Having sung my song I could sit down but I won’t just yet since I want to share something of the challenge of the storms we face individually and as a church. This last week has been a hard one for many as plans have gone on hold again. The conviction that God is our ultimate security is a saving grace. If you imagine life as an often-perilous journey, the image of a boat represents such security. It's a rich image. The boat carries us through life’s shifting currents. We are moored, and we lose our moorings. We sail with and against the tides. The boat holds us secure above the chaos of life. Many headstones have boats inscribed to capture how faith carries us through the deep waters of death to the harbour of heaven where, to quote Thomas Aquinas, God ‘feasts his saints with the vision of himself, who is true light, the fulfilment of all desires, the joy that knows no ending, gladness unalloyed, and perfect bliss’.
Over the last year I have been thinking about the storms of church life. In the wake of my walk book, publication of which was delayed so it almost coincides with that of the Christian book, I wrote and published Elucidations. Thanks to the ongoing success of ‘Fifty Walks from Haywards Heath’ I’m able to offer it at half the price of that, £5 not £10, to get it into as many hands as I can. ‘Elucidations - light on Christian controversies’ has 25 essays on storms we sail through as a Christian community worldwide and across denominations. Besides the old chestnuts of church divisions, homosexuality, Mary, suffering, unanswered prayer and so on the book touches on the storm of COVID as well as the storm of child abuse. These are rocking the boat of the church worldwide, the second with its sickening evidence of the misuse of power. Such storms impact us all, especially the last two with the weight of regulations and the time and trouble needed to deal with them.
The Church is God-given yet man-handled. As God’s never-ending family it has unique status tracing back twenty centuries across five continents. It is an instrument of salvation conveying Christ’s divinity, a safe boat for voyaging through the tumult of this world. It is also human in a deficient sense compared to her sinless Lord. With 24-7 media scrutiny people are more aware than ever of those failings. Trusting the Church, an essential for Christians, has been made a mockery in our age and an uphill struggle to elucidate. Despite clerical failings however scripture makes these invitations: ‘we appeal to you, brothers and sisters, to respect those who labour among you, and have charge of you in the Lord and admonish you; esteem them very highly in love because of their work’ 1 Thessalonians 5:12-13. ‘Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account. Let them do this with joy and not sighing’ we read in Hebrews 13:17. In such words we are encouraged to distrust ourselves and look to those trained and authorised to engage us with the word of God, in the worship of the eucharist and moral wisdom of the church through the ages. The alternative is swimming outside the boat, so to speak. It’s going our own way without sermons, eucharists, moral guidance or formation in prayer all of which build divine life within us to the detriment of our sinful humanity.
More than that, essential to being a Christian is being part of the community, the local body of Christ, in corporate engagement with scripture, eucharist, the age old expression of faith and morals, under pastoral oversight. Helping out at St Wilfrid’s and Presentation has been for me an enormous privilege building from my own community involvement in Bentwood seizing opportunities to share Christian faith both online and face to face in which ‘Elucidations’ is playing a part.
‘A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But Jesus was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, "Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?" He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, "Peace! Be still!" Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, "Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?"’ Mark 4:37-40
It has been an unsettling week with the extension of lockdown restrictions we hoped would be lifted tomorrow. Our Lord is the illumination, the one to elucidate, to shed light on our forward path. ‘Peace, be still…why are you afraid?’ The scripture today invites us to confess our anxieties and make fresh entrustment to God of our lives, our church, our town and our world. One expression of that entrusting is manning the boat, so to speak, under the captaining of Derek and Arthur as we await the answer to our prayers for a successor to Fr Ray. A new partnership of priests and people is on the horizon continuing teamwork stretching back over 150 years.
When I served as diocesan mission and renewal adviser I recall how surveys of new church members evidenced them being drawn across spiritual and practical hurdles into two convictions: God is good and the Church is OK. Business with God leads people so far but it needs complementing by a decision to trust the Church and give the institution the benefit of the doubt. As in my own experience, seeing the integrity, large-heartedness and holiness of church members can be pivotal in overcoming the stereotypes of Christians as narrow thinking. ‘As we work together with Christ’, Paul says to us this morning, ‘we urge you… not to accept the grace of God in vain. See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation… open wide your hearts!’ (2 Corinthians 6:1,2,13)
‘With Jesus in the boat we can smile through the storm as we go sailing home’.
No comments:
Post a Comment