Our readings this morning touch on faith and practice, and I want to think a little about the reading from Ephesians. Much of this Letter centres on how Christians should live together in fellowship, and it’s important stuff I think. However good we are at important things like maintaining our buildings, paying our parish offer and being good at worship - and they’re all really important - they come second to the call to be in fellowship: fellowship with Christ, and fellowship together as his people. One of my favourite hymns begins with the line “Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you.” Let’s use that line as a way in to thinking about Christian fellowship.
The first two words are brother, sister. And I’m reminded that the very first message Jesus sent to his disciples on the morning of the first Easter Day called them his brothers. And he told Mary Magdalene to tell them “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”
In the car the other lunchtime I found myself listening to “Call You and Yours” on Radio 4, and feeling rather sad as so many people called in to talk about splits and rifts and divisions within their families. In my family we’re always falling out, but we always just as quickly fall back in again, and woe betide anyone else who might attack or smear or threaten any one of us. But there are serious splits in maybe five percent of families in the UK, and that translates as several million people. So in our human families we don’t always get on together as well as we might; what about the family of God?
Sadly, churches are made up of human beings, and as much at risk of splits and dissentions as any other human organisation. But it’s a shame when that happens, because fellowship is fundamental to our call. And in God’s family, our relationships should take their cue from him. Paul said to the Ephesians: “As children of God, aim to be as like him as you can.” How can we mere mortals aim to be like God? By trying our best to be like Jesus.
So the first line of that hymn, the Servant Song as it’s known, goes on to say, “Let me as Christ to you.” Being Christ-like together surely means being humble, patient, forgiving, helpful, supportive, caring, all the things we see in Jesus when we read the Gospels. When Jesus said, “Follow me,” he wasn’t just saying literally walk behind me along the road, he was also saying learn from me, follow the things I do.
Blessed are the meek, said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. But being meek doesn’t mean being a soft touch. There’s no Christian ministry of being a doormat, as I’ve said many a time before in sermons. People who follow Jesus know from him what we stand for, and if we’re truly following him we’ll be firm in our support for what’s good and right in the world, and equally firm in our opposition to the things that do damage, and to everything that’s unfair and unloving.
To say that takes me to the middle bit of that first line of our hymn, which is the four words: “Let me serve you.” Serving is the “why” of our fellowship. That’s what takes us, or should, from being a comfortable holy huddle, happy together without much regard for what goes on outside, to being something more world aware, more apostolic, hard-working. I believe that the God I serve and worship is offering himself as Father to every person, whoever and wherever they may be. I believe that we’re all his family, if we choose to be. And I believe that even when people turn their back and walk away he still loves them. I love the picture Jesus gives us of the father watching from the rooftop for his prodigal child to return. Christ loves people like me, but he loves people who aren’t very much like me too.
So our fellowship should be purposeful and outward-looking. And for me, the test of a Church isn’t how many people are in the pews or on the electoral roll or the list of regular givers; nor how lively and joyful our worship is.
Don’t get me wrong: as our church grows, and our giving grows, and our worship grows in spiritual strength and beauty, I’ll be the first to rejoice. But the main test of whether we’re getting it right is that we’re asking things like “How can we serve the people here? How can we help make a positive difference to this community? How can we make our bit of the world a better place?”
Oscar Romero, the Archbishop of San Salvador, was gunned down as he said mass in his cathedral. I’ve taken a quote from him as my thought for the week, and I’ll read some of it now: “Every effort to better society . . . is an effort God blesses, that God wants, that God demands of us.”
Archbishop Romero was of course ministering in a part of the world where monstrous injustices were being done by the ruling powers. But even in our own peaceful and fairly comfortable communities there are things we can do, things that need doing. Things that could be better, people who need a bit of help or light or comfort in their lives. We may be few in number, weak in resources and maybe very aware of our own smallness - but even the tiniest Christian congregation has the privilege and call to pray together for the whole community. That means those who’d like to be here but can’t be, those who get distracted and never make it, right across to those who have no time for either church or God. Remember that God loves every single one of them.
At our communion service, and often at other services too, we’re sent out with words like “Go in peace, to love and serve the Lord.” God calls us together in worship, but then God sends us out into the world, and he sends us, as the response at communion puts it “In the name of Christ. Amen.” I hope our worship helps bond us in fellowship and lift us in spirit, but it’s also given us to use, given so we can be made useful, together, to God. And can I just say now that all that I’ve said this morning will be my theme, God willing, throughout my ministry here: “Brother, sister, let me serve you, let me be as Christ to you.”
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