends and together with all of us who are also Jesus’ friends you will join us in working towards making our world a place filled with God’s love.

            Working towards making our world a place filled with God’s love is not easy. Even the first group of Jesus’ friends, people we call the disciples and apostles, were afraid to share the stories that had about Jesus and to share with other people the things Jesus had taught them about how to love others as God loves us.  For almost two months after God raised Jesus from the dead, the disciples and apostles tried to hide from the leaders of their own community and the officials of the Roman government who were in charge of Jerusalem and Judea.

            But God wanted the whole world to know how much God loves this world and how in Jesus God has shown us how to love one another in the same way.  God knows that we can do this, even when we don’t believe we can.  Every human being, whether they know who God is or not, whether they know anything about Jesus or not, whether they belong to the church of not, has built into them the ability to love as God loves.  It’s just how were made.

            But when we’re afraid or when we not confident about our abilities or when we don’t want people to think that we are ‘different’, we can forget that we can love as God loves.  So, two thousand years ago, when Jesus’ friends were gathered, still afraid and still unsure about what they were supposed to do, God whooshed in upon them and whispered in each one’s ears, ‘Yes, you can do this.  I know you’re afraid, but you can do this.  You know how to love as I love.  You can change the world if you’ll tell others what you have learned from Jesus.  I promise you, there’ll be a lot of people who will listen to you.’

            We use a old-fashioned word for what God did on this day two thousand years ago: inspiration.  It means ‘breathing life into someone or something’.  In the case of the disciples and apostles what God did was to blow on the glowing ember of Jesus’ love that was in each one of them.  That glowing ember burst into a fire of love that gave them all courage to tell their story. Because of that transformation we’re here today.

            Emily, today you are being gathered into the loving community of Jesus’ friends. For a very long time we have brought together all sorts of people, young and old, women and men and children, so that they can know how much God loves them and how much God loves the whole world. But there’s more to being a friend of Jesus.  To be a friend of Jesus we have need to be transformed, to be inspired, so that the love we have found here can be shared with others.

            We need God to breathe into us, to blow on the glowing ember of Jesus’ love in us, because we sometimes forget that this love is inside us.  Sometimes we are afraid because we don’t want people to think we are strange or different.  Sometimes we are afraid because we know that loving the world as God loves the world means standing up to bullies and to selfish people.  But we can do it.  It’s how God made us.  We just need God to whisper in our ears.

            Sometimes God whispers in our ears when we listen to the stories we read from the Bible.  Sometimes God whispers in our ears when we speak to God as we would speak to any friend, sharing with God all that we are thinking and feeling.  Sometimes God whispers in our ears we listen to how other people have tried to love as God loves.

            Emily, welcome to the friends of Jesus.  Welcome to the church where we try as best as we can to love each other as God loves us.  Here you are and will be loved.  Here God has and will whisper in your ear.  Here God has and will kindle the fire of love God planted in your heart and all of our hearts from the day of our birth.  Welcome.

Always your friend in Jesus,

Richard+

The Venerable Richard Geoffrey Leggett

Vicar of Holy Trinity Anglican Cathedral