A church with a sense of humour where love is all around!

I hesitate to follow on from Becky’s fun with the children. It was great fun seeing her re-telling of the story of Noah's ark with so many unexpected animals.

And as for the joke about opening the door ... that was one she had not actually run past me before the service!!!!

I must say I have enjoyed John Pritchard’s book, Going to Church

Among the ten things the Bishop of Reading would go to the stake for in any church is

A church with a sense of humour where they laugh a lot – mostly at themselves.

It’s very sad when people feel that on entering a church they have to take off their personality and leave it at the door. You catch a glimpse of that when young men, unaccustomed to church and dressed up uncomfortably for a baptism or wedding, are clearly enormously relieved to get outside, where you can almost see them shake off the formality and resume normality. Laughter in church would be deeply odd to them. But laughter is a gift that belongs to our humanity. It’s God-given and one of our greatest pleasures – as well as being good for our health. Humour should be alongside holiness as the ‘ground bass’ of our church life. Sometimes as I watch the Church acting out its protocols like vintage Gilbert and Sullivan, I think God must be hooting with laughter (if you’ll excuse the anthropomorphism) As if our formalities mattered.

Laughter is a gift that belongs to our humanity

My problem is … I am not good at telling jokes!

So I want to move on … to another of his statements and one that is very timely in the week when we are going to have our Visitors’ meeting.

John Pritchard is also adamant about another of the things to go to the stake for in any church …

A church where love is all around.

… even when it has to be expressed in forgiveness. Love is the litmus test of a church’s life. It tells you whether it has got the Jesus gene or not. Love is the projection of God’s life into the world and so it is one of the very few things that increases the more you give it away.

In each of his letters Paul comes to a point at which he seeks to apply the thinking behind his Christian faith to practical everyday living, not least the kind of living that is so necessary in a church family.

Coming towards the end of Ephesians that’s exactly the kind of thing he reflects on.

Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2

So then, putting away falsehood, let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another.

Be angry but do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and do not make room for the devil.

Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labour and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy.

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.

Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

There is so much that is precious in what Paul has to say.

I like the way that passage begins.

So then, putting away falsehood let all of us speak the truth to our neighbours, for we are members of one another.

Paul has a very strong sense of belonging when it comes to the church. On a number of occasions he speaks of everyone who belongs to the church as if they were members of a single body. And in that body the seemingly least important members are just as important as the seemingly very important members.

But here the analogy he uses is a little different.

He is adamant – we are members of one another.

We belong to each other. We are part of each other.

When one hurts we all hurt.

That sense of togetherness is bound together by a sense of love.

How that works out in our church is key to the life of our church family.

We have a wonderful collection of church directories from about 1900 to about 1930. Not unlike in size or content the directory we continue to publish. One difference is that the church directory includes a listing of all the members and adherents with their addresses … and it includes the visiting district they are in and the church visitor.

Isn’t that fascinating.

Our present scheme of visiting districts goes back 50 years, but 100 years ago the church family was divided into visiting districts.

That notion goes to the heart of what we do to bind ourselves together as a church family.

Every 6 months the church visitors meet together for an evening when they compare notes and someone with a particular experience or speciality feeds in thoughts and ideas that can help build up the whole work of visiting. On Thursday we meet as church visitors and Deacons and will be joined by a friend of Kate Blazey who works with older people and is going to share with us on the support we can give and share with those who have dementia.

Someone who has been a visitor for quite a number of years is Katherine Stanley – she is going to say a few words about what it means to be a visitor.

Reflections on being a Church Visitor by Katherine Stanley

When we moved to Cheltenham, nearly 38 years ago, we visited some other churches and after a few months settled into Highbury. When new to a church, you don’t realise the organisation behind is, so I didn’t know all about the Districts and the Church Visitors, but I did know that every month a dear little old lady brought us our Highbury News. We lived in Beechurst at the time, and it was Marion Darvill, for those people who remember her.

Well, when thinking about what I was going to say this morning I realised that this dear little old lady, was probably about the age I am now!!!

After some years, I was asked if I could become a Church Visitor. As I enjoy meeting people I said yes.

Highbury has 12 geographical districts, each district having one Deacon and 1, 2, of 3 visitors, so that every person in Highbury can feel some connection with the church.

In this church, we have our own building, but this ccanot exist without people, because the people are the church, drawn together on Sundays and during the week as well so we are all connected through our Christian faith.

It is up to all of us to help each other feel welcome in our church, and the Church Visitors have a special tool to help them – it’s called Highbury News. This is a really valuable link, because as well as giving all the news about Highbury it enables the visitor to make contact with everyone in their patch, thus strengthening the Christian connection of love and care.

Another way of promoting the family feeling in Highbury is the way that the Visitors themselves have a meeting with the Pastoral Care team, usually twice a year, when there is a special theme, and the opportunity to hear about concerns in all the other Districts. I can assure you that no confidences are betrayed, but it is an extra way of helping that Christian family feeling.

It is interesting to see the kind of dynamic Paul envisages in a church family where we are all members of one another. It is not all sweetness and light, all cooey and lovey dovey.

Be angry … he has space for anger, but do not sin. That’s an interesting qualification. Maybe there are times when we can be angry – even with each other. But there is a line beyond which we not cross in our anger. When it turns bad – turns to sin.

Then comes that very wise advice – advice to be taken to heart in any family and in any church family.

Do not let the sun go down on your anger.

Interesting isn’t it the injunction about thieves giving up stealing. Isn’t that an interesting insight into the makeup of the church Paul knows he is writing to. It is not a repetition of the injunction ‘do not steal’. Paul envisages that a church family will be made up of a mixed bunch.

There is room for the thief – but the thief is to stop thieving and to share with the needy.

Then Paul comes back to what is said, what passes the lips …

Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to those who hear.

That’s a wonderful measure of how we speak one with another, what we say to each other, and the tone in which we say it.

Building up – edifying. Words that give grace!

And do not grieve the Holy Spirit.

Things you do can make others not so much angry, as sad.

And they can make God sad.

Don’t grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption.

Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice.

Those are the negatives … but in place of the negatives paul then lists the positives. They are the things for us to take to heart in our conversation with each other, in our visiting scheme in the whole of our church family life.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.

What it all boils down to is that we be imitators of God, as beloved children, and that we live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for , a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

I love those words …we are called to live in love.

That’s what church is all about.

That’s worth going to the stake for.

John Pritchard recalls a doctor who once said that he’d been in general practice for 30 years and he’d never found anyting as effective as a prescription of love. “What if it doesn’t work?” he was asked. “Double the dose,” he replied.

Churches need to be places where such prescriptions are given out endlessly and inexhaustibly. If people don’t experience something different about the quality and character of loving in a Christian community, you can’t blame them for not taking their enquiries further. “God is love, and those who live in love live in god, and God lives in them (1 John 4:16). That sounds like a cast-iron argument to me, says John Pritchard.

At the heart of our church family life, at the heart of that church visiting scheme

Let’s live in love as Christ loved us.