All You Need is Love.

Text: John 2, 1-11

Ok, so Jesus is at a wedding, and the wine runs out, and he turns a load of water to wine. Well known story. Big deal. Clever, but so what? We've seen Dynamo apparently walk on water on the Thames and David Blane stay in a box for I don't know how long. It takes a lot to impress us now.
Well what is it that weddings celebrate? (ask Anthony and Maria)
Love.

LEARNING

“The local church needs to know the needs of the community in which it is set, and what resources it can mobilise to meet those needs”

Jesus was someone who knew how to be at the right place at the right time. He had this uncanny knack of being able to see a need and meet a need wherever he went.

One of the things anyone getting married needs is a venue. And we’ve got one.

But what else might they need that could happen in this venue? How do we develop a plan for using this building? What might need to change to allow us to meet an identified need? (mention change of furniture-maybe it will be different every time?)

As a new vicar I am well aware that finding out what people need could take time as I get to know people and allow them to get to know me, and I’m hoping to come round and meet with you lot-(appointments list) but what about the needs of the others who aren’t here? Our friends and neighbours, and their friends and neighbours? What other needs might people have, and what resources might we have to meet them?

OUTREACH

“the church needs to be a visible and active presence in the community, sharing gospel values and building relationships”

Did you ever wonder what Jesus was doing at a wedding party? Wouldn't he be too busy being holy, playing God somewhere else, to mix with ordinary people like you and me at a social event?
Actually, no. Jesus learned how to be holy precisely by mixing with ordinary people - and he taught ordinary people how to be holy by hanging around with them. No-one was too bad, or sad, or strange, or old, or young, or rich, or poor, or dull, or anything for Jesus to want to be with.
Jesus went and hung out where the people were at, bringing transformation by being there. He didn’t wait for them to come to him. (Blue coat neighbourhood forum etc.) As church we must expect to do more than that which can happen in this building. Jesus didn’t have a base for his ministry-he moved around to where people already were. This reading teaches us that although it is great what we do in here, we also need to focus on what we do out there.

VOLUNTARY SERVICE

“The church needs to offer itself for the benefit of those who are not members”

So Jesus was where the people were, and it became apparent that there was a problem. Something was ruining the party, something was stopping people from really relaxing, letting go and experiencing the good things. The wine ran out, and Jesus did what needed to be done. He made a difference.

Well there’s something ruining the party for all of us, stopping us from really relaxing and experiencing the good things. It is a separation from each other and from God that the Bible calls sin and it causes all sorts of problems and difficulties. And something needs to be done.

Someone once said that, ‘Church should not be a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners.’ When you think of a museum everything is carefully categorised and laid out, with 'do not touch' signs and roped off areas and repeated admonishments to keep a reverent silence. When you think of a hospital you think of confusion as you enter, seeking the signpost to the ward you are heading to, and all around you see broken damaged people, some of whom you see being fixed, and some you see deteriorate or even die despite the best efforts of the staff. It’s a place where people try to do what needs to be done, facing the realities of how difficult that can often be.

All too often churches are a too like museums and not enough like hospitals. How might we learn from Jesus and do what needs to be done here? Someone else said “the church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of non-members.” As well as building on the relationships we already have those groups already using this building we need to form a plan, a vision, for what could be possible here. If you have ideas, share them with each other.

I see this building potentially becoming a Christian centre offering all sorts of things that could facilitate the transformation of the community through the ministry of the church: (church isn’t building-it’s the people) we could link with refugee centre, offer language courses, CAP Money, help with forms, support university chaplaincy if issues with withdrawn or struggling students in the area, link with the food bank, provide a contact space for disintegrating families, build links with Murray Lodge, run a youth group or a children’s after school club. I could go on and on and on. There is so much that could be done. But the reality is that it is only really useful to suggest the things not that we can do or they should do but that I can do. So together we need to hear what God is calling us to do together, here and now, so we can do what is needed in order to see His kingdom in this place, this locality.

At the wedding Jesus needed to do the whole water/wine thing, but as we share communion together we’ll focus on his ultimate self-giving for the good of all humanity, his death on the cross that we might live, and part of our response to receiving communion is that we emulate that self-giving by living as changed people. What might that look like specifically?

