All Saints Church, Worcester

Morning Communion - Genesis 3:1-3 and Matthew 4:1-11

Looking at Our Values - Openness and Honesty

After much preparatory work during 2004 we launched our church's Vision in December to great excitement. It came in 3 layers. Our overall direction and purpose is expressed in the phrase:

Revealing the Heart of Jesus in the Heart of the City.

Our teaching so far this year has looked into aspects of the heart of Jesus. We have by no means finished exploring that rich territory but during Lent we are moving on. For there is a third layer to our Vision. I have a friend whose wisdom and straight talking I value. When I told him we were working on our vision as a church he said in typically direct style, "It doesn't really matter what your vision statement is - it's your values that really count." That struck a chord with me, and so, although our direction is highly important, we spent time also on our Vision Day looking at operational values as part of our vision. Here they are: It's not simply the direction we are travelling in which matters - it is how we travel together which is important too. We could have the best direction and purpose in the world but if the way we relate to one another along the way is not right, our mission will be undermined, our care for one another lacking and our worship an empty gesture.

During this season of Lent, as we reflect both on the time Jesus made in the wilderness and also the journey he made through his life towards the cross, we will look at the way we journey together by examining our operational values.

These can become agreed ways of working together that we can be committed to as God's people at All Saints. The key questions are:

Do I want to be part of a church which holds these values?

A more challenging one is -

Am I willing to commit to them personally?

[Educationalists tell us that there are various stages in the level of understanding. Ignorant Inaction - 'we don't know and we don't do'. Knowing Inaction - 'we now know but we are not doing'. Knowing Action - We now know and we're beginning to do. Ignorant Action - 'we do it without even knowing we are'. We're moving from step one on the ladder to step 2/3 here but we're headed for Step 4 where without even thinking about it we relate to one another according to these values.]

So the first of these values is: Openness and Honesty…

"We are committed to running the church and living with one another as transparently as possible. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says: "Let your 'yes' be yes and your 'no', no." John's letters have much to say about the value to our fellowship of walking in the light, rather than the darkness of hiding things away or distorting the truth. (See 1 Jn 1: 5-7) We can expect openness and honesty to build our relationships with each other and contribute to our being a healing community. A commitment to this value will inhibit the spread of rumour, gossip and misunderstandings. Conversely we can expect closed attitudes and dishonesty to damage people and relationships."

In the light of today's readings, we can reflect that on one level this is all about nakedness. Chapter 2 of Genesis ends with nakedness before God and one another being both natural and normal for the inhabitants of the Garden. They are totally comfortable with each other and with God. Total openness and honesty is symbolised by their nakedness without shame. It's a physical nakedness but it is also symbolic of the sort of transparency which we hold to be a value worth having. Chapter 3 of Genesis tells us how that went wrong. It went wrong through disobedience and the result of that was that nakedness became a bad thing. Adam and Eve chose to start hiding their nakedness from each other as they made their makeshift clothes. And when God turned up suddenly that wasn't a welcome thing so that they hid in the bushes from God.

Look at the contrast between the comfortableness of the first scene and the shame and discomfort of the second. Something was lost at that time, and I wonder whether part of living out our redemption in Jesus Christ can be to recover what it means to live transparent lives of openness and honesty.

Naked before God

- not trying to hide from God but acknowledging our shame and guilt and weaknesses as well as our strengths and joys before him. He knows us as we really are so we don't need to pretend. As we have prayed: Almighty God to whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hidden. That's the truth anyway, so what's the point of pretending?

This is the starting point to living lives of openness and honesty with ourselves. Not kidding ourselves we are any better or any worse than we are, but discovering that as we approach God honestly and receive his acceptance we can learn something of what it means to live with openness and honesty about ourselves.

That frees us up to live in open and honest relationships with one another. We know who we are before God. We know who we are in ourselves. We can therefore begin to risk being ourselves before one another. This then feeds into our relationships and structures within the church. What we learn in our individual relationship with God, we can practice in the small cell groups which we encourage people to belong to. This will flow into our teams, ministries and even committees and working parties too! Often we want openness and honesty to start with the structures but I think it has to start with us and God and within our relationships, even though our commitment is for this to filter through and transform all of our relationships, both formal and informal.

Then we will increasingly find ourselves in the territory which John described as: walking in the light. We are making a deliberate decision of the will to resist and reject, even where necessary to repent of the darkness of half truths and hiddenness. Anything which leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations, gossip and rumour, cliques and factions: the downfall of community as people are damaged and hurt, as many a church knows too well. In contrast we choose to walk in the light of openness and honesty so that we can instead build our relationships with each other and contribute to being a healing community.

So what can we do practically to walk in the light?

We can learn the sort of openness with God where we get used to being ourselves before him and even with ourselves. That's what was going on for Jesus in the wilderness experience. Exposed to the full onslaught of the devil's temptations, it was a time to be alone with himself before God and discover the truth about God's call upon his life. Can we begin with just 5 minutes in a day when it's just me and God with no agenda so that we can listen to what is on God's heart. We might find it grows from there to something more - quiet days, retreats etc.

We can discover what it means sensitively to speak the truth in love where both parts of that sentence matter intensely. Some are good at speaking the truth and the "in love" bit is used as an excuse for criticising. Some are good at speaking encouraging words without really engaging with the truth. Only with the heart of Jesus within us will we be able to both speak the truth and do so in love. The best way to begin to practice this is by speaking a positive truth in love. Learn how to say, "I really appreciate you" - that's speaking the truth in love! Here's a test: if you have something difficult to say, does your saying it simply make you feel better as you get your moan off your chest, or is it designed to help the other person or the community become more like Christ? We need to be sensitive to one another in what we choose to say, or indeed not to say and how we say it!

If that's about our speaking we need also to work at our listening! The other side of the Speaking with Sensitivity guideline is to Listen Without Over-Sensitivity! When we are tempted to feel hurt by something someone has either said or not said to us, do we assume the worst or the best? Do we jump to the conclusion that we are intended harm? Or do we give opportunity first to the possibility that we might have misheard or misunderstood what has been said? Is it something we can check out before we give into the temptation to feel aggrieved?

We can help to ensure we stay in the light by our relationship with God, with what and how we say things and with how we listen and interpret too. Already we can see how this first value links into the rest. Openness and Honesty takes us down the road of Being Real. Once we set off in that direction we really will need to allow for enormous amounts of Generosity towards one another which will inspire us also to look outwards with the same generosity. And so we will be making progress towards the Celebrating and Embracing of Diversity which we see also as God's calling on us as we journey together, so that with our different perspectives and ways of responding to God we do all that we do for him to the very best of our ability.

A commitment to Openness and Honesty is no easy commitment. None of this will come easily. But these values are worth pursuing with all we are and all we have, because they will transform the way we journey together and make it much more likely that we arrive ever closer to our goal. Instead of coming off the rails altogether and obscuring the reality of Jesus Christ within this City we will instead be on the road to revealing the heart of Jesus right here in the Heart of the City!