Vision and the hospitality of God
St Peter’s, Nottingham - 1st Sunday after Trinity
10 June 2007
1 Kings 17:17-24; Galatians 1: 11-24; Luke 7: 11-17
World vision
There is much talk today of vision. With a new Prime Minister about to be launched upon us, everyone is asking what his vision is. How will it differ from his predecessor? Will we see a return to something closer to earlier principles of the Labour movement, or will it just be a reflection, strong or weak, of what has gone before? And, in a sense, more worrying are the new tensions arising between Russia and the west, and wondering what path the Russian president is leading his country down, how does he see the future? And constantly with us over the past few months and years – what is going on in Zimbabwe, in Darfur, in the Congo? What effect are those ongoing appalling situations going to have on the future development of the African continent? What do African leaders, and other world leaders believe needs to be done in order to keep the possibility of real progress in Africa alive? And that is without even mentioning the Middle East and Iraq.
These are all vision questions, and we look longingly at politicians and the media and those who control commerce in the modern world in the hope that there is more to their actions and words than just a sort of day by day pragmatism. Is there, we may wonder, any vision at all of the world for which these powerful people long, or have relationships in this so-called one world now broken down to an extent that we just have to look after our own interests, protecting what is ours, and not bothering too much about what happens to others who see things differently?
Vision in the Church
Similar questions can be asked of the Church. We are only too aware of the fragile state of the Anglican Communion. Each time I pick up the Church Times these days, I do so in trepidation, fearing who will have said what or done what, decided what to do or what not to do; and with the Lambeth Conference now not far over the horizon, I guess the media are going to be watching closely and delighting in whatever mess ensues. One province has already said that its bishops will not be coming as they will not sit at the same table as another set of bishops. This is a wonderful model to be presenting to our fragmented world.
And what is pretty depressing at national and international level could so easily be reflected at local level as well. We are very close now to concluding the legal process of uniting this parish with St Mary’s. Many people were, and some remain sceptical about the project. I am genuinely sorry about that, but hope also that as we move forward, and gradually get to know one another, to work with one another, to pray and play together, and not only our three church communities, but with the people of St Nic’s and our ecumenical partners as well, it will become more and more clear that being together, and modelling collaboration, partnership, community will have something to say to our city as well as being beneficial to us. A project has been carried out for us by Cathy Rylance, formerly with Capital One and now an independent consultant, researching what all the city centre churches are doing or hosting within their premises, in terms of service to the community. The draft report makes impressive reading, and Cathy, as a sympathetic non-churchgoer has been amazed at what we are all engaging with. But I guarantee that not many of you would be able to name one activity that, for instance, St Andrew’s with Castlegate United Reformed Church is involved with. I guess quite a lot of you don’t even know where their church is. Or what the YMCA is involved in as a significant ecumenical Christian agency in the city. And if we don’t know what even those operating within the geographical boundaries of our own parish are doing, there is little likelihood of our offering support to them, or them offering support to us. There is a real feeling, even in this compact city centre of ‘you in your small corner and I in mine’, and we don’t really care too much, provided our small corner is reasonably comfortable and familiar.
Saint Columba
Yesterday was the feast of St Columba, alongside St Aidan the most significant of our homegrown saints. Columba’s early life was probably pretty disputacious. The story goes that he got caught illegally copying another monk’s psalter. There we go. Nothing changes. The copyright laws were tough even in those days. However the particular dispute that followed Columba’s misdeed led to war, and his exclusion from Ireland. Well, history suggests that that was our gain and Ireland’s loss!! However accidental or controversial his arrival, Columba set out with a vision, a vision that was formed within a very sharply-focussed sense of his calling from God. It was a vision in which place was very significant, and in which people were the focus. The place of course was Iona, and the people were…well anyone and everyone whom he encountered on his journeyings across Scotland and around the western isles. Iona is symbolic. A tiny island – a place referred to even to day as a very ‘thin’ place - there is ‘not much between Iona and the Lord’ – perched on the edge of the world, or so it would seem to its many visitors, a pinhead on the surface of the earth, battered by storms, most of it barren and infertile. Yet from here the Gospel spread across Europe. “To tell the story of Iona is to go back from god and to end in God’ wrote Fiona Macleod in the early part of the last century. A rigourous and refining homeground for testing the vocation of those for whom it was home; a place where the immanence of God in Christ literally glowed for those who were (and are) its visitors. From here, Aidan went into fierce and heathen lands to create the Holy Island of Lindisfarne in the same mould, and from there Cuthbert and Chad and Cedd and more spread throughout our islands and beyond, people, individuals inconspicuous and insignificant in the field of human power, whose hearts were filled with a vision of the glory of God and whose eyes and hands and legs were dedicated to the service of the glory of God’s creation, humanity.
Jesus and the widow of Nain
When Jesus saw a woman in deep distress there was only one thing to do. Rules went out of the window. It was improper and against the law to touch a corpse, but a widow who had lost her only son was not only bereaved of a loved one, but cast out also to the edges of survival – there was no place for solitary and unmarriageable women in that society. But in Jesus’ heart was the vision of Isaiah the prophet – to bring good news to the poor, to restore sight to the blind and to bring liberation to the captive – to bring life, in other words, where real life there was none, a vision that will be repeated in just a few verses time, as John the Baptist is informed in his prison cell of how Jesus is doing.
Paul in like manner after his visionary encounter with the risen Christ did not return to Jerusalem to be indoctrinated with the new faith but rather went away to the edges to encounter God and to own for himself the new vision of God’s life for God’s world.
The hospitality of God
The hospitality of God is total self-giving for the world. As we try to search out our vision for being the church today in this city, or nation or world, we could at least start with Columba and Iona, Aidan and Lindisfarne, insignificant places and insignificant people soaked in the prayer of God’s hospitality, reaching out with all we have not to entrap them into what we are and have, but that they may find freedom in the glorious liberty of the children of God. I’m not sure though how the people of power will connect with that vision. Many were converted in those days, but then many were not. Nothing changes.