EVANGELISM

“The church aims to facilitate transformation through enabling people to come to Christ”

But there was another problem for the people in Jesus day because of the whole ‘sin’ thing. At that time it was hard to live a life that seemed pleasing to God. There were so many rules and regulations. Do this. Don’t do that. Wait this long. Do it so many times. Only the real experts even stood a chance of knowing anything about being in God’s presence. One of the things they did was to try to get clean of all the things they’d done wrong by washing using these enormous jars of water. And it was these jars of water, the ones used to try and get close to God, that Jesus turned into something that would help the party be more fun.

He showed us that being close to God is for everyone, for the ordinary people like you and me, not just the holy experts and that being close to God is now something to celebrate. We don’t need to worry now about getting clean of all the bad things we’ve done because Jesus has done that for us. The old way of experiencing God was replaced by a new way.

Jesus chose to offer everyone, whoever they were and whatever they were up to, the same sort of new life as he'd injected into that party with that new wine. We are offered it, too, a life that makes sense and has purpose.
You know, God loves a wedding. Because he loves people, loves to spread joy. Think of the deep love of a couple embracing on their wedding day. That's the sort of love God longs to share with you. And that’s worth celebrating. And it’s worth sharing. How can we effectively facilitate others coming to know that God accepts them and loves them?

So in summary,

Weddings are about love, and this particular event that happened at a wedding was about that love including everyone, whether they were ritually pure or not, whether they belonged or not.

The challenge for us as church, for us here today, for those who are part of this family but unable to be with us today, is how we, too can be agents of LOVE who offer new wine to liven up the party, and who bring God’s transformation to everyone whether they belong here or not.

Jack of all trades?

Vicaring is a funny life. As a public figure, the visible face of the church, the establishment, one gets all sorts of invitations to join forums and committees and steering groups and to attend meetings and studies and to be present at events and supporting social gatherings and great at assemblies with both tiny tots and tired teens and to generally be available in the way that it used to be in the good old days when the shops were shut on Sunday and everyone went to church in their best clothes. And presumably all of those activities are viewed by the people who participate in them and who invite vicars to join with them as being of the Kingdom of God. And we've not yet got to the infirm and the emotionally needy or to writing awe-inspiring sermons that gladden the heart, comfort the soul and kick the backside, or to preparing people for weddings or baptisms, or meeting with grieving families, or tidying one's study, or having lunch with a loved one. And so the list could continue. So vicars need to be jacks of all trades and masters of all of them, which sets us up to fail from the outset as we discover that we're master of none of them.
Or is there another approach? As I have started this new post I have tried to hit the ground not running but walking slowly, looking around, trying to discern where the people in the congregation, the local residents and I overlap in terms of creating opportunities to see the Kingdom of God in all its glory. But it's hard because I know that I need to let people down if they expect me to say "yes" to everything or to change nothing and do what was always done. Our relationship with God needs to be living and active, which means that the way that we order our worship lives and our church activity will also be changing as we grow and learn.
Rather than be a jack of all trades and master of none of them, I'd like to really discern the charism of this place, this calling on me and my family to minister in this place, and to do it to the best of my God-given gifting and potential.

Giving is not the same as fundraising - by Bishop John

- GIVING is NOT THE SAME AS FUNDRAISING

- GIVING is BASIC TO CHRISTIAN LIVING & HEALTH

- WE DO NOT GIVE TO MEET THE NEEDS OF A BUDGET

Giving is much more important than that. It is essential to our spiritual health. It is a sign of living in that life in all its fullness that Jesus longs for us to enter and enjoy. It is a sign of Kingdom life. Giving sets us and others free. Giving sets givers free to receive more of God’s grace. Giving, freely and in God’s name, sets others free. It is Kingdom-building.

