Evangelism today...

The lectionary passage for tomorrow concerns the woman at the well. 

Jesus took time to listen to her, to chat to her, to answer her questions. Evangelism begins not where we want people to be, but where people are.

We have to start there and it can be messy. We live in a world that doesn’t know Jesus, hasn’t a clue who he is, but I believe we are surrounded by people who are open to listen, searching for something to make them feel they are loved. We have to have the time and the skills to enter their world. It can be very different from ours.    

I see as I go round my four communities. I see it when I enter “the world” dressed like a minister and people’s hesitance to speak to me because I am frightening or abnormal.

I drove down a massive pothole on Tuesday and needed the RAC and then Kwik Fit and then the Peugeot garage because I needed a new wheel. All of the men who encountered me initially looked at me like I was some sort of alien from the planet church. This sort of thing stops when I (or the church) spend time in the world regularly. Tuesday is generally my Rye day, I do assembly, then a group in the afternoon so in between I do some visits or work in the library then I go for some lunch in the same lovely coffee shop on the High Street. I have been in there every Tuesday nearly for about six months now. Now they know me, and they chat to me like I am like them! Very interesting. I see it when I enter homes to prepare people for baptisms or marriage or funerals. One Mum last month said when I asked why she wanted her little girl baptised, “because I believe in all that stuff and that…” We spent an hour unpacking what all that stuff and that meant – it was about God’s love.

Another Mum answered the same question “because I believe in life after death. I have a mate who is a Christian who says we will come back as animals and I like that.”I did explain that might be Buddhism! But I started there.

If we want to take evangelism seriously, we have to have the capacity to answer people’s questions and have confidence in what we know about Jesus to give a correct picture of him. My church here says it wants to evangelize its community round the church. Acts of kindness and opening our door is part of that, but we also need to commend Jesus and tell his story to people. 

And one more thought:  there is a bit in the story in John 4 where Jesus talks about where to worship, on this mountain or that, and the right way to be religious. In Jesus, God shows a commitment to know and dwell among his people.

Not only is God present outside church buildings, God promises to be found there. We spend so much angst worrying about buildings, future pattern of churches, can we stay here long term, should we merge with another church, we need also to venture out in expectation that God will appear in another setting. This passage in John chapter 4 gives no support to views that say a person must come inside a church’s walls and traditions to meet God. It speaks in fact against any community that shields itself from the mysteries of a God who operates freely in all sorts of places, not exclusively on this particular mountain or in that specific temple.      

A God encountered outside the walls, encountered “in spirit and truth,” must be a God who dwells among flesh and blood. If that is so, what sort of church should we be and where are we to be church first?

Can we be like Jesus today? Can today's church show the world a way that meets our neighbours and does not avoid them? I think we are called to challenge stereotypes and expectations. Today, this week, it might meet this woman.

Will it spend time with her and offer her the living water or want to keep it for itself or offer it to someone more respectable?

Will she see in the people of God the presence of God’s grace filled love? And can they tell her about God’s love for her beginning where she is? And should they devote more time to going out and telling than to propping up and keeping on?  

How to cope long term spiritually...

I've been reflecting on the Transfiguration. Peter, James and John got so carried away with their experience up a mountain with Jesus, they wanted to stay there for ever really. They wanted to bask in the wonder of it all. They were lost in wonder, love and praise at it all. But of course Jesus reminded them that staying there was not an option; there was life on the ground to get on with.

Sometimes we are like them!

We go on holiday and taste God’s creation and are inactive for a bit and we want to stay there and not come home. When I was little, and we would go on holiday, there would be one last outing to the beach, and one last paddle in the sea and you came back and had the sand washed off your feet and then you would have a tantrum and run off and go in the sea again because you didn’t want it to end. I was a nightmare when little!

We are envious of other Christians who seem to do it better than us, or other churches that don’t have our problems. So we create a league table of success which is so unhealthy.

We want worship every Sunday to meet our every need and we complain bitterly when it doesn’t.

We want to rest in God’s presence without responsibilities, if we’re honest.

