…it is this, God loves you. God wants you to love other people. And in baptism, we invite people into that family and into that relationship with Jesus and with one another.
I love to preach at baptisms. And I tell you why. Because you’re trapped and I could preach for half an hour and you’d still stay here and listen to me and smile me because you want me to do the baptism. Well, don’t worry. I’m very much the school of thought that the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ is a very simple one.
And it is this, God loves you. God wants you to love other people. And in baptism, we invite people into that family and into that relationship with Jesus and with one another. And that’s really important. That relationship between us as a family is what Christ asks us to model.
And we get that in our reading from Ephesians, it’s often turned to when people are having difficulty in their marriages. And it’s really very simple to see why. Love one another, love one another as God loved you. In that love, in that love, there will be abundant gifts, abundant gifts of Grace, abundant gifts of Jesus Christ working in your life in ways that you would never have expected. Abundant gifts in the birth of a child.
And that’s what we are here to celebrate today. The family that God has created, not just between mothers and fathers, not just between brothers and sisters, not just between our earthly families, but our heavenly family. And it’s at times like this that we get a glimpse of what that heavenly family is, what the heavenly family is about. And it is this, who are my brothers and sisters, who is my mother and father? It is you who are sat here with us today.
It is you who will take this amazing family by their hand and show them your love. That Ikenna may grow up in that love, may understand what that love will do in the world. Today God holds his hand out to Ikinna and says, you are welcome, my child, into this family.
Today we bring Ikinna into this family, and for the rest of his earthly life, he will know the love of Jesus Christ. And he will know the love of each and every one of you in it. Hands up. God parents. God parents put your hands up. Who’s going to be Ikinna’s Godparents? There should be six of you. I should see more than four hands. 12345 was the six six?
It is your job, God parents. It is your responsibility. It is your awesome task to ensure that Ikinna grows up in a faith of Jesus Christ, that he steps out into this world and declares it so that other people may come to know Jesus Christ as well. Shower Ikinna and his family in your love. The love that Jesus Christ has given you.
Amen.