Parish Of Opawa St Martins Blog

With all the shaking we have been through in the last nine months it is easy to be pessimistic about what God is up to. In this parish we have dismissed very firmly the idea that God is ganging up on us in some way, or that God is trying to teach us a lesson. There is a lot we can learn about ourselves and about our world to be sure, but it if I were God and everyone was saying that I was responsible for sending those earthquakes to teach those people of Christchurch a lesson, I would be tempted to sue for defamation. But of course that would be an oxymoron! God is love rather than condemnation. God is forgiveness and comes to take away our fear. God is the promise of new hope and new beginnings.

The bible is full of writers who understood what it was like to live through a disaster. They see life as challenge in two ways. One kind of challenge is the toughness of life which tosses up the odd curved ball for us to deal with. In the midst of all the things we live through there is another kind of challenge. That is the challenge to hear the call of God on our lives and to respond to it. This is part of the message of the prophet Isaiah in the text before us today. Isaiah is saying that God speaks a word of promise and hope. Isaiah is addressing the exiles in Babylon who had been through unimaginable horror and the trauma of defeat. As they grieve for their old lives back in their homeland, and learn to cope with the isolation of being held captive in a foreign land, God speaks to them a word of promise. To the exiles he is saying, “We will get through this”. For my promise is effective and real. The road ahead may be long, sometimes arduous. But the word that I speak will have real outcomes; will provide a hopeful future such that the world will be amazed. Isaiah’s message: God will heal and restore. God’s faithfulness and steadfast love is your hope. God’s word is not just a sound that happens. It is a reality which has an effect. Just as rain and snow have an effect on the soil, enabling plants to grow and food to be produced, so the word of God has a real effect. God’s word is to announce restoration and healing. This will be effective in spite of the deafness of human beings, even if there are some who do not want to listen to God at all.

The New Testament calls Jesus the Word of God. He in his person is the inauguration of the kingdom of God. He is the announcement of God’s mercy and love. But he knew that there would be many who would not listen, because human beings are adept at non-listening. Jesus knew that because he spoke to crowds of people, and many, especially those who should have been best equipped to hear what he had to say, were unwilling to listen at all. Some, in fact, were openly hostile to what he had to say. That is why he would so often say things like: “Listen, anyone who has ears to hear.” In the speech of today we would probably say: “I might as well be speaking to a brick wall!”

Today Jesus tells the parable of the sower. In the parable, God is the sower, and the seed is the Word of God. The soil types are those who listen to the parable and there are four types of listeners. They are the hard surface, the dusty surface, and the cluttered surface. These are the soil types where people fail to hear Jesus for various reasons. In talking about the hard surface types (the path), Jesus is lining up for criticism the religious leaders of his day. These were the ones who thought they had no need to listen to Jesus, because they already had the truth, and were no going to allow Jesus or anyone else to upset their lovely religious systems. That exposes a temptation to be avoided: that of thinking that revelation is a defined package of truth that once received it has to be defended. We believe that the Spirit is given to continue guiding us into truth. That means we always need to be open to the Spirit guiding us to new understandings of God, so that truth is something that is discerned in every age by each generation as we encounter new contexts and in new situations.

The next two types of soil were people who said they would follow Jesus, but they got a bit of a “kick up the backside” because they were not really committed. The dusty ones were initially enthusiastic when they heard Jesus and they have shallow soil. They went through a period of rapid growth at first, but when the heat came on and following Jesus began to look a bit risky, they bottled. And so when Jesus was arrested, the disciples abandoned Jesus, betrayed him and denied him. In the face of difficulty they lost their nerve.

There were other kinds of enthusiasts too. These are the cluttered ones. To one such person Jesus said that foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no where to lay his head. To another, a morally earnest person who felt he had a duty to first bury his parents he said something that sounds really hard to us: leave the dead to bury their dead. To another, he said sell all you have and give it to the poor and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me. The thorns and weeds that entangle the sprouting seed of those who are trying to hear the Word of God and follow it are worries and anxieties, the lure of riches, even moral reasoning. Jesus was on the side of the poor and the marginalised, often these were the people who looked a bit dodgy. And so it was tempting to put respectability above following Jesus.

And so it is with us. There might be all sorts of reasons why we might not hear the Word of God. Some here today might be worried about their ability to hear God at the moment above the noise of the anxieties and difficulties we are facing. But if our hearts our open and we want to hear God, the Word of God is always effective and will grow in our hearts even if we can’t perceive it happening at the moment. In the gospels, the people who did hear Jesus and who responded with open and welcoming hearts found themselves transformed. People like Mary Magdelene; the blundering disciple, Peter; the man born blind who was healed. They may not have looked a very promising group of people, but God transformed them anyway, and through them he did far more than they could ever think of asking or imagining. That is our hope. We might see difficulties and trials and wonder if God is even present. We might think we are unworthy, or that God has another pool of people who are much better than us. None of that is relevant. God has you and he longing for you to listen and respond; to allow the seed of his Word to grow in your heart. The point is that the growth of the Kingdom is God’s work. God will plant the seed, He will cause it to grow, and God will act in us and through us. When God speaks, it’s not just a sound that is made. When God speaks, it is word of promise and hope. It is God’s loving and providential purpose that is at work in our hearts. We might have many good intentions in our lives, but never get around to fulfilling any of them. But it is not so with God. God’s purpose is always fulfilled. That is the conviction of one biblical writer after another. Look at Joseph who was sold as a slave. God used that situation of sibling rivalry and bullying to save Israel from drought and certain death. God even brought good out of the horrific time of exile, revealing hidden mysteries of himself for the first time that aid us in our journey today. God wants you to respond because he has made you and loves you. He will use you and me in spite of any failings and weaknesses we may think we have.

We all have our failings, the parts of us that are represented by the hard surface, or the dusty surface, or the cluttered surface, but our hope is in God who chooses us anyway. He is the one who works miracles who in the soil of our hearts and he will bring forth more good fruit than we can ever imagine or conceive.

Today we move away from the great festivals of the church associated with Easter, Trinity Sunday and Corpus Christi and return to the cycle of green Sundays; Sundays in ordinary time. In this part of the Church’s year we return to our systematic reading of one of the Gospels. Believe it or not, the Anglican Church does not trust its local clergy to choose their own readings. Our church has an international cycle of readings called a lectionary, which lays out the readings to be used in every church in the world wide communion. So we are reading the same readings that are being read in Africa, England, North America, Australia, and in all the other places the Anglican Church has been established. We think of this a gift shared; our common readings encapsulating the church’s best wisdom about which readings will be beneficial for the Body of Christ. Also, following a common set of readings becomes glue that holds the Anglican Communion together. As we are in Year A of the cycle, we are reading through Matthew’s account of the life and ministry of Jesus.