If Jesus was to be real to these disciples, then life back on the ground had to be different. We’ve all met Christians who are so heavenly minded they are no earthly use whatsoever, or brands of Christianity that teach, but don’t equip you for real life in the real world. 

And maybe we forget the whole point of a high spiritual encounter is that it continues to help us live in the world we return back to. I easily forget that. This week being an example!

On Wednesday I led a retreat at Penhurst Retreat House in the countryside near Battle looking with 20 lovely people about how you cope with transition. It was a great day and afterwards one of them wrote to me something that made me blush really “I have only known you a few hours and yet you radiate a contentment in living a life with God at the centre. It is evident your service is in the Lord and that your roots go deep and are grounded in God and his Word. What a wonderful man! Such an example to those around you. Thank you for showing us that God is faithful and gives joy even through suffering and transition. "

The little card the person handed me was a spiritual high for me.

But then I forgot everything she wrote and I beat myself up. On Thursday I had a bad meeting, I was in a fowl mood after it and had to go and buy chips late at night!

On Friday the cat decided to be violently ill all over the lounge carpet and the dishwasher decided to spew water all over the kitchen floor and all over me when I opened the door to investigate the noise and then it died. And then I got a migraine and I was grouchy! I forgot the mountain and wallowed in the plain without remembering I could cope and I could get through everything.       

We need to remember the call to go up the mountain is meant to help us cope with the world – even sickly cats, bad meetings and spewing water, even the deepest pain, the frustrations and challenges of life.

The disciples had an uncertain future but also the resources.

Peter, James and John saw the truth of their Master here, a truth that was more glorious than anything they could have ever predicted. And they heard the Word of God which was to send them out, the Word which stayed with them until they met their death.

In a few years time, James the disciple and apostle would be beheaded, for what he saw and heard that day he would not keep quiet about.

Many years later, Peter would be crucified outside the pagan city of Rome, rather than go back on his Epiphany.

John, well we don’t know when he died, but the last sighting of him we have of him is in exile for his beliefs on the lonely island of Patmos, still faithful to the vision he had seen.

This moment with Jesus was glorious. No wonder Peter wanted to build shelters on the mountain top and prolong the experience. But the experience had to change everyday life, for it to matter.

Those disciples came off the mountain, engulfed with a quality of love for God and for others, which for some of them would prove costly. I suggest that even when the cost was the ultimate price, they would not have had it any other way. Once we have glimpsed the transfigured Christ, nothing else matters as much as it used to. And we need to expect God to change us, you know! We live today with little expectation. I read this week of H G Wells who wrote a short story once about an archbishop who ran into difficulty and decided to pray about it. He had always said his prayers with the utmost regularity. Prayer he regarded as a purifying, beneficial process, no more to be neglected than brushing his teeth. Yet he had never really asked God for anything. He had not made a particular and personal appeal to God on his own behalf for many years. In this tangle, however, he needed help so desperately so, entering his private chapel, he sank to his knees and folded his hands.

“O God,” he began, and paused. He paused, and a sense of awful imminence gripped him. He heard a voice, not a harsh voice but a clear strong voice, neither friendly nor hostile.

“Yes,” said the voice, “What is it?”

They found His Grace next morning. He had slipped off the chancel steps and lay scrawling on the crimson carpet. His death caused by the shock that God might actually speak and change things.   

Today,my equilibrium returned after being wobbly for a bit as I went on a training day about the place of silence in spirituality. It was really good stuff. The leader of the day shared this story which I end with. One of his friends began work in a high powered job with IBM. His desk in the office was by a window with a wonderful view of delightful countryside. His new boss came to meet with him on his first day. Imagine the new employees surprise when he was told, “I want you to stop whatever you are doing every night at 4.30pm, make a cup of tea and stare out of that window for half an hour before you leave at 5.” Apparently, the employees best thinking was done in those half hours and productivity the next morning was high.

We need to commit ourselves to be resourced, regularly, and then remember the resources. That is the key to effective discipleship.