All Saints Church, Worcester

All Age Worship - Matthew 5:13-16

Who On Earth Are We? - A Transforming Community!

Here is a picture of the salt flats in death valley, California. It is big and temperatures reach to over 50°C. It is covered in salt and just about nothing lives there. They tell a story of a man who went out with his bottle of water for a half hour walk and never came back. A search party ranger found his dead body an hour and a half after he had set out. It is that deadly. Too much salt is deadly. But take a little bit in a salt cellar and add a pinch to your food and it is good and gives taste to food.

They say that too many clergy gathered together in one place is insufferable and more than most people can stand, or words to that effect! But spread them out, one in this parish, one in that parish, and they do spice up our national life and serve in a beneficial way to society in general.

If you're the only Christian in your family or where you work or where you live then you are God's little pinch of salt in that place and very precious to him. He will use you to bear witness.

Paul spoke to us last week of our calling to wash one another's feet. The call to humble service, being alongside other people at their point of need. Offering your service in a salty way is giving that something extra that somehow bears witness to the Lord.

There are many examples in Jesus' life of that little extra he gave that was so significant. People in his time would go out of the village to where the lepers were at least to take them food from time to time. But Jesus took that extra step of embracing and kissing the leper. People offered and received healing in a number of ways but by healing on the Sabbath Jesus challenged the restrictive practices of the Sabbath.

Jesus was master of the single pithy sentence -
"If one of your sheep falls into a ditch on the Sabbath..."
"Your sins are forgiven."

People didn't need dictaphones to record his sermons. They just remembered some of those little sayings. Then someone gathered them together and wrote them down. 2000 years later those little grain-of-salt sayings are still as life transforming as they were then.

What else did Jesus do? He crossed the boundaries of society as when he spoke to the Samaritan woman at the well. All are equal under God and worthy of our care and attention.

But what always hits me between the eyes is the love, time and attention that Jesus gives to some of the poorest and most needy members of society. For instance, the woman who touches the fringe of his garment as he is passing through the crowd. He stops, finds the woman, leaves off whatever else he was doing, and devotes his whole attention to that one person. We have an extraordinary picture of that woman - her ailment, how long, what she had tried, what it had cost her, how it was getting worse, the thought in her mind of hope in Jesus, the timidity and trembling with which she came to Jesus.

History does not usually record the lives of the common folk. we know about the Lords and Kings and heroes but not the folk who served them and fought their battles. But in the Gospels it is as if a spotlight moves around and focuses on the poor people typical of those times. We feel we would know them if we met them. This is not typical history. There is only one explanation. It is the quite exceptional interest that Jesus took in people around him. It is the observant eyes of Jesus that brings these people to our notice. It is his heart that relates their needs to us. He is the light illuminating the common lives around him, bringing them into the foreground, and treating them with respect and dignity.

If we are to be the means of bringing people to Christ then, like Jesus, we must spend quality time with those who are non-believers.

No one yet has the answer to stemming the ebb tide from church membership in this country. Some witness through splendid buildings, beautiful music and dignified worship; others through humble service in prisons, hospitals, hostels; some through pure preaching of the word and holy living; others through new forms of creative worship. We have had a decade of evangelism; we have Alpha. People claim positive response to all these endeavours yet, in this country, the ebb tide continues.

Frankly, I am puzzled. There are many good things going on in local church life and in para-church organisations. In society at large there is unrest and a search for deeper meaning to life. Somehow we are failing to match the two up in such a way as to demonstrate that in the church there are answers to the questions being asked in society.

I understand that part of the reason for the success of Alpha was because someone researched the questions people were asking about life and the church. That's why many of the topics are how? How do I receive the Spirit? How does God guide me? We are a society wanting to know how. How to change a washer on the tap. How to get the baby to go to sleep. One business has the answer to some things - B&Q it. Go to www.diy.com and there's a whole library of how to's graded from first timers to the experienced.

Nicky Gumbel, the author of Alpha, has salt and light as the first step on the road to sharing faith with others. He quotes 1 Peter 3:1-2 on unbelieving spouses, ".... if any husbands do not believe the word, they may be won over without words by the behaviour of their wives, when they see the purity and reverence of your lives."

Today, many people are extending that principle to embrace one's immediate circle of family, friends, neighbours, work colleagues. Non Christians known to you by name, with whom you spend some of your time. The jargon term for this is oikos, a NT Greek word meaning family or household. The recognition is that most people come to faith through friendship where they get to know a believer and see the difference it makes. The challenge to us then is to actually live the Christian life and to spend more time with our non Christian contacts in the faith that a deeper friendship may grow that may become a bridge to faith.

But it doesn't stop there. We have to go beyond our circle and try to find ways of creating new friendships with non-Christians.

We could paraphrase the opening verses of the first letter of St John in this way. There is a friendship between the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. God has reached out to share that friendship with us. The friendship we have with God we seek to share with people around us. That means beginning and nurturing friendships before they become believers. We need to work together and support one another in creating these new relationships.