The Bible readings for last Sunday and for this one invite us to think about light. One of the things I’m enjoying about living in the Fens is the opportunity to see fabulous skies especially on clear days. When you see light, positivity is possible. To grope in the darkness can be crippling mentally. We need in a time of darkness and struggle to know that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all, and to hold on to that truth tight.
A week ago, we were privileged to be in Ripon Cathedral for Candlemas. As the gathered community remembered Simeon acclaiming the infant Jesus as a light to the nations and the glory of Israel. The cathedral was filled with 7000 candles, many laid out to form a message. The congregation of about 500 all processed around the candle displays. This took five hymns to do! It was very powerful and very moving. A reminder at the liturgical end of Christmas that Christ’s light makes a difference in the gloom of February and every day.
We have also in recent days remembered the atrocity of the Holocaust. I remember the horrific experience of watching Schlinder’s List at the cinema. Remember that film begins in colour and about twenty minutes in you see a candle shining. The film then goes into black and white for about three hours. Then at the end, it returns to colour and a candle again and a procession of elderly people in Jerusalem at the Holocaust memorial there, and you realise you haven’t been watching a story, you’ve been remembering a dark part of history and the fact in the end a light shines. However hard that is to believe. We saw the film Jojo Rabbit the other week. That film ends with a young boy in the Hitler youth told to hate all Jews, finding a Jewish girl hiding in his house, and having eventually befriended her, after the war is over, they emerge and he says to her “what are we going to do now?” “Dance!” she says. The light shines in the darkness and the darkness cannot put it out.
We are not having the easiest time at the moment. The house being rented for us has all sorts of problems not least no heating or hot water for over two weeks now. We’ve had to move out as the temperature is around five degrees! We’ve been this past week in hotels and are now in a converted stable - living out of suitcases again is hard, but we are being held by kindnesses like hospitable hosts when the bigger picture is challenging. We have no idea what we are going to do if we still have no heating into a third week this Friday. It’s about believing the light will come.
Often a change of approach is all that is required. I was invited this week to try and help a small church look at its future. What could have been a difficult meeting actually as we gave the five folk there encouragement to have a go, ended really positively. We even wrote a mission statement:
Murrow Methodist Church believes, despite being small in number, it still has a call to be God’s people in the village being the only expression of Christian presence in it.
In the next six months, Murrow Methodist Church will:
Celebrate the work that is done in our building at Knit and Natter group, the Book Café, school reading group, homeschoolers, and our monthly stall which the village supports in healthy numbers.
Hold an open day with a history exhibition and displays from user groups and our own activities on Saturday 4 July and a Church Anniversary led by Debbie on Sunday 5 July.
Purchase good quality printed cards with details of our services and activities to give out at the above weekendand possibly, with help, leaflet drop some of the village.
Write a positive article about our church in the May edition of Village Voices.
Try to get into the local primary school via Debbie offering to do regular assemblies.
Purchase a new, good quality notice board to be put at the front of the building on the left, with service details, ministers contact and regular activities in large letters and a perspex part to display notices.
Purchase a radio microphone as few preachers now usethe pulpit.
Apply for a mission grant at the March Circuit Meetingfor publicity materials for our open weekend and a radio microphone and a new notice board.
Share worship, when needed, with Parson Drove and Tydd St Giles chapels.
“A small church is no more a failed big church than a satsuma is a failed
orange, they are different.”
Our call is to hold onto the light...
I’m using the vision of Martin Niemoeller in my service tomorrow. In 1936 in Germany as the Nazi message was spreading, he preached this:
“The problem with which we have to deal is how to save the Christian community at this moment from the danger of being thrown into the same pot as the world: that is to say: it must keep itself distinct from the rest of the world by virtue of its “saltiness.” How does Christ’s community differ from the world?
We have come through a time of peril – and we are not finished with it yet – when we were told: “Everything will be quite different when you as a Church cease to have such an entirely different flavour – when you cease to practice preaching which is the opposite of what the world around you preaches. You really must suit your message to the world; you really must bring your creed into harmony with the present. Then you will again become influential and powerful.”
Dear brethren, that means: The salt loses its savour. It is not for us to worry about how the salt is employed, but to see that it does not lose its savour; to apply an old slogan of four years ago: “The Gospel must remain the Gospel; the Church must remain the Church; the Creed must remain the Creed; Evangelical Christians must remain Evangelical Christians.” And we must not – for Heaven’s sake – make a German Gospel out of the Gospel; we must not – for Heaven’s sake – make a German Church out of Christ’s Church; we must not – for God’s sake – make German Christians out of the Evangelical Christians!
That is our responsibility- “Ye are the salt of the earth.” It is precisely when we bring the salt into accord and harmony with the world that we make it impossible for the Lord Jesus Christ, through His Church, to do anything in our nation. But if the salt remains salt, we may trust Him with it: He will use it in such a way that it becomes a blessing.”
This living of light can happen in small ways and remind us all is not dark. We were getting into a lift in Peterborough hospital yesterday. The doors began to lose before we were safely in. A young girl held the door open. She said, “if I can’t hold a door open for people, it is a sad world.” I said, “many wouldn't!” She said, “I’m a nice person!”
No comments:
Post a Comment