ARCHDEACON OFWORCESTERS CHARGE
Tuesday 5 June 2018
Readings: Ezekiel 47,1-12 and 1 Peter 2,1-10
The churchwardens among you are probablythinking as we read the first reading from Ezekiel, Im glad I wasnt thechurchwarden in the temple when all that damp appeared.
Some of you might be thinking; would thatwe could get back to the days when just living stones is all we had to dealwith, and not these solid ones as well. So I want to say first of all a verybig thank you. Thank you on behalf of the congregations and the communitieswhich you serve.It may feel sometimesthat youre in well, not quite smoke filled rooms, but little rooms doing lotsof business and working to keep the business of the church going, but it is areally important gift that you bring, not just to the church, not just to thecongregation but to the towns, the villages, the parishes in which you are andof which you are the churchwardens. So a very big thank you.
I think the theme this year, from whatIve heard people saying to me, was not quite admin overload - does that soundfamiliar?Those letters GDPR came upquite a few times and I was thinking back this is my fourth visitation now thatI can measure the years by what issue Im going to be the lightning rod for inthese discussions. Not that I want you to feel sorry for me, you wont I know,but I remember one of the first visitations was when the Safeguarding toolkitcame out. There was a sort of groan: how will we do this? Does it make adifference?And I have to say, it iswonderful that you do do it and each year thats being fulfilled more and more -and yes, it does make a difference because we want, particularly with all thethings weve seen recently in the press about our church, about otherorganisations, we want our churches to be as safe as they can be for children,for vulnerable adults.So sometimes thethings that seem like box-ticking are really important, doing the Kingdom thingswe believe in to make our churches places we know people can come to and feelsafe and valued.So thank you for that.
I remember the year after that when itwas Fairer Share.Or as it was nicknamedonce towards a less unfair share.Trying to divide the cake in a way that is equitable, for the missionand ministry not just of the church where you are or I am, but for the wholeministry of the Church in this diocese and across the parishes, the schools,the chaplaincies, across the whole patch.Trying together to share the cost of that so that we can effectively ministertoGods love in places perhaps we dontsee or have contact with, but where we believe that needs to be shown andreflected.And this year interestinglywe are re-doing Fairer Share. It seems to be a little bit easier this timeround.
The one that came back this year is theone Im partly to blame for.Its theBuildings for Mission survey, which collided with GDPR, for which I take noblame at all. Ive a feeling with GDPR that in way we are sort of collateraldamage here.European law, in trying tohit some of the big companies that are taking data, means they came in withthis very far reaching law.But thankyou for all that you have been doing for that as well. For that, of course, isalso trying to honour people, isnt it?Not trying to exploit people and thats something we believe in and wantto do.The Buildings for Mission surveyis what it says on the tin.Ourbuildings arent just for conservation, though they are very beautiful placesand they speak to people of God.Theyare a part of Gods mission wherever we are.And we want to find the best way of making use of those, the complementaryway that not every church has to have the same ministry because of the buildingit is.They are all different.This one might not be quite like the churchyou come from.We all have anappropriate ministry for the churches and the buildings and the settings inwhich we are.And I hope that theBuildings for Mission survey will get a conversation going between us, so thatbeyond our congregations we can together see how we can reflect Gods love andhis glory in the world.
So for all of that Id like to say a bigthank you. Thank you, too, for the conversations that weve had and therelationships we build up within deaneries, between parishes and across thediocese. Relationship is something which is surely absolutely at the heart ofall we are and believe as Christians.
But in this place [Pershore Abbey] Ifind myself returning to a theme that some of you I know have heard me talkabout fairly recently - the theme of St Benedict.This was one of his monasteries, aBenedictine monastery.We have Evesham,Malvern Priory, both Malvern priories, Worcester Cathedral, Tewkesbury down theroad, many others.Benedict was a monkaround the turn of the 400s into the 500s, very early in the life of thechurch, and Im fascinated by the man.Im fascinated by the fact that when the world around him seemed to befalling apart, particularly Europe seemed to be falling apart and Rome wasbeing overrun, when it seemed that everything familiar was disappearing, a mancalled Benedict took a group of people up into a mountain and formed a littlepraying community.
A faithful community of prayer in timesof change.And that vision spread.We are sitting here because it spread as faras here, over a thousand miles away - the vision that faithful communities canbring Gods love and hope to a world in turmoil.Many people today are saying that the world isin turmoil, and I guess its not so different to the world in Jesus day, inBenedicts day. In fact, we human beings are pretty good at turmoil, arent we?
But we also have this calling asChristians to try and hold on to something which gives a message of hope, asign of encouragement in the world.AndBenedict formed these faithful communities of prayer and it seems to me thatsnot a bad description for your parish church, to be a faithful community ofprayer especially in a time of change and turmoil.
