Sermons
24th Feb 2008 - Third Sunday in Lent
(Week three of the Stewardship campaign: Looking ahead)
(Also the baptism of Thomas Sebastian Hunt)
Our focus today and quite rightly so, is fixed on little Thomas Sebastian as he comes with the support of his parents and godparents to the waters of baptism. He comes to that living water Jesus told the woman at the well about, the water that within Thomas will become a spring of water gushing up to eternal life. Baptism speaks powerfully of past and future in thanksgiving and in hope. We give thanks for the very gift of life itself praising God for his goodness in calling Thomas into being and into the world that God loves and we also look forwards with hope for all that the future holds for this little boy. As he is enfolded within the love of the Christian community, as he is given the gift of new life, we pray with hope that he will flourish within the existing and exciting life of this church, we pray with hope that he will grow in grace and receive the gifts of God that come to each of us as members together of the living body of truth which is our Christian fellowship. Through the waters of baptism we begin to experience the life of eternity to which God calls us. So we are gathered in thanksgiving and in hope. And at this time in our life together we are using this sense of thanksgiving and hope to empower us to answer God’s call to us to equip this community in all its needs. We are I hope beginning to realize that the call to us through this time of reflection in Lent is one that we need to answer with dynamic affirmation. Affirming not only that we are committed to all that is happening already in our midst and giving thanks for it, but also committed to resourcing our future together.
So what can Thomas expect of us? Over the next few years what is he likely to find happening in this community into which we immerse him today. What can each child expect of us here in this place? Well I think they can expect us to have vision and to have the guts to follow that vision through.
So what is the vision? Last week I spoke a little about the sense of discerning what God has been up to already as a pointer to where he may be leading us. I spoke of the tremendous variety of gifts God is calling into use here and the tremendous variety of people God is calling into his service here. People answering God’s call to run children’s church, and soup kitchens, and art exhibitions, and Lent Courses, and community magazines. People called to organize websites and fruit and vegetable co-ops and Facebook groups any number of other things. People also called to worship God, people called to bring their children to the waters of baptism. The vision is dynamic and varied, the vision is full of thanksgiving and full of hope, and as I said last week we must take seriously the possibility that we are only at the start of something here.
Vision alone founders, vision without the guts to follow it through is whistling in the wind. And the guts needed for this vision to continue its way, to continue to listen to God and move in the ways he directs, the guts needed are of two sorts. We need people who commit to give of their time and talents and we also need people who can now step forward to give more realistically of their own financial resources. We are time and talents rich, but financial stability poor. Over these first four weeks in Lent we are trying to address this problem, trying to ask what it is that God might be asking of us. And today we do that in the light of hope for the future. The possibilities that lie ahead are very rich indeed: int eh next year we will receive a full time curate, we are already receiving blessings in abundance from the work of Peter our Pastoral Assistant, we will in the next 18 months have to decide if we have the guts to go ahead with our development project, a project designed to widen the community ministry of this church, if our congregations continue to grow we may have to think of further diversification in services, shouldn’t we be starting house-groups, have regular Bible study, renew several aspects of the interior of the building including the organ, the heating and the lighting? The answer is yes to all of these, but the answer can only be yes if we have put in place a financial structure that is sustainable and also a financial culture that takes the call to support the church as a priority. The church cannot exist on vision alone, and there is nothing to rely on here except ourselves. The vision is full of hope and I couldn’t be more convinced that we are seeing something remarkable happening here in the flourishing of so much of church life but wouldn’t we to be most pitied if we had failed to commit ourselves in that one area of life that we least like to talk about in church, the area of finance. So we need again to ask uncomfortable questions: How close to the 5% target are you? Have you ensured that you are giving in a tax-efficient way? is your support of the church a priority and not an afterthought? Is your support for this place sacrificial? Because what after all will we say to Thomas when he is five if we have missed this opportunity? Can you imagine having to say that we backed out of supporting the development project for lack of financial nerve? that we had to cut back on the time we ask Peter to give to the parish because we hadn’t got our house in order? That we wanted to expand into new ventures but that we couldn’t quite find the extra finance needed?
So on this joyful day we give thanks to God for the gifts that he gives to each of us, we focus our attention on Thomas and this great moment in his life when he is drawn into the life of the Christian community here, and we pray that we will take seriously God’s disturbing call to to support the life of the church here. Jesus promises the water that gushes up to eternal life, and if, like me, you think that that is a truth worth preserving at all costs let us work together, all of us, to see if we can’t commit ourselves afresh today to supporting the community in which Thomas will experience that truth which is eternal. God calls each of us to the experience of his eternity, it is the highest calling we can imagine let us pray that we hear take up that calling with courage.