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My Baptism took place in Acomb Baptist Church on 9th January 2005, before a congregation of the York Community Church. Here you can read three texts which constituted the part of the service in which I stood before the congregation to witness how I came to be there. I read out my testimony, Jayne read Psalm 139 v.1-10, and I read my prayer.
Over the past week, as I phoned people to tell them about my Baptism, the dominant initial response that came back to me was surprise. Various degrees of surprise. My loved ones who are not Christians had a moment of struggle to overcome a shock. Friends from church were delighted and surprised. Although, since some of them had actually prayed for years for this to happen, one might have expected them to be delighted but not surprised. I almost feel that some of us gathered here have come to witness a miracle. And, I must admit, if I were to look at myself standing here with the eyes of the person I was only a few months ago, those eyes would be goggle-like.
I owe you an account of how this has come to pass.
I was brought up in an almost impeccably secular environment. My grandmothers went to church, one being Protestant and the other Catholic, but it was a side of them that I had an occasion to witness only now and then. I suspect that my parents discouraged them from teaching me their faith, perhaps because they wanted to spare me the burden of being categorised as religious in a communist land.
To be fair to my parents, however, they brought me up to respect that some people had faith in God. I was never allowed to mock people of faith and I think it is thanks to my father that I have always understood that the existence of God could be neither proved nor disproved by scientific evidence and reasoning alone. However scientific a reasoning, it rests on assumptions at the heart of which there has to be a leap of faith. The atheist asserts a belief in proclaiming the world to be godless just as the believer lives in faith as he marvels at the world that God has created. It is almost as if we had a choice which way to leap: to godlessness or to God. Until quite recently, I had an intellectual pride in making a point of not performing either leap. I was one of the people that Brian Crosby confessed to finding particularly annoying when he preached the last time we were here to celebrate Baptism: the people who just stick to mundane realities and won't be drawn into any arguments about life beyond the mundanely obvious.
The process of opening my heart to God started a year ago, when I decided to read the Bible. I wanted to please Jayne, and also to close a gap in my knowledge, because my ignorance of God's Word began to feel shameful. I decided, however, to read it in German, a language I had been learning and needed to practise. Our friend Odile gave me a copy of the New Testament containing Martin Luther's German translation as well as King James' English version. The reading was a slow process, but engaging like none I had ever done before.
It was changing me gradually, but two particular events marked the path. One day I took my granddaughter Nina on a trip to Scarborough. We had a great day together and towards the end, as we walked up the South Cliff towards our car, she popped the question: "Grandpa, do you believe in Jesus?" I paused to consider a reply but she insisted: "Do you believe in Jesus? Just say yes or no!" She put me on the spot and I had to get off the fence; and I said yes.
A few weeks later, I woke up at night with the realisation that I love Jesus and that he therefore must be real. After this moment, there was no going back. I knew that I would have to join the church. The bible was telling me to do it and I wanted to obey.
While my personal relationship with Jesus started and developed in the course of my reading God's Word, it is clear in retrospect that I was ready for the reading by the time I started. Now I know that many in the church had prayed that I open my heart to God, but I did not know it at the time. I was aware, however, of two kinds of experience that had been drawing me towards the body of Christ for some time.
The first was my love of walking in high mountains. Last time Jayne and I were in the Alps we saw it written somewhere that, in the mountains, even the most secularly minded walker or climber often gets an experience for which he or she just wants to thank someone; and if there were no Creator, whom could we thank? I experienced just that feeling repeatedly for many years.
But it is not just the magnificence of nature that draws Jayne and me back to a particular place in the Alps year after year. It is the people who live there as well. They love their mountains, do their work in them often with breathtaking eye for perfection and skilled care, they are straight and warm and friendly, and devout Christians. Their forms of worship are Roman Catholic, but the chapels they have hewn in rock, the shrines they lovingly tend by high and remote paths, and the crosses they install on many peaks, with inscriptions of Bible verse, move the spirit in many, regardless of religious denomination.
Back at home in York, contact with Christians has been a powerful influence over quite a few years. The architect, the builder and the joiner who altered our house must be mentioned here, in addition to the increasing number of York Community Church people that I have met through Jayne. By the time I started my Bible reading, I had long felt blessed by Christian friends.
Two weeks ago Jim popped this question in the last half a mile of a walk: "Can I ask you something about the New Testament?" "Yes", I said. "What does it say about Baptism?" "Everyone has to do it", I readily replied, relieved that I knew the answer.
Verse 5 is inscribed on the cross on my favourite mountain, the Böses Weibl. The plaque is visible in the picture, above Jayne's head.
O Lord, you have searched me and you know me.
You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar.
You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue, you know it completely, O Lord.
You surround me – behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea,
even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast.
Dear Lord, help me to keep myself open to your presence at all times.
When I have done something well, give me the humility to see that I have not done it alone.
When I have failed in something, remind me that I have to trust you to help me pick myself up, learn from my mistakes, and move on.
Lord, when I see someone doing that of which I disapprove, take away that high horse on which I want to sit and be a judge. Give me the heart to see beyond the offending deed, where a human person is, one you have created alongside me. Give me compassion with their suffering; and courage to approach them in brotherly love.
Lord, when I feel hurt by someone, remind me of the cross on which you have suffered, and of the reason why. Help me to open my heart, so I can forgive as you forgave us all.
When I am lost, give me the wisdom to see the fact and to ask you for guidance; and Lord, give me the courage to be free to follow your path.
Father Lord, encourage me to take your hand, that you offer to your child.
Dear Lord, help me to keep myself open to the ways in which I can serve you.
Have mercy on me, help me to repent, wash away my sins.
Amen.