I have brought an icon of the Holy Trinity, revealing amongst other things, the exchange of love constantly being given and received in the life of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Known, in the East, as the icon of hospitality, inspired as it is by Genesis 18, where Abram and Sara offer hospitality to three Persons, they later discover to be God himself. This icon invites the viewer, each one of us in, to share in the divine life of the Trinity, to become as Peter writes ‘partakers in the Divine Nature’ (2 Peter 1.4). There is a strange Greek word perichoresis, used in Orthodox theology which again reminds us of themovement and exchange of God’s love in terms of dance. We are invited to share in the dance of Divine life. ‘I’ll live in you if you’ll live in me, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.’ It is a dynamic understanding of God’s life-changing love.

I have also brought this water fountain as another image of the movement of God’s love, as Jesus described the new life that he brings as ‘streams of living water’ (John 7.38).

Let me ask you a personal question! Are you a bath person or a shower person? In a bath, once the water is in, it stays in. You wash yourself in the water and then you lie in the dirty water until you get out! In a shower, there is always new and fresh water. God’s life is always new and fresh. Are we living in this new life, receiving and giving or holding on to what we’ve got and becoming stagnant. Are we conduits or containers?

I want you to open your hands. You need open hands to give, you need open hands to let go, you also need open hands to receive, to bless, to touch and to heal.

Now, close your hands. With closed hands we cannot give, we cannot receive, we cannot reach out to touch, to welcome, to embrace or to heal.

The way of the world, of the ‘old Adam’ within each of us says, the more you give, the less you have, so hold on tight to what you’ve got, indeed get, grab even more and hold on to it.

The way of Christ, the subversive and liberating truth of the Gospel teaches us that as we give, we become more truly the ones we are created to be, as we are made in the image and likeness of God, the giver of all things. As we give we open ourselves up to receive more of God’s grace and provision, we remain within the prodigal and life-giving love of God. Withholding who we are and what we have takes us out of the flow and deprives us of the oxygen of the Holy Spirit.

Rockefeller was once asked, ‘How much money does it take to make a man happy?’ To which he responded ‘Just a little bit more’. I guess, at one level, if we are honest, we might all recognise that somewhere in ourselves and we can all give all sorts of good reasons for it. But is this desire our master or our servant? Jesus could see so clearly the spiritual danger of the wrong attitudes towards money, how it can imprison us and prevent us from enjoying the glorious freedom of the children of God.

You will know the story of the monkey or ‘How to catch a monkey’ …….

You will remember the account of the Rich Young Man who having met with Jesus, went away sad, with a heavy heart, he could not let go, he was (as someone put it) possessed by his possessions.

So where are we, as individuals and as PCCs or Diocese in all this? To what extent are we in captivity through wrong attitudes to money? To what extent are we actually, despite all we would like to think and be keen to profess, in hoc to Mammon.

Thomas Merton wrote ‘Money has demonically usurped the role of the Holy Spirit in much of our life today.’ How often, in our personal lives, in our Church life, in our Diocesan life is money the key criterion for our decision-making, coming before and displacing the seeking the mind of God and the wisdom of the Spirit? What does God want to happen? If he wants it to happen, provision will be discovered. How easy it is for me, for us to collude in the ‘sensible’ accountancy thinking of ‘we can’t even think of doing that, because we haven’t got the money.’ So we miss out on God’s plans and provision for us.

In 1987 I spent 3 months with a Christian community in Washington D.C., an area of great poverty, with many street people, refugees, high unemployment, poor housing, high levels of drug addiction, prostitution and criminality. It was a hugely impressive ministry rooted in inspired worship, a real and daily engagement with Scripture, and expressed in great variety of ministries changing lives and communities. (A ministry unlike so many lop-sided ministries which took seriously both the King and the Kingdom.) It was a difficult Church to join. The Church welcomed all unconditionally but to be a full member, there were particular commitments. You had to have a particular call to a particular ministry which you will offer to God and to others. You had to join a group of others with the same kind of call, to work with them in the same area of ministry whether it be in housing provision, or refuge for asylum seekers, or health or healing, or coffee shop ministry or whatever. As part of the induction for membership you had to write not only your spiritual autobiography, tracing the journey of your relationship with God from the time of your earliest memories but you also had to write your financial autobiography tracing your relationship with or your attitude to money from your earliest memories. Both of which exercises can be profoundly helpful and revealing, bringing to light, as they will, areas of our own lives which may still need the liberating ministry of Christ.

