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Stewardship Talks : Privilege and Responsibility

Crisis

Everywhere I go someone will stand up with a voice of doom and declare the church to be in crisis. Then someone else will stand up and declare that the church is not in crisis. But I wish they wouldn’t! Because the church is always in crisis and its greatest danger is that it is only occasionally aware of it.

The Church is always caught in the abiding tension between its essential nature and its empirical condition – between what it’s called to be and what it actually is. That is why the whole of our Christian journey and pilgrimage is towards becoming what we know we are in Christ. And no one emphasised this more than Paul. And in no place is it spelled out with greater clarity than in Philippians 3:12: “I have not yet won, but I am still running”. In other words I haven’t yet achieved my goal – I haven’t yet arrived at my destination – but I’m getting there. I am still running, trying to capture the prize for which Christ has captured me.

This is not just true of Paul and his experience, it is true of the whole Church of God. For over 250 years the Church of God in this place has borne witness to the faith of Christ and each generation has believed that it has been called for such a time as this – not yet having won, but still running towards the goal to lay hold upon that for which Christ has laid hold upon them.

And is not this the context that your project finds its meaning and authenticity? This is our time of opportunity. This is our day of privilege and responsibility. Faced with a future in which the challenges to and opportunities for the gospel are likely to be unprecedented, this particular generation must (along with the divine resources to be found in God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit) use its own best endeavours of heart and mind, our God-given gifts of imagination, skill, courage, committed discipleship, financial resources to fulfil God’s mission here for the foreseeable future.

Vision

Someone has said that the Church exists by mission as a fire exists by burning. Your project declares loud and clear where your mission priorities lie. It is to love God with all our hearts and our neighbours as ourselves. Our primary task is to worship God in his holiness. But the vision of God captured in our worship must send us out into the community to live and love and serve and work to his praise and glory.

I am sure it was that vision of God through Christ which captured Paul, motivated his mission and sent him everywhere facing the most horrendous circumstances to try and capture that for which he had been captured, namely to fulfil the mission of Christ and to inherit Christ in all his fullness. It is a similar vision that has inspired your project.

Change

Many people find change difficult. They see it as a denial of the past. But with God change is not a denial of the past but a pathway continuous with the past along which the God of newness and renewal and change leads his people from one degree of glory to another. Your project is not a denial of the past – quite the reverse. It is the means whereby, in our day, and facing new and complex challenges that our forebears didn’t, we can maintain the gospel priorities of those who have kept the faith and kept running in days gone by and, in doing so, have brought us to where we are.

If we are going to see further than they saw it can only be by standing on their shoulders. Listen again to what Paul said. “I have not yet won, but I am still running. All I can say is that I forget the past and I strain ahead for that which is still to come. I am racing for the finish.”

What did Paul mean by “forget the past”? Was he suggesting a suspension of memory? A theologian of his competence couldn’t possibly mean that when he knew that God’s instruction to his people in the Old Testament was “beware, lest you forget the Lord your God. Remember how the Lord your God led you through the wilderness.” And how could be possibly be suggesting an erasing of the memory when the central act of worship is a vital act of memory: “Do this in remembrance of me”. And we dare not forget the past history of this place with all its men and women of God who have met the challenges of their day and brought us to where we are today. We rejoice in their memory.

So what is Paul saying? Something very important. He carried two great burdens. One, the burden of failure – he had persecuted the Church of Jesus Christ and put Christians to death. And the burden of success – he had had a remarkable ministry as the apostle to the gentiles. So what I believe he is saying is, in your pursuit of Christ and his mission, you must not be paralysed by past failures nor impeded by past achievements. This is a new day and you are called for such a time as this.

The imagery he uses is of a runner in a race and the word he uses – ‘strain ahead’ or ‘stretching out’ is very significant. It is all about concentration on the things in front of you rather than the things behind you. The language is vivid, tense, repetitious – “pressing, stretching, pushing, straining” – you get the picture of the lungs burning, the muscles aching, the heart pumping, the perspiration pouring.

That may not be an inaccurate description of the committed effort that will be needed to complete what you have begun in your project. We need to follow Paul’s example and fix our eyes on the goal at the end of that particular race, that particular prize, that particular task. So that we might grasp that for which Christ has grasped this particular Church family and bring the dream to reality.

