When he was about thirty years old,Jesus walks out of Nazareth, away fromhis father’s carpenter shop, a few miles out into the countryside to hear a preacher by the name of John, a distant
relative . On that day he was baptized and publicly named “ He was given a
name and told to whom he belonged.His story, the story of his ministry,actually begins on that day.
In this sermon , I make the case that Christian faith begins not on the day we decide to adopt a new set of rules for living, a new ethic, a new list of sins to avoid, but on the day we know who we are and whose we are: “child of God, you belong to Jesus Christ forever.”This public naming gives us a purpose,
a sense of belonging in a society that tends to isolate individuals.
Dr. Willy L Mafuta,
Senior Pastor,
Hopewell United Methodist
Church, Hopewell, NJ 08525
www.hopewellmethodist.org