The Church 2011

I’ve been thinking a lot this summer about the Church and what it is and what it’s for and what it’s good at. And the answer is… that being part of a positive and generous Church could well be the most important thing we do. Being part of God’s Church is the major way in which we meet with God, and then are sent out into the world as disciples and saints to make the world better. What we do here this morning matters more than almost anything else we will do this week. Being part of the Church matters more than we realise. It shapes and defines us.    

It’s by being a child that we learn how to become, in time, an adult. It’s by being a son that we learn how to be a parent. It’s by being loved that we learn how to love. Our daily, local experiences teach us vital things about the big themes of human existence. Personal experience teaches us what big ideas mean. 

So, I’m basing these thoughts on the Universal Church on what it feels like week by week to come here and share in worship and living with you. On what it feels like to learn about God and courage and honesty and love with you. On what it feels like to be part of a church which is striving to be focused on God, and enjoy herself while she’s doing it. On what it feels like to be part of a church which is slowly growing into something quite special.

My experience of St Mary’s feeds into the bigger picture of what the Church is called to be in every place and generation. We, here, are a very small part of the Universal, Catholic Church, which is something we need to be more aware of and more inspired by. We are not simply a group of people meeting on the edge of Hyde Sunday by Sunday- we are part of God’s united and wonderful Church. We have brothers and sisters in almost every village of the world. People before us have done as we do, and people will be doing what we do long after we are buried in the churchyard.

And we are all heirs of the Kingdom of Heaven. We are all guided and fulfilled by the Father who made us. We are all loved and redeemed by Christ who died for us and rose again in glory. Filled and united by the Spirit, we are Christ’s Bride, Christ’s Body, Christ at work in the world.

In short we are not dabbling: we are the very cutting edge of the battle between hope and fear. There is no more exciting and more important time to be God’s Church than now because this is the hour we’ve been given to live in and as much now is at stake as ever.

The challenges might be different than some of those our brothers and sisters have faced before, or face now in other places. We are more likely to be ignored than persecuted, more likely to be talked of as gullible than arrested, more likely to be mocked than executed.

Like them, we have a job to do in being love and in proving that faith can be plausible and sensible and vital in Newton in 2011. To show by our lives that God is not dead and our faith is not groundless. To show that we are fully alive because of what we know of God. We are God’s shop window. We are walking parables. We are contemporary disciples. We are the body of Christ here and now. And nothing is as important and precious as that call to live for God as God’s redeemed people.  

So how do we do it? By taking our identity from God. We must live out in our daily lives what we say and do in Church- that God loves us, that Christ died for us and rose again, that the Spirit inspires us to serve. In a world which has lost its compass and its landmarks we need to hold fast to the love of God, and to who we are because of who God is.

Which is what Jesus did. In this morning’s Gospel it is clear that Peter has one set of expectations about Jesus and Jesus has quite another sense of what he is called to do. Peter expects Jesus to march to Jerusalem, gathering followers, and then to seize the Temple and proclaim himself King of Israel. This is what Peter longs for, what he’s willing to die to achieve. But Jesus is very blunt in his response: “Get behind me, Satan.” He calls Peter, the Rock on whom he will build the Church, Satan, because his way is the way the world would choose. And Jesus comes to show the world, to show us, a better way. He comes to show us that love and justice and courage and humility are not weakness but the Way of Life. And he calls his followers, his Church, to do the same.

Which is what Paul is talking about in his Letter to the Romans. Our reading is a list of how God’s people and God’s church should be: a place of morality and self-restraint and compassion, a place where people choose to love, a place where people choose to turn the other cheek. Let me be clear- this is not an invitation to people to walk all over us but a bold statement, backed up by Paul’s life, which says that there are stronger forces around than anger and violence. Paul gives us the recipe for a full and fulfilled humanity.

So, we must choose, through the Spirit within us, to see ourselves as the people God knows us to be, precious and wonderful. And the way we learn who we are is by being part of the Church, through being part of a community built firmly on the Bible and on bread and wine, part of a community which meets together to talk about resurrection and vulnerable love, and then goes out into the world to live those truths out. 

No Church is perfect. There will be weeks when things don’t come together for you. I will choose the wrong hymns- they’ll be too new or too traditional. Someone will say something annoying as you sit down. The Gloria might get on your nerves. We might find it hard to focus. But those things should only make us pray harder and realise how important all of this is. If Jesus loved his Bride enough even to die for her then the least we can do is stick with it and be here and be committed, despite her failings, and despite her flaws. We need to do everything Paul says- to be gentle and forgiving and patient with the Church and its members and its leaders, and outdo one another in showing love and respect, and weep with those who weep and laugh with those who laugh. We need to live in harmony with one another, because here is the place we learn who God is and hence who we are, his precious children.

To sum up, the Church is the place to which we come to hear and celebrate the story which gives meaning and direction to our lives, the story of God’s love made flesh in Jesus. The Church is the precious Body of Christ. Nothing is more precious and more important than that. We should be excited to come to Church. We should be excited by what happens here. We should be excited to be part of it.

And we should be excited by the great adventure we call life, by the chance to live out what we share each day. By the chance to take up our cross and follow. By the chance to overcome evil with good. By the chance to rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

These things are what Christians do. These things are what the Church does. And nothing matters more than the call to be God’s Church in God’s name in God’s world.