Being Different
Can anyone tell me where this place is? St Andrew’s – home ground of Birmingham City Football Club. There can be some pretty scary supporters. In recent years we haven’t had much to cheer about. We did win the League Cup back in 2008. I won’t gloat about one side that was knocked out of the League Cup. There aren’t many supporters here in Howth – Maurice Bishop and I used to console each other on a Sunday morning. In fact you could say that to be a supporter of Birmingham City is to stand out as different from everyone else.
This morning I want to talk of ways of being different, of standing out in a crowd. Some people dress differently and do their hair differently. Then we are all different. God loves us all, no matter where we come from, how old we are – even how we dress. The difference we are talking about this morning is who we follow.
Lesson told of Baptism of Jesus – I want to think about our own Baptism. When we have a Baptism, at one point in the service I will say: In baptism, God calls us from darkness into his marvellous light. To follow Christ means dying to sin and rising to new life with him. That means very consciously choosing – choosing different attitudes, different behaviours, different priorities in life in the sort of people we choose to be.
Bible talks about repentance – it uses a Greek word: metanoia. That’s what John and Jesus meant when they told people to ‘repent’. Turn around, change direction, take a different journey through life.