Walk on with hope
First sermon at a new series of Evening Praise services
When we thought about this service and about Ministry areas in general we came up with the themes of new beginnings, hope and transformation….
Somebody questioned me about whether you could actually have a new beginning as a beginning was automatically something new, but I’m not going to worry too much about that this evening, because I think if we look at beginnings, we can go back 2000 years ago to the beginning of the church, or we can go back even further to the beginning of time, whenever that might have been.
And so tonight I’m going to go back some years, back to the creation that God made – and what a wonderful creation it is… And that reading from Genesis (from The Word on the Street) that we heard tells it perfectly, describing ‘first off, nothing’, but then God began creating and we’re given the picture of God’s Holy Spirit, ready to play.
And then there was light, and sky and water and land and the sun and the moon and animals and other creatures, and then there were humans, and we’re told that God saw it and it was good, or in this version I think, a much better description, God looked at it and thought, ‘this is fantastic’.
So we have that picture of God ready to play, and at times it’s very easy to lose sight of the wonder of creation as we get bogged down in day to day life and concentrate so much on getting through the day, sometimes good days and sometimes not so good days, but God looked at his creation and thought, ‘fantastic’.
I wonder how often we stand back and look at the world today and think ‘fantastic’ because for all the problems, and there are far too many, so much of what is around us is still ‘fantastic’.
And now we’ll jump on a bit from creation through time to Jesus. And that time contained a lot of problems, in fact a history of people rebelling against God and God calling them back, but then he sent Jesus and history was changed forever. Jesus came for all kinds of reasons, and he came to show us what it is to live, really live…
He came to offer an example of justice, peace, hope, vision and of course love… A love that is so deep that we can often fail to understand it or recognise it, and it was following the life and example of Jesus that the early church began and we read a lot about that in the Acts of the Apostles and other New Testament books, and what we see of the church wasn’t always an ideal picture.
There were people involved and sadly that will always lead to some tensions from time to time, but there were also incredible accounts of people joining together in fellowship, often over food, praying together, worshipping together and totally depending on God to provide for their needs, and we’re told the church grew and grew.
And that’s why we’re here 2000 years later because through the years people have been faithfully proclaiming a message of good news and hope for everyone, and the church has got bigger and bigger… And they’ve done it in different ways to suit different generations, using some gifts that are the same and some that are different…
And then in our quick journey through history, we remember that nearly 100 years ago the Church in Wales came into being and this was in effect a new beginning – not the beginning of the church but of a new vision, or perhaps more alarmingly, a new structure.
As we approach the centenary of the Church in Wales there is much to be thankful for, many good things have happened, many people’s lives have been changed and continue to be changed, many community projects run with the help of church members, many charities are sustained by generous giving of time and money, but it’s not enough…
The reality is that we are a church that is reducing in size, not everywhere by any means, and certainly not inevitably, but the figures aren’t good enough and some will say that numbers don’t matter, and to an extent that’s true, except when we use that as an excuse for decline when we should have been doing more.
And so the Church in Wales has introduced the most radical change to its structures in its relatively short history, and there may be some of you who are thinking, “I’ve heard of all kinds of new things in the past, and we just carry on”, well this is different, because actually the more we do together the less chance there is of nothing happening and us just returning to a fairly dour and too often negative state…
Ministry areas are not about a new structure but about a way of engaging better with the communities we serve, andimportantly, a way of every one of us getting closer to God, the God who loves us limitlessly without conditions… They are a way of us growing as disciples ready to help make more disciples…
Remember, and it’s worth reminding ourselves every day, that God still look at us and thinks we’re ‘fantastic’…
Because if we recognise what God has done for us and how he loves us and we really reflect on that then I think it’s pretty inevitable that we will be changed, and if we’re changed then in some way the whole world be changed…. People don’t keep good news to themselves…
That sounds a little crazy, a little over ambitious, but I don’t think God wants us to be limited by our worries and concerns… This is the God who thrives on being incredible – there are the signs of his glory and power that we see in the bible, there are the signs all around us in creation, there are the promises he makes to his people, there is the incredible love that he offers even for those who reject him…
His message for us all is a message of hope. Now, some of you will know an incredible song, sung by supporters of an incredible football club, “You’ll never walk alone” (you’re thinking of humming it already aren’t you!!) Well, there’s a line in the song that says, “Walk on, walk on, with hope in your hearts and you’ll never walk alone”.
What a challenge those words are to us as a church today – how often when we worry about numbers of people coming through our doors, the amount of money we have, buildings needing repairs, not enough heating in the church, or too much heating in the church, not enough young people, too many noisy children…. You’ll know the sort of list I mean, but how often when we worry about those things do we actually look as though we’re walking on with hope in our hearts, how often do we look like people, like a church that’s walking on with hope, knowing that we’re never alone… Because I think people don’t want to see a church that’s looking like we’re struggling, that’s looking like we haven’t got answers, they want to see God and we know God – good news is there to be shared.
We can truly walk with confidence when we walk with God and seek his will and pray to be filled with his Holy Spirit, we can walk with confidence when we distance ourselves from the idea of church being a building, but still love our buildings as places of fellowship, worship, prayer and growth, places of welcome for everyone….
We never walk alone, God is always with us, but there are times we forget that…
And so as Ministry areas we are called to walk together with confidence and with hope, walk together with new visions of mission, walk together with a determination to reveal more and more clearly the love of God for all people…
The Bishop has asked us to dream dreams and that isn’t just a phrase he has made up, but a biblical principle – we are to dream dreams as to how, with God’s help, the church might look today and into the future, and I think the time for starting from the negative points has long gone, in fact I don’t think there was such a time – we are at a point when we need to spend time thinking of what we can do not what we can’t.
And so we have a new beginning, and I hope that you will embrace the new beginning with hope, because that will lead to transformation… That’s a really scary word, because it so often means change, and lots of us don’t really like change ! But our faith is built on transformation – created perfectly in the beginning of time we so often rebelled against God, but he promises transformation through his free gifts of grace and mercy, and because he still thinks, and sometimes I’m sure we don’t even understand why, that we are ‘fantastic’ !
So as a ministry area let’s walk together with hope, let’s know that God is a God of transformation, that God isn’t a God of decline and defeat… he never has been… Some thought Jesus on the cross was beaten but he wasn’t… He was about to display the greatest and most life changing moment in history, life changing for us all…
And our second reading this evening talked about some of that transformation – the incredible promises of God – a new Jerusalem, a new world in other words where we are closer to one another and closer to God, where ain and tears and crying are no more, where we recognise that God is truly what is important in our lives, the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, the source of life, true abundant life, the true provider of the water of life, water which is given freely…
And so as we begin this journey into Ministry areas, let’s work together and pray together and meet together and eat together, let’s think together and dream dreams together and let’s trust that God is going to work through us and in us to bring us and others ever closer to him…
Comments