Sermon for the 4th Sunday after Trinity

Sunday 27th June 2010

Preached by Rev Paul Hewtt

I’m a great fan of William Temple’s maxim that a clergyman should preach with a Bible in one hand and a newspaper in the other. Apart from the appalling tragedies and sad stories that the news is always full of these days, the rest of the news is very much full of the same stuff.

Between the Budget, the World Cup in South Africa and the Wimbledon tennis championship, one would begin to wonder is there anything else.

So that’s why I thought, this morning, you would be delighted to know all about our wonderful day out we spent at the Diocesan Synod, last Thursday week in Lurgan. I say a day, but I have already misled you. Mentally or physically, I wouldn’t be up to spending nearly 12 hours getting there and back and all the rest and I think my compatriots might feel the same way. But, I think, we did our duty: Good and early on Thursday 17^th June, Walter Moore, Hazel Johnston and myself got ourselves over to the Jethro Centre in Lurgan for the pre-Synod Eucharist!

You would have loved it – plasma screens everywhere, a band, and not an alb nor a stole in sight. Ray would have had the time of his life! The tribe of clergy involved in the Holy Communion all wore black preaching scarves – the scene was set! The preacher was none other than the blessed Tom Keightley of Belvoir Parish. Thank God for him.

He always has powerful things to say in a way that would have you rolling on the floor. He has preached here in this Church, and we need more people like him! I actually usually enjoy the pre-synod Eucharist, even if it has a lot of things people hate, but I have no qualms with it. After a coffee break, we even stayed for the presidential address, by our Diocesan Bishop, Harold Miller!

You could probably read this on the website, but just to prove to you that I was there and that I was listening I will tell you, without reference to the internet that he spoke of the local Church as the hope of the world and it was under three headings: WWW - Welcome, Worship and Witness. (I hope you’re impressed!)

Welcome was his first and longest subject, and I’m going to dwell on it for a few moments.

There’s no doubt that every Church needs to be a place of welcome. I’m sure I have told you the story before of going to what everyone refers to, on holidays, as ‘The English Church’. Although the Bishop doesn’t seem to have had good experiences of tea or coffee after Church Services, where he says the tea is often “awful” (not in Glencraig, Hazel and I thought to each other!) I felt I had to stay this particular Sunday in the English Church because they were offering Champagne. It wasn’t just the Champagne I wanted to try, but it was just that I wanted to come home afterwards and tell you that on holiday I had Champagne after Church!

On this particular occasion, I made a deliberate policy to collect my glass ... and just wait and see. So I looked at the plaques on the walls and I moseyed around, just to see what would happen.

I could have made a point of talking to someone or to a group, but I just wanted to see would anyone come and speak to me. When I had finished my glass, I walked through a group of people in order to put my glass back on the table and I went out through the door. No one said even ‘hello’ – maybe it was just me. (On a previous occasion, by the way, I had even filled out a card requesting information about Church activities, but no one ever contacted me).

In other words, if I really wanted to be a part of that Church, I would have to really scream at them to ‘let me in’! It seems that if one really wants to be a member of a Church, you’ve got to be persistent.

Now that our large notice boards have been beautifully restored and painted by Ian Black and his cohort, Johnny Park, we really should make an effort to use them to our advantage – perhaps a wayside pulpit, or, at least an advertisement to let people know who pass by that we’re still alive! However, one such story that the Bishop relayed in his address was about locked gates to a Church he had seen. He was decrying the state of our closed Churches and he asked would it worth the risk to continue to leave them open. And, indeed, if we were diligent about certain objects in our Church, perhaps we could, once again leave our Church open. It is certainly food for thought. One Church the Bishop came across had ugly locked gates; a rusty chain was wrapped around the opening with a huge padlock. Just inside the gate was the wayside pulpit with the verse written on it: “Jesus said, ‘I am the gate’”. What kind of message does that give to a passing world?

It is very interesting in our Gospel reading this morning when it says that Jesus was resolutely setting out for Jerusalem. They came across a Samaritan village, “but the people there did not welcome him”, it says

So what did Jesus do? Jesus moved on! You remember, Jesus once even told his disciples, if people do not welcome you in to their homes, then just shake the dust off your feet and move on! If you’re not welcome, you just move on

Noting the Bishop’s observations on ‘Welcome’, and with all our own personal experiences of visiting churches, we should all be very conscious of how strangers or visitors might feel when they visit this very Church

I know people have been at this Church and for a whole load of reasons perhaps, not least, sometimes, because of the Vicar himself, they never return. I have seen them come and I have seen them go

I hope that most people who come to this Church or who have joined as new parishioners over the last while, do feel welcome. I hope someone has spoken to you and, when appropriate, invited you around for a cup of coffee in the Church Hall. We all know what it is like to walk in to a strange Church, and we often judge that Church by the kind of welcome we receive. But it has to be balanced – we’re not here to smother you, but we are here to be a welcoming Christian family. Otherwise people will just move on, not just from this Church, but they may even move on from Church altogether!