All the gospels have their own emphases when it comes to telling us about Jesus; who he was and what he was about. One of Matthew’s favourite themes is that Jesus is the embodiment of the Wisdom of God. We don’t hear much about Holy Wisdom in preaching these days. But it is a very important strand of the bible and of Matthew’s message about Jesus. The books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon can be classified as Wisdom literature and they make wonderful reading. In the bible Holy Wisdom is usually a personified as a female person. In my bible the notes refer to Lady Wisdom, opening the possibility that the biblical writers did indeed relate to God as “she” in the bible. In the book of Proverbs (see chapter 8) Lady Wisdom stands on streets and calls people to a great feast, to the table she has set laden with bread and wine. She pronounces her authority, describes her divine origin, and asserts that she was with God in the beginning as a master worker in God’s creative activity. When you think of the story of Jesus, does any of that sound familiar? Matthew noticed that it was very familiar indeed and told his story of Jesus accordingly.

Matthew is telling us all through his Gospel that Jesus is the Wisdom of God in human form. When Jesus is on trial, it is the wisdom of the wise and intelligent that is really on trial. Whereas John’s Gospel talks a lot about the Logos of God (Jesus is the Divine Word (Logos – see the lectern) of God who became flesh and dwelt among us), Matthew is saying that Jesus is the Wisdom of God made flesh.

There is a unit on Wisdom literature for the year 7 and 8 students at St Mark’s School. It is always fascinating to hear young people try and define what wisdom is and where to look for it. Boys most commonly start off thinking of wisdom as knowing lots of facts. Wisdom is knowledge they say, and knowledge is power. Here’s a question: What do you think Wisdom is and where would you look for it?

First century people had their own solutions to the question of what wisdom is and where it could be found. Some said that Wisdom is the Law of God (the first five books of the First Testament) which is the answer offered repeatedly by Psalm 119. So those people studied the Law (Torah) and tried to internalise its precepts. Some people said Wisdom is to be found in the Jerusalem Temple, so those people spent as much time as they could in the temple going through the cycle of daily temple services and sacrifices, allowing themselves to be carried by the rhythms of worship as if they were being held by a stream of water. Some said Wisdom could be found everywhere in creation, the beauty of this world where the divine artistry could be adored. Matthew understood Jesus as divine Wisdom made incarnate, made flesh. He is saying that being Christian is about making it our business to know Jesus and to understand the mind of Christ who leads us to the Father who is, after all, the ultimate Wisdom.

Today Jesus offers thanks to God for those who are most receptive to Wisdom. It is the little ones, the infants, those who are like children, who are most open to receiving the Wisdom of God. We are lucky in this parish to have lots of ministry going on with children and families and when we work with young children it is easy to understand what Jesus means. Children are trusting, because they have to be. They have to trust their parents, their teachers at school or pre-school, and they have to trust other adults. Their hearts are open to new learning and new possibilities. Open and trusting hearts: this is what God is looking for in his people, and what we need to be able to cultivate in our prayer life with God. By the time we become adults that can be difficult to do. One of our children’s ministry team says that she likes working with children in our parish because of what children show her about God, not because of what she can teach them. Children have an intuitive knowing when it comes to God, because they know how to trust with hearts full of wonder and awe. Marcus Borg tells the story of the parents with a two year old and a new born baby. The three year old kept wanting to spend time by herself with the new born. Wondering why, they listened through the baby monitor to hear what would happen. Their three year old said to the baby, “Tell me what God is like. I’ve almost forgotten.” The gift of children to us is that they remind us how to be open and trusting in our relationship with God. It is so important. Jesus’ observation (complaint?) in this part of Matthew is that the religious people of his day had hearts that were closed. They thought they had God all summed up in their laws and rituals, so that anything Jesus had to say could only be viewed as a threat. This is one the big temptations to avoid in our journey with God. If we think that by studying the scripture and maintaining a discipline of prayer that we are somehow becoming an expert about God, the defender of truth, we can make ourselves blind to the ways God comes to us and we can become critical of others. Being critical, becoming blind, these are things that diminish our souls. Therese of Avila said that we always have to be ready to go back to the beginning in our life with God, which requires us to have a certain level of humility. Jesus wants us to have wide open and trusting hearts, to be a church with a wide open door, so that we make space for those who are different and so that we are always open to new revelation from God.

The temptation that the religious leaders had succumbed to was the sin of pride. They not only wanted people to admire their piety, but they began to be severe demanding in the way they expected the people of God to live their lives. Well, Jesus had fun when he walked this earth. He went to lots of parties. He changed water into wine. He celebrated with the people and allowed his disciples to pick the odd grain of wheat or two on the Sabbath. Jesus had high expectations of his followers too, but by comparison with the religious leaders of his day, his yoke was easy and his burden, light. Jesus has come to lift our burdens, not add to them. Knowing him, being intimately connected to him is the highest form of wisdom. That is where we find rest for our souls. That is why we are here, for around this table, Jesus is as close to us as you or me. He is feeding us with his very self, and sharing his life. He is beckoning us to come closer: “Come to me all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will refresh you. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am meek and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

Whether or not Christ is present in the Eucharist was one of the fault lines that ran through Christianity in the reformation. Christians from the earliest times have always taught that Jesus is present whenever we break bread. This is the whole point of the resurrection narratives in the gospels, when the disciples on the first Easter Day recognised that Jesus was intimately present to them just as he had been before Good Friday when they broke bread together. That was a obviously a formative experience, an experience of being nourished in the resurrection life of Christ. No wonder that the sacrament of Holy Communion has from the start been the central act of Christian prayer down through the ages.

When the Reformation came, Martin Luther wanted the old Catholic Church to reform the way it taught people about Christ’s real presence in the Eucharist. Thomas Aquinas’ teaching on the subject, which had come to be known as transubstantiation, made absolute sense to everyone in the 12th century. Aquinas used the philosophy of Plato and Aristotle to explain in philosophical terms how Christ is present in the Eucharist. That theory made sense then because everyone at the time understood the thought of these two great philosophers; the thought of Plato and Aristotle still shaped everyone’s understanding of how God worked and how the universe worked. But by the 16th century, the world had moved on and Thomas’ theories no longer struck the chord they used to. So when Luther nailed his 95 theses to the church door in Wittenburg one of his demands was that transubstantiation be reformed in favour of something that would enable the people of God to understand the Eucharist better.

