God is from Essex and Other Good News

Sermon for the Baptism of Christ  – 11 January 2025 – St Martin’s, Kirton

Text: And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’  (Luke 3v22)

God give you peace my Sisters and Brothers.

I know it may grate with some, but it will warm the heart of our Colchester-born Grandson who turns Twelve today, to know that the Bible clearly says that God comes from Essex…   After all where else in our sceptred realm do they use the phrase ‘well pleased?’   Surely proper people, like us Suffolk folk, use words like chuffed’ to describe our pleasure?  But no. God goes for ‘well pleased’ and we will probably need to get used to the idea that TOWIE will be on endless repeat on TV in Paradise.

According to Luke’s Gospel the only thing he has done so far is demonstrate that ‘He is not the Messiah’ but is indeed a ‘very naughty boy’ having got lost in the Temple when He was a tweenager!

What is it on his CV that causes God to speak from heaven, give Him a mystical slap on the back and exclaim, ‘with you I am well pleased!’?

The clue to answering the question is found in the first part of these words from the heavens, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved.’ 

Nothing else is needed to gain the approval of God, to be chosen by God other than to be born as a child of God.This is a simple yet profound statement.  God loves us not because of what we have done but because of who we are.  To please God all that is needed is that we be born.  

I am immensely thankful for those who taught me about the faith when I was in short trousers.  They filled me with dreams of heaven and a passion to serve and praise God.  Sadly this also came with an unhealthy fear of God.  I grew up with a picture of God as an angry old man with a beard who was out to ‘get me’.  Anyone else feel the same?

I spent many anxious years and spilt many tears trying to somehow please, or even, appease God.  It was only as I was at the beginning of this marvellous journey of hope that is a vocation to be a priest that I knew that faith was not so much about my trying, and failing, to please God but that God looked on me and was pleased with me.

One of my most vivid memories is being on a retreat in the Convent of the Schoenstatt Sisters in one of the areas of Cape Town reserved for so-called ‘Coloured’ people. During the Confession at the Eucharist I realised what a failure I was at being a Christian and was close to tears.  At that moment I felt a gentle presence stand behind and around me moving to embracing me and whispering gently into my left ear, ‘Andrew, you are mine!’  The tears flowed more freely after that but no longer out of fear of a ‘God who was out to get me’ but for the sheer joy of knowing that obedient or disobedient to God’s desires for me, near or far from God’s presence, God saw something in me to which I was blind.  I was then, and I am now, a beloved child of God who is pleased with me, warts and all.

And so is every one of us.  If we but stop to listen and look we will, with Jesus, also see the heavens open and the voice that spoke Creation into existence speak to us and say, ‘You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

When I am at my lowest that embrace from faraway Cape Town returns and whispers to me again.  Singing a comforting lullaby to me the words I learnt in a Sunday School chorus but do not sing anywhere near enough;

Knowing that God is well-pleased with us, even though we have nothing to claim that place or privilege, is a message that should bring us joy and hope and help us live lives overflowing with love for our fellow sisters and brothers – of our faith or of no faith – with whom God is also well-pleased.

This message gives hope for the helpless.  

Hope to all those who feel their offering to God is too small, or imperfect, or insignificant. God loves you because of who you are not because of what you have achieved.  Our Beloved loves all those who feel they have never matched up to the standards set by others or even by themselves.

This message gives hope for the hapless.  

Hope to all those who, like the Penitent Publican feel they are unworthy not just because they don’t measure up but because they have gone in the wrong direction completely.  Our Beloved loves all those whom everyone else condemns.  God does indeed ‘Love us when we’re bad’, and in loving provides a living hope for those who have even given up hope on themselves.

This message gives hope for those hankering for redemption.  

All those who are hag-ridden by righteous acts and deeds.  Those who are so anxious about performing their acts of devotion precisely or their deeds of charity scrupulously that their faith has been robbed of any joy.  Yes, ‘Jesus loves us when we’re good, when we do the things we should,’ but no amount of doing good can increase a love that loved us to death and beyond to the life after life.  

We must learn to praise God’s name and serve God’s children not out of a compulsion to curry Divine favour nor out of fear of punishment but in the sure and certain knowledge that the One Who Loves us Best looks on each one of us, smiles, and says, ‘You are my child, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’

[This blog ‘God is from Essex and Other Good News’ is copyright © Andrew Dotchin 2025and may be reproduced without charge on condition that the source is acknowledged.  The cartoon ‘What Would John the Baptist Do?’ is copyright The Church Pension Fund details of how to use it may be found on their website.]

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Jesus is Baptized

As the people were filled with expectation, and all were questioning in their hearts concerning John, whether he might be the Messiah,¹⁶John answered all of them by saying, ‘I baptize you with water; but one who is more powerful than I is coming; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandals. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. ¹⁷His winnowing-fork is in his hand, to clear his threshing-floor and to gather the wheat into his granary; but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.’

21 Now when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened, ²²and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’  (Luke 3v15-17, 21-22)