Dear Robbie and Nate,

Today is the day when you will be baptized. You won’t remember a thing about this day because you’re too little, but we will remember it, and will tell you about it when you’re older. It’s a happy day and an important day for your parents, grandparents, godparents, and for the rest of your church family here at St. Andrew’s, because today is the day when we all promise to help you grow up, learning to follow Jesus, to love him, and be like him in as many ways as you can.

Jesus is the one human being who’s ever lived who best shows us what God is like. Jesus lived thousands of years ago, but he’s never been forgotten and he changed the world forever. None of us have ever met him, but he means so much to us that we’ve dedicated our lives to following him and trying to be like him – just like we hope and pray you will too.

There are four little books about Jesus in the Bible – not very long books – but books that tell us some of the things Jesus did and some of the things that Jesus said. You’ll learn about them when your parents read stories to you out of the Bible, and when you come to Sunday School. Jesus did some amazing things, and he said some amazing things too.

Jesus said that obeying a lot of rules weren’t nearly as important as loving people. Maybe the most important thing Jesus said is that the way to live a good and happy life, and the way to be the best possible person you can be is to do just two things – the first is to love God (mostly because God loves us so much and it makes him happy to be loved back), and the second is to love each other in the same kind of way.

Today we read out loud a part of one of the books about Jesus in the Bible – the book called Matthew. In it, Jesus gives some examples of ways we can love each other in the way that God loves us. Here’s what Jesus said… “Come you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.”

All of those are ways of saying that our job as human beings is to look out, to love, and to take care of other people the best way we can. Sometimes we can do that at home, sometimes at school, sometimes at church, and sometimes in our neighborhood. There’s always going to be something we can do for somebody else who really needs help – that’s what loving God and loving each other is all about.
We’ll try and teach you that, Robbie and Nate, and we’ll look for ways you can love and help other people no matter how little you are and no matter how big you get. We’ll do our best to help you learn to be kind to other people, to share what you have with other people, and to go out of your way giving of yourself. We’ll do that because we know that that’s the way God wants us to bring you up and help you grow up – loving God and loving other people.

It’s not always easy to love God and each other, and we don’t always get it right. God know that we can be really selfish, wanting things our own way and wanting to hold on to everything we have. God knows that we can be very unfair to other people, especially when we don’t think other people have been fair to us. God knows that we can be mean and unkind and selfish. But God also knows that we have it in is to be kind and loving, compassionate and selfless. That’s what God most wants for us. In fact, that’s the way God created all human beings to be.

But it’s not just up to us - God will help us be loving people, and that’s really good news. He’ll help us because his spirit, his love – is in our hearts and in our souls. God is very close to us, right inside of us. When we talk to God, in a way of talking called praying, sometimes we can feel just how close he is. He listens to us all the time, he forgives us when we mess up, and he cheers us on when we do the right thing in the right way. We’re lucky to have such a loving God. And we’re lucky to have Jesus pointing the way, telling us stories about God, and teaching us about how to love each other.

Robbie and Nate, we want so many good things for you in your lives. We want you to grow up big and strong, happy at school and happy with friends. We want you to enjoy every day as a great day, delighting in the wonders of the beautiful world God has created. We want you to run and play, to learn to read and love it, to love school and love your teachers. We want you to come to church on Sunday and to get to see all the other kids your age – kids like Nate Taylor, Erik Holden, Alex Rodriguez, and that cute little Natalie Quinlan.

But even with all the love God has for you, and the love we have for you, sad things will still happen, and bad things will happen too. We wish they wouldn’t, but they will. We’ve learned, during the bad and sad times in life, that we can lean on God to get us through, and we can lean on each other to help us. We’ll help you learn to do that too.

And so today, your baptism day, we’ll pour a little water on your foreheads and make the sign of the cross on your foreheads with a little oil. We’ll all promise to love and look out for you as you grow up, and we’ll pray for you by name, asking God’s special blessing upon you both. We’ll give thanks to God that you are “sealed by the Holy Spirit in baptism and marked as Christ’ own forever.” We will be grateful that God loves all his children forever – his big ones like us and his little ones like you.

And finally today, we’ll all go up to the altar and kneel down to receive a very special blessing from Jesus – the blessing of his presence in our lives in the form of bread and wine. That’s what we call communion. Every time you come to church you can receive that blessing too. It makes such a big difference to know that Jesus is with us, inside of us, helping us grow into the people God wants us to be. It makes us feel more peaceful, it makes us feel more loving, and it makes us want to say thank you to God.

You are great guys, Nate and Robbie. You have awesome parents who love you more than you’ll ever really know. You have grandparents who think you’re incredible. And you have a big family here at church who love you too and want all good things for you.

May you grow up loving God and loving others, delighting in life as the good gift from God that it is. May all of us take our part in helping that come true in their lives. And may each of us be reminded and remember today that we too are baptized; we too like Nate and Robbie are the beloved children of God.

Amen.