Maisie’s Baptism Talk

Today I had the honour of baptising Maisie, who I’ve got to know over the last few months. I chose the reading from Psalm 45, verses 1-2 and 6-9. Here they are:

My heart is stirred by a noble theme
    as I recite my verses for the king;
    my tongue is the pen of a skillful writer.You are the most excellent of men
    and your lips have been anointed with grace,
    since God has blessed you forever.Your throne, O God, will last for ever and ever;
    a scepter of justice will be the scepter of your kingdom.
You love righteousness and hate wickedness;
    therefore God, your God, has set you above your companions
    by anointing you with the oil of joy.
All your robes are fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia;
    from palaces adorned with ivory
    the music of the strings makes you glad.
Daughters of kings are among your honored women;
    at your right hand is the royal bride in gold of Ophir.

And this is what I said:

It has been a great joy and a privilege to get to know the young lady in front of me over recent weeks and months.

Every time I see a new face in church, or even a face that’s less familiar to me than many others, I get a bit of a butterflies. So much so that I suspect I could be accused of holding back a bit because I don’t want to come on as that over excited, intense and far too much, vicar person.

But when I see faces reappearing a few weeks in a row, that’s when it gets really exciting. And that is why it has been such a delightful thing to get to know Masie, Joanne and Stephen since they started coming again a few months ago.

Now having already rejoiced at the fact that they seem to be sticking with us, can you imagine how I wanted to jump for joy when Joanne and Maisie said that Maisie wanted to be baptised. It didn’t even occur to me that she hadn’t been, but how exciting that she wanted to be.
I had a conversation this week about what Plan B was for this service in case I was unavailable. I said there’s no plan B because I’m doing that baptism, even if it’s stood in a puddle with my legs crossed!

So it came to picking the reading for today, and I was flicking through the various options the Church of England presents us with, and I came across this Psalm. If you don’t know, a Psalm is basically a really old song that is recorded in the Older bit of the Bible. Across the 150 psalms that are in the Bible, we witness a whole range of human emotions. We’ve got praise and wonder at creation. There are people feeling abandoned, and wondering where on earth God could possibly be in their lives. There is anger at God. There is anger at people. There are deep beautiful prophetic sayings. Don’t think the Bible is all mushy and nicely nice. You’re gonna find every emotion you can ever feel in the Bible, and most of them can be found across the psalms.

And this psalm, psalm 45, is actually written as a wedding song. Also very appropriate giving that we are celebrating with Joyce and Ted their 65th wedding anniversary this week. I chose this reading because verse 9 made me think of Maisie and her baptism. Verse nine says: Daughters of kings are among your honoured women.

At her baptism today Maisie has been adopted into the family of God. Now I fully believe that God has been with her every second of her life so far. Although she and her parents and her godparents have made this commitment today, her journey of faith started long ago. But at baptism something really special happens. We become adopted, fully, as God’s children. Even at Jesus’ baptism, the father had something pretty special to say. At Jesus’ baptism in the river Jordan, the heavens opened and God said ‘this is my son, my beloved, with him I am well pleased.’ And he says that to Maisie today. ‘This is my daughter, my beloved, with her I am well pleased.’

Maisie is fully embraced by the creator of the universe and the Lord of all Lords. She is adopted into the family of the king of all kings. It makes her a daughter of the king. And today a daughter of the king is among our honoured women. It is such a special thing when someone decides for themselves that they want to follow Jesus, that they have a faith that they want to be part of this community, locally in terms of our church here, and also globally in terms of the church across the world, and historically in terms of that big community of believers who have gone before us. Today is a very special day, and I’m so delighted that I got to do it!

When Jesus was alive, he told stories. He’s the biggest storyteller of all time I reckon. And one story he told was about the Pearl of great price. Jesus talked about a Merchant, a seller of fine pearls, who found a Pearl of great value, the greatest Pearl that he’d ever seen, and so he went away and he sold everything he had and he bought that pearl.

I think this story works two ways; it calls us to have a real commitment to our faith, to recognise how precious the Kingdom of God is and to want to partake in it so much that there’s nothing we would hold back.
That’s the call to Maisie this morning. But I also think that we are the Pearl of great price, and God is the merchant so invested in us, and captivated by us, and delighted by us, that he would give up everything he had to have us and that’s what he did on the cross. He gave up everything he had to win us, for us to love him back. There’s nothing he would withhold because he loves us that much.

And if you don’t know that, or if you’ve not heard that before, or never really believed it, it’s never too late to come to God. It’s never too late to see your worth as a Pearl of great price, as a son or a daughter of the king, fully adopted and embraced and cherished and loved and thought about and honoured and held. You are welcome to come home to him at anytime.

So just as we come into land a couple of things to recap. Maisie has made a wonderful decision today. Although God has been with her for every moment of her life, today marks the beginning of the official journey of her faith. She is the daughter of the king, ‘Daughters of kings are among your honoured women’. And each and everyone of us is a Pearl of such high quality that we are worth giving everything up for.

And one last thing, you know I like names right? I’ve talked about names, and the meaning of names in sermons before. Do you know what Maisie means? Maisie is of Scottish origin, and it comes from the name Margaret. Maisie means Pearl. So welcome to the family Maisie, daughter of the king, Pearl of great price.
Amen