Salt of the Earth

If any of you have ever visited Kendal in Cumbria you may have been into Holy Trinity Church next to the river. When you enter this Parish church you immediately struck by the size. The centre aisle is over 800 years old and there are a further 4 aisles which were added over the centuries. The church is amazingly only three feet narrower in width than York Minster. You leave the building with a sense of amazement. In its heyday over 1200 people worshipped every Sunday who mostly worked in the wool trade. Today the congregation averages about 40. I recently attended a mid week eucharist at Durham Cathedral where there were 5 others in the congregation. Yet at the recent Lumiere or light festival in Durham City, over 20,000 tourists walked through the Cathedral doors in one day. Let’s hope they God during their visit.  It is hard to imagine what those who built these magnificent buildings would say about dwindling numbers. The very best craftsmen toiled tirelessly to build these buildings and as they did so would have thought about the countless people who would encounter God there.  As each stone was laid it was more than just about building a building but it was about how people would be impacted and changed in the years to come.  These magnificent feats of architecture were built to inspire and give us a glimpse of God’s majesty but most importantly to attract people to God not the building. Sometimes we think of the church as the building but in truth the church is its people. The word church comes from the Greek “Ecclesia” which means “an assembly” that is you and me.

For us to be effective as a church we need to be the church not doing church and there is a huge difference. Throughout the generations and it is as true today, that the church can become centred around its own domesticity and that we forget sometimes the majesty of our calling. - to be agents of universal transformation. The gospel Jesus leaves us is not about gathering in places that we feel safe in but in transforming people and communities into the kingdom of glory. We are the salt of the earth and just as the salt was never meant to remain inside the salt cellar, but was designed to season all it touches, so we, the church, were not created to remain insular and isolated from the world. When we as a church or assembly of God’s people, retreat from the world, the church is seen as inaccessible, remote and out of touch. Too often we think that growing the Kingdom is someone else’s job. Someone who has those sorts of gifts, someone who is more outgoing or gregarious than you and me. But Jesus didn’t say “come follow me and I will make the outgoing and the confident and the brave fishers of me”. He said “I will make you” – You and me fishers of men. And note he said “make” because sustained by his spirit we are all capable of great things.   Jesus didn’t chose great orators, celebrities or politicians to grow his kingdom, he chose fishermen and tax collectors -  people like you and me. Ordinary people who did extra ordinary things. 

We could be accused of being naive if we were to believe that without much effort on our part people are going to return to church in droves. Yes we will have amazing events like Back to Church Sunday where we double our congregation and showed that when we work together as a team we can inspire people to come to church. And yes, some of those who came have returned. But it is not just about a once a year exercise in discipleship. For transformation to happen we need Christians being Christians in a lost and broken world.  We are the salt of the earth, a light for the world and yet we are tentative, sometimes we can even be apologetic for our faith. The generation we live in doesn’t want to hear about God’s message -  what they want it to see that it works then they will believe that its true.  They won’t be convinced that we have a message worth hearing if all we do it pop to church every Sunday and then don’t live out the gospel for the rest of the week. For this to happen it is we who must bear witness. We don’t need to be great preachers, we don’t need to be high profile evangelists. We need to be witnesses not to do witnessing. God has called each one of us to bring light to the earth and as Christians if we truly believe in the message of the gospel then surely we must feel compelled to let others know about the saving love of Christ. Who are we to keep this wonderful message to ourselves, as Christ called each one of us to minister to the world using the gifts he has given us for the sake of growing the kingdom.

So how do we do this?. How can we, ordinary people grow God’s kingdom?. Jesus said you are the light of the world.   As bringers of God’s light we need to decide whether we are a flickering candle, a 100 watt bulb or a huge football stadium spot light.  And as we shine out as living examples of Christ’s message there is something we need to nurture. And that is Relationship. Unless we build relationships with our local community and the people within it they will not have the courage to cross the threshold of the church door.

For many years I worked as an Operations Director of a larger regional charity who specialised in providing educational support to marginalised people. People often on the fringes of society. We would work with people who were released from prison who had raped or murdered, people who were drug abusers, those whom people considered unemployable, the damaged, the broken. What was common to the majority who came through our doors was that they had no self worth. Most of them we really victims themselves having  been physically, mentally or sexually abused. Most who were drug users were using drugs to escape not only from the world in which they lived but to escape from themselves. Most didn’t like themselves and certainly didn’t love themselves. One particular girl stands out from my time there. Stella came to us when she was 17. She had been regularly excluded from school and we had been told that she was impossible to deal with. She was withdrawn and insular. She wouldn’t engage in conversation and it was obvious that she had some form of drug habit. After weeks of working with her she started to come out of her shell. We discovered that she had been persistently physically and sexually abused by her step father which had prompted her to eventually leave the family home at 16 to live at a friend’s house. After about 3 months she finally told us everything about her tortured life and we discovered that she had a long standing ambition and that was to sing and record a CD. After much difficulty in trying to scrape the funding together,  we arranged for her to go to a recording study and cut a CD of a song that she had written herself. She had a remarkable voice and when she returned with the CD and played it to us there wasn’t a dry eye in the house. More importantly her gratitude was immeasurable and she told us that this was the first time that someone had ever believed in her.  With renewed confidence she went on to get a job and achieved a qualification.

This for me is a perfect example of being Christian and not just doing. Working with someone who was lost and making them whole again.  Seeking out those who are excluded from society and loving them to reach their potential. Jesus did the very same aligning himself to the excluded of society. In Matthew 5 Jesus tells us directly “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you”. It is easy to love those who love us but how much more difficult is it to love those who are seen as outcasts in society. It is at this point when our Christian calling really comes into play.

Therefore tonight I challenge all of us at the beginning of this New Year. How can we as individuals and a church live up to our calling?. There are many opportunities in our daily life to engage with people who ordinarily would not come to church. So why not build a relationship. As we found with Stella - relationship takes time but persistence pays off. Our local community is full of people who are lonely, sick, dying, there are those finding it hard to make ends meet, those who feel abandoned or lost. This New Year time why not take the time to visit or talk to someone you know needs a kind word or support, carry out a kind gesture or pray for someone whom you would ordinarily never think of praying for. Reach out to some one you have not spoken to for years.  Real compassion leads us to action.

As a church we have great challenges ahead but one thing is for certain that we cannot ignore our responsibilities.

We cannot do everything but we can do something.

 It is up to us to grow the kingdom.