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I log into Facebook and there on some one’s status is a grainy black and white photo of a baby - the ultrasound that announces that their new arrival is on it’s way. And many people will keep that ultrasound up with their other photos on the mantelpiece - the precious first picture of the precious special child.
On his mantle piece God has one of those ultrasound pictures of you. The precious first picture of you the child who matters so much to him. “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me… In the shadow of his hand he hid me, he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away”. (Isaiah 49:1-2)
God adores you. He has the ultrasound picture of you on his mantelpiece, together with the Christening photo, the picture of you when you were three years old, the wedding photo and the picture of you when you were 13 and you did something really kind. They are on the mantelpiece because he adores you.
Last week we heard the story of the Baptism of Christ and as Jesus came up out of the water the heavens opened, the spirit came down like a dove and a voice came from heaven “This is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased” (Matt 3:17) - and at your baptism the heavens opened and his voice said of you “This is my beloved child in whom I am well pleased”.
When my friend posts their ultrasound of their new baby they do so because they are so proud and love that little baby so much. It’s not because of the 13 GCSE grade 9s their child is going to get - she hasn’t got them yet. It’s because of her career as a barrister - she hasn’t got that yet. She hasn’t even been born yet! They love her just because. Not because of anything she has done. Just because.
That’s the same with God and you. “The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me” - God doesn’t love you because of how many GCSEs you have got or how clever you are. He doesn’t love you because of your career, how successful or famous you are. He doesn’t love you because of how good you are. He loves you just because. This is the doctrine of justification by grace. Like a mum or dad loves their child not because of anything the child has done, but just because the little one is so special and is theirs - well God doesn’t love you because of anything you have done. You don’t have to earn his love. He loves you just because he loves you. And adores you.
As St Martin Luther points out, this is one of the reasons why we baptise babies. If as a norm we waited until the person was grown up they might mistakenly think they had earnt their baptism by being committed enough or by believing exactly the right statement of faith. We baptise them as infants when they are too small to have done anything to deserve it. God baptises them simply because he loves them.
Similarly we now admit children to communion way before they are old enough to make an adult commitment to Christ. As soon as they are old enough to understand that something special is going on and to understand that Jesus is somehow coming to them - well why wait until they can articulate the difference between the eucharistic doctrines of Transubstantiation, Consubstantiation and receptionism - I doubt many of you could articulate them and we give you communion. So why not just give children Jesus’s body and blood for the simple reason that God loves them.
My personal views about children and communion were very much influenced by meeting Christians with severe learning difficulties. We had a group from a residential home who came most Sundays to my old church of Holy Trinity Barkingside. Some of them could not even talk. One of them, Judith had the habit of saying “Awww, shutt upp!” if in her opinion I talked to long. But they were all engaged in the service. They joined in the songs, dancing and jiggling in their wheelchairs. Singing - perhaps not the right words or right tune, but singing. And when they received communion it was amazing to watch. Even for those who could not speak - you could tell they knew something very special was going on - and they loved it.
Rebecca Long-Bailey the Labour party leadership candidate got herself into hot water this week(1). She is not a Christian, so she has no particular problem with the idea of abortion. She has no problem with the part of the current law that says any child may be aborted up to 24 weeks. But - and here is where Rebecca Long-Bailey is controversial - the current law says that disabled babies may be aborted at any stage in the pregnancy. Rebecca Long Bailey objects to that because it suggests that disabled babies somehow matter less than “normal” babies. To Rebecca Long-Bailey, as to God, a person doesn’t matter because of how rich they are or how clever they are or whether they have a disability or not. They matter because they matter.
“The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he named me” God values you just because. He is there for you when times are good and he is there for you when times are bad.
“But I said, I have laboured in vain, I spent my strength for nothing and vanity. Yet surely mycause is with the Lord, and my reward with God.” (Isaiah 49:4)
God is described in the bible as “like a mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings” (Luke 13:34, Matthew 23:36) . Like any caring mother, God isn’t just there for you when you win the 100m. God is there for you when times are tough. When you feel so worn out by the crapness of life that you “have laboured in vain” you have “spent your strength for nothing and vanity”. After years of loyal service you have lost your job. Or out of the blue your GP sends you to the consultant and you are diagnosed with a terrible disease. Or a close friend suddenly dies. Or you just feel worn out and depressed.
