Getting Married at Holy Trinity
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Building
Community When we first came to New Zealand, I think it would be fair to say that we had no money whatsoever and consequently we were in no position to buy a house. For the first 4 years that we were here we rented and although that was no great hardship, I was hugely keen to create a home for our three young children . So it was that I fretted to own my own home. Joy of joys when we finally bought a home! Three years later we bought another house and we moved from the old house into the new home. That process taught me something: A home is not a house but a family, it’s not the bricks that make a home, but the people, it’s not where the stones are , but where the individuals are. A
home is a living building of living stones. So it is that the church is not
the lifeless structure of this
building. The church is a living community of people, We saw this graphically demonstrated on Easter Sunday when we made a living cross in these aisles. Now the church is by no means the only community that’s around. I’m sure you can all think of many communities that you belong to. Today is our Parish Founding day. What
exactly was founded and why? It wasn’t the church buildings of St Augustines or Holy Trinity. It wasn’t yet another coming together of people who wanted to have a social time together. It seems clear enough to me that we are a community founded to be different and to make a difference. Let us look at the passage we read today, from 1Peter. The passage says “come to him a living stone”. We come to Christ as individuals, and then we are formed into a community by His Holy Spirit. Peter doesn’t say, form yourselves into a community, he says, “and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house”, a living community. So who does the forming? Christ does. And what happens to the individual, the I? It becomes a We, through the grace of the Holy Spirit. Here then is one way in which we differ from other kinds of communities. Our community is formed and cemented by the love of Christ. We are also centred around him. He stands as the capstone or the cornerstone of our community. The cornerstone is the visible support on which the rest of the building relies for
strength and stability. Believers have faith in and rely on Christ, much as a building rests on its cornerstone. It is worth noting from the Gospel reading that it was the faith of Peter not Peter himself, which was to be the rock on which Jesus would build his church. In Peter’s day, buildings were made of stones. If he were alive today he might use the example of bricks instead of stones. Each believer is a brick in the edifice of the church community, cemented by faith into a spiritual house for God to indwell. Now a brick is useless lying around on its own in the builder’s yard. Yet it becomes very valuable when it is built into a structure. So much so that if one brick is missing, we all notice it. Sure the whole building doesn’t come crashing down, but we all notice it. So it is that Christianity is about
being in community. Solitary
religion is ruled out here. Loving one’s neighbour was a central theme in
Jesus’ ministry. Christianity has
meaning and purpose only when we are in community. Now it is Christ who gives our community life. We are the living stones centred around Christ, our capstone . Christ is pivotal to our existence as a community. See our vision statement: “We are a family in Christ, celebrating diversity in Christ and nurturing spiritual growth in Christ.” Being centred around Christ means
that this community draws its life
force from Christ. In this way Christ is
the bread of our life as a community. We had a wonderful cake that Pip baked after the Sunday Live Service last Sunday. Now before the cake was served, you could say, we were a group of people at a worship service joyously worshipping God, but as Pip shared out her cake, something wonderful started to happen, we became a community that she was nurturing into a life, together. This is what Christ does for the church, he nurtures us into life with his life. That’s what the Eucharist symbolises. Without Christ we are merely stones, with Christ we are ‘living stones’! Why
does Christ do this? Why
does the church community exist? What is the point of it? The answer lies in verse 5. We are to be, “a holy priesthood”. The Latin word for priest is ‘pontifex’ and it means a bridge-builder. A priest is a bridge-builder who builds bridges for others to come to God. This means that, having found the Saviour ourselves, Christians have the privilege of bringing others to the Saviour also. We say: “Come and see what we have found…..it’s wonderful and precious.” We are not required to do this on our own, we do this in community. Together we do the work each of us is called to do for the common purpose of bringing people into a relationship with God. We are all different and have different styles and skills, but we are united in a common purpose of building bridges that will facilitate the process of bringing people into a relationship with God. But wait there’s more…. we are not just a priesthood, we are ‘a holy priesthood’. The word holy is really important here, because it tells us that we have been set apart for a special purpose. We are holy not because of our own good behaviour or great spiritual insights. If that were true only a very few of us would indeed be holy. But we are holy because, once we have become Christians, we are then set apart to be dedicated, to proclaim God’s goodness in all we say and do to all whom God sends us. That becomes our main purpose in life. Last Sunday we saw how this was true for the priest Samuel. Well it is also true for each and every person who has made a commitment to follow Christ. This is what unites us in this community. We are all called into this priesthood, this holy nation, set aside, not to be exclusive but inclusive, to dedicate our lives to the privilege of proclaiming God’s love to the world as we encounter it. God has called us out of darkness into glorious light. We have been called from a place where we felt far from God to a place where we have an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ. We have been called from a place of no mercy to a place where we experience God’s mercy.
It is well with our souls
because of Jesus Christ’s love gift of salvation and it is a love gift
available to everyone, not just a select few. This being the case, the function of the church is to proclaim this good news of God’s love through the things we say and do. That means that as a church we must engage with each other and with the world in ways that reflect who Christ is and what he stands for. What
does this mean for our Church community here in the Parish of Devonport? If the church is to be a community of God’s people in the way that Christ demonstrated with his own disciples, it means much more than singing the same hymns, praying the same prayers and taking the same sacraments on a Sunday. It means committing ourselves to each other in love. We have an incredible gift to offer each other. · We have the gift of sharing a purpose, · the chance to build each other up, · an opportunity to serve God together and · to lovingly support each other in our faith journeys. In a healthy biblically functioning community we are no longer just drops of water, we are a wonderful wave of love and support. We can say: ‘When you are at the trough of
the wave and I am on the crest, I will be there to support you, I will be
like Christ to you, when I
am in the trough and you are on the crest , you can be like Christ to me.’ John
Lennon’s song Imagine springs to mind. He was describing his fantasy,
but we have a real possibility here, if we allow God to form us like living
stones into a Christ-centred community. But you know, the Church, as the body of Christ, as Christ living in the world, incarnate, has a larger mission than to merely support, nurture and guide its own members. The church is established to be more than a comfortable club of conformity. It is a community of loving defiance that says, we as a community will allow God to use us to make a difference. · We will make a difference in the life of the lonely teenage, · we will make a difference in the life of the refugee, · we will make a difference in the home of that hungry family, · in that struggling marriage, · in that disabled or elderly person’s isolated world and in many more ways too. We will make a difference because we are going to bring Christ’s light and his mercy into their lives. We have got something real, relevant and permanent to offer. We will be the witnesses of God’s love made visible in Jesus. We will
do this each in our own individual
ways, But, we
will do it together as a community in Christ, because in so doing we
will not be doing it in our own strength, but in the strength of the one who
is our capstone, our lord Jesus
Christ in whose marvellous light we
live and breathe and love .
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