Sermon preached by Rev Dr Brenda Mosedale on 26th July as heard by a member of the congregation.
Today I do not have a flip chart with a picture of a mountain, nor are you going to be given post it notes to complete. For those of you who have not been here for the past three weeks you will not see the significance of that remark. We have been considering in recent weeks our Vision, what is our dream for this church, our Purpose, what are we here in CMK for and who are we here for. Then in the third week we considered what Pathway we would nee to take to realise this vision and purpose. Ernesto had guided us in our thinking with a picture of a mountain and indicated the vision at its peak with our current position being somewhere near the foot. (I would question whether our vision should always be for the top of the mountain, but that discussion can be for another day.)
All of our responses on the post it notes are being collated and considered, then finally distilled into a common understanding of what should be our priorities and how we move forward. It’s rather like the model for business activity of deciding what on is about and seeing if one has the right resources and how one might deploy them to achieve the objective. The theory behind the model is that if you cannot see a way to achieve the objective without undue risk then one should not waste resources starting out on the project. I work in the Health Service and quite properly we also have overall objectives and have to consider the big picture, but you cannot be doing that all of the time, for the most part you have to buckle down and get the day to day tasks completed each day without too much thought for the long term. The priority is the patient before you.
So now we come back to having a sermon based upon the bible readings, but please do not forget the thoughts about vision purpose and our pathway, they are relevant to today’s message.
Today’s readings are both about feeding a crowd of people. Elisha’s servant thought that there was insufficient food to feed a crowd of people, but Elisha had faith that with God’s help it would be sufficient. John’s gospel gives us the familiar story of the feeding of the five thousand; rather more than Elisha had to deal with. I used to worry whether the miracle was that our Lord made the bread sufficient for all of the people with no other help or if the miracle was that having portioned out a tiny single lad’s food, others who had food were moved to share what they had and so all were satisfied. I do not think it matters which way we think of the miracle.
John’s gospel has a theme of the disciples, although witnesses to Christ’s teaching and miracles, not quite getting the message. Frequently too when things get tough or problematic they would take, not one or two, but six or seven paces back and then ask Our Lord what he was going to do. This story has such an instance. I have this picture of our Lord smiling at this point and even the gospel writer recording this with a smile. You can see them at it, just like Elisha’s servant. “It would take 200 denarii to feed this many”, “It’s no good we do not have the resources.” Then Andrew comes forward with a little boy and enough for one packed lunch! Big deal!
Jesus took the bread, blessed it and broke it; then, he took the fish, blessed it and broke it. What about that poor boy seeing his food being portioned out and given away. He might not have been happy until he had received in return his portion, which proved sufficient, for we are told all were satisfied.
In looking at our vision, purpose and the pathway God is asking us to follow, we may be tempted to take a strict perspective and say, we do not have the resource, it will be too difficult for us therefore we should not try to start. Perhaps with today’s readings we are being asked to show more faith in what God can do through us and not be disheartened at the size of the task. We have put individual responses on post-it notes and there will be far too many suggestions, if we are being asked for a common way forward. Those post–it notes are our loaves and fishes and we have to be prepared to see them blessed, broken up and shared so that God’s purpose can be fulfilled and all can be satisfied.
There are records of the feeding of the five thousand in other gospels, but here in John’s gospel it is followed by the story of Our Lord walking on the Sea of Galilee to offer encouragement to the disciples who were in a boat caught in a storm. I think the reinforces the message that we should be bolder in our thinking for what we as individuals might be able to do and what we collectively as a church should take on here in CMK today and in the future. The disciples thought Our Lord was not with them when they hit the storm, but he appeared when it seemed impossible for him to be able to intervene.
I think today’s message is for us both collectively and as individuals and ask you to take it with you and think about what each of you has to offer and recognise as you do that God will take it, give thanks- maybe break it and share it- because that is what is what it may take.
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
28 June 2009: David Tatem's farewell sermon
Final Address given by Revd David Tatem at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone, Milton Keynes on Sunday June 28th at the conclusion of his ministry there.
My text is taken not from either the old or new testament readings for today but from Lewis Carroll's Alice through the looking glass and in particular the rhyme of the Walrus and the Carpenter; 'the time has come the walrus said, to talk of many things..... I was going to leave it there but the verse goes on...of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and Kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.'
This seems like a very appropriate quote for a 21st century church. After all, it has everything. There is something about the manufacturing industry and transport about agriculture and climate change and I suggest, change management too! Anyone who has tried to work with change in a church setting and especially in ecumenism will be familiar with the concept of the flying pig! In an 'ancient' manuscript of Cornerstone's I found when I was clearing out my office I found language which spoke of moves towards organic unity in the church and made some hopeful references to the year 2000, well, by the year 2000 there was certainly plenty of organic pork but none of it was flying!
It was though, the first part of the verse I was really thinking of. 'The time has come....to talk of many things. It's tempting in a sermon like tis to want to say all the things I've left unsaid, to pack them all in together but I need to focus down onto something which I hope you will remember and which may be helpful. To do that I want to tell you a story which come from a clip of an address given by Sir Ken Robinson, the education expert, at a conference in the U.S. [http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html]
He tells the story of an eight year old girl in the 1930's who was being extremely disruptive because she wouldn't sit still and couldn't concentrate. Today she would be diagnosed as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder) but in the 1930's people didn't know this was something they could have. Her school wrote to her parents saying that there was obviously something wrong with her and that they should get treatment to help her. Her mother took her to a specialist and they sat and talked for 20 minutes while the girl sat on her hands next to her mother. Eventually the specialist came and sat next to the girl and told her that he now needed to speak to her mother privately for a few minutes and that they would go to another room. As they left the room he switched on the radio and the girl immediately began to dance around the room to the music. They were looking in through a window and the specialist turned to the girl's mother and said, “she isn't sick, she's a dancer! Take her to a dance school". Her mother did just that, and the girl, Gillian Lynn, eventually went on to become a famous dance choreographer who worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber to create Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.
