Triduum Homilies: Canon Pat Browne at Easter Vigil

Canon Pat Browne gave the following sermon at last night's Easter Vigil in Holy Apostles, Pimlico, central London.

"Truth! What is Truth?" Pilate asked defiantly of Jesus.

How would you answer that question? What is the Truth about you and your life? That you are a man or a woman? That you are Black or White? That you Are British, Kenyan, Filipino? That you are straight or Gay? No! These things don't get anywhere near the Truth about you. They just tell us what you are.

What then? That you work, are retired, are unemployed? That you are good at making money? That you are a skilled carpenter, a fine musician? A sportsman or woman? No! These things don't get near the Truth about you either. They only tell us what you do.

The real Truth about you consists, not in what you are, or what you do but in who you are. Do you know Who you are? Jesus reveals the answer to that question.. You are God's Son - God's daughter. You stand alongside me before God. I am his only-begotton Son. You are his adoptd Son - his adopted daughter.

This is the marvellous Truth about us. That on the day of my Baptism - God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit took me into his life forevermore, as Family.

We have the joy and priviledge tonight of witnessing this act of God as he claims Niall, Jodie, and Phil through the sacrament of Baptism, and makes them his children forevermore.

I had an email about two weeks ago from a man who had been baptised in this church some years back. He told me he has since become an atheist and now wanted to be de-baptised. This was the first time anyone had ever asked me for that.

I discovered there is a procedure in which he can formally renounce God, his faith and his Baptism. But he can never be debaptised - once baptised, always baptised. When I wrote back I told him I was saddened by his request and reminded him that one of the things that happens in baptism is that he is claimed by God as his son, and though we may in life turn our back on our parents, be they our human parents or God our parent, we can never not be our parents child. He can never not be God's child. That is a given for always. Say a prayer for him - that he will come home again to God - as we seek to do tonight in an ever more powerful way than before.

Tonight as I witness these three young people being baptised I learn the Truth about myself. I see myself in a new light - standing here as I am doing in the Light of the Easter Candle. I discover myself to be a child of God. He has taken me to his heart.

This is the great Truth that Pilate never saw. Thank God that you do and I do. It is the Truth that sets us free from fear - of death, our past sins, of harsh judgement, guilt and defeat.

So now be God's child not just in name but in the way that you live your life.

You are God's Beloved always.