One of the times when life can literally feel like “labouring in vain” is the tragedy of miscarriage and still birth. I first really became aware of this when I was a 21 year old intern at Christ Church Highbury. The music director’s wife who had many beautiful children had a late miscarriage. People could say plenty of glib things “well you have got all your other lovely children” or “It’s only a miscarriage” - but it didn’t take away the pain for her of losing her baby, her much wanted child who had been born early and dead. Since then I have come across so many friends who have been through this pain. Parents trying for years for a child through IVF only to lose him through a miscarriage. Parents with a much longed for younger child to be a sibling to their three year old - only for the little boy to die in the womb. It is difficult for those outside who have never met the child to feel the pain of the mother who has known that biological bond for all those weeks in the womb. But if God knows us from when we were in our mother’s womb, it’s clear he knows too the pain we feel when we lose the child in the womb.
It’s odd that in our society we can feel such joy with the parent showing their scan of their baby in the womb, and to some degree such sorrow for those who face the trauma of miscarriage and the death of their baby - yet at the same time we talk glibly about “the termination of an embryo”. Back in the days of the Romans there was no easy technology for abortion but there was still a solution for unwanted babies. They were exposed, left to die on the hill tops. Christians were thought weird and extremist for their opposing of infanticide. So it is in our DNA as Christians to be pro-life. If God values you so much; If you are so precious to him that he has your photo on the mantelpiece; If he knew you inside your mother’s womb - then doesn’t he also care for every other little person in their mother’s womb?
But if you are going to be pro-life, you have to be pro-life. You can’t be anti-abortion and then create a church where single mothers are made to feel shamed and unwelcome. If you are going to be pro-life you can’t tolerate them growing up in a world where aged 13 they get stabbed or shot in gang violence. I don’t understand how American Christians can call themselves pro-life and then support the wide availability of guns. How can supporting the weapons of death be pro-life?
Nor can I understand how Christians who claim to be pro-life can be pro the death penalty. Before he was 35 year old being taken to the electric chair after twenty years on death row, before he was a 15 year old who has made a mess of his life and got into a fight and shot someone, that man, that boy, that child was once a little baby, a baby everyone thought was cute and precious. And God still looks at that man and sees him as special and precious, the one he knew in his mother’s womb. We love the fact that God forgives our sins - our pride, our cruel words or actions, our lies our selfishness - but the God who forgives those also forgives the rapist and the murderer. In the same way that a mother cannot hate her child even if he does something terrible and evil - God can’t stop loving his children whatever terrible things they have done.
Now I know you won’t all agree with me articulate the Church’s teaching of being pro-life - pro-life not because we value a cause but because we value people whom God thinks are precious.
Two caveats. You can be pro-life and not want to make abortion illegal. That’s not as crazy as it sounds. There are plenty of people who think heroin is a terrible thing but making it illegal is even worse. Or a less controversial example - there are plenty of people who think adultery is a terrible thing but making it illegal would be even worse. I can argue passionately that a baby is a precious thing and that it is never the best thing to terminate a baby in the womb. But I can also see the horrors of the days of back street abortions and the number of women and children who died through them. I and many others may not agree with the decisions of women who (after whatever terrible ordeal they have been through) choose to abort their child. But I am not going to add to their trauma by forcing them into the arms of backstreet abortionists.
The second caveat is that we all love to judge the one sin we haven’t committed ourselves. So for those of us who have never had an abortion it is an easy temptation to judge those who have as beyond the pale. God may forgive our sin but he won’t forgive theirs. Not knowing of course that those people might be sitting right next to us in church. But the reason for being pro-life is because people matter to God. God has their photo on his mantelpiece. As Rebecca Long Bailey has pointed out people matter to God whether they are able bodied or disabled. All people matter to God - good people, bad people, right people misguided people. So the person who disagrees with me, perhaps thinks abortion is no more than another form of contraception - that person matters to God as much as I do, is as precious to God as I am- and God has their photo on his mantelpiece, just as he has mine and has everyone here’s. God has a very big mantelpiece.
“The Lord called me before I was born, while I was in my mother’s womb he names me… In the shadow of his hand he hid me, he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away”.
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(1) leadership contest of British Labour Party - views of candidate Rebbecca Long Bailey reported widely in the British media https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-51149511
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