Preparing for Carers

1993 (Year A) 28 February / Lent 1

St Peter de Beauvoir Town

It’s often very difficult to articulate why we come to church. The more holy amongst us would claim we come to worship our creator. The more realistic would answer that it was all our parents’ fault. It may be because we want to do the right thing, or at least want to be seen to be doing the right thing. The truth is that we come for a whole host of reasons, some honourable, others not.

Part of our coming has to do with us longing for our deepest needs to be met. The theme for today ‘Christ the friend of Sinners’ suggests one of them. There is for instance, within each one of us a deep need to be forgiven and accepted. And so the church it is not the community of the saved or the perfect, it the community of those who have been touched by the love of God.

Our worship is the place where we bring our hopes and our fears, some of which we daren’t articulate even to ourselves. This building in a place where quite literally tears are shed, laughter is shared, frustrations are felt. All this is immensely right and proper because they have to do with our deepest selves. They have to do with our hearts and our hearts are the places where God dwells.

We come to be nourished, literally and spiritually, Sunday by Sunday. We come for peace, we come to be challenged – both gifts of God in creation. We come so that we might go out and live our lives better next week. We come to give and to receive. To offer our service, to revitalise ourselves and one another. To be loved. To be active, to be participatory, to share the spirit of God with our brothers and sisters, because if we keep our faith and our love locked up in our own hearts what good does that do? We come to express who we are and whose we are.

One of our deepest needs is to be loved, to be cared for. The church as it seeks to mirror Gods love for creation needs to love and care for those not only amongst those gathered into the congregation but those who are loved and uncared for outside these walls.

This church, to give credit where it’s due, seems to me to be a good deal better than a many I’ve known. There are numerous examples of generosity of spirit, of kindness and true Christian charity. It goes on already as one person cares for another. It often takes my breath away as I watch it going happening.

Over the past ten or so years it’s been one of the most important duties of the clergy to play their part in this caring process. You’ll know when we’ve got it right. I hope you’ve forgiven us when we’ve got it wrong. We’ve tried to get around to as many people as possible as regularly as we can. Some things never change, and that will continue. But the P.C.C. has been conscious that the whole business of caring for each other might be done better. We seem to have talked about it regularly over the past few years. At last, things have got a bit clearer and something is about to happen. I’ve been deputed to explain as clearly as possible what it is.

Here is a list of all the people who come regularly to church. We are proposing to divide it into about twelve groups and give one person in the group the responsibility of keeping in touch with the others. Not in some nosy or busybody kind of way, but as a friend, who if you’re not around would signify that you’d been missed perhaps by a telephone call. Maybe it might be a visit, or just an ‘Hello’ in the street, no great shakes, but something that we hope might improve contact between members of the church. It may well improve the back page of the Newsheet, but you mustn’t think that everything you say or do from now on will be read by the rest of the congregation the following Sunday. People have worked out some rules of confidentiality.

We hope that it will enable people coming to St. Peter’s for the first time to feel at home more quickly than they did in the past. In the case of those who come wanting baptism for their children it will enable us to give them someone who will look out for them and help them find their way round the service when they come. Just generally being another point of contact for them as well as the clergy.

That’s very briefly what’s going to happen. Almost all of you will know the person who has your name, so no introductions will be necessary. I hope all this will allow friendships to develop and deepen so that we will be able to become more like what God wants us to be and we become more like the early church which stood out amongst the rest of society because the brethren loved and cared for each other, just as God loved and cared for them. AMEN