A sermon on 1 Peter 2:2-10 by Margaret Welsford

“Be like newborn babies, always eager for the pure spiritual milk, so that by drinking it you may grow up and be saved.”
So said the apostle Peter at the beginning of the second reading we heard this morning.

Now I’ve got some idea what he was talking about, because in the last year I’ve seen close up what it’s like for a newborn baby to hunger for the breast and all that it provides. With mouth open and eyes closed, sometimes emitting a little wimper (or if kept waiting, an almighty howl) they search frantically until they make connection with the nipple and for them the source of all good things.

Even now at 12 months of age and what seems like aeons away from being a newborn, Acacia still hungers for the breast. Especially when she wakes up in the morning, I am sure there is absolutely no other thought in her head as Nathan carries her down the hallway from her room to ours. There is no “hello, how are you this morning? I must tell you about this great dream I had.”

Like some kind of heat-seeking missile, her eyes and open mouth seem to zero in on the target in her single-minded determination to get to the breast.

And this is of course understandable when you are a few hours or weeks or even a year old. For not only does this milk provide the nutrition you need to grow it gives physical closeness, comfort and warmth, the intimacy of eye-to-eye contact, the comfort of being held by loving arms, enveloped by the presence of your first love. And as if that weren’t enough the milk also supplies protection from diseases that you don’t even know about yet.

I’m not sure how many parallels between mother’s milk and spiritual milk Peter had in mind when he wrote this, but having lived his illustration for the last year I can think of lots of them. As growing Christians we are eager for the nourishment found through partaking of the Eucharist. Actually, in some traditions there has even been a second chalice filled with milk, shared later in the eucharistic liturgy.

Like newborn babies we too look for more than just physical nourishment from the milk God offers us.

We seek warmth and comfort, and find it in prayer and through fellowship with God’s people. We long for deeper intimacy with the God who holds us, and we find it as we draw close in prayer and worship.

We need protection from all that would harm us, and like a baby drawing immunity from its mother’s body, our resistance to infectious evil is strengthened as we feed on all that God gives us – in scripture, in prayer, in community and in Eucharist.

The benefits of course are not all one way. Just as we are to be like thirsty babies, God is like the nursing mother. God desires to give us nurture and see us grow.

For the mother, her body and being is focussed on giving nourishment to her baby. The sight, the sound, even the thought of her child triggers the flow of her milk, whether the baby wants it or not. And the more the baby suckles, the more the mother’s body produces.

As the mother delights in seeing her baby grow and develop sustained entirely at first from her body by her nurture, love, support and encouragement. So does God delight in us, her children and our developing maturity.

In fact, as Kristin said to me once, through the experience of breast feeding we can get a glimpse of what it might be like to be God, creating a person and watching them grow miraculously before your eyes, fed entirely by your own body.

As the baby grows into a child, she eventually doesn’t need the mother’s milk anymore, but the bond is still there. Acacia is already beginning to enjoy the more worldly delights of babychinos at the Market cafe.

The child can go out and explore and play secure in the knowledge of the mothers love and availability. A secure attachment relationship has been forged and cannot be easily broken.

So it is with God’s love for us. In time, the nourishment of spiritual milk will enable us to grow up and graduate to more solid foods. And confident in the knowledge of God’s love we will go out into the world and do extraordinary things in his name. We are free to develop and mature into the sort of adults God needs for this world.

With God’s loving nurturance we will grow into what we were created to be – a holy nation, God’s own people, a chosen race living in marvellous light.