Opening the door to a new life

 The difficulty we face today is the fact that we have unlimited choice in what we want as individuals.  No one really worries, or dare I say it cares, about your choices so long as they are within the limits of the law.  This may mean that you go off to windsurf and form your community with those who do the same.  Perhaps you enjoy a glass of red and would prefer to do this surrounded by strangers, whom you may eventually get to know in a bar.  No matter what we are doing so long as we are satisfied, then who cares?  The one choice we are perhaps scared to make is a choice with regards our own spiritual journey because as soon as we make a choice in this arena we are pounced on from all and sundry.  The biases of the community to our faith journey is evident in the presumptions.  Your a Christian? those are the ones that go around drinking a persons blood and saying one thing but doing the complete opposite. Like politicians.  or Your a Muslim?  why aren't you wearing one of those covering things? aren't you all terrorists?  A Jew? aren't you the ones that say you look after the poor and the orphan but then go and create more by bombing the Palestinians?  These are hard accusations against any faith community based on limited understanding. So what makes the Christian community or any faith community a faith community?

For Christians, it starts with an acceptance, an acceptance of Christ who holds open a door into post-resurrection life (Jn 10.1-10).  Only when we truly enter into that life by stepping over the threshold of death do we begin to form the community that Christ  / God calls us into. Yet there is more to this than just acceptance and entry.  We enter into resurrection life by passing through our own deaths.  The death of our own individual wants and desires.  An entry into a life that is centred not on our own selves but on God.  It is a grouping of individuals that have allowed their trust to blossom between themselves and God in such a manner as to allow God to lead them.  It is not a community that is built on shame or on the concept of shaming someone to do something.  It is a group that builds its relationship around trust.  Trust in the other that is not myself and trust in the other that is ultimately other.  By opening the door Christ invites us into a relationship that is built on trust and love.  For us to become a viable part of that trusting community we need to shed our own desires and wants that we impose on others around us. This begins at baptism when we invite parents and god parents to bring their child to the font and ask them to instil these precepts in the life of the child. If we do not and our sponsors do not how can we build on trust? and in love?

Discerning the call into community not individuality

© Blake Coffee .churchwhisperer.com 

We open ourselves up to God and God's community, allowing God to direct and build according to God's will not in accordance with our will.  How is this done?  It is about letting go of our self centredness, our selfishness and perhaps, like the early followers of Christ immediately post resurrection (Acts 2.42-47), it is centred around the worship of God and prayer.  It is not centred around the crutches that we often depend on in today's world to focus our minds and let us know that God is present. Today, it is as if we cannot let go of ourselves and enter into God's presence without a symbolic crutch.  In those early days there were no symbols of the risen Lord only knowledge of God's presence as the worshippers immersed themselves in prayer.  We come together to form community around the table in communal worship.  It is not individual time to be with God when we come to worship; it is community being formed in God.  The joy and the hope that is formed is a joy and hope in community.  We are individuals outside of the worshipping community but we form the community in worship.  Each time we come together as a community we come together in the presence of God and allow his Spirit to affect our behaviour in Community.  If we set ourselves apart from the community, by clinging to our crutches, we no longer form as God's community but rather we come together as a bunch of individuals supermarket shopping for a Spiritual experience.

Walking alone or as Com-panis

 I think that opening ourselves up may well be a perennial challenge for us when we look at proclaiming or at least stating our faith beliefs. Often when we are asked with regards our faith we are reluctant to state anything. If you are like me the thing I have an issue with is when someone comes up to you and says "Do you believe in Jesus?". I really want to ask "what do you mean?" as a reply just to ensure that the person speaking is not making a false idol out of the use of the name "Jesus". At this time of year we state quite clearly "Christ is risen! Alleluia!" not "Jesus is risen". That is why we are Christians not Jesusians and we must be very careful with what we proclaim and how we proclaim or state our faith. This I believe leads quite often to fear, fear of being misunderstood or lumped in with others who proclaim voraciously but act as non-Christian as can be. Yet, the risen Christ states to the women on the day of resurrection "Do not be afraid" (Matt 28.10). How then can we understand the manner in which it is acceptable and not cringe-worthy to respond to this challenge of proclamation without fear but with confidence?

Do we like Peter get up and preach in such a manner on the street corner? (Acts 2). I think that it is more important for us today to look at the end of this particular chapter and not at what Peter is doing. We have not just been anointed with the Holy Spirit that led Peter out into the middle of the city but rather we are or should be living the life of a Christ follower. It is in the last verses of this chapter that our attention needs to focus (Acts 2.43-47). This is the community as it begins in terms of fellowship and worship. One of the things that we do not do quite so well is that described in verses 46-47 which for me is the crucial point as it concludes with "And day by day the Lord added new converts to their number". This is past Peter's speech it is the communal aspect that brings new converts. A communal life that is open to all and brings others into contact with the understanding through teaching and fellowship of what the Gospel means in our present day lives. We need to be expressing our faith and preaching the Gospel in the way we live our daily lives by exploring our faith together.

