This is where my homily for Epiphany 2 Year A is going. I am trying to introduce a positive theme of 'Church' against a backdrop of constant media negativity. Are we beginning to believe what is being pumped out? Is it a fair an accurate picture. I think, (believe) there is another, greater, story.
Maybe you have had accosted by someone with the statement ‘Well, you don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian?’ I find it painfully difficult not to respond by landing them with a heap of theology. I usually take the cowards route and keep quiet. To be fair to myself there is more to be learnt in listening because behind that statement often lies painful stories where the Church has let them down. Its an opening gambit and it would be all too easy to fire off rhetoric.
I think of a minister in Scotland who upon visiting an unmarried couple’s house (with regards to a baptism) said ‘We don’t “do” bastards.” A generation later the family confessed to me how they still could not stomach to go into a church.
In Year A of the liturgical cycle we follow the gospel of Matthew and also a good chunk of Corinthians. Both the evangelist and St Paul are arguing for the Church. And this is what I would like to be our theme for this year, the Church. As my story illustrates the Church can fail to live up to the Gospel. But, I think the more we look at what the Church means, the more we discover that at the heart of transforming our world, God has put the Church. I believe, therefore in a Church shaped Mission.
And yet we so often, even as Christians, even more so as church leaders, we downplay the Church. Could it be that we begin to see only the criticism and the barrage of negative media stories?
When Simon confesses that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Lord replies by adding, ‘On this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell will not overcome it.’ So every other institution and organisation may eventually fail, but Jesus is going to ensure that his Church never fails. Even the banks can’t have that kind of guarantee! Yet, too often we live out the life of the Church, as if it’s in the mind of God, some marginal institution.
Go to Rome, and walk around the ruins of the ancient Senate, miles of rubble. That’s what happened to the empire that was supposed to never fall. Look at the Berlin Wall now and hear the words of statesmen like Gorbachev who know acknowledge the central role of the Church in bringing freedom.
There is a reason why Christ has deigned his Church, indestructible, it is because it is to be the one and only means of saving the world.
St Paul writes specifically to the church of God in Corinth and his first letter is packed with all sorts of crucial insights into what it means to be a church. He begins by rejoicing in them as a church. Verse 4, Chapter 1, actually reads in the Greek; I “eucharist” God always concerning you – on the grace of God given to you in Christ Jesus. I tried today to read these words like a mantra, but inserted in the name of our church, Holy Trinity Salcombe. God the Father has given this town his most precious gift, the Body of Christ, with not the vicar as its head, but Jesus himself.
There is a great danger at this present moment that we, and specifically Anglican Christians, downplay the whole concept of Church. The temptation is to believe that the church, local and national, is an incidental network or an institution. In other words it’s a bit of an accident of history. So after some brainstorming the First Century Christians pulled out of the filing cabinet the idea of having an organisation called ‘Church’. So forget the Holy Spirit, because obviously in this scenario he has retired and has not really been that hands-on for the past two thousand years.
There is a lot to say and I hope much opportunity to share thoughts and reflections. Aside from St Matthew and St Paul, I will probably pick up in sermons and talks themes from St Benedict, St Francis, the Desert Father, and the Reformers, and much modern discourse. But at the heart of it I hope you will share with me a belief that the Church, the Body of Christ, is the one community which God gives gifts like no other. As Paul says, ‘Therefore you do not lack any spiritual gift as you eagerly wait for our Lord Jesus Christ to be revealed.’ (1 Cor 1. 7)
I like Brother Roger’s call of Taize, that it should be parable of community. Surely, that is the calling, the vocation, of every local church?
