We make a difference !

Somebody once said that if you think you’re too small to make a difference then you have obviously never been in bed with a mosquito !

It’s a frightening but very true fact that all of us, who call ourselves Christians, have huge responsibilities, both to share our faith with others and also in the way we live out our lives.

This evening in the gospel reading (Matthew 23:1-12), we heard the account of Jesus criticising the Pharisees for their behaviour. He talked of how they told people to do things, things they wouldn’t consider doing for themselves, of how they liked the titles which gave them a prominent place in society, and then he offered perhaps the most cutting line of all – ‘The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted.’

This is pretty severe stuff that Jesus is saying, and as I was reading these words it’s very hard not to wonder if, at times, he couldn’t be saying many of these things to his Church today. The Church, with all of its faults, remains an important fellowship, and that fact means that we must try and ensure that at all times we are seeking to follow the will of Jesus.

And so, going back to the story of the mosquito, every one of us has a big part to play in the image of the Church, and far more importantly, the image we are showing to others of Jesus.

There’s a story about an East End villain, who had a brother who worked with him who died. The man went to a local Vicar and asked if he would hold the funeral service, and he offered him £ 50,000 if he would say that his brother was a Saint.

The Vicar thought for a moment and then accepted the offer, but once he got back home he was full of regret – How could he now fulfil his word and yet hold on to his integrity as well as the money ?

On the day of the funeral the Vicar spoke of the deceased, ‘He was a rogue, a thief, a cheat and a liar, but, compared with his brother he was a Saint.’

Image is a huge problem for the Church today, but I wonder how much we help ourselves sometimes ? Every one of us will, at some time, I am sure, have come across some unpleasant bit of Church politics, every one of us will have witnessed problems between people in Churches, maybe even been involved in some ourselves, every one of us will know of an occasion when we or a fellow Christian has gone out of Church, and behaved in a very unchristian sort of way !

And so we are challenged to ask ourselves 2 questions, ‘What are we doing to bring people into the kingdom of God’, and ‘what are we doing to keep people out of it ?’

There’s another story about 2 cars which are waiting at traffic lights. The lights turns green but the man in the first car doesn’t notice. A woman in the car behind gets very agitated, and begins tapping on her steering wheel, and yelling at the man to move. But still he doesn’t move.

The woman is now going absolutely mad in her car, ranting and raving, banging the steering wheel, and then the lights turns amber. She presses the horn of her car once again, makes a rude gesture at him and shouts again. The man at last hears the commotion, sees the amber light and accelerates through just as the lights go red again.

The woman is now absolutely beside herself, screaming in frustration, gesticulating, blasting her horn wildly, and then still in mid-rant she hears a tap on the window, and looks up to see a policeman. He tells her to turn off the engine, get out of the car, and put her hands together – as she gets out he immediately handcuffs her and, along with his fellow officer, bundles her into the back of the police car.

She is too bewildered to ask any questions at this point and she is driven to the police station where she is fingerprinted, photographed, searched and put in a cell to await questioning. After a couple of hours a police officer comes in and escorts her back to the desk where her possessions are returned.

The officer said, ‘I’m sorry for the mistake but we had a call that said a car just like yours had just been stolen, and when I pulled up behind you, I noticed you blasting your horn, shouting, gesticulating and so on, and then I noticed the Christian fish emblem on the back of your car, and the ‘What would Jesus do’ sticker, and the other sticker which said, ‘Follow me and follow Jesus’, and I just assumed that because you were behaving like that the car must have been stolen.

As Christians we often won’t be better than the next person, we often won’t even be as good as the next person, but whatever we are we will be judged far more harshly, and when we are judged, people will also be making judgements about our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

There will inevitably be times when we fail, but let’s try at all times, with God’s help, to do justice to him in the way we think, the way we act and the way we speak. AMEN