Today is a busy day in the life of this congregation. We are celebrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ, who came to declare God's love and reconciliation to all people, and, through his death on the cross and rising again to new life, showed that God's love cannot be defeated by human wickedness.

We are celebrating the life of this Parish through our Annual Vestry Meeting. Through the business of the meeting we affirm all that is good and commit ourselves to improve where improvement is needed. We give thanks to God for those who have served us in the past year, and pray for those who will serve for the year ahead.

The third thing we are doing, which is perhaps the most important, is to baptise Emily and Sebastian. Jesus told Nicodemus that you need to be born again to inherit the kingdom of God. Today, Emily and Sebastian will be born again through baptism. Today is their church birthday. Today they become members of the biggest family in the world, which is the Christian church. Even though they are to be baptised in the Anglican Church of St Luke at Enmore, they will have brothers and sisters in every other denomination in the world. Anglican, Roman Catholic, Uniting Church, Orthodox, Baptist, Lutheran and the other churches agree that if someone is baptised with water in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then they are full members of the church and inheritors of the promises of God made through Jesus Christ.

So we have a lot to celebrate today. But today is only the beginning. It is the beginning of the rest of our lives for each one of us. Today God says to us, I am the one who made you, I love you so much that I died for you, and nothing can separate you from my love, go, and live your life in my love. God says this to Emily and Sebastian, to their parents and godparents, to you and to me, and to all the people of the world, if they care to listen. So we have a lot to celebrate today.

But, as we look around, we quickly realise that human beings have a lot to learn about God's love. In fact, most people find it hard to believe that God loves them and harder still to actually live in the love of God. So God has provided teachers and companions, for Emily and for Sebastian, and for all of us. If you want to see who these people are, look around you. Parents and godparents have responsibilities in bringing up children in the Christian faith, but because we are all children of God and we all need to learn more about God's love, God has given us the Church to be a community of learning and a community of love.

This is the vision that we are committed to at St Luke's and it is our hope that all who share the life of our worshipping community will know the love of God and live lives which have been made new a better by that love. We all have to learn how to be a community of learning and a community of love.

Last year, in October, we found a tool to help us in the task. It is called the Natural Church Development Process. It identifies our strengths and the areas where we can grow. I was not surprised when it told us that people experience love and grow in faith better in small groups than in large ones. We all need other people to share their lives, people to whom we can talk about personal problems, people who will pray with us, people we can share our faith with, people with whom we feel at home, people we can trust.

Emily and Sebastian need these things, too, and it is our prayer that they will find them in their families. They will also need friends outside their families, people that they choose to confide in, godparents, perhaps, or neighbours, or people from their church community. They need a network of people who really know them well and can help them to grow as humans and as Christians.

The Natural Church Development Process calls such networks, Holistic Small Groups. The name doesn't really matter; the Roman Catholic Church calls them Basic Ecclesial Communities. Whatever you call them, they are groups of people, ten or twelve, who meet regularly to share all aspect of life - that is why they are called Holistic. They provide a place where each person can grow as a person, can grow as a Christian and be cared for with the love of God. They exist naturally, some people are drawn together to form such a group; they change and grow; people join them and leave; they flourish best when they meet the needs of the people in them.

They can be formed deliberately, according to a plan. Many parishes have a small groups coordinator, who trains group leaders and encourages new groups to form. The groups grow and multiply, and more leaders are raised up and the church grows as a consequence.

I would like to see the multiplication of such groups among us because this may be the best way to get our message across, I want each person here today to hear God saying, I am the one who made you, I love you so much that I died for you, and nothing can separate you from my love, go, and live your life in my love. I want Emily and Sebastian, their parents and godparents, you and to me, and all the people of the world, to hear it, and hearing, it, to respond.