Welcome to St Laurence Church, Appleton with Besselsleigh
A welcoming and inclusive church serving the whole community
St Laurence church is in the middle of Appleton village, down at the bottom of Church Lane, past the school.
Church Lane turns off Eaton Rd, on the right on the way in from the A420, after the road bends round the Manor.
Epiphany II Year A, 18 January 2026
Isaiah 49.1-7, I Corinthians 1.1-9; John 1.29-42
This week’s gospel was Saint John’s account of the baptism of Christ, noteworthy for not actually including any baptisms, let alone Christ’s. It also shows the beginning of the gathering of disciples, starting with Saint Andrew’s recruitment of his brother Simon Peter, the Rock on whom the Church will be built.
The scene begins with John the Baptist describing Jesus as ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world’. This reference to the Lamb recalls the Passover and sacrifices in the Temple, and so sets up the remainder of the gospel-drama about ‘us and our salvation’. The little Lamb, apparently so weak on the weather-beaten hillside of the English imagination, is rather stronger than the Rock of Peter, and solid as the rock of Golgotha on which Christ carries out his work on the Cross.
In addition to these images of Lamb and Rock, we are given two questions to ponder. The first is put to Jesus by Andrew and an unnamed disciple: ‘Where are you staying?’ they ask him. The second is his response: ‘What are you looking for?’
In fact, the second question is a version of the first, because the first question isn’t about Jesus’ lodgings, but about where he’s more firmly fixed: what are his abiding concerns? What motivates him? Where does he abide?
We know from earlier in the chapter that he abides ‘close to the Father’s heart’ (v.18), and that the Spirit, after the unreported Baptism, alights on him, and abides eternally in him. Indeed, it is into this perfect unity of the Holy Trinity that Jesus longs for us to take our place, like participants in a dance with always room for one more dancer. Jesus, in his Father’s heart, calls us also to dwell at the loving centre of all things. (It’s a long story …)
Hence his question to the disciples: ‘What are you looking for?’ Or perhaps, Where are your desires and longings fixed? What motivates you? Where do you abide? For the Christian, as for Mary Magdalen on Easter morning, the answer to the question is that we are looking for Jesus himself. But all of us, in fact, whether Christian or not, are looking for a bedrock to build on; a centre that won’t peel away to nothing, like an endless onion.
To achieve this, we must learn to trust in God, like the Israelites in the reading from Isaiah; and, like the Corinthians in the reading from Paul, we must be less self-reliant and self-satisfied. We must learn to place our hope in the apparent weakness and absolute folly of the Cross.
One way to do this is to allow ourselves to be drawn back to God several times a day, asking Christ to abide in us, and to help us to abide in him. There are lots of ways to do it (just ask anyone who regularly prays). Any conscious coming to Jesus will gradually cultivate peace and unity in our hearts and minds. This will then, albeit slowly, percolate out into the world, and share the peace of God like airborne seeds. It is crucially important work, and especially appropriate to Christian Unity week. It begins with recognising Jesus as the Lamb of God, and seeing him as the cornerstone of the new creation.
If readers of these homilies would like to pursue questions raised, do please contact me on rector@stlaurencechurchappleton.org – or if you’re local, come along to St Laurence’s – Wednesdays and Sundays at 10am.