We do not walk alone when we walk with those who share bread (Com-panis - companions)

In moving forward we move together assisting each other much as the two disciples on the walk to Emmaus do. They are speaking together about their faith trying to understand so that when the risen Christ comes into their midst they offer the hospitality of the road joining together and accepting the other. So often in our faith journeys with each other we are prone to close ourselves of from those who look at the scriptures in a different manner to ourselves. We become judgemental in our outlook as we assure ourselves that we read and interpret in the tradition that is "right" without opening ourselves up to the mystery that is God. This is perhaps best illustrated in the latest pronouncements by GAFCON in terms of communion with others. Who knows what is "right"?; certainly not me. The disciples are open to the ideas propounded by the other and do not dismiss them as being incorrect or wrong or not according to the way they have been taught. The hospitality of the way is an openness to the other so that we can weave our entangled lives together on a path that leads us all to God. It is a hospitality that reaches out to include those who are different from us so that we can discuss our journeys along the interweaving paths of God's graciousness.

Yet, we are afraid. We fear the vulnerability that comes with this type of open hospitality as we cower behind our doors and lives. We are unable to speak clearly of our faith as we suppose that we do not have the "fancy words" that modern society expects in our explanations. We have a fear that we will incorrectly express what God means in our lives and what the risen Christ is to us. We fear the ridicule that comes with disbelief. Most of this fear is a result of our fear that the borders of our neatly prescribed religious beliefs are going to be penetrated and overcome in the language of disbelief that society regales us with. Yet, in clinging so fast to the border we forget that only when these are flexible and porous to the other can we entertain each other in hospitality and generosity showing God's love and grace to the other.

New fire to begin a new life

 Christ is Risen!  He is risen indeed! But how do we approach this new thing, this new life that is given to us in the darkness of the pre-dawn.  Does it actually mean anything to us as we gather at the place of worship or is it another thing that is on the agenda for this weekend?  Take the kids of to some exciting camp ground or to the coast or to a secluded spot away from it all  isn't that better than going to a stuffy old church and listening to another boring old sermon?  and if we do go away do we go to a distant church were no one will know us just for the tradition that tells us we should go to church?

In this age when people are less drawn to the concept of a commitment to a place or an institution where we find those that do are becoming older and more frustrated as they feel the demands of 'religion' placed upon their shoulders, what does it mean to celebrate new life and the mystery that is the Risen Christ.  How can we re-capture this mystery within our lived lives in a manner that will draw us into Christ's presence in our lives and those of the community? The darkness of our daily lives appears not to be dispelled by the new fire that is lit for us.  The new fire brings an image of warmth and community as we gather around to bless the candle that for us becomes a symbol of Christic love in the world.  We have survived the previous days challenges, the death of a human upon a cross.  We saw the humility, the graciousness with which the anointed one died.  We sat on the side lines without interfering, much as we do today in light of injustice and power.  So here we have gathered as a community.

New fire burns away the dry dead old life

We become aware that it is our mortality that has been surrendered, our frailty that has been given in the body of the anointed one as we are invited to new life by those who are at the tomb.  The body is not here, we gave up our lives on the cross when we surrendered to Christ's love in our lives at our baptism.  We have been invited away from our old lives. It is a time of rejoicing, our introspection should have been undertaken as we approached the cross initially. Now in the joy of seeing our risen Lord we need to acknowledge our own death so that we also can rise with Christ. What we should not do is go looking into the past that is dead to us to find the newness in life that is promised by Christ in his resurrection. Christ comes to us from the future not the past and in coming to us from the future we accept him into our lives knowing and abetting the change that this brings. We celebrate the burning away of the dead wood as we light the new fire, the fire of the Spirit in our lives as we move forward on the journey to the risen life. We pass through baptism acknowledging that we will live in truth and in Christ. We were reminded of that surrendering on Good Friday.  Both visually and physically as we wept at the foot of the cross, a weeping for our old lives.  We have been washed in the waters of baptism and cleansed so that we too might partake of Christ's risen life.  He has gone on before us and as we renew ourselves within the waters of baptism so we commit ourselves once more to that call from outside of ourselves.  

We celebrate today in the present. We allow the past to die. We begin a new life in the future with Christ. In celebrating today we need to place all our effort into fulfilling the vows that we take. Only in allowing ourselves to die will we begin to rise into something different. Unfortunately for many today this will be an exercise in futility as we do not wish to die. The horror that we feel is present in death is persuasive and denies us the support that we need to fulfil Christ's promise. In our denial we loose our rebirth and are unable to become as Christ as we bring with us the sins of the past. We immediately forget the words at the beginning of each service and the light that is re-lit at dawn, Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!