Putting On Christ

Passage for reflection: Romans 13: 8 - 14 

We have arrived at the beginning of a new Methodist year. For many of us, there is a new beginning: a new minister, a new context, a beginning of a process to reopen churches safely. I’m conscious that some of my new congregations  will be reading one of my reflections for the first time. The beginning of my new appointment is very different from how any of us expected it to be. But here we are, and from where we find ourselves, we journey on together. 

The 1933 Methodist Hymn Book had a lovely section in it called “Opening and Closing of the Year” and within that section of hymns was a hymn which included these words: 

“With grateful hearts the past we own,

The future, all to us unknown,

We to thy guardian care commend,

Do thou to all our wants attend.”

Where do I start as I begin a new ministry? I have eight lists of names, some information about stuff, a plan of services ahead which is very bizarre as I don’t take a service in a reopened church building until the first Sunday of October. I asked if I had a diary. I was told “there isn’t one because there is nothing in it!” The study is full of boxes and I can’t find anything...

The passage in the lectionary for the first Sunday of September I choose to reflect on is from Paul’s letter to the Romans. In the thirteenth chapter of the letter, Paul gives us advice on how to do church. Coming out of a period of uncertainty, and nervously taking tentative steps forward, we need some guidance. 

Let’s put three things into our action plan as we set out shall we? 

First, let’s remember what basic Christianity is: 

“Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore, love is the fulfilling of the law.” 

I’ve been glad since moving into our new manse to meet our neighbours in the little road we live in. It’s good to hear our neighbours story. It’s good we will clearly get to know each other well over the next few months. We’ve lost respect and care for neighbours, if we are honest. If this wretched pandemic has taught us anything it is that in this country when the chips are down, we do actually care for each other. We are judged by the quality of our love for those who need love most. We have to have unconditional love at the heart of what we do. A looking out for others.  

Victor Frankl, who wrote some powerful stuff reflecting on being incarcerated in a Nazi concentration camp, helps us see what this love which puts the neighbour first means:

“Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him. By his love he is enabled to see the essential traits and features in the beloved person; and even more, he sees that which is potential in him, which is not yet actualized but yet ought to be actualized. Furthermore, by his love, the loving person enables the beloved person to actualize these potentialities. By making him aware of what he can be and of what he should become, he makes these potentialities come true.”

Secondly, let’s wake up! Paul says now is the moment “for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone, the day is near.“

I watch very little live television these days. I fall asleep in crucial moments of dramas and thrillers. I need to wind the thing back to see what I slept through. I wake up and haven’t a clue what is happening because I’ve missed a crucial piece of information. There is a new day for us to greet, to throw off the bedclothes to welcome, the sun is rising to beckon us to possibilities beyond our imagining. We are to greet those possibilities with expectation. The light shines leading us from night to new adventures. 

It’s easy to miss what God is doing if we sleep. 

Years ago, in a church called Kinsbourne Green, where I was lay pastor in the early 1990’s, there was a sisterhood full of elderly ladies. One of them used to fall asleep regularly during my talk. I remember one day this happened as usual but after about ten minutes, the lady woke up with a jolt, looked straight at me and said, “Good God, are you still talking?!”

Maybe God is challenging us as a Church about sleepiness. Maybe we’ve been snoozing spiritually, and maybe it’s been easier to ignore the alarm, the call of God to get up, and pull the duvet over our head and stay snuggled in our comfort zone rather than going out to find what God is actually doing. 

Most of you will know we have six cats. We’ve not yet brought them to Ripon. They are still in Wisbech. But we will have to get used to them stamping on our heads in the early hours of the morning demanding we get up. They want food, now, not when we feel like waking.

“The night is far gone, the day is near.”

Then perhaps the greatest piece of advice we have as we set out on a new journey. 

“Put on the Lord Jesus Christ.”

I’ve been conscious that apart from Sundays when I’ve led services over the last two years as I’ve recovered from illness, this week has been the first time in ages I’ve put a clerical shirt and dog collar on, my uniform as an ordained minister and that felt good. It was great fun on Thursday to walk round Ripon city centre in work clothes. A lot of people talked to me, even if some of them only wanted me to direct them to the public loos! We put a uniform on to say “this is who we are.”

There have been a lot of pictures posted on social media this past week of children in school uniform returning to school. Most of them are proud to belong to their school and be associated with it by what they put on in the morning. (We had to wear purple at my secondary school, so I rarely felt this pride!) 

Of course at the moment there’s a new “putting on” of something we have to remember. Outside a shop this afternoon a lady said, exasperatingly, as she reached the door “forgotten my mask... grrr, world!” The things are horrible, I struggle with them but we put them on in shops and in churches if we return to them, to keep us and others a bit safer. 

What does it mean to “put on the Lord Jesus Christ”? 

I found these words which tell us better than I can:

“If you are tired and depressed, Jesus offers new clothes of peace and confidence.

If you are overwhelmed with pain and grief, Jesus gives you the new clothes of peace and comfort.

If you don’t like yourself and the way you have been behaving, Jesus offers you the new clothes of love, self esteem and the knowledge that he created you and that you are precious to him.

If you feel guilty and helpless in the face of temptation, Jesus gives you the new clothes of forgiveness and the help of the Holy Spirit.

He offers you these things and more as he joins himself to you and daily offers you fresh and beautiful clothes to wear.”

We like our tatty and old clothes, Jesus. Why do we need new stuff from you? To put on fresh things means we are ready to begin a new journey. If I turned up to my welcome service on Sunday evening in a dirty suit with stains and cat hair down it, and scruffy shoes with holes in them, well, that wouldn’t go down well. My suit is at the dry cleaners and I have a new pair of shoes. 

Maybe we need at the beginning of a new year a serious divine wardrobe refit. To put on Christ means we reject the ways of the world and we try every day to reflect him as he wraps himself round us so that he becomes part of us. 

So a very happy new Methodist year to us. Here’s to love being at our heart, waking up, and putting on Christ which will enable us to flourish and grow, whatever shape the Church is for us over the next few months. We need to be his people. We need a new start. 

On Friday afternoon I had to go to a gathering in York and I needed to use the sat nav to get me there and back. I decided to go to Morrison’s before coming home but didn’t turn off the sat nav. It screamed at me “proceed to the route, proceed to the route!” It couldn’t cope with Morrison’s car park. I had stopped following the suggested way and had gone my own way. 

Does God feel like that with us? I wonder, regular readers and new friends and members of my churches who are sharing my rambling for the first time, do we need simply to return to what we are meant to be doing and who we are meant to be?