This is different from being a holyhuddle.Somehow Benedicts monasterydidnt succeed in being holy huddles; in fact they became places of hospitalityand welcome. They celebrated the Eucharist regularly. When we take bread andwine, we take the ordinary stuff of the world and we say the ordinary stuff ofthe world can show us the glory of God.We take the world seriously as Christians, we dont try to escape fromit or shut it out.And so Benedictscommunities were faithful communities, but they were also world facing andworld affirming communities.They wereinterested in what went on outside the walls of the monastery as well.
If ever we want to do our mission actionplanning, however we describe that, maybe the best place to start is outsidethe front door of our church, actually in the parish, with the parish in ourview, not just the familiarities of the building around us.It seems to me that today, as ever, ourchurches are called to be communities of blessing with a message of hope.And the message of hope is that our God isun-put-downable and nothing that can be thrown at God throws God, becauseultimately Jesus rose from the dead, ultimately Gods love is stronger thananything we can imagine.
So how do we as churchwardens andpriests alike together help build communities of blessing which bless thecommunities in which we are set with messages of hope?The two readings which we had this eveninghave both those at their heart.Petersletter, our second reading, people think was probably written to a small groupof quite dispersed and dispossessed Christians.They probably didnt have a building to worship in, they didnt havemuch of a place, they were pushed aside, they were marginalised at the time,they were up against it.
Peter wrote words of encouragement. Hesaid to them, first of all, by quoting from Scripture, that you have a history,you have a story, you belong.Youre notjust the dispossessed, youre not just the poor, youre not just the nobodies,you belong in this history of salvation.See I am laying in Zion a cornerstone and precious. Youre a chosenrace.He puts them in a line, in astory, he gives them this story: people who felt they had no story, they becomepart of the story, Gods story with us.
To people who had no place he gives thema place and that place is Christ. Christ who is the cornerstone, the one onwhich the whole building rests.So tothese people who are placeless they are given a place where they can feel athome:at home in God.
And thirdly he gives to them a standing,a status, which they didnt believe they had.You are a chosen race, a royal priesthood.Once you were not a people but now you areGods people.This is a really strongmessage of hope the writer of this epistle is giving to those Christians whomight have thought everything was hopeless.They have a story, they have a place, they have a standing, astatus.They count.
Thats a message that so many of us needto hear.Perhaps I need to hear it againas well, perhaps we all do, telling it to each other, that were valued, thatwere chosen, that were holy.Andinteresting for Peter it says this not anybodys doing other than Gods, ourGod is like that, our God wants to love us into life, building that communityof disposed, uncomfy Christians into a community which could be a blessing, acommunity with a message of hope that they first received from themselves.And if Peter wrote this I wonder why he did, because,if you remember, Peter was often the one who got it wrong, often the one whoput his foot in it, often the one who knew what it meant to be forgiven, to beloved into life.He knew what it was toreceive that love.He had to learn atthe Last Supper to receive, to have his feet washed and that is a great messageof hope surely.
Then back to that first reading fromEzekiel, the vision of the temple.Ithink you have to imagine a tour guide taking place round the temple, showingthem all the wonderful things and then he shows them this water coming out andits a thin trickle. Its a trickle in a parched and dry land, and it growsever wider, it grows ever deeper.I lovethe bit when he says along the way, mortal have you seen this?Are you paying attention? Have you noticed?
For what comes from the temple isntjust for the religious few, its not just for those in the temple.It is blessing for that desert land.It ends up wonderfully, so rich, bringingliving water to the Dead Sea, dead through its saltiness, then as now.And these trees grow, their fruit will befood, their leaves will be for healing. This water that flows through thetemple is a gift for the community to everyone.Its an ever deepening river of blessing.Isnt that a wonderful message of hope?
And isnt that a wonderful picture foryour parish church? To imagine a stream coming from your church of Gods love,which is an ever deepening river of blessing for the whole world, for God lovesthe world so much.Ezekiels prophecywas when they had no temple, when they were in exile, when all seemed absolutelyhopeless. he had a vision that somehow the community that would grow aroundthis would be a community of blessing for the whole world, a message of hopefor everyone.
We started with the business, the stuff,the safeguarding toolkit, GDPR.I endwith communities that bless the world, messages of hope.But theyre all part and parcel of the samething, you know, because God is there in the very ordinary things doing thatblessing and giving that hope.In thosesurveys, in the work that we do, in the work that sometimes seems so mundane,its all part of that story, that story which helps us become, under Godsgrace and in his power alone, thank God, in his power alone, communities in ourparishes, in this Archdeaconry, in this diocese here and now, which can beblessing to their communities and radiate a message of hope.
Amen