But Luther was disturbed and shocked when the consequences of his call for reform became clear. Some of the reformers were going as far as saying that the bread was just bread and the wine was just wine. For example Zwingli, the Swiss reformer, championed what some have caricatured the “real absence” of Christ. He said the bread and wine are mere symbols commemorating Jesus’ death. He said that if Jesus was fully human, and that human body had ascended to heaven to sit at the right hand of God, there was no way it could also be here in this celebration as well. A human Jesus cannot be in two places at once, he argued. Therefore this is nothing more than a memorial meal. Luther was appalled. He tried to pull things back at the Marburg Disputation in 1529 but the Protestant movement found itself divided on this point. Luther said that Christ is indeed truly present in the Eucharist. Bread is still real bread, he said, but it is also contains the physical presence of Christ. Similarly wine retains it’s wine-ness, but it is also truly the blood of Christ. His doctrine became known as “consubstantiation”. Anglicans adopted this position as well. Anglicans call this the doctrine of the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. The English reformation was political rather than a theological one. So we adopted a middle road half way between the Catholics and the Reformed traditions, and we believe in the “real presence” of Christ in the Eucharist. Having said that we also seek to be a broad tent. We allow room for those who are catholic or Reformed in their views, and the way we accommodate that is to keep on debating until we find forms of words that we can all say “amen” to.

In the mean time, reformed churches and the Puritans followed a line closer to Zwingli and others; somehow Anglicanism makes room for them in our church. The important point is that Anglican Church believes in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist, in the bread and wine of Holy Communion. Unlike our mediaeval forebears, Anglicans refuse to define that presence in philosophical terms. The Anglican way, when it comes across the mystery of God, is to step back a little and adore the wonder of God. We tend to write poetry and hymns if we feel so inclined, but we avoid defining the mysteries of God in philosophical terms.

The fact that our church believes in the Real Presence of Christ is why it is possible for us to have the Reserved Sacrament and to take communion to the sick in the way we do. In St Mark’s Church there is a little cupboard in the sanctuary called an ambry with a red light next to it. The red light is always on as a reminder of Christ’s continual presence in the elements of bread and wine kept in the ambry. We treat that bread and wine with special reverence, and we use the bread and wine consecrated here at our principal Sunday Eucharist when the church is gathered, to take communion to the sick and to those who cannot be here. In that way they remain in communion with Christ and with us, which is why our intercessors to pray for them by name in our prayers every Sunday.

Some people find it hard to believe in the real presence of Christ in the elements of bread and wine. A good way to understand this is to go back to the incarnation, to the story of Christmas and Christ’s birth. At that particular point in time when Christ was born, God assumed a human body, so that all people could be redeemed, so that we could all be joined to God. Christ’s humanity, then, is very important. His humanity is a significant instrument of our redemption. God becomes human so that he can assume every aspect of our nature, so that he can redeem it and reconcile it to God. His risen and glorified body reaches out to people in every time and place so that he brings the whole of creation into communion with God.

But the consequences of the incarnation go further and deeper. Through his dying and rising, he makes all of us members of his Body, the Church. In the resurrection he draws us closer to himself and sets us on a journey of transformation, so that as we become copies of his humanity, we also become more and more like God. In the Eucharist, he continues to come to us in a physical way, through bread and wine, to feed us, to nourish us. Christianity is an incarnational religion. God takes signs and symbols like bread and wine, water, the giving and receiving of rings, the touch of a someone in the laying of hands, and speaks us to us directly through them. In God’s hands, these signs and symbols become reality. The Eucharist is an intimate abiding with Christ as he comes to us in a common meal as we eat and drink together from the one loaf and the one cup. St Augustine once said (in simple terms) that we are what we eat. As we eat this bread and drink this cup, we become more and more the mystery we celebrate. We become a new humanity, part of Christ’s risen body.

So if we believe all that, the amazing unimaginable mystery of God becoming fully human in Christ for our salvation, and if we believe something as astonishing as being made a member of his Body even though we know we are imperfect, then it is not so hard a thing to believe Christ’s own promise that he comes to us here, and that he is truly present to us in Holy Communion. The incarnation is a continuing reality. Just as God became human in Christ, so he comes to us in the physicality of bread and wine. Jesus gives his life to us in bread and wine. He is nourishing us, strengthening us to be the new Israel, the new humanity as he promised: “Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise them up on the last day.” (John 6:54).

In the reading from St Paul’s letter to the Corinthians we heard one of the most ancient parts of our tradition. It is the familiar narrative: On the night before he died he took bread, gave thanks, broke it, and shared it. Four actions: taking, thanking, breaking, and sharing. All of us should recognise these four actions as a representation of the life of Christ: He takes our humanity, his life is focused toward God in an attitude of thanksgiving. He is broken on the cross for us, and his life is continually given for the world. That is what he is eternally being and doing. He eternally comes to take flesh in our lives and in our hearts. He continually prays for us and gives thanks to God for who we are and for the love in our hearts that comes from God. He is still absorbing and defeating the evil of the world, and he is still giving his life for us and to us. Taking, thanking, breaking, sharing. Let us give thanks for this amazing gift, for God’s presence, and for the sacraments in which God communicates to us in flesh and blood. Let us give thanks for Christ’s body of blood that meets our needs so perfectly as it nourishes our hearts and our spirits, as it touches all our senses: touch and vision, taste, smell, and hearing. So when we reply to the minister’s words: “The Body of Christ” let our “Amen” be our “yes” to God and our “yes” to who we are.

Today we celebrate the Holy Trinity, God revealed to us as three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; yet at the same time one God. This is the only feast day in the Church’s year that celebrates a particular doctrine of our faith. All our other feast days celebrate an aspect of the life of Christ, or the lives of the saints. This is the only festival in our calendar designed to highlight a particular doctrine – we believe in one God who is at the same time three persons.

This understanding of God is not an easy one to explain with words, but it is central to our understanding of God. Perhaps a way into this is to remind ourselves that the essence of God is love. And so when Christians think about God and deepen their relationships with God, we see as of first import, three persons living in divine harmony, in a circle of love, a community where each person of the Trinity is totally focused on the needs of the other. So while there are three distinct persons, there is divine harmony and unity within the Trinity such everything they do they do they act together as one, so that we can affirm that there is one God. And so in this circle of love is the source of life which is continuously made available to you and to me, and to the whole of creation.

Divine love is at the core of the Trinity because God is love. This is a love that brings complete unity and harmony. We also find that life is at the core of God. Another meaning of the Trinity is life generating life. That is why the first reading today is the creation story from the first chapter of Genesis. We know God as the creator of all things, the source of all, the ground of our being. Genesis 1 is a theological reflection about God and creation, and our place in creation. It is not an attempt to offer a scientific explanation for when God created, or how long it took for God to create, or what method God used. It is simply affirming that the world exists because God wills it to exist. God is not a celestial engineer whose creative work took place at just one point in time, as if winding up a clock and then leaving it to run by itself. God created the world in order that all may enjoy the richness of the life God has to offer. And because love is at the core of God the life that God creates is good; God is one who longs to stay in relationship with us and is bound up with our destiny. So to say that God is creator, is not to return to some past event way back time to reflect on some mysterious origin. To say God is Creator is to say that we exist now because God wills us to be. God is eternally loving us into life and willing us into existence. To know God as Creator and Source of Life is like standing next to a spring of beautiful life giving water in the middle of a beautiful garden. God is the constant creative, loving, life giving breathe of life that sustains us. So when we hear that God looked at what he created, and behold, it was very good, we know that even now God looks at you and me, he sees what he has created, and he says, “Behold, it is very good.”