It may just be that the priorities of our lives and the decisions we have made actually reveal that there is another Master in our life and as Jesus says ‘No-one can serve two masters.’ ( Mt. 6.24). But as with the Emperors New Clothes, we collude with one another in avoiding facing this truth.

Or we could come at it from another angle: Are we building/have we built our identity, our self respect more on what we have and our status amongst others than on our primary identity as infinitely precious children of God, with whom through the Spirit we can enjoy intimacy and call ‘Abba’, Father.

Such questions, I suggest are not for instant answering but for a real and prayerful pondering over days – perhaps this Lent. What is in no doubt is that God loves us so much, he wants to set us free in our relationship with money as in every other aspect of our lives. ‘Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.’ (2 Cor. 3.17)

2 Corinthians 8 & 9 provide us with a window into the flow of grace, gratitude and giving. In fact the passage is full grace ‘charis’, the word is used 5 times in these few verses though not always translated as ‘grace’.

v.1. Paul writes: ‘We wanted you to know about the grace/charis of God that has been granted to the Churches in Macedonia.’

The secret, the source of their giving was grace.

Grace overflows – that image of flowing again – in giving.

v.2. Their abundant joy and extreme poverty have overflowed in a wealth of generosity.

At a time of great affliction, God is giving these Christians abundant joy (v.2) and out of this joy in the Lord flows their generosity. Grace – joy – generosity –giving. And it is not as if they are wealthy, they are giving out of their extreme poverty (v.2). Many of us who have travelled abroad to Christian communities in areas of great poverty will have been stunned by the generosity of hospitality we have been offered, given the very best and most valued of what the people had to offer. No meanness of spirit, no holding on to the best for themselves, not even what we might a call a sensible apportionment of resources, ‘well we’ll give you something nice but we need to keep plenty for ourselves’. A radical prodigal generosity echoing the prodigal generosity and love of the Father for each of us. And it stuns even Paul ‘ they give according to their means and even beyond their means’(v.3) The grace of God overflowing in generosity. We might think of the despised Zachaeus who when he experiences the acceptance and love of Jesus is set free and cannot help but give (Luke 19.8). He says to Jesus ‘Half of my possessions I will give to the poor and if I have defrauded anyone, I will pay them back four times as much.’ The grace of God given to him overflows in almost reckless giving.

He no longer needs to hold on to his money to give him security or to buttress his identity, he has discovered, he knows on the inside that he is loved by Jesus. We see this outflow of giving, this reckless generosity in the woman who has discovered and experienced the forgiveness of Jesus, and she ministers to him with extravagant love and devotion as she anoints him with the most costly of perfumes (Luke 7.47) as in this batik.

MUTUALITY

v.4. These Christians in Macedonia saw generous giving not as a duty – ‘well, I suppose we ought to give something’ but as a joy and bringer of joy. Paul tells us:

‘They were begging us earnestly for the privilege/charis of sharing in this ministry/koinonia to the saints.’ The privilege of giving is grace/charis. The word Paul uses for this ‘ministry’ is koinonia. One of the essential marks of the Church is koinonia – which means fellowship or mutuality, belonging to one another, helping and supporting one another within and across the Body of Christ. And here they are begging for the privilege, the grace to support other Christian families who are struggling. (As some of you will know from conversations I’ve had with Christian leaders suffering great affliction in Middle Eastern countries, I’ve been convicted by one Christian leader who said Christians in his country are missing the support and solidarity of us Christians in the West.) Here Paul tells the Corinthians – and us today - how the Macedonian Christians begged for the privilege of giving. When I was in Oxford Diocese, we had a link with the Anglican Diocese of Kimberley and Kuruman and I remember one of their priests who was in our Diocese telling us how every year in his Archdeaconry, clergy and lay representatives from every parish go away together for a weekend for mutual prayer and encouragement and during the course of their time away, they compete with one another about which parish will give the most into the common kitty to be used to support those who were struggling the most. It is a very inspiring and humbling ministry. This is gospel giving, bringing joy to the givers. It is the kind of free and generous giving that allows us to enter into more of God’s blessing for us. So Paul, quoting Jesus says It is more blessed to give than to receive. (Acts 20.35)

Here, in this passage, this ministry/koinonia is for the saints in Jerusalem. So we see this gospel principle of mutual support across cultures within the Body of Christ.

