The arrival of any new-born child turns one’s world around. Their very being alters everything. Previous patterns of life are completely reordered and all priorities are reset.
When a couple marry I often speak of how their marriage is an icon of God. St John teaches us that God is Love and that those who live in love live in God and God lives in them. Thus, to behold that which is love is to espy God. This iconography is most clearly painted if a couple share in the creativity of God and are blessed with children. For parents are called to live out the self-giving nature of God in response to their child. They are to be gracious and selfless with unlimited forgiveness and love towards their child. This is to be done whether or not they experience reciprocation or appreciation of their actions. This is most clearly lived out at the very moments that a parent will feel that they are the least engaging with what divine nature might well be. For again the gift of Love and demonstration of love, we are taught in the person of Jesus Christ and through scripture is total and selfless. People glibly talk about making sacrifices for their children. At the heart of our faith is that we are all called to be Christ like and be living sacrifices, and parents are vividly called to be just that.
However, Jesus reminds us that it is not simply parents that are the location of the presence of God. The child themselves are integral to how we encounter God.
This should not come as a surprise, even in utero John the Baptist leaps for Joy when his mother Elizabeth is visited by Mary, who is carrying Jesus. Jesus’ birth provokes shepherds and magi to alter their lives to go and see him. Joseph and Mary take refuge in Egypt to protect him, when Herod views his existence as a threat. If at the end of his life we can see the reality of God in the face of suffering and the cross, then too as an infant we also see one who redeems what we are simply by his fulfilling of Isaiah’s simply prophecy of “A young girl will conceive and bear a child and will call him Emmanuel, God with us.”
Often in Baptismal sermons, there can be a sense that the preacher is the one with power. That they are imparting something onto others. There is of course within the action of immersing a child into the fully mystery of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection that is bound up in the bestowing of grace.
However today I wish to explore what the child gives to us, preacher, priest and people. Alexander lives out the lifestyle that James calls us all to inhabit. Whilst his knowledge will need to be nurtured, he has an innate wisdom given by God. For it demonstrates all the attributes that James refers to as being from above, “pure, peaceable, gentle, wiling to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.”
Jesus takes this further. In response to issues of power within communities and when instead of harmony there is discord and argument. As with any good teacher he reaches for a visual aid. An image, an icon that speaks beyond the immediate of what is needed and why. That which he reaches for is a young child. “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcome the one who sent me.”
In welcoming a child, we are not simply adding to our numbers, we are welcoming into our midst the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit and the Father. We are the recipients, not the bestowers of the reality of God in our action of welcome. Thus, today as we welcome Alexander, he enables us to welcome the living God. Our lives are transformed through this encounter.
This encounter with God through a child provokes us to then revisit James’ challenge as to how we view every day life and its challenges. Are we shaped by the divine wisdom as demonstrated or by earthly wisdom which is destructive? The gift the wider church and world receives through the welcome of a child is one that we should cherish and be transformed by. Any parent is changed by the arrival of their child. We know that the shepherds and Magi, Anna, Simeon, as well as of course Mary and Joseph’s lives are completely changed by the infant Jesus. We need to realise that we all by our welcoming of a child are bound up in this process of transformation. For an encounter with that which speaks of God, whether in a burning bush or a baby in a pram, is for us all lifechanging.