Trinity 1 Building Christian community 14th June 2009

How do you build Christian community?

On the first three Sundays of June we’re looking at the diocesan ABC vision which calls our churches to attend to God, build Christian community and commend God’s love for the world.

Last week we looked at attending to God through worship, personal devotion and stewardship. Today I want to look at how lay and ordained ministry and ministry with children and young people and in our school come into play.

First though let’s look at today’s scripture for what an encouragement they are for building and growth!

The parable of the scattered seed and the mustard seed in Mark Chapter 4 hardly need interpretation. They say clearly that through the ministry of Jesus Christ God’s rule has entered the world and from humble beginnings he is bringing about the magnificent divine purpose.

The seed would sprout and grow, we do not know how…first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain.

Then the mustard seed…grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.

The growth of God’s kingdom prophesied by Our Lord fulfils what Ezekiel prophesied six centuries before Christ in today’s first reading. There the prophet speaks of a tender sprig planted on a high mountain to produce boughs and bear fruit…I will make high the low tree and make the dry tree flourish says the Lord.

Building Christian community is very much God’s business. It’s as much God’s business as the growth of the harvest in the farmer’s field.

For twenty centuries gospel seed has taken root first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain. Over that period the Christian community has spread across the world and a church has stood here in Horsted Keynes for almost half that period. There has been a Christian community here for over 800 years.

We should take heart from the Lord’s indication that the growth of his kingdom and his church is his business. Church growth is something he delights to demonstrate.
All we need do is faithfully prepare and water the ground.

I will make the dry tree flourish says the Lord. If, that is, my people don’t get in the way.

One way we obstruct building Christian community is by leaving it to the so-called professionals. There may be one ordained priest at St Giles but he is send here to remind every member here that they have a ministry with him to bring God to people and people to God as priests should do, as Jesus does.

One of the most encouraging signs I can discern here was set forth at our APCM. There we heard evidence of some 200 people involved in ministry of some kind or another through the way we organise St. Giles.

Mission takes time and organisation even if it is also the work of God. There are no quick fixes since it is about building communities, and relationships take time to build not least that with God himself.

The collaboration of lay and ordained ministers is crucial. I am the celebrant this morning but with a calling to generate a community of Christian celebration. I am the preacher but with a call to generate a witnessing community.

Sometimes we forget that priests are given to remind us of what we’re all about. Just as Israel was lifted up, as in Ezekiel’s prophecy for the good of all nations a priest is set apart or lifted up – Father John – for the sake of the well being and revitalisation of St Giles and Horsted Keynes.

I will make the dry tree flourish says the Lord. If, that is, his priests don’t get in the way!

In the diocesan vision a major component of building Christian community is ministry with children and young people and in our schools. I suppose we could pat ourselves on the back that such ministry is going on even as I speak. That’s a fruit of lay ministry here, the fact we have Sunday Club back up and running with some 18 volunteers.

If the dry tree is to be made to flourish at St Giles the drawing in of young families is pivotal. That will be God’s work and ours. The leadership that will have most effect in this realm though will be in households from fathers and mothers keen to build Christian homes.

How do we help build Christian homes in Horsted Keynes? What is a Christian home?

Surely it’s a home where young and old flourish together because they have honest, solid foundations in the word of God and encounter with the Lord in prayer, sacrament and Christian fellowship.

Building Christian community isn’t mainly our work. The church is ekklesia, God’s work, literally those called by God. We’re a community called by God to walk in step with Jesus, listening to his words, praying his prayers, living his life.

Though we are many we are one body because we all share in one bread.

In other words our community isn’t made from our efforts to comply with one another or even comply with the Lord so much as by our shared readiness to welcome God’s gift, the one bread.

Christian community - the Church - is about acts and words that keep us in step with Jesus, especially sacraments and scripture.

In the full diocesan Life Together vision document, abbreviated into our ABC, we read these words: We have a vision of a community that gives the worship of God the priority he deserves…and presents the gifts of Word and Sacrament in such a way that their meaning and power are evident to those who experience them.
Life Together

How well do we present those gifts here at St. Giles? How deeply do we sense the meaning and power of the Holy Scriptures and the Holy Eucharist?

Building Christian community is like that growing seed in today’s Gospel, or the flourishing sapling in our Ezekiel passage. It is God’s work which we prepare the ground for and water with our prayers.

Church life isn’t so much our life, our thinking or feeling or being together but our being together in a place where we trust God to do something and to change us, however little we understand this mystery.

We take bread and wine, pray over them and share them but what matters most is being here, at the Eucharist, in a place where God has power to renew his life in us, the life of Jesus. This has meaning and power - not something we can work up but something God gives to those who will receive from him by putting faith in him.

How do you build Christian community?

By building confidence in Christ, that he’s with us in word and sacrament and that he’s calling us to walk in step with him in his day by day mission within Horsted Keynes and its surrounds.

By building confidence in Christ – along with humility before God. We need our prayers and aspirations to be more and more unselfish and attuned to the prayers and aspirations of Jesus.

A Christian community has Christ’s prayer and aspirations that God our Father has promised he will always hear and answer.

As we shall sing shortly in William Bright’s powerful words:

And now O Father, mindful of the love
That bought us, once for all, on Calvary’s tree,
And having with us him that pleads above,
We here present, we here spread forth to thee,
That only off’ring perfect in thine eyes,
The one true, pure, immortal sacrifice.

Look, Father, look on his anointed face,
And only look on us as found in him;
Look not on our misusings of thy grace,
Our prayer so languid, and our faith so dim:
For lo, between our sins and their reward
We set the Passion of thy Son our Lord.