People v buildings

Sometimes well meaning people say to me “Bishop, people are more important than buildings”. And I have to reply, “Yes, they are. But buildings are for people.” And church buildings, together with church people, those who worship in them, must declare the gospel of the resurrection, that the living God is in the midst of his people bringing newness and life, touching people where they are and allowing the many-sided, multi-faceted gospel diamond to shine the light and glory of God onto their contemporary, complex lives, to give direction and wholeness so that they may become with us people on the way to becoming what God would have us be. And I don’t accept the dichotomy of buildings versus people. Together we must declare the same gospel of the resurrection.

We have not yet won, but we are still running because we are part of God’s continuing story in this Church and community. We are charged with the responsibility of telling God’s story with freshness, integrity, and practical application by the way we live, by the values we share, the priorities we set, the decisions we take and the vision we hold for our church and community.

Should not our commitment to this project be motivated and under-girded by the common fact, shared by us all, that our baptism into Christ carries with it the responsibility of keeping the story alive, fresh and pertinent and telling the story by sharing it with others?

The continuing story

We are tellers of a story that has its focus in Jesus Christ. It is a story that began before the world was created and will end only when God chooses to draw all things to himself. It is a story of Abraham and a journey into the unknown. It is a story of Moses and liberation, of Job and the struggle to make sense out of misfortune. It is a story of Paul and his witness to the power of faith. It is a story of how God has touched your life and mine in a thousand different ways. It is a story of today and tomorrow and of decades to come. It is a story of faith in the future because we are people of faith and therefore we are part of the story. By faith we have made the story our story and we are called to make it known to others.

We are so privileged. As part of the story of God we have faith to offer a world that has lost faith in itself. There’s no room for arrogance for we are merely beggars telling other beggars where to find bread. We are so privileged. We have hope to offer a world where so many live without hope.

When the Spirit came at Pentecost everyone heard in his own tongue the wonderful works of God. It is a symbol of the Spirit’s ministry – separateness and division were overcome. The dividing wall between people was broken down. Here indeed is hope for a divided world. If within our Churches there is openness and acceptance, love, support, honesty, healing, reconciliation, justice and peace then we have a gospel of hope to offer the world.

We are so privileged. We have love to offer. The love of Christ constitutes the model and the measure of the love which the Church owes to the world. It was a costly love, revealing its deepest dimension on the cross. It will not be different with the Church of today. The proof of the risen Lord’s identity was the scars he bore. Because of them his disciples believed and a church which bears the costly scars and wounds of love will not lack credibility in its witness to a suffering and broken world.

We are so privileged for supremely we have Christ to offer. He is the personification of faith, hope and love. He is the one without whom neither the church nor the community can be made whole. “Faith in the future” is ultimately about our fulfilling of the two great commandments – to love God and to love our neighbours as ourselves. That’s what it’s based on – our conviction that people need God and our need to offer Christ, in whom God became flesh. Its achievement and realisation of its vision will result in so many more becoming part of the story of God, so that our children and grandchildren will look back and give thanks that we kept running and rose to the challenge of our day, and be proud to stand on our shoulders as they face the challenges and opportunities of their day and run the race that is set before them.

Fix your eyes on Jesus

Let us take one further step into the wonderful imagery of my text, for the words that Paul uses describe a runner who has stopped watching his feet. If you have to watch your feet and where you’re placing them it impedes progress and slows you down. Paul had been running for years before he met Christ. He had always been watching his feet, intent on keeping every jot and tittle of Pharisaic Law-keeping. He made little or no progress until the day when he met Christ. Then his eyes were lifted from his feet to the Christ of glory and he was able to run with purpose and finish the course that was set before him.

We could spend time watching our feet, avoiding the so-called potholes and problems, or we can once more fix our eyes on Jesus and run to reach the goal and obtain the prize. We have not yet won, but we are still running. We are the resource that God will use to complete the task and realise the vision. It will be sacrificially costly in every sense but that is the pathway Jesus took. May he give us all grace to follow in his footsteps to the glory of God?