What is the greatest gift we have been given? Our life, our breath and body, is an obvious candidate. Next the life of another in friendship and love and perhaps marriage. Furthermore the gift of new life in the form of a child, even if this gift is a loan really, as we need to let go off our children as they grow mature. Having been given a child for a season, why would you want to give them away so soon, as in effect you do in baptism? In a Christening a child is given to Christ who claims the child as His own – it is no longer yours. Why give your child to Christ? Because there the child is in good hands.
In John 17:1-11 we read four times of God the Father having given people to Jesus and these verses can also help us see why it is a good thing to give a child to Jesus. First, using the NCV,
You gave the Son power over all people so that the Son could give eternal life to all those you gave him.
Even if we have in some way been involved in giving life to a child, Jesus can give the child something we cannot give: eternal life. If life is about relationships, life ends when our relationships come to an end. We have not the power to maintain relationships forever but God has:
And this is eternal life: that people know you, the only true God, and that they know Jesus Christ, the One you sent
This relates closely to a second reason for giving a child to Christ. Jesus says in His prayer
I showed what you are like to those you gave me from the world.
In Jesus we see exactly what God is like. Others can tell us about God but no one else can show us God. We give a child to Christ because we long for the child to see what God is like. Why would we need to know what God is like? Because in any case we belong to God:
They belonged to you, and you gave them to me, and they have obeyed your teaching.
As creatures we all belong to the Creator but we long for our child to belong to God in a more intimate way, responding with obedience rather than rebellion to the teaching of their Creator. Baptism signals a homecoming, belonging again to the One to whom we really belonged from the beginning and from whom we have been snatched away.
Jesus cares for all people but those given to Him are His first priority:
I am praying for them. I am not praying for people in the world but for those you gave me, because they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And my glory is shown through them.
Christians are Christ’s first priority because through them His glory is shown to others. A Christening is always also a commissioning: we are claimed by Christ also for the sake of others. By showing off the beauty, goodness, grace and truth of Christ to others we can become the means by which others come to know Jesus Christ and the only true God and so find eternal life. It is a glorious task even if it is not undertaken in a safe space which is why Jesus prays
Holy Father, keep them safe by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they will be one, just as you and I are one.
With Jesus we pray for children (and adults) that are Christened that they will be kept safe, not by the power of a mighty hand that eliminates all obstacles and evil, not by the power of a superior intelligence that easily navigates the deceitfulness and treacheries of this world, but by the power of God’s name, which is to say God’s character, being made like Christ who by innocent suffering defeats evil.
For that the baptised needs the community and unity of the church, as we each receive with gladness and obedience the name and teaching of God.
