Giving a Talk on Baptism
I gave just a short talk on Sunday so we could have more time to hear from Susan and Sarah as they shared their stories and were baptised. In my talk, I tried to explain the practice of baptism by giving an overview of the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts – which given the fact that we have spent the last six months preaching through these biblical texts should be very familiar to people! My first sermon this year was exploring Jesus’ baptism (‘In the Days of the Burning Sun’), and baptism has come up frequently in the Book of Acts, so it felt right to end the Book of Acts by celebrating people in our community getting baptised. I love how physical this act is – the shock of cold water. It reminds me that the physical matters. God is our Creator and Sustainer and Transformer. Baptism is about beginnings, and I feel like God is bringing us into a new season.