17/8/25                          St. Peter’s                                Trinity 9  

Gal. 3:26-28        Communion and Baptism        Luke 14:1,7-14

The Welcome  

There’s always a mix of people at a Baptism service - some will feel comfortable in these surroundings, whilst for others it might be a bit peculiar; some people will know what they think about God - whether it’s yes or no - others won’t have made up their mind yet. 

 Whichever camp you fall into we want you to know you are very welcome, we are delighted you could be here to witness the baptisms of Kiera and Nylah. We want you to feel at home - now and whenever you might drop in.   

If you’re not quite sure about God it’s very easy to think that - if he is there I’m probably not his type so probably best if we just ignore each other.

If that is roughly where you are, you’ll have to take my word for it because I can’t prove it - but God doesn’t have a type - in fact, as our reading will show up it was often religious people Jesus found it hardest to get on with - so God doesn’t have a type - he welcomes everybody. 

Take Kiera and Nylah - I guess that even before they were born they were loved, even before they knew how to smile at you, they were loved - because that is what love is like, it really doesn’t need reasons. 

And this is how God thinks of each of us - in the service we’ll be concentrating on Kiera and Nylah, but I want you to know it’s true for all of us - before we could do anything God loved us - and He could no more stop loving us than you could stop loving the two of them.

This has been an extended welcome - because welcome is what this service is about - the welcome we at St Peter’s want to give to you the baptism party, but more importantly it’s about God’s welcome to Kiera and Nylah. 

The Sermon

When I welcomed you I touched on the indisputable truth that it’s very hard to get our minds round who or what God is - we can’t see him, we can’t touch him, and any idea of communication with him we have to take on trust. 

This makes a pretty dispiriting start to a sermon. But all is not lost..

In one of his letters Paul said about Jesus ‘In him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell.' What that means for us today is that everything we need to know about God we can get by looking at Jesus. 

Take welcome itself.  Welcome and hospitality are at the heart of the way of life Jesus came to bring in. For him they weren’t just the trappings of a polite society they were the thread that if you followed created a different kind of society, one that looks to include rather than exclude.

His life showed us something about the breadth of God’s welcome.  

Look at the people who gathered round him - there were fishermen, tax collectors, the poor, the wealthy, lepers, outcasts, Roman soldiers, people to whom many religious people wouldn’t have given the time of day. But they all got a welcome. 

Why did people want to meet him? He always seems to have treated the person he was talking to properly, he took them seriously, he was trustworthy. He was interesting to listen to - crowds gathered whenever he started to teach, he was good company we often read of him being invited to someone’s house for a meal. As a guest he must have been fun, his conversation would have been unexpected. challenging, exhilarating. This is what God in human form looks like - this is the life we are offered, this is the hope into which Keira and Nylah have been baptised.

Welcome doesn’t sound very controversial, but some hospitality isn’t so generous. It comes with strings attached.

I don’t know if you picked up the tensions in the gospel reading. Jesus had been invited to a party - it sounds to be more like a formal dinner party than asking somebody over for Sunday lunch - and it wasn’t a friendly invitation - the hosts were religious leaders who felt threatened by Jesus - he was undermining their role and they had invited him in order to catch him out, hoping he would put his foot in it, so that they could rubbish him, so they could ignore what he was showing them about God. Their hospitality had been weaponised

Jesus recognised what was going on and he brought them up short. 

‘Your parties are all show, they’re about getting the best seats and prestige. It’s you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’

This wasn’t his kind of hospitality, it was self interested not generous. It reflected personal ambition rather than love of neighbour, so he says, ‘You should be looking out for everyone. Don’t forget the vulnerable, the needy, the lonely - they shouldn’t be pushed out to the margins, they should be included too.’ 

This is what Jesus’s hospitality is like, this is what God’s is like too, because in Jesus the fullness of God is pleased to dwell.

Now we might well say ‘what a lovely idea’,  but a moment’s thought and we realise it’s much easier to say than to do - it’s not easy to get on with everybody, there are people we don’t feel at home with - but this picture of how broad and far reaching the welcome and hospitality of God are gives us a direction of travel. It gives us a task  - we are to create a community where all are welcome, where differences are a strength rather than a weakness, where the joy that Jesus brought to his followers is visible.

This is the hope into which Keira and Nylah have been baptised. They will find there is a lot to learn - that’s true for all of us -  but  they are being welcomed to a faith where there is room to grow. 

To take part in God’s welcome we have to accept it ourselves and Keira and Nylah’s baptism is  God saying welcome to them. It’s him saying I enjoy your company, let’s get to know one another - and whatever else they grow out of they need never grow out of this.