Rev Chris - Rethinking Church - Our Calling - Service

“The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many” Mark 10.45 We have all met people who are full of their own importance and we know what reaction rises within us as a response to such displays. Jesus’ disciples were not immune from such weaknesses. Even in the community of faith there are some funny characters! James and John sidle up to Jesus and asks a favour. They want to have the best seats when the kingdom comes. And Jesus has to explain to them that they do not know what they are asking for. They have got the whole thing all wrong. To truly follow Jesus is about serving, about giving of oneself over and over again “to give and give and give again what God hath given thee, to spend thyself nor count the cost to serve right gloriously” wrote Geoffrey Antekell Studdert-Kennedy (better known as Woodbine Willie, the first world war chaplain), because of his practice of handing out Will’s woodbine cigarettes to desperate soldiers in the trenches. Though the gospels of Mark and John are different (that is a question for another day!) the fact that Jesus demonstrates over and over again this important lesson right up to his last night with his disciples shows they were so slow to catch on to his message. At the last supper Jesus gets up from the table and takes off his outer garments, girds himself with a towel and wielding a basin of water kneels to wash his disciple’s feet. There is some protest from Simon Peter. He knows something is wrong here. It doesn’t feel right. Jesus is Lord and Master and yet he performs the most menial of tasks (usually the job of the lowest rank of servant for guests who enter a house). And yet here Jesus is teaching the disciples a great lesson. I love the story of A.E.Whitham (one time President of the Conference) recorded in Gordon Wakefield’s book entitled the Liturgy of St John. Whitham once had a dream, that he was a tourist in heaven and wandered into the museum of that Holy City “There was some old armour there, much bruised by battle. Many things were conspicuous by their absence. I saw nothing of Alexander’s nor of Napoleon’s. There was no Pope’s ring, nor even the inkpot that Luther is said to have thrown at the devil, not Wesley’s seal and keys, nor the first Minutes of Conference or the last… I saw a widow’s mite and the feather of a little bird. I saw some swaddling clothes, a hammer and three nails, and a few thorns. I saw a bit of a fishing net and the broken oar of a boat. I saw a sponge that had once been dipped in vinegar, and a small piece of silver…Whilst I was turning over a common drinking cup which had a very honourable place, I whispered to the attendant, “Have you not got a towel and basin among your collection?” “No”, he said, “not here; you see they are in constant use”. Someone once said to me that Methodists did not wash feet on Maundy Thursday and I quickly drew their attention to the rubric in the Conference authorised Worship Book to the service for that day which clearly states that the service “may continue with the washing of feet”. As so often is the case, we are quick to dismiss something we have never experienced and quick to jump to the conclusion that all churches are just like ours. That our experience of Church is the norm. We base our assumptions on what our experience is and think we can from that deduction make a generalisation. Often our generalisations are sweeping. I once had a church where after I received a Papal Chalice following the visit of Pope Benedict XV1, having attended the Beatification Mass for John henry Newman as the official representative for the York & Hull Methodist District and used the said chalice in a service. I was lambasted in the church council by someone who told me that Methodists had always used little glasses for the communion wine. Now to a bit of a church historian this was like a red rag to a bull. Now since little glasses were not invented until over 100 years after John Wesley’s death, the premise of my friend on the church council is rather hard to defend. Many of our churches are full of chalices from current and former church buildings which at least indicates they had them. For close on 100 years since the first Methodist society was formed Methodists used chalices for the wine. If we were to go back 125 years we would not find any use of individual glasses in Methodism because such a bizarre novelty did not exist. For most of my thirty years in the ministry I have counted it an immense privilege and a highlight of the year to wash feet at the Maundy Thursday liturgy. And am saddened that so few Methodists appreciate the richness of this sacramental action- “for service too is sacrament”. Centuries ago the monarch used to wash feet at the Royal Maundy Service but the condition of people’s feet was regarded as a bit problematic and so giving coins instead with the monarch preceded by a nose gay bearing servant in case the people and their feet stinketh, was an innovation. So, what do we make of this call to serve? The Church exists to be a good neighbour to people in need and to challenge injustice is the strap line heading of this section of the Our Calling document. Then follows a series of questions about how we might discover the needs of our local community, how we can better get involved in community groups, how we can challenge injustice in the world and use our premises for the good of the community. We have some very good examples of these things being done in the life of our circuit, but we probably could do better. There is room to improve our community involvement. So, I wonder what plans and targets we might be ready to make? I love the story of CK Barrett whom many will remember in these parts, a Methodist preacher and Doctor of Divinity at Durham University with academic awards and accolades a plenty, a prolific NT scholar and author of many commentaries and books, whose writings will have helped many of us listening today. He was once asked what the greatest honour he had ever had bestowed upon him. He replied that it was to go to the little village chapels in the pit villages of the Darlington District and proclaim the gospel of all redeeming grace. That sounds to me like a man who knew what it meant to serve. I know this to be the case having heard him many times from childhood when he visited annually Skinningrove in honour of his father’s first visit in a horse drawn caravan to conduct a mission in that mining village. As St Francis said many more centuries before “it is in giving that we receive”. When we serve we find all sorts of surprizes and blessings. So with Woodbine Willie, CK Barrett, and countless other disciples of Christ may we give ourselves in the service of Christ, in myriad ways and find blessing in so doing.