Sermon 9
A Sermon at Wonersh by Jeff Watley on 31 December 2003
Our Church
Vision: God’s Love draws us to Himself
and inspires us to reach out.
The Great Commandment: Mark 12 28-31
Introduction: Happy New Year to you all. I want to begin this New Year by paying tribute to everyone who has worked so hard and who have given so much in 2003 in serving others through their ministry as part of the life of the Church. This commitment has created and sustained the 5 services each week that have become such a precious part of the lives of so many in the regular congregations. This commitment has touched the lives of a huge number of children and young people many of whom come from families with no active Christian faith. Your involvement has brought our community into an encounter with the Gospel through Get Out There initiatives and the wonderful Feast for Life initiative and many other events and courses during the year. High level skills in graphic design and publicity were used to ensure all the events were full. Others have provided a network of pastoral care and support that gets better and better. Prayer warriors have met week in week out some at ghastly times of the day. Musicians have practiced and played to lead us in worship, flower teams have arranged, cleaners have polished, accountants have counted, sidesmen and women have got alongside people and welcomed them, committees have committed us to exciting plans and the Review Team reviewed the big plan and so it goes on. If I tried to mention everybody who had contributed to the activity of 2003; it would read like a Gwynneth Paltrow Academy Award speech lasting several days and I would be in floods of tears. It really is awesome. Every member of the Ministry is working at full stretch. I am so grateful for the fantastic job they do, and you will be aware that some of them have to do all their preparation in hotel rooms and airport terminals. And although it is invidious to single out any individuals because it is all about working together as a team: I do want to put on record publicly our thanks to Sue and John Metcalfe, our churchwardens who have given almost every waking moment to the care and strengthening of this church in every way possible, and on top of that they have given Sheila and me and our family the kind of love and support that Vicars can usually only dream of. Sorry to embarrass you John and Sue, but I know I speak for everyone in expressing our thanks. And I know that you are both only too aware that it is the fact that it is a team effort in which everyone has an involvement that makes it work.
The question I want to address as we refocus our Vision at the start of this New Year is why we are doing all this. We need to be reminded from time to time what the motivation is that makes all this effort worth it. What is the goal: the big picture, the vision that harnesses our energies and makes all those long hours worthwhile.
To get to the heart of the motivation we have to begin with
the heart of God. God is passionate
about his family and has a deep interest in the life of this Church. Moreover lost people matter to God and so God
is passionately concerned about the way we bring his love and gospel hope to
the community around us. To put it
plainly, there are things we do here in Wonersh that
touch God’s heart. There is rejoicing in heaven over every sinner
who repents. I think of one lady from Wonersh who did not get out much. She was not able to come to Church. Her husband who does attend tells me that she
did not talk much about faith but.
During Feast for Life the two of them attended a Senior Citizens lunch
at Lawnsmead where they enjoyed the generous
provision of a good lunch and good company. I was sat at the table with
them. Then Saltmine
put on a brief drama called Will we still
be Married in Heaven?
Over the last 3 months John and Sue Metcalfe, Martin and Sue Down and I have met to review our Vision Statement. The old one you will remember was ‘To know Christ and to make him known’.
That was good; It was particularly good in capturing the Great Commission from Matthew 28. “Go and make disciples of all nations baptising them in the name of the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded”. This is a good vision statement about what we are meant to do.
But there is also the question of what God wants to do in us. We must not let the work we are doing for God undo the work He is doing in us. What does God want for us? Jesus’ prayer for the Church in John 17 gives us great insight. Is not a prayer for success in our mission, but it is a prayer that we should be one. “My prayer (says Jesus in Jn 17 v 20) is not for them alone (referring to the disciples) but also for those who believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you.”
The number one concern on Jesus prayer list is that we learn
to love one another. That is what the
We need embrace both the Great Commission and the Great Commandment in our Vision statement.
So: to the Vision Statement. God’s love draws us to himself and compels us to reach out.
You will notice that it begins with God’s love. Our purpose springs from God’s love and is in response to what he has done for us.
[Reflect for a moment on the beginning of your own journey of faith. Can you recall the moment when you realised that God loved you.] Luke tells the story of a woman in Luke 7 who experienced the love of Jesus which changed her whole life and who discovered that Jesus’ love was love of another kind.