God’s work of creation is never done. It is on going. When God called the people of Israel and made them his holy people, it was a creative act. When God sent Jesus Christ into the world, it was a creative act. When God raised Jesus Christ from the dead, and made him the first born of the new creation, it was a creative act. And when God poured out the Spirit on the church and made us each a new creation in Christ that too was a creative act. So if God creates, and if God is the source of everything, and if love is therefore at the root of creation, there is no longer anything to fear, neither in this world or in the world to come.

So the Trinity is life generating life: the Father giving life to the Son, and sending the Holy Spirit. It is dynamic energy and it is creative. The Trinity is also a community of persons which is also central to a Christian understanding of God. This is why Christianity is a communal religion. If we take the Trinity seriously, then we are to be a people who seek to build a loving community. These days, when the pressures on people in our community are so great because of yet more earthquakes and aftershocks, we really need to treasure the sense of community that is around us. It is a gift from God. The earthquakes are making life stressful, are they not? We are becoming tired and stressed, and it’s at this very point that our energy levels for caring for others might begin to wane. Well we are surrounded by God’s love, the holy Trinity is holding us, sheltering us, bearing our pain, drawing us into a circle of love. In your prayer stay close to the heartbeat of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit; come to know them as a community of love, and ask them for the energy you need to help us share this gift of community with the world around us. Theologians have a word for this. They talk about us being an echo of the Trinity in the way we build community with others, in the way we look beyond ourselves to the needs of others. Whenever we do this, we imitate something of the Trinity. We become witnesses to the life giving creativity of the Trinity, and to the miracle of love diffusing itself. Whenever we choose life, whenever we create, share, or enrich another’s life, we imitate the Trinity. Whatever is life giving is of the Trinity, and God is present.

Our work of learning to be a ‘community of faith’ also imitates the Trinity. We imitate the Trinity whenever we respect each other, when we are open to others, when we listen to their stories, their pain and their joys; when we help them dig out silt, or hold them when they can’t take any more shaking. Whenever we give up habits which harm others, when we take up our obligation to stand with the weak and the poor in our society, we imitate the Trinity. Imitating the Trinity means entering more and more fully into the life of God both personally and as community of faith, and it’s a life which is never static or selfish or boring. So today, in our lives together be a sign of the Trinity. Be a people who resemble our God in heaven. Today, as in every day, our God invites us to choose the dance of life, to enjoy God’s lavish gifts of love, and live!

The Christian story of Pentecost is a story of the birth of the Church. Today we are celebrating the church’s birthday with music and song! Pentecost is a celebration of the birth of the church, and when we look at Luke’s story in Acts 2 we can see what the early Church believed itself to be.

To begin with, Luke tells us that the followers of Jesus gathered in Jerusalem. Day by day, they devoted themselves to prayer, the teaching and fellowship of the Apostles, and the breaking of bread. It was while they were doing these very simple basic things that the Holy Spirit suddenly comes upon them with the sound of a violent wind and with tongues of fire. This is the moment when they are transformed from a group of shattered and grief stricken followers of Jesus into fearless Apostles who would take the good news of God into the known world.

As always, the Apostles turned to the only scriptures they had to make sense of this new experience, the Hebrew Scriptures. In ages past, it was the unpredictable and untameable prophets, the spiritual elite, in whom the Spirit of God dwelt. These were people like Moses and Elijah. It was they who spoke the word of God, who encouraged the people when they were down, rebuked them when they went astray, prayed for them, and agonised over them. They were the sign of God’s care for the people.

But all through the bible it was the prophets who also longed for the day when all the people would experience the Spirit of God directly for themselves, from the least to the greatest. Jeremiah, Isaiah and Ezekiel, and especially Moses all prayed to this end. The Prophet Joel’s prayer is the one that Peter himself quoted on the Day of Pentecost. He declared that in the last day, God would pour out the Spirit upon people of all sorts, men and women, slaves and free, young and old. “Your young shall see visions and your elderly will dream dreams…” Joel’s vision was that everyone would be caught up in the rushing wind of the Spirit.

The Day of Pentecost is Luke’s way of showing us that the death and resurrection of Jesus has released the Holy Spirit so that finally the words of the prophets and mystics of old come to be a new, lived reality. Jesus’ death and resurrection have opened up a new reality; the Holy Spirit is now available to all, activating the presence of Christ in the new community of Israel, the people of God, you and me.

So now, more detail comes into focus as we discern this picture of the church. To begin with, we had the followers of Jesus gathered together for prayer and for fellowship and to hear the teaching of the Apostles. Then we see that this entire group is caught up in the outpouring of God’s Spirit, after which there is a whole expanded range of people living within this new spiritual reality opened up by Jesus’ death and resurrection. The astounding thing to those first disciples was that God really did pour out the Spirit upon people of all sorts. In this story God acts unilaterally to include both Jew and Gentile in the fellowship. That was radical stuff for those first Christians, most of whom were Jewish. What Jesus himself had talked about was turning into reality. The book of Acts tells us that there were plenty who didn’t like it and tried to resist the movement of the Spirit. It must have been tempting to set up two churches; one for Jewish Christians and one for the Gentiles. But as we see in the letters to the Galatians and the Corinthians, Paul refused to stand for it. From the beginning the Church is a highly diverse group of people who belong together because they are called together by God. This is not better illustrated for us than in the story of the day of Pentecost. Look at the list: Galileans, people of Jerusalem, Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Cappadocians, people from Egypt and Lybia and Rome. All them of hear the gospel in their own language. All are joined to the church through baptism and worship God together.

So this thing we call the church, the Body of Christ energised by the Spirit, is now an incredibly diverse group of people of all sorts. They are men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile. They are a koinonia, a fellowship or a communion, where barriers of race, age, gender and social status are torn down so that they are one; joined by the Spirit to be one Body. They are given birth into this body by baptism. They are bound together by one Spirit and they belong together in one radically new community: the community of the resurrection. These are the ones who live the resurrection life in the here and now.

To complete this picture of the church, we need to look at what this group does. Of course they are not just a club of holy people enjoying each other’s company. The last part of Acts chapter 2 tells us that this diverse group of people of many nationalities and cultures and languages, came together week by week. They shared their possessions with one another, especially those in need. In other words, they were a prophetic movement. They challenged the injustice of the empire and culture around them. They did this by sharing what they had and caring for the poor and including the weak. They took part in a radical meal, the breaking of bread, in which all shared equally in the bread and wine. This was a meal that demonstrated their discontinuity with the values of the empire, for now when they broke bread together, they gathered around one table where all the people were equal regardless of race, gender and social status. They continued in the prayers and in the teaching of the apostles. They continually gave thanks to God, and they proclaimed this radical good news of the Kingdom of God to all.