So where does this grace of giving come from? Paul is in no doubt.

v.5. Because they gave themselves first to the Lord.

This is surely the heart of the matter for them and for us today. Giving the whole of our lives to God and that includes our financial lives. As Martin Luther wrote ‘there are three conversions necessary for the Christian life, conversion of the heart, conversion of the mind and conversion of the wallet’.

Giving ourselves first to the Lord is the preventative medicine that will help us to avoid what one wag has called ‘cirrhosis of the giver’. What is ‘cirrhosis of the giver’? “It is an acute condition which renders the patient’s hand immovable when it is appropriate to move it in the direction of the wallet, chequebook or purse. One treatment which always works is to remove the patient from Church. It is clinically observable that this condition does not occur in other places like the pub, the shops, the restaurant, the golf club etc.”

Gospel-giving however is win-win. It releases more joy in the givers, it blesses and encourages the recipients, as Paul writes, it ‘supplies the needs of the saints it overflows with many thanksgivings to God’ (2 Cor. 9.12) and it glorifies God.

Win-Win, Giving opens us – and others – up to more of God’s grace and blessing. Gospel giving calls for faith, for trust in the Living God. I have never known any individual or any PCC, for that matter, who has taken a step of faith in giving, who has ever regretted it or who have found themselves worse off for doing so. Giving builds our faith, and we discover more of God’s love and provision.

I have a friend who gets very annoyed when people say to him ‘take care’. He says ‘no, take risks’. The more we dare for Jesus in faith, the more we discover the riches of his grace. Jesus invites us to trust him, to take a step in faith, to life in all its fullness.

Or as someone said ‘If you want to walk on water, you have to get out of the boat!’

PRAYER OF DEDICATION

Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse

Trust me in this … and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have enough room for it. Malachi 3.10

Jesus said ‘Give and it will be given you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over will be put in your lap.’ Luke 6.38

+John Warwick

2006

Would Jesus rake leaves?

I'm sure you all saw the challenge posed by one of the protesters outside St Paul's Cathedral-it became the favourite image of press and TV alike. As the controversy gathered momentum regarding whether their presence constituted a risk one bright spark pricked at the conscience of those in the church by asking on a large placard "What would Jesus do?"
It's a question that gets asked a lot in Christian youth work as young people are encouraged to seek inspiration from a wholly positive adult role model who isn't one of their parents. But is it a question that we can ask in any given situation?
At the charismatic end of the church the faithful are encouraged to "walk as Jesus walked", suggesting (with not a small suggestion of the kenotic heresies that were kicked out within a couple of hundred years of church life) that they can perform all the miracles that He did if only they had enough faith. And yet...
Do we model ourselves enough on Jesus who gave of himself, who's agenda was to bless others?
I suspect not. I noticed that my (elderly, widowed) next-door neighbour had not cleared the leaves from her lawn, generously deposited by the enormous willow tree that we share. Well, I say share...it's her tree but we get 70% of the shade and the leaves that drop. Anyway, the leaves were lying rotting on her lawn. So I offered to rake them up. It was about an hour's work at most. As I worked we chatted and I learned all sorts, such as that my vicarage had been built by a wealthy man for his daughter who had (foolishly, I might suggest) married a vicar and then been given to the church. My neighbour's house is built in what were its grounds. She's been there for over 35 years and seen vicars come and go. And in that time not one vicar has ever been round, invited her round, or offered to help.
And we wonder why the church often seems to be in trouble.
As Christians we don't need to make grand gestures or win complicated arguments. We don't need to be performing miracles on street corners. As a vicar I realised that I don't necessarily need to be leading my flock into an intense battle.
We just need to do the little things, the things that bless others. Because that is what Jesus would do if he lived where I do. Or where you do.