Thoughts for the last day of a church year...

I love that old story of a church likened to a fence round a cemetery – those inside the fence cannot get out, and those outside the fence don’t want to get in!

For church to be authentic and to be taken seriously today we need to take our inner life, worship, bible reading, prayer times, fellowship and support of each other seriously. But we cannot stop there, our inner life must equip us to be God’s people in the world where we are placed and attract other people to us, not necessarily to our building but to Him in whose name we go out.

I am writing this on August 31^st, the feast day of St Aidan. From the monastery he founded on Lindisfarne, Aidan shared the Christian gospel in a way that enabled it too take root in England for the first time.

In his 'History of the English Church and people' the Venerable Bede writes: "Among other evidences of holy life, he [Aidan] gave his clergy an inspiring example of self-discipline and continence, and the highest recommendation of his teaching to all was that he and his followers lived as they taught."Bede (writing around the year 700!) also notes of Aidan "His life is in marked contrast to the apathy of our own times"

Aidan’s blessing is powerful – citing both bits of spirituality and discipleship we need.

Leave me alone with God as much as may be

As the tide draws the waters close in upon the shore, make me an island set apart, alone with you God, holy to you. Then, with the turning of the tide, prepare me to carry your presence to the busy world beyond,

the world that rushes in on me. Till the waters come again and fold me back to you.

There is a statue of Aidan on Lindisfarne carrying a flaming torch, the fire of God's love, the light of the good news he carried. Some people think its an ice cream cornet but it IS a torch!

Hear today the challenge of these words from an authori called William Brodrick, which were true of Aidan and demand our allegiance today: 

We have to be candles, burning between hope and despair, faith and doubt, life and death, all the opposites.

That is the disquieting place where people must always find us.

And if our life means anything, if what we are goes beyond the monastery walls and does some good, it is that somehow, by being here, at peace, we help the world cope with what it cannot understand.

As a new church year begins tomorrow (a unique thing in Methodism we begin the year in September) let’s fill ourselves with God and then be God’s people where we need to be.