So today, we too, celebrate our diversity of gifts and culture and language. We give thanks for those who have worked down through the ages, to make the gospel audible in every language. We celebrate the gift of God’s Spirit which is intensely and intimately present through all creation. We give thanks for the Holy Spirit fanning the fire of faith in those first disciples. We give thanks for the way the Spirit blew those apostles to all peoples of the world, and that the Spirit made them into one body, the Body of Christ, proclaiming God’s good news to all people.

Today we are reminded that now is the time for us to continue this mission. When God would drove those first Christians out of Jerusalem, they were scattered them like seeds all over the earth. Their message changed many lives. Eventually, (if we believe all the legends), it cost most of them their lives as well.

Today, the wind and fire comes into each one of us. It comes to fan our faith, and it comes to empower us to accomplish what God wants done in the world and it comes to empower us to be a prophetic community in our own time. The Spirit is still calling us go against the tide and to live the values of the Kingdom. We too, are to share what we have so that others may live. We are to break bread together; to be the community who share a meal in which human stratifications of race, gender and social status are irrelevant. We are sent into the world, to live the good news and to work with God to redeem the whole creation. That is our task; we are all called to be part of it. We are to make ourselves available to be God’s ministers wherever we are, and in all we do. And let’s face it; our world needs the Good News at the moment. It needs generous and faithful Christians who can share it, who can give an account of the hope that is in us.

Today as we will be invited to have our hands anointed for ministry. We are Christ’s hands and feet. We are his mouth piece. We are the only instruments God has to proclaim the Good News. Our hands will be anointed to show us that when we were baptised we became ministers of Christ. Our hands are the hands of Christ, our words are to be his words, our feet to be his feet who will carry the Good News to all the world. Brothers and sisters, the Spirit is longing to renew us and refresh us and to bring us peace. Come to be anointed with open hearts, come to listen to what the Spirit is saying to the Church. Come that the flame of the Spirit may burn brightly in your hearts.

The image we have before us of Jesus going up into the clouds is a curious one that makes little sense to us in the 20th century. So as we approach it today, we need to think of this episode in the life of Jesus unfolding more of the mystery of the resurrection. We ponder this story of the departure of Christ to see what it meant for the disciples and for us, and how our understanding of the resurrection is deepened.

The Ascension is about endings and beginnings. It is about joy and hope. The earthly ministry of Jesus had ended. He had taken the cup prepared for him as he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead and buried. The time for him to return to God had come. The dramatic exit into the sky makes his departure final; Jesus’ time with us in his physical presence is over. But that signals a new beginning. The Ascension signals the beginning of the reign of Christ. Jesus has taken his place with God. Now he is the great intercessor described in the book of Hebrews; one who prays constantly for us. Although absent, he is profoundly with us. He is praying constantly for us, still pouring out his life for the whole world.

So what does this mean for the disciples of Jesus? The departure of Jesus led the disciples to a new understanding of themselves. When Jesus’ body disappeared from sight, Jesus in fact, left another body here on earth. This is his body in the form of his followers, the Church, what Archbishop Cranmer called “The blessed company of all faithful people.” It is up to us now that Jesus has ascended into heaven and so today we think about Jesus leaving the new people of God, the royal priesthood, you and I, to undertake his mission here on earth.

That all sounds clear enough. We know it and we hear it said from the pulpit and the bible readings every year. It is, however, quite unlikely that the disciples comprehended what had happened until sometime afterwards. They didn’t just walk down the mountain after the ascension and say, “Oh well, we’re the body of Christ now, so we’d better get on with it!” The realisation that they were Christ’s body on earth came slowly over a period of time; and it took some time to work out what the implications would be, the full implications of realising they were entrusted with God’s mission. It’s one thing to be told to go into all nations and baptise people, it’s quite another to realise that the future of the Church depends upon your faithfulness and effort. Those disciples came to realise the significance of what had happened slowly, and although the words “we are the Body of Christ” might trip easily off the tongue, the fact is that the church has always struggled to come to grips with this reality.

The wonder of this reality of being one body is that we belong together. I say this is a wonder, because we are not a club of like minded people. We are all chosen by God to be here, and that means we may find ourselves alongside people with whom we have nothing in common, in fact people for whom we may have a strong dislike. A body is a whole entity, some of the parts may look strange, some parts have nothing in common with another; but without all the members together, we are impoverished. We may not like it, we may even resent it, but we really do belong to one another. We are God’s gift to each other. We find the presence of the risen Christ here because we come together with people quite different from ourselves, and not in spite of them. Clearly the writers of the gospels thought this was true of the Church; for an important part of Jesus’ prayer in John 17 was for the unity of Christians. Our unity as one body is an important aspect of our witness to an unbelieving world.

We know from our experience though, that the body of Christ on earth sometimes falls short of what’s required. We are an imperfect people because we are human. We sometimes knock ourselves too hard; we feel anxious about things that we ought not to feel anxious about; we are sometimes passive when we should be more willing to contribute our insights; we are sometimes silent in the face of injustice and division. Often we behave in these ways, because like the first disciples, we have not realised the full implications of what it means to be the body of Christ.

Whatever the ills of the Church on earth it’s never been any different. The book of Acts and the gospel of Matthew give us a very pertinent reminder that this Body of Christ has always been wounded. Matthew and Acts tell us that eleven disciples made their way up the mountain. That number; eleven, is an indication of the wounded nature of the church from the beginning. Hadn’t there been 12 disciples? The number 12 had been linked to he twelve tribes of Israel; and the twelve tribes of Israel were mirrored in so many parts of society and in God’s dealing with his people. 12 was a significant number steeped in imagery and meaning, a number deliberately chosen by Jesus so that the people would perceive the mission of the Church as being the continuation of what had gone before. But now that symbol is shattered, even before the coming of the Spirit and the commissioning of the Church. Even at the beginning the Christian community was wounded.

