Passion Sunday – Annual General Meeting
1992 (Year C), 12 April / Passion Sunday
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
Some of the stories told by the members of this year’s lent groups have moved me, almost to tears. As I’ve sat, I’ve heard of sacred times and places and I have been transported far away from my own cares and concerns and have entered another world. At times it, has felt like a blessing. I have listened to the most amazingly personal and individual tales and found myself taken to Eygpt, to a bathroom, to Ely and the Isle of Wight and the Taj Mahal – even to a carpark. As these stories have unfolded it’s been clear just how important they have been to the teller.
Of course they’ve been intensely – personal, yet they have the capacity to reach out to others with them. For me it seems that this is a glimpse of the sacred.
It has been a gift from God.
Initially the stories felt so personal that they had little relevance for anybody else in the whole world. Yet they’ve had such power that they’ve transcended the time and the teller, and allowed others to enter, and show them something of the nature of God. And God is after all is what is sacred. He is nothing else.
Some have found my very English way of thinking to be very difficult to understand – for I was brought up to see some things as being too personal ever to say to anybody else – only God would know and understand them, so only he could be told them. If truth be told there were probably some things that were too personal even to tell God. Yet here we were, being given permission to enter other lives and to find God there already. And what is more, reaching out from there to touch us.
I was taught that the relationship I had with God was incredibly personal. No-one else could possibly enter it and so I was very much unaware of what I shared with other Christians. I think it would be true to say that it’s only since coming to live amongst this congregation that I’ve finally realised that what we share is as much importance as what I am given by God as an individual.
For each one of us might have been called by God by our name as individuals, but we are a people with whom God has made a covenant. In our history He made a covenant with creation. He said ‘I am the Lord of you all. I will release you all from slavery – not the odd one or two chosen ones. I will rescue you all – I will adopt you as my people for I am the Lord. Not of one or of two but of the whole of creation – the whole cosmos.’
And so the amazing thing is that the very centre of our being, in the place where we seldom go ourselves, we find God. And if we are privileged to look into another we find Him there wailing.
The faith we thought initially to be so personal, and the relationship we thought we had with God to be ours alone, are the things which unite us to everyone else.
Such a gift and such rights bestowed on us by our creator bring with them responsibilities, although for the most part members of the Church of England have behaved as if the gift was made to us only, and could be taken up or put down at will.
The gifts and the rights. The shared nature of our faith spill over – out of our worship into our daily lives, in the most mundane ways. The Annual General Meeting is one such example. We have a shared responsibility to ensure the upkeep of our building. To see that our corporeal life develops in as rich and as deep a way as possible. To plan together how we might further the Kingdom in this place.
It’s not a task for the chosen one or two – it is a task for us all. So it’s important that as many as can possibly stay after this service do so. It is vital that we have as many different opinions represented on the church council as we possibly can. It is our responsibility to recognise God waiting to speak to us from every one of our sisters and brothers. May God bless us as we review our life together and may we be led forward by the Divine will. AMEN