She was a woman of ill repute; almost certainly a prostitute. For years she had understood what it was to be despised and used at the same time: she ached inside for some sense of her own worth or value but the world conspired to condemn her for her lifestyle whilst closing every door that would allow her to change it. She heard of Jesus and sensed that He was different. She gatecrashed a party at the home of a respectable Pharisee. She threw herself at Jesus feet, honoured him in a way she felt able to do: poured out her broken heart in tears, poured out her meagre treasure in the form of her bottle of perfume: almost certainly the one tool of her trade and she even threw her sense of shame and reputation at his feet as she loosed her hair: something that no-one with an ounce of dignity or self respect would dream of doing in that culture. To the assembled social company this was a symbol of total degradation. To Jesus it was a confession of total dependence. His response to her was love of another kind. He lifted her up; he honoured her; he received her love; he forgave her sin; he gave her the dignity and worth that made her life worth living; he gave her the power to start again.
It is only when we realise that we have more in common with this broken woman whom Jesus restored than the respectable Pharisees who stood in judgement over this woman that we begin to understand the depth of God’s love for us. God’s love draws us to himself. This is love of another kind. It takes the Holy Spirit to reveal our sinful state to us, but he only does this in order to reveal Christ’s love to us. Father, Son and Spirit work together to draw us to Himself.
Two things happen when we are drawn to God by his love. Romans 5 v 8 reminds us that what was true for the woman at the party is true for all of us, that it was while we were still sinners that God met us in His Son and brought us home. Like the little girl who loves her favourite rag doll even when it has lost its eye and hair and is grubby and torn, so Jesus loves us not because our lives are attractive to him, but because he loves us and his love makes us lovely. God’s love transforms us by bringing us out of darkness and into His glorious light. Hope grows where once there was despair. Slowly we find the strength to overcome sinful patterns. Over time we grow more like Jesus.
True it is not always a smooth transition. This process of transformation is really difficult, but it is part of God’s work in us. God draws us to Himself.
The second thing that happens is that he draws us to each other to form a loving community. We must not seek to rush or bypass this. Jesus prays for it as his number one prayer and we too need to pray for it and work towards it. And despite the fact that everyone involved in this Church is really delightful, friends it will still be really difficult. Humanly speaking it is probably impossible. We need to be very careful to avoid hypocrisy, broken relationships and any form of exclusion. Repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation and self discipline are all tools in the toolkit that we need to use regularly. But we have the power of the Holy Spirit working towards this goal.
Some research conducted recently has actually proved that joy laughter and love play a significant part in Church growth. (***). Meeting socially, paying compliments, laughter, all part of growing towards our goal. God’s love draws us to himself: draws us to each other.
So to the last part of the Vision Statement: God’s Love draws us to himself and compels us to reach out.
Actually any attempts to reach out with God’s love will founder if we neglect the importance of growing together as a community.
I was talking a couple of days ago to a lady who visited another Church on Christmas Eve. She went with other members of her family because her local church did not have a service. They sat in the old style box pews; wich comfortably accommodated the 5 of them. 5 minutes before the service started, she received a tap on the shoulder. Excuse me madam, you are sitting in our family pew. And they were asked to vacate the seat for one of the regular families.
That was not a Church that had a vision to reach out. It was not a church that gave priority to the visitor and the newcomer. I know it would be different here where the motto on such occasions is always Family hold back.
But we cannot simply wait for people to turn up at church for them to encounter the Love of Christ. We have to reach out in all sorts of ways. The Feast for Life initiative last year, combined with the Get Out There initiatives were great examples of how this can be done creatively and generously. Again lots of fun and laughter; lots of generous hospitality, and in the case of Get Out There we discovered that practical love has a divinely assisted power to touch peoples lives, far greater than purely verbal programmes.
The reaching out is not limited to special church programmes. It is a vital part of the ongoing work of the care team, of the youth work, of the street wardens of Christian viewpoint and Men’s group. But it can also be part of all the encounters that every individual member of the fellowship has at work, at the school gate, in the golf club, on Platform 5 and in the playground. Grace leaks. And everyone whose life has been touched by grace will not be able to keep it to themselves.
Again: let us acknowledge that this is not easy. We probably cannot do it in our own strength. But it is part of God’s heart so he provides the power of the Holy Spirit.
[Christ’s death on the Cross is not only about reconciliation between individuals and God (the I thou dimension) but it is also about reconciliation between men and women, slave and free, Jew and Gentile, black and white, rich and poor, young and old, educated and simple, When Jesus talked of building the Kingdom of God on earth he had in mind not only the frontier missionary initiatives to take the Gospel to people who did not know Jesus but also the breaking down of the walls of separation within the community of the Church. The power of the Holy Spirit is available for this task too. ]