But we need do not loose hope because we trust in a God who is much bigger than our human failings and whose purpose will not fail. The image of Jesus ascending into heaven is a curious one, but one with deep theological significance. When we look into the sky and see the myriad’s of stars at night, it is easy to see the immensity, the grandeur and the depth of the mystery that is God, and it is easy to see why the church would choose Jesus being taken into the immensity of creation as an image of the resurrection. And if we think of the risen Jesus being taken into that immense mystery which we call God, then we begin to grasp the meaning of the ascension. But Jesus is also fully human, and so he takes all our humanity into God. He takes our human bodies and souls, battered and bleeding, laden with grief and anxiety, into the presence of God, where he prays for us continually that we may experience the divine life within us, that we too may be united with God. We may think we are flawed, we may be acutely aware of our pain and the burdens of life, but Jesus accepts our suffering, our sense of inadequacy, our feelings of anxiety or hopelessness, because he has been there. He accepts our lack of confidence and the dark areas of our humanity, our capacity for deceit, betrayal and greed; and he brings that to God constantly in prayer. And having accepted us he calls us to repentance, and gives us the eternal commission to be his people and to serve him in the church and in the world. And so supported by the prayer of Jesus, we as the Body of Christ are called and sent to make new Christians, to engage with the world, to re-interpret the faith for successive generations. Not someone else, not just the clergy or the Bishop or other so called professional Christians; but us, you and me; all of us together.

Today, the final act of Jesus was that of blessing. He blessed the disciples, he blessed the world. He is now present in all creation through the Spirit, present as blessing, present as the life of God bringing all things into God’s orbit, making all things new. We too are blessed as we are sent out to continue his work. In the remainder of this Easter season, why not reflect in your prayer on your part in being the body of Christ? Spend some time discerning what it is that the risen Christ is calling you do to, in order to further God’s mission. Ask God to strengthen us all, and to renew us afresh with the Spirit of the risen Christ as we go forth into a world desperately in need of the good news of the gospel.

During a scripture lesson in St Mark’s School last Friday the year seven students were asking about God, especially about how we can know Jesus. It is a very good question, and lots of ink has been spilt trying to explain the answer. It is the problem that the early Christians had to face as they learned to cope with the physical absence of Jesus, and it is a question comes up in various ways all the way through the New Testament. Who are the authoritative and trustworthy teachers of the faith, and how do we know that we can trust them? What laws should be followed and why? These were huge questions that form much of the backdrop of the New Testament writings. The question of authority is one that comes up all the way down through the ages. The reformation was about authority, whether the Pope should be regarded as Christ’s vicar on earth, or whether authority should be drawn from scripture alone. (Anglicans, naturally, adopted the middle ground with a sort of mixture of both, retaining Tradition and Reason alongside the authority of Scripture). Large communities of faith formed themselves around answers to that question. Incidentally, there was a much publicised pastor last week predicting that the world would end on 21 May. He now says he got the date wrong. It was supposed to be 21 October 2011. Last Wednesday at morning prayer there was a wonderful line that came up about this in the book of Deuteronomy: “If a prophet speaks in the name of the Lord but the thing does not take place or prove true, it is a word that the Lord has not spoken. The prophet has spoken presumptuously; do not be frightened by it.” (Deut 18:22).

So how can we know Jesus if he is no longer physically present to us? What would your answer be to the young questioner in school? The answer that John’s gospel comes up with is that the physical absence of Jesus means that he is now fully present in the worshipping community. That is where he is to be found; in the community of believers praying, the community of believers celebrating Eucharist where he continues to give himself to us through the elements of bread and wine, the community of believers listening attentively to scripture together, in the community going out in the power of the Spirit to share the Good News of God with others. John’s gospel says this is where the presence of the risen Christ is to be found. It is not the only place, of course. The Spirit is not confined to these four walls or to us gathered here. But John is making an important point that we need to sit with for a moment.

John’s point is that being a Christian is communal; it is about being a member of the community of faith, because that is where Jesus can be met and touched and heard and seen. This is why Jesus promises to send the Spirit, another Advocate, to be with us. The role of the Spirit is to be the ongoing presence of the revelation of God. In other words, the Spirit will guide us into truth and help us to stay in the teaching of Christ. The gift of the Spirit, present in the community of believers, will enable them to live lives that flow from the life and energy and love of God. The Spirit is the one who makes Christ present in our midst, who activates his presence. The gift of the Spirit means that we are not orphans, left abandoned by God. Instead we experience the living Christ through the permanent presence of the Spirit. This is where the Spirit enables us to meet Christ face to face, where he speaks to us on our level and in our language. Here, Christ draws us into the intimate communion, the beautiful oneness that exists between the Father and the Son. Here we are drawn into that communion so that we too, can be one with God through Jesus in the power of the Spirit.

So where do we meet Christ, and how can we know him? The first step is to be part of a Christian community, a church. Being a Christian is not something we do in private by ourselves. We can pray to God and hear God speaking to us in our own life of prayer to be sure. It is important that we do pray each day at home and that we do nurture our relationship with God in that way. God does speak to individuals in their prayer and that is very good. But that discernment of God’s voice is always tested in the wider church, in the community of faith.

Some religions are quite individualistic. I don’t know a lot about Hinduism for instance, but in Hinduism it is possible for each person or family to have their individual god and so presumably it is possible for each person to express their faith in their own particular way and hear their own God speaking to them. For many people today that is probably very attractive. But Christianity is not an individualistic religion. We can never say, “I’ve got the Spirit therefore listen to me.” Christianity is a communal religion. Being a Christian requires that we are part of the Body of Christ, a community of faith. It is within the community of faith that Spirit leads us into truth and enables us to meet Christ. We can’t do that by ourselves. By definition, to be Christian means to be in a Christian community, part of the Body. Truth is something we discern together. Interpreting the scriptures is something that the church has always done together. Even the writing of the gospels was a communal process, not an individual one. The gospels were caused to be written by church communities bearing the name of an Evangelist such as Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. The decision about what material should be in the New Testament was a communal exercise when leaders of all the churches came together in an ecumenical council. None of those decisions were made by individuals, although God spoke through them. These are decided by the church, waiting on the Spirit, listening together, praying together, being guided by the Spirit into all truth. Knowing Christ, discerning his voice, these are communal processes we do together. If you want to know Christ and hear his voice, this is where you need to be, for here at this table is where we listen for his voice speaking to us, and where we meet with him Sunday by Sunday and receive his life and all he has to give us.

The fact that Christianity is a communal religion has its risks and frustrations, and we all know them well. When we find ourselves sitting next to someone in church we don’t like, hearing the Spirit speaking through them can be hard work indeed. Sometimes leaders are frightened and lack vision causing the Body of Christ to become paralyzed. Sometimes the church is captured by political groupings, or power is misused. Sometimes there is conflict and brothers and sisters refuse to listen to each other. These are all painful aspects of church life to live with.

But we are not to allow this to cause our shoulders to droop or our hope to fade. The Spirit is coming from God to warn and to guide us, to encourage and to lead, to heal and build up. Our hope is in God. In the Old Testament, even before there was a clear belief in an afterlife with God, the children of Israel trusted that God would fulfil his loving purposes for them, just because God is God, not because they deserved it. “O Israel, hope in the Lord; for with him there is plenteous redemption.” Jesus is present with is, and that is our hope. Hope is God’s gift. It is the hope that God will bring about his loving purposes for us. Even if our lives are shattered and our homes are broken, God has made his purpose clear for us in Christ. This hope is based solely on God’s love for us. It does not depend on our determination, or on whether our belief is strong enough. All we have to do us open our hearts and minds to God, and the Spirit will make faith and hope and love grow in our hearts. He will make them brave again, so that God’s love for us in Christ, shown in his resurrection, will shine like a beam of light is a world which needs it so much.

