Change ?

Through Lent at each of the evening services we were going to be thinking about a particular word and it’s meaning for us in the Church today and for us as individuals. Last week we thought about tolerance, and concluded that in all things the over riding principle of the Christian faith is to love – love God and love our neighbour, whoever they may be.

This evening because of the events that have taken place over the past year in this area, and the publicity given to those events in recent weeks, we have taken a slightly different path with our service, with the Church open for prayer, along with other Churches in the Borough, and this short service to allow people the chance to reflect on the problems, and also to pray for the future.

The theme of this evening’s service would have been to think about the word ‘Change’ and that’s what I want to think about for a few moments.

Someone once said, ‘I was a revolutionary when I was young and all my prayer to God was, ‘Lord give me the energy to change the world’. As I approached middle age and realised that half my life was gone without changing a single soul, I changed my prayer to ‘Lord give me the grace to change all those who come into contact with me – just my family and my friends, and I’ll be content’.

Now that I am old and my days are numbered, my prayer now is, ‘Lord give me the grace to change myself’… If I had prayed for this right from the start my life would not have been wasted.

Change begins with us ! This is the point Jesus is making in our gospel reading this evening as he talks of us being salt and light (Matt.5:13-16). The salt that’s lost it’s taste is no use to anyone, and what use is light if we don’t use it in darkness ?

That is our challenge in difficult days – over the past few weeks I have been asked many times what I think we can do to prevent the tragic deaths of so many young people, and the answer each time is that ‘I really don’t know’… Change is desperately necessary, but how that change will come about is less easy to pinpoint.

But this isn’t a suggestion that we do nothing. Gathering here this evening to pray is tremendously important – God hears our prayers, and we must continually offer our prayers for others, and for ourselves, as a priority in our lives. But there is also the challenge to be prepared for change ourselves. It is pointless to expect change around us if we will never change.

Sometimes change is good, and sometimes not so good. Sometimes we refuse to change, hoping that things around us will stay just as they are, and in comfortable situations it’s understandable, but as society offers us changes and new challenges we must respond as well.

In Jesus we have a light who can shine even into the darkest situations. In Jesus we have someone who can offer hope and comfort to those in despair. In Jesus we have a strength who can help us to cope with the problems we will inevitably face in our lives.

But in Jesus we have someone who doesn’t want to be left just as a last turning point when everything else seems lost because Jesus came to bring a reason to live for today as well as a hope for tomorrow. Jesus came to take away the wrongs of our past, he came to show us that life is precious and there to be lived to the full, and he came to offer us the joy of knowing that that life, lived in his presence will never end.

Change begins with us …. Through our communities today there are many people hurting, there are many who have faced loss and many who are worrying about loved ones… We can’t take away all of their problems, we can’t make them simply disappear, but we can and must show them some of the love and compassion of Jesus, and offer them hope for today and tomorrow.

As Jesus died on the cross we are told the curtains of the Temple were torn in two, the earth shook, and a Roman Centurion watching said, ‘Surely this man was the Son of God.’ It was a dramatic realisation, but it was a realisation that inevitably must have changed that man’s life. Today lives need to be changed, people need to feel hope, people need to have someone to turn to – Jesus is ready to receive them, and we must be too… AMEN