Father, by Your Spirit help us to understand what You are saying to us through Your written Word, so that we may follow the Way of Your Son who is the Living Word, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
'Come as you are.' That's the message at the heart of Back to Church Sunday, which - just in case you didn't already know - is next Sunday. 'Come as you are.' Perhaps you've already invited someone to join you here next Sunday morning, and given them one of these invitation cards. If not, then there's still time! And please continue to pray for all who will be invited to a service on Back to Church Sunday.
A personal invitation is the best way to encourage those who have lost - or never had - the habit of churchgoing. And a personal invitation back to church can mark the beginning of a life-changing journey with Jesus, in the company of His pilgrim people. That's certainly what happened to Celia in Colchester, when her friend invited her to come with her to church. 'When a friend invited Celia to a service at St. Luke's Church in Colchester, she admits she didn't leap at the opportunity. Her view of church at that time was that it was "stuffy, full of hypocritical people and not for me, as I didn't have any Christian beliefs." But not wanting to hurt her friend Carole's feelings by saying no, Celia went along. It was not at all like she'd imagined. "I was surprised, it was … more progressive and the people were very friendly. I didn't feel like they were trying to shove religion down my throat - they let me make up my own mind. It was a very relaxed and welcoming atmosphere, just like one big family." For Celia, this invitation back to church was a major turning point in her life. "My views changed after I took part in the Alpha Course and I really enjoy coming to church now. … I've joined the Worship Team and I also work with the children. God is the most important person in my life. My life revolves around serving him and demonstrating his unconditional love by serving others."
Like Celia, countless others have found that an invitation back to church can be a major turning point in their life. So if - like Celia's friend Carole - you have someone in mind to invite, don't hold back. After all, the worst they can do is to say no.
And, who knows, they may come to thank God for your friendly invitation, and for you!
Perhaps it's easy to forget just how big a step it is for many people to come through the church doors. In doing so, they are entering an unfamiliar world, meeting a unfamiliar group of people, and sharing in what is an unfamiliar event. They are having to connect with what is essentially to them an alien culture. And that's a brave thing to do. This year I've had a taste of what that experience is like when I joined a local Malvern Cricket Club. I made initial contact via the website, found out what was going on, and then turned up at the pre-season cricket nets. It was very daunting to enter the sports hall with several dozen folk, all of whom knew each other. I felt the odd one out, and didn't know where to go, what to do, or who I needed to speak to. Yes, I knew that they were playing cricket, as I wanted to, but it was still a very strange experience. Thankfully Chris, the club secretary, spotted me looking a bit lost, and introductions quickly followed. And gradually, as I attended the nets, and then started playing, so I got to know others at the club. And I even scored a few runs!
What a difference it makes if someone looks out for you - or, better still, comes with you. If that's true for a cricket club, then how much more so ought it to be in a Christian Church. So what will a Back to Church Sunday visitor find, if they come here next Sunday morning? Well, they'll find a large group of people of all ages and stages and backgrounds meeting together in a very ancient and beautiful building. They'll also find that there'll be a welcome for them at the door, as well as inside, and that the Priory is an open doors church which seeks to place welcome at the heart of its' ministry. And, yes, they'll also realise that some of our facilities are still badly in need of a 21st century makeover!
But beyond initial impressions of the Priory as the people and the place, what will they experience in the time they share with us? Hopefully, as well as receiving a warm Priory welcome, they will also discover that meeting the Living Lord in worship lies at the heart of our gathering. And that, flowing from this meeting in worship, is the understanding that we are called to go out and bear witness to the love of God and neighbour through our service of others. Our visitors will hopefully see how worship of the suffering Saviour inspires His servant-hearted people. God's way, for the sake of God's world.
However what visitors won't find here is the finished product. Like this building, we Priory people are a work in progress. That means we don't always get it right - well, I can certainly speak for myself! So often we fail to grasp what God is trying to say, or to do in our lives. Perhaps, then, it is of some comfort to know that the first followers of Jesus were no different. For, in today's Gospel, Mark tells us how the disciples were also struggling to get the point.
This was certainly not for the first time. Earlier on in Mark's Gospel, Jesus said things to them in parables and they didn't get it. They struggled to get their minds round the fact that, while He often said things that had a clear meaning at the surface level, He also wanted them to look under the surface. And now Jesus told them something He meant quite literally: "The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again" (Mark 9: 31). And, they, unsurprisingly, were probably puzzled because they couldn't find any hidden meaning. But this time, Jesus was simply trying to tell them what was going to happen: that He would be betrayed, be killed, and then rise again.
So why couldn't the disciples understand this? Well because it was the very last thing they would have expected the Messiah to do. Not all Jews of the time believed that God would send a Messiah to save His people. But nobody at all believed that a Messiah would have to suffer and to die. And yes, they would doubtless have believed - like most first century Jews - that God would raise the dead at the end of the present age. But not that one person would rise from the dead in the very midst of the present age. No wonder the disciples were slow on the uptake. What Jesus was telling them simply wasn't part of their existing worldview.
God does not always act in the ways that we might expect. As the Jesuit priest Gerard Hughes has pointed out in his book God of Surprises, "God is mystery, a beckoning word, and he calls us out beyond our narrowness" (DLT 1985). The first disciples had to have their worldview radically challenged and then turned upside-down by the One they thought they knew. And that was to be a slow, painful, and stumbling process.
In today's Gospel it's clear that they were far from open to having their understanding transformed. Instead, their concern was about status, about what was in it for them. They had only half understood what Jesus had been saying, the half of His message they wanted to understand: if Jesus was the Messiah, then they were His royal courtiers-in-waiting. Status, not service was their ambition.
Yet Jesus would have none of this: "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all" (Mark 9: 35). Jesus measured greatness in terms of service, not status. Of course, this idea is so contrary to the world's idea of greatness that most of us - like those first disciples - have a hard time really understanding it, much less practicing it. As someone once wryly remarked, "most people wish to serve God - but only in an advisory capacity". But to be like Jesus is to be a servant. That's what He called Himself. For Christians, service is not optional, something to be fitted in if we can spare the time. It is at the very heart of the Christian life. All of us have a serving part to play, and there is no retirement from God's service! For us, like the first disciples, serving others as Jesus did is where the rubber of Christian discipleship hits the road.
John Barr
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