The Annual Meeting and Other Thoughts

A sermon preached at Chirbury Parish Church last Sunday, on the set readings for the day . . .

I want to take from the readings we’ve just heard some thoughts about discipleship, fellowship and mission - three vital words when it comes to our identity as the Church of Christ. First we have the story from the Acts of the Apostles about Tabitha (or Dorcas, to give her her Greek name), at Peter’s hands miraculously healed if not indeed raised back to life from the dead.  It’s a powerful story, but alongside the miracle we also get a quite charming insight into the close fellowship of the little Christian community in Joppa where Dorcas had “filled her days” - so we’re told - with acts of kindness and charity; isn’t that a lovely thing to be able to say about someone - could be said of me, or of you? Certainly I find a personal challenge in that description.

Dorcas seems to have been quite a saintly lady - but then again, in the New Testament the word saint is used of all the faithful, and not only of a few special people who’ve been canonised. So all of us are saints, potentially at least, all of us members of the vast throng mentioned by John in one of the readings set for today that I haven’t used, from chapter 7 of that immense vision of the last things we call the Book of Revelation. This is what he writes:

“After that I looked and saw a vast throng which no-one could count, from all races and tribes, nations and languages, standing before the throne and the Lamb. They were robed in white and had palm branches in their hands, and they shouted aloud: “Victory to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”

So we’ll be all robed in white, then. I’d certainly like to think so - but if I’m to be robed in white and given a palm branch to wave it won’t be because of my own goodness or my own achievements, however steadfast and noble and enduring and loving I’ve managed to be. The only reason these robes are white is because they’ve been washed in the blood of the Lamb. Those who receive these robes have placed their hope in Christ, for it is Christ alone who justifies us and makes us clean.

For now though we are the Church militant here in earth, with a gospel-shaped job to do. So here are three things that lie at the heart of what being the Church should be: three things we should be looking for, praying for, and working for:  first, we should aim to be a community of people who belong to one another because we belong to Jesus, and who therefore should aim to be constantly growing in our care for each other;  second, we should each of us be constantly striving to excel in acts of kindness and charity;  and thirdly that everything we are and everything we do should be focused on Christ, for without him nothing we can do, nothing we can attempt, has any lasting value.

In our reading from John’s Gospel we find Jesus telling his opponents that his own sheep will hear his voice and willingly follow him. While in these parts sheep are more likely to be herded or driven, a Judaean shepherd would lead his sheep, and his sheep would therefore need to recognise his voice. Through the day sheep would be grazing together in mixed flocks out on the hills, until called out by their own shepherd.

As Christians most of us spend most of our lives in company with people who don’t necessarily share our faith, or at least don’t practise it. And most of the time that won’t matter. Often we may find ourselves working closely with people with whom we agree on lots of things, but maybe not on what we do on a Sunday. But we need to know who we belong to when the chips are down, and whose voice to pick out when other voices are calling in other directions.  That’s our number one priority, and everything else about being a Christian, being Church, follows from that.

At this time of annual parish meetings, something from which I’m presently spared by age and retirement, church folk will be finding themselves looking back over the year past, and looking ahead to the year to come.

The other day I was talking to a churchwarden (not from these parishes), who told me she’d been thinking very hard about not standing again at her church's annual meeting, but had decided that maybe she would if (underlined). If she could feel a little bit happier about future directions in the diocese and deanery (which I think she was beginning to), if just a bit less stuff to do landed on her shoulders, in other words if a little more if it was shared some of the other folk in her church. I think she was in fact quite hopeful there, since she had some quite positive things to say about the standard of fellowship they had, and clearly things weren’t all bad. When you think about it most of life is a mixture of good and not so good, and none of us get it all right all of the time. We’re a mixed lot of sheep.

Sometimes we’re good at listening to the voice of our Good Shepherd, but often we’re not so good, and stuff gets in the way. We’re wilful, we know it all already, we want our own space; we think we’re sorted already, so we've no need to listen. Or is that just me? Anyway, looking back on my own journey of discipleship and ministry, I have to admit that things have gone better when I’ve taken the time and trouble to ask prayerfully, “Lord, is this your will?” and when I’ve had the humility to go to those with whom I should be sharing ministry and ask, “Does what I'm proposing make sense? Are you happy to be on board?”

But let me remind you of the firm promise Jesus gives to those who do listen to his voice. He says this: “No-one can snatch them from the Father’s care.” We're often so aware of our own weakness and smallness, our age profile, the number of empty pews in our church. We lose confidence in our ability to do mission. But what Jesus asks is this: that we recognise his call, and offer him ourselves as we are. Remember the five barley loaves and two small fish offered by a small boy? Jesus used them to feed a multitude. And he can and he will make much more of us than we could make of ourselves, once we make that offer.

Our annual meetings often reflect on church fabric and finance. We love our church buildings, and I’m glad we do, but however lovingly and carefully we care for them and maintain them, that on its own makes us little more than the curators of a museum. And Church is much more than that. Church isn’t primarily about buildings at all, it’s made up not of stones and stained glass but of sheep who know their Shepherd’s voice, and follow.

The church Dorcas attended probably met in someone’s home, and not in a special building; but it was a real church even so, a place of service and faith and fellowship and love. And the Spirit of Jesus. We need that still, maybe more than ever. It’s only when people can see the quality of our fellowship and feel the strength of our faith that mission begins to make sense.

And mission is what we’re about, not only because we want our churches still to be here in years to come, but because we want our churches to be doing the Lord’s work now, and because like him we care about the people here, about their future,  and about their walk with the Lord. When I was working for a mission agency I was told that mission begins with listening. Mission begins with listening to the voices around us, for if we’re not meeting with people where they are, addressing the real concerns they have and speaking in language they understand then we won’t be heard. But even before that mission begins with listening to the voice of our Good Shepherd, and setting ourselves to follow where he is leading.

It’s right that we should love our church buildings, and our traditions of worship, and that we should support its structures within deanery and diocese and so forth. But at the same time I’d have to say that when I hear the voice of my Shepherd I don’t so much hear him calling me into the church building as sending me out from it. We meet here to gather at the table of Christ our Good Shepherd, to pray in his name to our Father and to receive the enlivening and renewing power of his Holy Spirit; and we are then sent out by him proclaim his name and his love in our bit of his world. And we’ll do that by following him into the places where he already is, to families and streets and homes where he is already present, and where he is already wanting to change hearts, to heal wounds, and to transform lives.