Vicar's Sermon - 2nd August 2015
Ephesians 4.1-16
‘Everything that we need to be the church of God in this
place is here, in this place.’ I wonder whether you think that this statement
is true? ‘Everything that we need to be
the church of God in this place is here, in this place.’
Over these last few months a lot of my thinking and reading
has been around community and hospitality. What builds up a community – a
church community (yes) or the wider community in the town - what things
help? ...and what things hinder? One book has led to another, one thought has
sparked another thought and slowly a number of connections have been made. So
much of what I have been reading traces its origins to the West Coast of
America and then, (surprise surprise) a number of authors have explicitly
referenced our former Bishop Tom’s theology in their work – he, at one point,
taught on the West Coast. One key
message has been that our Christian faith needs to be ‘incarnated’ in the local.
The Church of England tries to do this through its parish system but in America
this is increasingly falling foul of mega-churches which suck Christian life
and energy out of ‘downtown’ areas to the suburbs, to the Mall where there is
plenty of parking and where the church can build a brand new ‘all singing and
dancing’ facility.
For all of us the temptation is to see our faith as being
something that resides primarily in our thinking and feeling – but, in the end,
it must be lived, it must be seen. Faith must be seen to make a
difference to how we live and the way that we live and the things that we do.
So getting to know a place, becoming part of the life of the town, committing
one’s time and energy to the neighbourhood, playing a part in establishing
friendships and networks of people who (knowingly or not) support the things of
the Kingdom of God...all these things have been highlighted in my reading as
being important marks of Christian discipleship. The Benedictines called this ‘stabilitas’:
all of us are tempted to think that ‘the grass is greener on the other side’
(at another church, that if only we had this or that type of person – a youth
worker, a children’s worker, a young
Vicar with all the characteristics of the Archangel Gabriel , onside we would be a much better ‘church’).
Stabilitas says ‘if you can’t find God here you won’t find Him there:
look for the Kingdom of God in this place, with this people and
you will find the pearl of Great price, the Treasure buried in a field.
Commitment to place and commitment to a people – to a
community. These things matter. But then, serendipitously in my thinking and
reading, there has been a link to living with a sense of generosity and
abundance rather than seeing life through the lens of austerity and scarcity. Currently I am on the
rather grandly entitled ‘Delivery Team’ for a Diocesan wide scheme called
Partners for Missional Church. Fifteen churches (large, small and struggling,
evangelical, high church, wealthy, less wealthy) across the Diocese have been
chosen to set off on a three year journey of growth and discovery under the
guidance of a team from the USA, supported by partners in Nottingham and Oxford
Dioceses and with a few folk like myself watching over how things go. There’s
not enough time to explain the process now but at its heart, each of the churches
involved will be helped to recognise ‘where they are’ as a church: to get to
know one another as the congregation and then to get to know the area in which
they are set before setting about discerning what God’s Mission for them might
be. A key premise of the scheme is that ‘all that we need to be the church of
God in this place is here, has been given to us by God.’ What follows from this
belief is the challenge to actually understand, appreciate and celebrate the
gifts that a church has been given. I wonder whether we, here, might benefit
from doing something similar?
In another context –
as we see in what is taking place in Bishop Auckland around the Bishop’s
Palace and the Zurburan pictures and the 11 arches projects for example- much of the latest thinking about wider
community development is based around something called ‘Asset Based Community
Development’. Again, this resists the
temptation to look outside an area for experts to come in and ‘solve’ a problem
or to ‘fix’ things or people: the end result of that approach (say the social
scientists) has been to de-skill local people and to create a dependency that
is even more costly to address. It would be far better (say those who promote
Asset Based Community Development) to build on what is present. It would be far
better to focus on gifts and abundance rather than need and scarcity.
All of which is very interesting but weren’t we meant to
having a sermon this morning on the epistle to the Ephesians, the next part of
our sermon series: Ephesians 4. Well take another look at the passage and see
if you can make the connections.
Our passage begins with a desperate appeal by Paul for the
Christian congregation to work at building up their common life. Church life is
hard and it takes work and effort: I said this last week and I’ll say it
again. ‘One church, one faith, one Lord’
sounds great when sung accompanied by a full organ but this unity (albeit a
divine reality) takes immense effort on our part to maintain: just look - it
requires humility, gentleness, patience and forbearance – it needs us to learn
how to love. Paul makes the appeal for church unity so despearately precisely
because he knows it doesn’t come at all easily.
But then the passage moves on to speak about ‘gifts’. It is about the importance of recognising the
giver and their gift, the absolute necessity of each person being able to
contribute their gift – because until a gift is given (offered and used) then
we are all impoverished. Initially I was excited about this passage and its
reference to gifts but then I got plain annoyed because the list of gifts that
Paul gives here is so narrow – apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors,
teachers – we’ve professionalised all of these, when we hear them we think of
Church Leaders, of people with clerical collars. So I want to add a whole host
of other gifts (which to be honest Paul does elsewhere in his writing) and to
give three cheers for the person who can play the saxophone and the member of
the congregation who comes along and clears the church gutters. I want to thank
God for the ladies (and gents) who bake and cater for church do’s: and those
who shift tables and hoover and clean. And then there are all the gifts that I
don’t know about (shame on me): gifts of mind and hand – those who paint or
write, who sew and stitch, who think ‘out of the box’ but feel the church
restricts and confines them. And those who sit and pray, and visit and notice
who needs visiting. And those who give time freely to others to help and
encourage and who nurture and teach. And those who heal and those who tend and
care. Those who can make something beautiful out of very little and those who
can think strategically and manage and plan.
All these gifts are here, in this place, and the thing is I
cannot grow into maturity in Christ unless and until your gift is used. Modern
life encourages us to think of ourselves as wholly autonomous, separate,
omni-competent individuals. But this image of the Body of Christ says that none
of us can be independent of everyone else – my growth in the faith rests on
your growth in the faith – we are to be inter-dependant. Our lives are bound
together in community whether we recognise it or not: our faith and our growth
in the faith takes place alongside others and we stand more chance of growing
as we find ways of working together, being together, receiving from one
another.
God has blessed us with so much in this place. He has blessed
us with one another. As we , continue our Christian journey may we learn to see
Christ more and more in each other – for He fills all things (even the person
next to you) – and may we grow up in every way into Christ, built up in love
and celebrating His grace as each of us offers their gift for the work of
ministry here.