There has been a bit of religious scaremongering over the last week. According to one prediction broadcast on TV1’s Closeup programme, today is supposed to be the end of the world (we rang the bell this morning and nothing happened). The problem with these sorts of predictions is that they are intended to strike fear into our hearts; “Make sure you’re saved or you will miss out”, and missing out means, I presume, facing the fires of hell. Some faithful Christians hear this stuff and worry themselves sick about whether their spouse or their children are saved and what God will do to them if they are not. When I hear these sorts of predictions part of me feels sorry for God; sorry that God is, quite frankly, being misrepresented badly by those peddling this stuff in his name. What these people are saying about God has nothing at all to do with the God of revelation, and we will come back to that later. The reason I am disturbed by this talk is that it is dangerous in our context. We have just had an earthquake and we are in the middle of a serious natural disaster. This kind of language can tip people into thinking that the earthquake was somehow sent by God as to teach us a lesson or as some kind of judgement. Church leaders here in Christchurch of every stripe, have been at pains to say that this is not the case. The earthquake is a natural disaster and not sent by God. Yes, we can say that God is in the earthquake, that Christ is enfleshed in those who died and who were injured, and that God is in this mess with us and can be found especially among the most vulnerable. But not: God deliberately sending this as warning of the day of judgement.

Anyone who has read anything of John’s gospel and the letters that bear John’s name will know the constant theme that comes through this corpus of writing. God is love. Love casts out fear. Fear does not come from God. Jesus did not come into the world to condemn the world. He did not come with violence; indeed he consciously avoided all forms of violence and expected his followers to do the same. The kind of talk about God that motivated Saul to stone Stephen in the first reading is a kind of spiritual violence we should eschew. This is talk about God that uses fear to convert people with threats of hell or attempts to convert people at the point of the gun are quite simply not from God. God is mercy and love. God is forgiveness. If you hear of anyone trying to scare you into the kingdom with threats of hell fire or of being left behind at the rapture or if they come at you with extremist politics and bombs, that message is not from God. If they are writing poisonous blogs and agitating and oppressing this is not from God. It behaviour is not even biblical; these are messages proclaimed by people who do not know their own scriptures and would be better off doing some serious study. These are the activities of people motivated by fear who are projecting their fear on to others. People who are frightened do not listen, and they look around for people who will agree with them to make them feel safer.

Jesus never once tried to scare people into the kingdom. He came as the embodiment of God’s love to invite them to know God and to bring healing and forgiveness to a broken world. He wants us to share Good News with people about God’s grace. It is notable that the gospel text before us today begins with the words, “Do not let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God still, and trust in me.” Jesus is talking with disciples about his departure, preparing them for his physical absence. They are words of encouragement for a small group of followers who were facing tough times, including religious persecution and exclusion from the synagogues. The underlying assumption here is that faith is a gift. Faith is the gift of a relationship with Jesus, and it is given so that we can be drawn into that intimate communion between Jesus and the Father that goes on eternally. Jesus is ready to give that gift to all who will receive it when they are ready for it, and he is eternally coming to us through every time and space to make the gift of faith available to us. In a small group one day the leader used a meditation called the God Tree. Participants were asked to imagine God as a tree, and then they were asked to imagine where they were in relation to the tree. One person in the group described themselves as being so entwined in the tree that she could no longer tell where her body stopped and branches of the tree began. Her relationship with God was one of a close intimacy, a communion of love and trust.

This is the gift that Jesus longs to give to us, to everyone. He goes on to say that he is “the Way, the Truth and the Life.” What are we to make of these words, and how can we use them as Jesus intended, for encouragement and for building up our faith, rather than as weapons of fear and exclusion?

“I am the Way” – Christ is a journey. Remember those two disciples on the Road to Emmaus who were on a journey. Christ became the journey, and as they travelled their communion of love and trust deepened as Jesus opened their hearts to know God more.

“I am the Truth” – truth is what meets us on the road as we deepen our relationship with God. When Jesus says, “I am truth” it means that truth is not something we possess. It is never something I have “got” and you haven’t. Truth encounters us. When we see it, we see the parts of ourselves that we struggle to like and the messes we have got ourselves into. But it is not used to God as a weapon to beat us up. Truth invites us to own who we are, to face and accept the truth about ourselves. We are also invited to know the ultimate truth which is that we are loved utterly by God and that God is source of the love that is already in our hearts. Truth invites us to allow God to change us, to help us grow, to enlarge our vision; to shape and mould us so that the image of God that is ours to bear can be seen more clearly.

“I am Life” – this Journey which leads us to Truth is always life giving, because it is the nature of God to give life in abundance. This life is never destructive or oppressive. John’s gospel reminds us over and over that where this way of life-giving truth does cause conflict, it is because it exposes lies, violence, the points where people refuse God, all of which lies hidden. This means this journey, this life in Christ, will have ups and downs, and it will last a life time until we brought home to the place Jesus has prepared for us in heavenly mansion, which is the heart of God.

Not that we have to wait until death to enjoy that place. Jesus is eternally coming to us, eternally making a home for us in God, eternally inviting us into an intimate communion with himself. He wants us to experience that now, to stay in touch so that we can enjoy life in God now. The words of Jesus, recounted beautifully by John, are poetry and metaphor, just like the “cornerstone” which is Peter’s image for Christ. Poetry and art can open windows, reveal hidden connections and let in the light and the breath of the Spirit. It is no accident that the church has nurtured poetry and art and culture over the centuries because it inspires and makes us feel close to God. It we listen with the artist, we find ourselves encountering truth. Fear and anxiety are never far away of course. Those who are unable to face their fears will face the temptation to control truth, to control poetry and art, and keep truth boxed up in small packages that can be contained and managed.

But encountering Truth, and being changed by it means allowing God to make each of us into works of art, icons of Christ, people who bear his face. Can we allow God to do that with us? Can we speak words of mercy and compassion and love to a community that is broken and anxious and fearful about the future? That is our task now; to be the ones known for a non anxious presence, who bring an awareness that we are held and loved by God, that our task is to pass that love on and to avoid using these stressful times as an opportunity to scare people into the kingdom. It means God might involve us in exposing hidden refusals and lies and violence, but God will give us the grace and the courage we need for that task.

But there is more, Christ will be the way into a journey of freedom. He will be our strength, our courage, our vision for the future. He will show is the poor and help us find ways to feed them and care for them. He will give us the resilience we need when we are down hearted and alone. He will help us remain human with open and loving and trusting hearts.

