May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O Lord, our strength and our redeemer. Amen
I stand before you today with some degree of nervousness – commissioned by the PCC to do something which we all find difficult – namely to ask you for money. This Trinity Sunday, we have designated as ‘Link Sunday’ where we are seeking to support our little church magazine, The Parish Link, as a tool of mission and, as tools cost money, we as a congregation need to pay the bill.
But I don’t want to start in the realm of Mammon seeking your cash. I’ll save that for later so that you can decide whether my preaching warrants your financial support. I want to first talk about Mission and the role of this church in a missionary sense and I want to start with a few reflections on the society in which we find ourselves here at the start of the third millennium.
Now some of you may realise that somewhere in the Low Countries, as we speak, a few people are getting quite excited at the spectacle of watching 22 grown men running around after a leather ball. Euro 2000 is, for the month of June, a prime focus for many millions of people.
If football is not your particular cup of tea this weekend then how about tennis? That sure sign of impending foul weather – The Wimbledon Championships at the All England Lawn Tennis Club in are now underway. For the next two weeks our television screens will take on a permanent green and white hue as we watch Sampras and Hingis, Henman and Kournikova all do battle.
If tennis does not fit the bill then of course there’s cricket. We have the far from unique opportunity this weekend to watch England getting soundly thrashed again – this time at the hands of the West Indies in the first test. I have to say it was a test of faith when writing this sermon on Friday to assume that the match would not actually be over by Sunday – but there you are.
If spending your weekend watching cricket feels to you about as exciting as watching a House of Lords debate on building regulations then how about golf. This wonderful sporting weekend is capped off by the fact that today is the final day of one of the 4 great major championships, the US Open at Pebble Beach, California.
So there you are, as full a weekend of sport as you could possibly want and I think it is a safe bet that a significant proportion of the population will be devoting a fair amount of their time over the weekend to watching one or other of those events. It is also a safe assumption – and if I were not in a pulpit, I’d be prepared to make a large wager on the fact, that more people will be watching sport this weekend than will be in churches this morning. I notice no-one is wont to contradict that prediction.
Sport, they say, is the new religion. If we had the Archbishop of Canterbury preaching this morning in this church and David Beckham signing autographs on the playing fields then I’m afraid it is highly likely that Mr Beckham would be the one to draw the crowds.
We live in a godless age. We live in an age where God is marginalized and ignored. Where people look on their local church as a place to be christened, married and buried or hatched matched and despatched as the saying goes. We live in an age where the blasphemies of earlier generations are the marketing slogans of today. One of the most popular chains of restaurants in the country, particularly with the young is called TGI Fridays. For those of you not in the know that stands for Thank God It’s Friday.
I was in Edinburgh a couple of weeks ago and noticed another eatery taking a similar line – again a chain as I noticed another one in Manchester this week and they go by the name of FT5K. Any guesses as to what that stands for? Feed the Five Thousand.
The car boot sale seems to have replaced church as the required Sunday morning place of pilgrimage for many families and I have even heard the vast new shopping complexes described as the cathedrals of the modern age.
So God is marginalized to hatches matches and despatches. We have a generation of children being raised in a secular society where they are rarely taught the essential truths of the Christian faith – our own village school being a worthy exception. We live in a society where money, possessions, status and celebrity appear to matter more than love, compassion, humility and peace, where the words of Jesus fall on deaf ears.
Here in Bunbury, things are no different. On a good Sunday morning we might get 120 people to the various services? – excepting high days and holy days. Let’s assume that as many again are attending churches of other denominations and a few would be here but for infirmity or illness and what have you got – say 250 people in a community of 1500 to 2000 people turning to Christ for forgiveness and grace.
But why should we care? We’re here aren’t we? We’re doing our bit. If other people are more concerned with sport or car boot sales or cleaning the car then that’s their problem – we’ve seen the light. We’ve responded to the call. That’s an end to it. But of course it’s not. Christ left us, through his disciples with the clearest of messages to tell us that that was not enough. To tell us that it was our duty to seek to bring people to him in the words of the Great Commission – Matthew 28, 16:-
And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you and lo; I am with you always to the close of the age.
And if we want clearer evidence of the need and the importance of this mission then we need to look no further than our Old Testament reading for this morning from Isaiah. This is a wonderful reading full of power and imagery. Remember the scene that Isaiah describes:-
In the year that king Uzziah died I saw also the LORD sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphim: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the LORD of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.
Isaiah saw for us the true might and splendour and majesty of God, enthroned in full sovereign authority over the world. His power is proclaimed for all to see and the whole earth is full of his glory. And what is the prophet’s reaction to this wonderful revelation? It’s human. In the light of God’s majesty he sees himself for what he is.
Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the LORD of hosts.
A cry of despair as Isaiah sees how far he is from measuring up to God. A humbling of himself before the might of God. A complete absence of pride, the essential pre-requisite to being used by God. How many of us could reflect Isaiah’s humility before God. How at odds with today’s secular outlook as we are exhorted to “Believe in ourselves”, “Live for today” “Look after No 1” etc. Pride inflicts itself upon us at every turn and is very difficult to resist. As Isaiah reaches this place where pride is banished, the seraphim come to him
Then flew one of the seraphim unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.
The gospel of forgiveness – at work in the Old Testament as surely as in the new and with the grace of God’s forgiveness and his sin purged, Isaiah responds.
I heard the voice of the Lord saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I, send me.
He has believed in God’s forgiveness and no longer feels defiled and inadequate. He believed that when God said he was forgiven then he really was forgiven and he is eager to do the Lord’s bidding, “Here am I, send me”
How often do otherwise good Christians fail at this last hurdle. They recognise their inadequacy, they repent and are forgiven but then in response to God’s call they stand up and proudly declare “Here am I, send him or him, or her”. We are often so well equipped for our Christian life but fail to remember what that great commission is from God whether in the form of God’s call to Isaiah “Whom shall I send, who will go for us” or Matthew’s great commission from Jesus “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations”.
And yet it is the natural fulfilment of our Christian lives. The path laid out for us in scripture is so clear. Repent, receive forgiveness and in God’s grace go out to bring his saving power to others. So what do we do to fulfil this God given mission. What do we as individual’s do to bring Christ’s word to that huge mass of unbelievers. What do we do as a church in Bunbury to make the people of this parish aware that their lives are doomed without the saving grace of God’s forgiveness.
If the answer is, in honesty, not much, then what could we do?
Well we could make a start. We could reach out to the people of these villages with the word of God. We could try and touch their lives in some small way that may get them to think about their mortality and their need for Christ and that is just what we are now trying to do with the Parish Link. To put a copy of our magazine into every home in the parish every month. Free.
Free because nowhere in the Great Commission does it say that we should charge for God’s word. If you feel that’s right then you may want to help by giving your direct financial support to this small act of Mission. It will cost us about £2000 to do this for a year. If you would like to contribute you will find an envelope like this at the back of the church as you leave. You may want to put something in it today and leave it or to take it away with you. If you are a taxpayer then the new government rules on gift aid donations mean that if you are willing to complete the form on the front of the envelope we can claim 28p back from the tax man for every pound donated.
Anything you can give to support this mission will be welcome. If you can’t give cash then give some prayer.
I want to leave you with a wonderful little piece of poetry by Elizabeth Barrett Browning that speaks volumes for me and captures in 4 lines what it’s taken me ages to say about our wondrous God and the need for mission.
And every common bush aflame with God
Let’s see if we can get a few more of those blackberry pickers to get their shoes off.
Tom Crotty