‘We are water people’: LCNZ Bishop Mark Whitfield
Sermon
LCNZ Bishop Mark Whitfield
Worship, Friday 5 October 2018
Text: Exodus 14
EXTRACT
Wherever we’ve come from and whenever we or our forebears did it … whether we were part of that earliest of European exodus migrations to our nations in the 1800s … or whether we’re relatively recent arrivals … we’ve crossed water to be here.
We are water people … and we came over and through that water filled with faith … filled with a sense of freedom and new opportunity … filled with a sense of future.
But we are water people in another way too …
We are people of baptism into Christ … immersion into the life and love of Jesus …
Here in this sea … in this water … our pursuing enemies were killed … Satan was drowned … the old Adam was drowned … our sinful nature was drowned.
Each new day – you and I – who by God’s grace and the working of the Holy Spirit make up this living thing called church … each new day we are invited to remember and be embraced by the grace and promise of our baptism.
It’s good for us to be in this water … for, not only are we safe here … but here we are also anointed and appointed and refreshed and renewed for ministry … called and claimed by God to be people and places of his love.
Read the full text of Bishop Whitfield’s sermon.
