All our major Church festivals have been squeezed together over the last while this year because Easter was so early. And now we have before us all these Sundays after Trinity. Today, of course, is the first Sunday after Trinity and we have twenty-two in all!! So, our Church is going to be decked in green for a long time to come. Green; the colour of renewal and growth and learning! What are we going to learn over these next twenty-two weeks?

The Gospel reading reminds me of the rock on which our glorious Church is built; not Glencraig specifically, but the Church of Christ which is still standing after 2000 years, despite itself! And I mean that. How can a Church, considering at times its appalling history be still standing despite its history and cruelty and lust for power? It has withstood storms and rain and wind form outside and from within. It has an incredibly firm foundation. But even to this day, Philip Yancey asks of the modern Church, if the Church is the embodiment of Christ, if it is meant to be God’s representative on earth, then why it doesn’t work better. Why doesn’t it work better?

I have a very high opinion of Christians. Actually, what I really mean is that I have a very high expectation of how Christians should behave. But I am constantly being let down. I have seen and heard Christians act in a way (in my humble opinion!) that is very un-Christ-like, and yet I am supposed to be a part of that same Church.

Where does that put me? You know that famous quote of Karl Rahner, which I’ve used 100 times, “The number one cause of atheism is Christians. Those who claim him with their lips and deny him with their life-styles is what an unbelieving world finds simply unbelievable”.

Does that leave the Church belonging to a quaint old nostalgic time when the local village rector was more like the village idiot, a bit of an empty head, or even worse a bit of a big head. Do you know the true story from the early part of last century when many Headmasters were ordained clergymen, shouting at of young Adams who had failed his term exams miserably, “Adams, you have a big head and nothing in it! Come in to the ministry!” And you always thought ‘Father Ted’ was a comedy programme, when all the time it was a documentary!

Or what about the advert in the church press which went, “Are you forty-five and getting nowhere? Why not consider the Christian ministry?”

Some tick off ‘church’ as their ‘to do’ list somewhere between visiting Great Aunt Edna and making a cake for the PTA. The attitude of others is summed up in a ditty:

So when I’ve nothing else to do,

I think I’ll pay a visit,

so when at last I’m carried in,

The Lord won’t say, ‘Who is it?’

But the often popular image of Church, and some of its realities, is wholly inadequate when compared to the picture of the church in the New Testament.

There are over 100 images or analogies of the church in the New Testament. The most well-known are, the Church as the People of God, the Family of God, the Body of Christ, a Holy temple, and one that we don’t often consider, the Church as the Bride of Christ!

Last year, we had something like fourteen weddings in Glencraig, but this year we only have a handful! It’s always quality over quantity here in this Church. And before you think I’m going completely soft, here’s a little bit of a story:

A doctor was addressing a large audience on the subject of food...”The material we put into our stomachs is enough to have killed most of sitting here years ago...red meat is awful, soft drinks corrode your stomach lining, Chinese food is loaded with MSG, high fat diets can be disastrous, and none of us realises the long-term harm caused by germs in our drinking water. But...there is one thing that is the most dangerous of all. We have nearly all eaten, or will eat it, at some time. Can anyone here tell me what food it is that causes the most grief and suffering for years after eating it? After a short pause, an old man in the front row raised his hand, and softly said, “Wedding Cake?”

The real truth is, as you well know, a wedding expresses more about the love of God than any other occasion in Church. This is all God’s idea; he thought it up, and the Church as the bride of Christ is one of the most beautiful analogies of the church in the New Testament. Paul speaks about Christ being the husband to the Church and so he tells husbands to love their wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.

In the marriage ceremony, the whole relationship of the husband and wife is likened unto the relationship between that of Christ and his Church. And what did he do for his church? He loved it and cherished it, and he even died for it, as I remind every couple who gets married here.

It’s a glorious picture, a picture of the holy and radiant church which doesn’t always fit the reality, as we have alluded to, but in this analogy we get a glimpse of what Jesus intends his church to be like. Perhaps, indeed, we have to wait until the end times, as in Rev. 21 when the new Jerusalem comes down out of heaven as a bride beautifully adorned for her husband.

The Church is made up of people belonging to God, who are bound together in love as a family representing Christ to the world, with his presence in their midst and loving their Lord as a bride loves the bridegroom, and the bridegroom his bride – it should be near heaven on earth.

Whatever our disappointments or disenchantment with ‘church’; that kind of ideal has to be our goal, to create the kind of church that Jesus intends it to be.