This week is one of good and evil, like few others. We gather to celebrate this wonderful baptism of Louise, and all the goodness, love, and hope that this occasion brings. But we do so in the context of evil. We have seen evil in the shootings in West Cumbria, reminding us of horrors in Dunblane and Hungerford.

Horrific as these are, they must not eclipse the other evil this week, in which the Israeli government attacked aid workers in international waters. History may, eventually, show this to the moment when the world began to turn against a government doing wrong, in the way that things began to change in world opinion towards apartheid South Africa after Sharpeville. We have seen evil this week in the Israeli government actions, but we should remember that Israel has been behaving in this evil way towards the Palestinian people for over sixty years.

Such evil, even though we celebrate goodness and hope this morning, raises questions for us. How can people do such things to other human beings? How can our God allow such things? These people performed deeply evil acts, using other people as instruments for their own purposes, and these acts must be condemned without reservation. However, the people perpetrating these acts are still humans, and that's the worst of it, that human beings are capable of this.

And where was God this week, as we might have asked where God was in the gas chambers of the holocaust, or in Hungerford or Dunblane? God was and is where God always is, and that is with those who are trying to comfort and bring light in any such situation.

And why does God allow this? God is all powerful, and he calls us to co-operate with the love and justice that he longs for. But we are free to resist, and sometimes people resist violently and horribly, as we have seen. We value human beings because the faith that we hold says that that each person, and especially the most vulnerable, has absolute value in the eyes of God, which means that it is impossible to treat anyone as a means to our own ends, which is why such evil appals us. If there is no eternal love focussed upon each and every individual, including the most vulnerable, including the most apparently unimportant, then it's possible for people to be used as tools, as objects.

In this world human decisions are free, even free for the most appalling evil, as we have seen. God does not dictate and intervene for outcomes. The victims' decisions, though, were being made by others and that's how power works in the world: some are enslaved by the decisions of others. Freewill is the ability to make a difference in a situation. That also means the ability, tragically, to abuse others. The victims are deprived of their free will, they no longer have that freedom to choose.

These events leave us with a sense that a line has been crossed here. Our faith will sometimes tremble at times like this. Suffering challenges anyone's faith. There's a dreadful flicker of fellow feeling when we hear of suffering. There's the sense that there are there no boundaries. Is there nothing that human beings will not do?

There is much that evil in the world, as we have seen this week, but there is also so much that is good, as we see in the hope that is Louise. So the problem we have is to sort out the good from the bad. It's important, because we do it, not just for ourselves, but, as we remember today, for our children too. In the case of Louise, you, Golzar and Rostam, are very careful, quite rightly, about the purity of what she eats and drinks, the safety of her cots and buggies. You keep an eye on her nearly all the time, watching over her well-being. On a deeper level, you have to be just as sure that the mental and spiritual food that you give her is just as good and healthy.

How can we tell the difference? What tape-measure can we use to tell good from bad? We don't want to judge by hearsay, or prejudice, or be swayed by eloquent speeches, or fashionable ideas. What impartial measurement can we use?

That was precisely the problem the first Christian preachers presented to the Jewish government way back in the early days. The Jewish leaders had to decide whether this new movement was good or bad. Should they help it or try to destroy it? You heard the story in our Bible reading for today. And they heard, and we heard, the wise advice of Gamaliel, who was respected and loved.

So Gamaliel pondered the problem, and in his wisdom warned the Jews, 'don't act against these men, if what they do is of men it will come to nothing, if it is of God you cannot stop them.' What he was saying was that time will sort the good from the bad. However attractive it is, if it doesn't work in human life and experience, if it doesn't help in a crisis, doesn't comfort in distress, doesn't provide a channel for joy and a work site for peace, it will fall of its own weight. We don't need to push it over.

There were many such religious movements in his day, as there are now. They flourished for a time, then died; either they slowly withered, or ended in a bloody confrontation. And he quoted two examples that his listeners knew about. One of them was led by a man named Theudas, who made big claims for himself, claimed to be able to divide the waters of Jordan with his command. He, and many of his followers, ended up dead in a battle with the Romans. The other example was Judas of Galilee. Quirinius was appointed governor of Palestine in AD 6, took a census and started taxing the Jews. Judas of Galilee led an insurrection which claimed that as God was the true ruler of the Jews they should pay their tax only to him, not the Romans. The Romans crushed it. So as Gamaliel said, time is the best measure of what is good religion and what is bad. Time is not only the best healer, but the best judge.
We stand today in the mainstream of a Christianity that has stood the test of nearly 2000 years. Ours, like all main-stream churches, does not claim any doctrines or beliefs that differ in any major way from the faith of all of our sister churches. We stand and affirm the faith, and when we do that we proclaim our oneness with the other Christians across the world and down the years. Time has battered the Church throughout the centuries. It has been oppressed, persecuted, ignored and subverted at various times to selfish and political purposes. In short, almost everything that could have happened to the Christian Church in the last 2000 years has happened. Everything time could have thrown at the Church has been thrown. And still it stands.

For 2000 years, the heart of Christianity has been the message of self-giving love which we see in the life and message of Jesus, which has inspired and challenged the minds of all centuries. The warmth and strength of his presence has given courage to faint hearts, and comfort to lonely souls for millennia.

History is littered with the husks of cults who have flourished and died, the books are full of stories of movements who could not stand the dread hand of time - who could not adapt, who could not respond to the deep down needs of the human spirit. Who, when faced by Gamaliel's test, failed. But today we receive Louise into a Christianity which has survived all these centuries. Into a Church which is human, and because it is human, has within it the seeds of its own decay. But it is also Godly, and because of that, it has within it the seeds of its own renewal. And that constant renewal and reformation as the centuries pass, means that the heart of the Christian faith - that self-giving love - is re-presented in new forms to each generation as it comes.

Louise will, God willing, be living in the 2080's, when most of us will have joined the great cloud of witnesses. I don't know whether one of the main industries then will be BP, probably not. Will they still be eating Kelloggs? Will Marks and Spencers still be around? Most interesting of all, will MacDonalds be running the British government? Probably not. After all, not many of our well known names were about 100 years ago, how many will survive another hundred? Very few I guess, and in 500 years, none.

But of one thing I am sure. The religion in which we have received these children today will still be here. The buildings might be different, the worship will need to be different, and the organization, please God, will be different, but the central message we preach today - the proclamation of God's love, and our response, will still be preached. They, their children and their grandchildren, will receive the message of a good religion that has lasted and will last - because as Gamaliel pointed out, it has within it the things of God. This is goodness and hope, standing firm in defiance of evil in our world.