Readings: Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16: 13-20
We pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our rock and our
sustainer. Amen.
In this past week,
not for the first time, I have been contemplating the nature of community. Aware as we are of the many different
personalities and backgrounds and experiences of those we end up in community
with, it begs the question of how we manage to maintain a togetherness that
gets us through the ups and downs of close relationship. And the truth is that sometimes we don’t and it
doesn’t.
Sometimes the hurt
is too much, the lack of attention too consistent, the division too high a wall
to climb to the top of when you might not find anyone else there. Other times the priorities you have change or,
as we say, life moves on.
Communities that
jell usually have a strong under pinning ethos – like the co-housing
development in High Street focussing on sustainability and communal space – or
an over-riding commonality of purpose like supporting the community you live in
to support you. It takes effort and
enthusiasm and communication and even then it doesn’t take much to fracture the
relationship, at least for some.
Good community
allows for diversity but encourages common ground. Community has to work hard to ensure no-one
is intentionally ostracised and individuals have to work hard to grow and sustain
community despite the odd hiccup. And to be effective community we need to help
each other - generous at sharing our gifts but also at receiving the help of
others, something we are not always good at.
Allow me a moment
of nostalgia here: I was reminded of how a good rural community works the other
day when I watched a video of cattle droving down in the Catlins – doesn’t happen
so much these days of course – but there was a farmer and a neighbouring
farmer, their horses and dogs moving cattle from Tahakopa down to Tautuku –
helping each other, cars stopped and patient, cattle off the road on the beach
where they could, greetings exchanged as they passed by……
In the readings
for today we explore both what it means to be a strong community of faith and
what the foundation of that community is.
In the letter to
the Romans Paul is exhorting the Christian community to live out their faith in
a way that reflects their baptism, their commitment to the way of Jesus and to
recognise that holy living is in itself an act of worship to God.
And the way he
drives this home is by using the analogy of the body – made up of many parts,
each of which needs the other to be effective.
Smell, touch, hearing, seeing, tasting, engine rooms and things they
make work!
And why is he
needing to paint this picture for them – because he is warning them against
becoming too haughty, too proud, thinking themselves better than others. For that only tears the community apart and rips
up its foundations. The rock on which
the church is built becomes, as the hymn so wonderfully puts it, sinking sand.
It’s not the only
thing, of course, that shakes our foundations but it is symptomatic of the dangers
that Paul was aware people needed to be alert for in the new born church inRome. Good community works when we remember why we
are community. And for us it is because
of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of the living God. He is the rock and it is his purpose that
holds us close and demands a way of living that is not easily of this world.
As we have been
going through the books of the bible, at this stage the Hebrew Scriptures, on
Thursday nights there is one absolute that keep leaping out of the pages and
that is what God continuously/repeatedly asks of us: to act justly, to care for
the widows and orphans, the weak and the vulnerable, and to live in the way of
love and reconciliation and mercy. And time and time again the people of Israel
turned their backs on caring for the community to which they belonged, the
community that God had entrusted to them, and instead looked to their own
desires and sense of importance and power. It was this waywardness that God was
constantly hauling them back from, redeeming them from the exile, the
wilderness of self importance and self absorption.
It’s what we do for
each, how we act as community that stands witness for God’s love in our lives,
the transforming power of Christ as our guide and light. Not that we come to church or put Christian
or Presbyterian in our census forms but how we live our lives as the community
of faith. We all have responsibility for
caring for the body, for helping each other out, for caring for the needy
(which includes each of us by the way), for the law of God is written on our
hearts and we can do no other.
Remember those
wonderful words, also from Jeremiah: “But this is the covenant that I will make
with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law
within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and
they shall be my people. …[1] We can do no other.
We here in this
community of faith, we need each other, we support each other, we miss each
other when we are separated, we have our ups and downs but as long as the
foundation on which we are built remains Jesus, Son of the Living God then we
keep strong to our purpose as community – and that foundation is: to love God,
to walk in the way of Jesus, to care for each other, to speak up for the
downtrodden and shelter the homeless, to make Jesus Christ known in our living. Our understanding of what it means to be
Christian has to be constantly discerned so that we are not distracted by those
things that draw us away from worshipping God in our living as well as our
words.
I think we have
some big conversations coming up as a church and as this community. And I think we here will participate well in
those conversations because we do have a strong community.
As the public
perception of church is leaning more and more to total rejection, as the world
sees Christianity being used to promote bigotry and hatred and violence, we
need to be outspoken in our tolerance and love and reconciliation. We can no longer keep silent hoping it will
go away or afraid of showing that there is a different way.
As traditional
church as we know it – parish, full time minister, a building for Sunday
mornings, an ‘open the doors and they flow in’ mentality – is squashed between
mega churches and strapped funding, we are challenged to think about how today
we best function as the body of Christ – do the clothes need changing?
What of the
community of Christ in this place – what happens when we are faced with making decisions
on our future – building, ministry, mission.
Will we have the courage to be bold and outward facing as God’s
community of faith putting our focus and our resources into being the gloriously
creative and trasnforming body of Jesus, working together with all our skills
and perspectives, vulnerabilities and strengths to make Jesus Christ
known. And the answer is: Amen
Margaret Garland
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