Words and actions need to match

A rather pompous Vicar was in school one day trying to impress upon the children the importance of living the Christian life. "Why do people a call me a Christian?" the man asked… After a moment's pause, one youngster said, "Maybe it's because they don't know you."

This week we have marked the celebration of All Saints Day and on that day we reflect on great saints of the past but remind ourselves also that we are called to be the saints of today… Sadly we’re not perfect people but we are called to be saints – and a saint isn’t, fortunately for us, someone who is perfect, but someone who is trying to live as God wants them to live… 

And our readings this morning work well with this theme. In the Old Testament reading from the Prophet Micah (3:5-12) we’re told of the dangers of prophets who are actually offering a false message, a message that rather conveniently suits them – and that’s a danger we can all understand. All of us are inclined at times to make judgements about people or situations…. 

We might look at individuals who are struggling in some way and wonder how they got themselves into such a state. We might look at those who hold different views to ours and feel that we want to tell them they’re wrong and we’re right. We might look at people who are poor or persecuted or homeless or in prison and think it’s nothing to do with us…. 

Judgements are made in all kinds of different ways and sometimes even with the best intentions but our job as Christians, though we haven’t always got that right in the history of the church, is to love not to judge, but it’s pretty clear that judging is easier than loving…  

The great American evangelist Billy Graham said, ‘It is the Holy Spirit's job to convict, God's job to judge and my job to love’…

Micah looked around at the situation at the time and he saw lots of worship and sacrifices at the Temple but he also saw poverty and injustice was rife and there was little being done to help stop those things… 

In the world today, a world of millions of refugees, a world of injustice and poverty for so many, a world where so often darkness seems to be winning over light, we have to be ready to listen to the challenge of Micah and speak into the darkness about light and hope….

And in the NT reading from Paul’s 1st letter to the Thessalonians (2:9-13) he is writing to a community that he loves dearly, and he is writing to encourage them – he gives thanks for their work and their commitment in the letter… All the time, as he encourages them, you get the sense that he is urging them to be strong against the persecution they would inevitably face as they lived out their faith… 

This week I was in a discussion which was quite challenging – we talked about the church and about the change in preaching over the years… And we reflected on the fact that we perhaps don’t often leave church really challenged about something in our life… We have a wonderful message of a God who loves us and who wants the best for us and who gives us chance after chance… and that is all true, but this God is also, as the prophet Micah would remind us, a God of justice and a God who, by virtue of what he has done for us, surely is deserving of a response from us…. 

The gospel message is not an easy one – it is about love, joy, peace… it is about hope and resurrection, but in it there are also calls for us to make about what we’re doing for God. In this letter to the Thessalonians Paul was reminding the Christians to stay on course, to not be distracted by things around them and to know that Jesus who died and rose again is still present and active in the world today…. 

And in our gospel reading today (Matt 24:1-14) Jesus came out of the Temple and predicted that it would be destroyed… I think we have to try and put ourselves in first century Jerusalem – this was an incredible building, beautiful and massive with long porches and columns and Jesus said it would be destroyed, and the disciples struggled to imagine it – and yet forty years later it would be destroyed by the Romans… 

But the point Jesus was making was more important than even that – he was making the point that this building meant nothing if it was not drawing people to live out a true faith, and there he was making a point which has to resound in all churches today… 

Later, sitting on the Mount of Olives with his disciples who wanted to know when this end was coming he told them they didn’t need to concern themselves with that at all but rather that they needed to be ready whenever God called them. In other words, they were to live consistently trying to seek and do God’s will… 

And he warned them that there would be dangers, that distractions would perhaps leave them feeling cold, that things would get in the way of them loving people as he told them to love…

And I think this raises huge challenges for us as churches today – there is the point about the buildings and the need not to be attached totally to a building but to recognize a building is just a tool which can enable us to get closer to God and to each other, but there’s also the point about distractions that can stop us from concentrating on what is really important…. 

It’s good to have money in the church to pay bills, to maintain the fabric of the building. It’s good that we don’t sit here with big holes in the roof ! It’s good and important that we gather together socially… But money and social events and buildings are not what we are primarily about as a church. 

As a church, we are about Jesus – about showing our love for him in words and in actions. We’re about recognizing the transforming and powerful challenge of the gospel to live lives which are seeking to be worthy of Jesus. And we’re about telling others about that love…. 

There is one more lesson that comes from our readings this morning I think and that is about the future of the church… Micah prophesied way back over 700 years before Jesus was born about the need to live out our faith – to not just go through the motions of worship, but to show transformation in our lives and the possibility of transformation in the lives of others… Without those things are words and our faith become meaningless… 

Later Jesus spoke about the destruction of the Temple because it really wasn’t doing what it was built for…. As Jesus looks at churches today, I wonder whether he may be tempted to repeat the same message. To say to us that if we’re not doing his work then churches may be destroyed…. At the meeting in the week I mentioned earlier someone spoke of a story about Jesus coming to meet a Church Council one day… 

The Council got themselves ready and waited and waited – eventually they got the message that Jesus was in the pub over the road, with a large crowd gathered around him…. They eventually persuaded him to come over to their meeting but soon got fed up as he didn’t listen to all the things they told him they were doing or needed to do – instead he told them about love and about welcome and about sharing these things….

Sometimes we run the risk of leaving Jesus out of what we do in our churches, and even in our lives… Our priority is him – to recognize his love for us, to respond to that love and to share that love… 

Let us pray : Lord we thank you for the privilege of serving you in your church. Help us to remember that it is your church and help us to remain focused on you. Help us to grow together in love for one another and to extend that love way beyond these wallsfor your glory and for the extension of your Kingdom. AMEN