So let the Christ who is the Way, Truth and Life be the one in whom we have confidence, because we have dared to trust him and because we have dared to let him shape our hearts and our minds.

Closeup has been running a story about the rapture which someone has predicted to be this week. Look here to find out more!

This fourth Sunday of Easter goes by the name of Good Shepherd Sunday. In the gospel text before us today, Jesus describing himself as the Good Shepherd, or more accurately, the real shepherd of God’s people.

As first world urban Christians in the 21st century, we are far too sentimental when we think of Jesus as the Good shepherd. Most of us have nothing to do with sheep in our daily life. Consequently our thinking about Jesus as the Good Shepherd is likely to be informed by stained glass windows and Sunday School picture books. In these images Jesus stands in long flowing robes unstained by sweat or sheep manure. In the one hand he holds a decorative crook that would hardly discourage the most timid wolf or mountain lion. With the other hand, he cradles a namby-pamby sleeping lamb with wool as pure and white as new-fallen snow.

The reality is quite different of course. Being a shepherd is a tough and gruelling job with long hours of work. There is nothing sentimental about it, and Jesus was speaking to crowd comprising people who were peasants. They knew exactly how tough the life of a shepherd could be. Jesus said, “I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me. I call my sheep by name and lead them out, and the sheep follow, for they know my voice.”

One of the things we have lost in our time is the connection between a Shepherd and one who holds public office. Such an image is not part of our culture anymore. We don’t think of our Governor General, or the Prime Minister or our High Court judges as shepherds. If we did, our world would be a much better place. But the idea that those who exercise leadership are to be known as shepherds, however, is rooted deeply in the Old Testament. We see it especially in the story of King David who was the shepherd king par excellence. We see it too, in the sermons and poetry of the prophet Ezekiel, who makes forceful use of this image. All through the bible, the Good Shepherd is far from a meek and mild, passive character. The Good Shepherd is a ruler who acts swiftly and decisively, and it has to be said, even ruthlessly for the long term good of those for whom they care. Swift and decisive action for the good of the community is the mark of a good biblical, shepherd ruler. And throughout the prophets, God calls the rulers to account for the way they shepherd their people. They are to defend them from harm; they are to seek out the lost, bind up those who are injured, strengthen the weak, and lead them to good pasture where there is plenty of water and rich grazing lands.

When Jesus calls himself the Good Shepherd, he is saying that in his person he is the one who will do this for Israel. For Jesus, being a shepherd is tied up with profound issues of life and death. In today’s gospel, it is made quite clear that the real distinction between the true and false shepherds of the people of God is that of life and death. The false shepherd steals the kingdom or usurps the rightful Shepherd in order to gain power, (and in John’s story of Jesus that power has just been misused to exclude the man born blind whom Jesus had healed). The Good Shepherd, namely Jesus, governs his people rightly. He gives them the living water and the bread of life. He brings them into a right relationship with God, thus offering them life in abundance. The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for his sheep, dies because of who he is. Jesus is not the Good Shepherd who happened to lay down his life for his sheep because of some accident of circumstance. Rather, he is the Good Shepherd because it is in his nature to lay down his life. In John’s gospel, no one takes Jesus’ life from him. He gives his life, he willingly lays it down, so that all may have life. His laying down of his life is part of who he is, part of his being; it is his nature to give his life to enable us, the people of God, to be who we are created to be, people who know the profound truth about ourselves that we are utterly loved by God.

This notion that Jesus is the life-giving Shepherd is an important image when it comes to making sense of our notions of ministry. As Shepherd, the risen Christ has care for the people of God. As we saw in his life and death, he expends his life for the world. The risen Christ is still expending his life for the world. He is given back to us still carrying the scars from his wounds, still giving his life for us and for the world. It was in his nature to do that when he walked on this earth, and it is still his nature to do lay down his life for us now. That means that he is given authority to be used carefully for the building up of the community of faith, and to help others grow towards God. He is our High Priest; he is One who stands between us and God, helping us all into a deeper, richer relationship with God.

Being a Christian is to be in Christ, to grow more and more like him every day. Being a Christian is not a hobby. Being Christian is not something we do on Sunday morning. Being Christian is not even a way of life. It is a way of being. It is who we are. It may be costly. All of us are called to expend our lives for the world, helping others into a relationship with God. All of us have a share in this ministry of Christ by virtue of baptism. Cast your mind back to the baptisms we have in this church; remember the oil of chrism with which the newly baptised are marked with the sign of the cross, the sign of Christ. The name Christ means “anointed one”. To bear the name “Christian” is to be anointed, anointed for ministry in the world, so that we are all workers with Christ helping others into a relationship with God.

In the Anglican Church some in leadership are called to ordained ministry, or you might hear it called ordered ministry. In other words, some are ordained as bishops, priests or deacons. These ministries are also gifts, God’s way of reminding us that we are not left as orphans, not left by ourselves in this difficult world. Priests are called to expend their lives for the building up of God’s people. Priests are human beings whose lives remind us all of what Christ looks like, what a costly love that is focused beyond self looks like. Priests don’t get that right all the time, but by God’s grace that is their calling. Just as Christ expends his life for the world, so priests are called to be the same, they are to be people who lay down our lives for the good of the world, even at great cost; not to massage their egos or to grab power, but for the good of the community, for the building up of the Body of Christ. They are to reach out to others and help them be in relationship with God. They are called to be and do this so that we can all participate fully in the ministry of Christ, who is eternally reaching out to all, and reconciling all to God.

No matter what role we have in the church, every ministry is given as gift by Christ. Our ministries are gifts; they are on loan to us for the building up of the Body. Our gifts are never given to us as ecclesiastical MBEs (rewards for long service or good behaviour). Neither should we fall into the trap of thinking that a particular ministry confer on us any special rights. If we are using our gifts to massage our ego or to gain power, we have a spiritual problem. All our ministries are God given gifts. These gifts are to be received with grace, thanksgiving and humility and exercised with diligence and care. God gives them to us for a time, but then we need to be ready for the day when God may ask us to lay them down again and take them back to be used by another. When that happens we hand the gift back to God, again with humility and grace and thanksgiving, because gifts are not something we own or possess. We hold them in trust for God and God’s people.

Ultimately, the way of the Good Shepherd is the way we must follow in our lives, for this way is the only way to effect change, real change which is growth towards God. People will not grow towards God because of words, or even good works, although these things all help. Ultimately the church works where its people are not sheep, but shepherds; people who in their very way of being, enable the lost to be found, the weak to be bound up and all of us to be nourished for the journey. We do this in lots of ways, and Jesus continually gathers all our efforts into his eternal giving of himself to God (one eternal sacrifice); and through these efforts others will see that there is more to our faith than going to church, and that the Good Shepherd is waiting for more of his people to hear and recognise his voice.