As a new pastor in a new parish you want the first time you lead worship to go well. Actually, it’s more than that, you really want to impress (or, maybe that’s just me?) Anyway, if you were present at my first service here at St John’s last Sunday at 8.30 I think you’d agree things didn’t quite go to plan. Nothing major and nothing that has caused me lasting emotional scarring (you too, I hope). As I think about it now, I think it was God’s way of keeping me humble, reminding me that I can’t control everything and that even when my plans go a little wonky it doesn’t mean God is suddenly hamstrung. No, even when things are less that perfect God still works through us, sometimes even more profoundly.
There’s something of that in Paul’s words to the Christians in Ephesus, I think. “Be imitators of God”, he encourages them. What is it about God that we are to imitate? Well, my ego wants to tell me that because God is perfect I need to be perfect (and didn’t even Jesus say that somewhere?), and being perfect means that everything goes to plan, I don’t make any mistakes and I get to control everything! But, then, it’s all about me. When Paul says ‘Be imitators of God’ he points us to Jesus. Jesus who was as human as we are. So, I like to think that if Jesus did work for a while in Joseph’s carpentry workshop he occasionally cut the timber to the wrong length, and didn’t get the angles right all the time. In other words, he made mistakes! And, things didn’t always go to plan. And, he didn’t think he had to control everything. In fact, he didn’t control everything! But, what he did do, and what he never stopped doing was to love, because that is who God is. And, that’s what Paul encourages us to imitate: the godliness and the humanness of love. Love is not about being right, or getting it right, and certainly not about being in control. Love always seeks the good of the other. There’s a vulnerability to love, a openness, a messiness even. We see that clearly in the way Jesus shows God’s love for us. Jesus shows God’s love – Jesus loves us – so we can be imitators of God.
'Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For on him God the Father has placed his seal of approval. John 6:27
On this day of Installing Pastor John into the community of St John’s, we are witnesses to the Apostle’s account of that day on the grassy slope when the Bread of Life fed them all. We hear of a conversation between Jesus and two of the Twelve. Apparently, this conversation is a test for the two chaps. It also then is a test for us; a test of how we are living as disciples of this Jesus of Nazareth, the crucified and risen Saviour.
Phillip and Andrew are the two. They both can see the absolute impossibility of the call to feed over five thousand people out on those remote grassy slopes late in the day. They respond differently to the impossibility of Jesus’ call to feed the world. One resigns in complete defeat and has nothing else to say or do. One tries to find at least something to keep on working with even as he resigns himself to the fact that the task is still impossible.
Reminds me of being a Christian in a modern secularising community or a church in mission in the same environment. It all seems impossible! Just because it is impossible, and just because we may fail the test Jesus is giving us, does not mean it is all over. There is a middle road and there is continued things to do under the provision and direction of the Saviour.
May you be confirmed in both this day.