Sermons
Sunday 6th April 2014, Lent 5, morning
Report to the ADCM
John 11:1-45
by Revd Chris Palmer
After this service we have our Annual Meeting. This sermon is by way of a report to that meeting, but I want it also have a quality of a sermon – and so we’ll start with that story we’ve just heard, about Lazarus being summoned from the grave. And I want to make two reflections on it.
First – why do we have this reading today, at the start of Passiontide? It really doesn’t fit with reflecting on the passion. Well, it goes back to the days when Lent was a time of preparation for baptism, for those who would be baptised at Easter. The readings we use in the first year of the lectionary cycle go back to that time. And these readings for the third, fourth, and fifth Sundays of Lent symbolise what happens when someone is baptised. The reading for the third Sunday of Lent is about the woman at the well; Jesus offers her ‘life-giving water’. Last Sunday, if it hadn’t been displaced by Mothering Sunday, we’d have had the man born blind. And today, Lazarus called out of the tomb. This is what happens when we are baptised: Jesus gives us living water that means we’ll never thirst again, Jesus takes us for blindness to sight, Jesus brings us from death to life. And baptism is a stage on bigger journey of being nurtured in our faith – in which Jesus continually feeds us, enlightens us, gives us life.
Then the second thing about this reading is that it’s about the family of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. These three – sisters and brother – crop up three times in Gospel. It’s as if we have three windows onto their lives. The first time is when Jesus goes for food at their house, and Martha complains that Mary’s not pulling her weight. The second time is this story when Lazarus dies. And the third time is just the next chapter, when Mary anoints Jesus’s feet – again when he’s round for dinner. From these stories we see that Jesus had a very special friendship with these three: he’s welcome in their home, he cries when Lazarus dies, he’s not afraid to challenge them. There is fellowship, love, and care here.
So the reading is about the gift Jesus gives us in nurturing us. And it’s about fellowship and care. These seem to me to give us headings for what I want to say by way of report.
Let’s start with NURTURE. One of the most important roles of the church is to walk with people along the road of growing discipleship. Our ministry of baptism is important here; we do lots of baptisms in this church, and I want to say a big thank you to the team that arrange these and visit families. Children are often baptised when they are too young to understand what’s happening, but this is itself important: God’s grace aren’t offered in response to our achievement, but go before anything we can offer God. In addition, infant baptism shows, importantly, that children are not merely potential members of the church: they are already part of our fellowship.
But growing out of baptism ongoing nurture is important. And there are lots aspects of this in our life together. Schools work is a significant part of our ministry: we have two church schools and also visit and minister in Pelham School too. In so doing we are seeking to give children a grounding in the faith that will bear fruit in later years; many reports and enquiries have shown that where children are taught faith in their early years, they are much more likely to become regular worshippers as adults.
Then we’ve also given people the chance to enquire about faith. A couple of new things are ‘God Talk’, our course for adults who speak to children about faith, and Pilgrim, which Paul and Tracy will be running at Christ Church later in the Spring, using material developed by the Church of England. And then there’s the regular round of Confirmation and First Communion preparation; ther are home groups, Lent and Advent groups, quiet days, and a planned retreat. Another new venture has been ‘God in the Pub’, monthly discussions of a God-topic on a Sunday evening, which have been really stimulating. It’s really valuable to hear about each other’s faith journey; we’ve been doing this on Sunday evenings of Lent – but it happens informally in lots of other ways too.
The question of how we grow in love for God should be central for every Christian. I know it’s easy at moments to think that Christian life is inevitably stale, but accepting this is a dangerous thing. Into our sometimes staleness God is planting a desire to know him. I urge you to seek this desire ardently in prayer; do not give up on this plea.
Then second, there’s FELLOWSHIP – reflected in those meals at Mary, Martha, and Lazarus’s home. So much is true fellowship happens over sharing of bread – or beer. So we hold Lent lunches, God in the Pub, harvest suppers. And last summer we had a parish weekend, where over a course of a weekend and six meals together we could deepen our relationships with one another. This last year we welcomed Kate into our fellowship, and I want to thank her a pay tribute to her for the wonderful contribution she is making to our ministry and life. And this summer we’ll celebrate her ordination, and do so over two shared meals: sharing bread and wine at her first Eucharist, and afterwards sharing the food we bring at a celebration lunch.
An Important part of fellowship is the care that’s expressed through administration. At times these things may feel mundane, but the work done by the parish office, by wardens, in ensuring sound finances, in safeguarding children and vulnerable adults, in co-ordinating health and safety, in tending the garden, and much more – these may feel like chores at times, but actually they are a way of showing respect and affection to one another, of expressing our fellowship. And very often it’s in these things that fellowship develops incidentally; you might think you’re gardening, but really you’re deepening relationship with other Christians. If you would like to contribute to our fellowship in some of the ways we’re looking for people to join in, have a look at the ‘Jobs corner’ on the notices. We’re looking for new safeguarding officers, coffee makers, Junior Church leaders.
And as we talk about these important administrative roles, I want to say an enormous thank you today to Caroline for her three wonderful years as church warden of Holy Trinity. Caroline, you became church warden in my first year here, and have been a wonderful servant of this community and a support to me and many others. We’ll be making a proper presentation during the meeting that follows this service, but as there’s a chance that one or two people won’t be able to stay, it is good to say a thank you now too.
So we’ve talked about nurture and fellowship in the life of our church. I think of these kind of like a horizontal access, but the vertical access, in which they are lived out, is Worship and Mission – pointing towards God and God’s world.
WORSHIP is key. Worship isn’t just a resourcing time of the week in which we are refuelled for the real work in the everyday. The real work, the truest expression of our humanity, is in worship – and how we live the rest of the time tests how true our worship has been. In worship we lose ourselves in God, we allow ourselves to be loved and return love. I could develop this theme, and another year I might, but…
… this year I want instead to focus on MISSION. Because our Diocese of Southwark has asked every parish to develop a Mission Action Plan – which, as the name suggests – is a plan of how we will reach out to our community and world. Earlier in the year six of us – including Caroline – went on a training day organised by the diocese. It was an inspiring day. They even gave us a book to take away! The process they described asks us to engage our whole congregation, as well as the decision makers in DCC and PCC, in order to define where we think God is leading and plan how we are going to do this. Within this process we must learn to prioritise: there are many good ideas of things we could do – but what are the God ideas that we should be doing. In many ways this is about learning to do a few things well. We will be looking to develop a team plan, by which I mean a plan for our whole parish of three churches – Holy Trinity, Christ Church, and St John’s. And we’ll be taking a cue from our team mission statement: we are a community ‘Faithful to God, Sharing with those in need, Caring for one another…’ On 12th May, we shall give time in the service to consulting our whole congregation about our strengths and weaknesses, and the opportunities and challenges we face, as a starting point in this process.
When the PCC first adopted the mission statement I’ve just quoted I was writing it up and felt it needed a line to round it off – and wrote on the bottom, ‘We may not always get it right, but we seek God’s grace to fulfil his mission.’ It came out of my head, but it seems to have stuck. It’s a reminder that a Mission Action Plan is a way to notch up achievements. Rather it’s about discerning where God’s desire is – and joining in. And we discover God’s desire for us, when we desire God. There’s a lovely quotation in the book about Mission Action Planning: ‘If you want to build a ship, don’t summon people to buy wood, prepare tools, distribute jobs, and organize the work, rather teach people to yearn for the wide, boundless ocean.’ Teach people to yearn: so I’m back to the desire for God. Longing for God – this is fundamental to being Christian, to being church. Ask for this longing, beg God for it in prayer. Don’t give up – because God desires us to desire him.