The point that Ken Robinson was making was that the specialist could have gone along with the 'popular' diagnosis of the school, that there was something wrong, and her creativity would have stifled. Thankfully he didn't but that is what so often happens in education, that creativity is educated out and not encouraged.
I want to pick up the thought and transfer it to the church to argue that one of the roles of faith and therefore the church, is to encourage and bring out creativity and not to stifle it by the demands of conformity to this or that.
We can be creative in art (and Cornerstone has many good examples of just that) but we can creative in liturgy in the way we respond to pastoral needs and in the way in which we reach out to the community and enable the wider community to be creative too. We can become a ferment of creativity. That should always be one of our core characteristics.
I'm not going to ignore our two bible readings, the story of Moses striking the rock to produce water for the people to drink and Jesus turning water into wine because they belong in a sequence together and they are relevant to provide a theological basis for what I have said. Moses demonstrated the creative use of a walking stick! Jesus takes the ordinariness of water, essential as it is especially to a people in desert conditions and turning it to wine makes it extraordinary. They both do it for the community, not just for themselves.
This is the challenge that the church goes on facing, to find ever new ways to be creative and to do it not in an inward looking way but outward looking, in ways which albeit slowly, build the Kingdom of God for the whole community.
We may be impatient for change or to see the visions we have had become a reality but perhaps our problem is with timescale and generations in the far future may look back on our time and be surprised as to how quickly things moved but they may say, “It went really very fast, it only took 200 years!”. We need to learn to be satisfied with the thought that the beat our butterflies wings here at Cornerstone may just cause a hurricane in Canterbury, or Rome or at the Methodist Conference or the Baptist and URC assemblies.
While we wait, the challenge is for us not to get impatient but to get creative. That's my challenge to you to get even more creative than you've been in the past and let it be to the benefit of the community. Let it become constantly better than it has been in the past.
My text is taken not from either the old or new testament readings for today but from Lewis Carroll's Alice through the looking glass and in particular the rhyme of the Walrus and the Carpenter; 'the time has come the walrus said, to talk of many things..... I was going to leave it there but the verse goes on...of shoes and ships and sealing wax and cabbages and Kings and why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.'
This seems like a very appropriate quote for a 21st century church. After all, it has everything. There is something about the manufacturing industry and transport about agriculture and climate change and I suggest, change management too! Anyone who has tried to work with change in a church setting and especially in ecumenism will be familiar with the concept of the flying pig! In an 'ancient' manuscript of Cornerstone's I found when I was clearing out my office I found language which spoke of moves towards organic unity in the church and made some hopeful references to the year 2000, well, by the year 2000 there was certainly plenty of organic pork but none of it was flying!
It was though, the first part of the verse I was really thinking of. 'The time has come....to talk of many things. It's tempting in a sermon like tis to want to say all the things I've left unsaid, to pack them all in together but I need to focus down onto something which I hope you will remember and which may be helpful. To do that I want to tell you a story which come from a clip of an address given by Sir Ken Robinson, the education expert, at a conference in the U.S. [http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html]
He tells the story of an eight year old girl in the 1930's who was being extremely disruptive because she wouldn't sit still and couldn't concentrate. Today she would be diagnosed as having ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyper-activity Disorder) but in the 1930's people didn't know this was something they could have. Her school wrote to her parents saying that there was obviously something wrong with her and that they should get treatment to help her. Her mother took her to a specialist and they sat and talked for 20 minutes while the girl sat on her hands next to her mother. Eventually the specialist came and sat next to the girl and told her that he now needed to speak to her mother privately for a few minutes and that they would go to another room. As they left the room he switched on the radio and the girl immediately began to dance around the room to the music. They were looking in through a window and the specialist turned to the girl's mother and said, “she isn't sick, she's a dancer! Take her to a dance school". Her mother did just that, and the girl, Gillian Lynn, eventually went on to become a famous dance choreographer who worked with Andrew Lloyd Webber to create Cats and The Phantom of the Opera.
The point that Ken Robinson was making was that the specialist could have gone along with the 'popular' diagnosis of the school, that there was something wrong, and her creativity would have stifled. Thankfully he didn't but that is what so often happens in education, that creativity is educated out and not encouraged.
I want to pick up the thought and transfer it to the church to argue that one of the roles of faith and therefore the church, is to encourage and bring out creativity and not to stifle it by the demands of conformity to this or that.
We can be creative in art (and Cornerstone has many good examples of just that) but we can creative in liturgy in the way we respond to pastoral needs and in the way in which we reach out to the community and enable the wider community to be creative too. We can become a ferment of creativity. That should always be one of our core characteristics.
I'm not going to ignore our two bible readings, the story of Moses striking the rock to produce water for the people to drink and Jesus turning water into wine because they belong in a sequence together and they are relevant to provide a theological basis for what I have said. Moses demonstrated the creative use of a walking stick! Jesus takes the ordinariness of water, essential as it is especially to a people in desert conditions and turning it to wine makes it extraordinary. They both do it for the community, not just for themselves.
This is the challenge that the church goes on facing, to find ever new ways to be creative and to do it not in an inward looking way but outward looking, in ways which albeit slowly, build the Kingdom of God for the whole community.
We may be impatient for change or to see the visions we have had become a reality but perhaps our problem is with timescale and generations in the far future may look back on our time and be surprised as to how quickly things moved but they may say, “It went really very fast, it only took 200 years!”. We need to learn to be satisfied with the thought that the beat our butterflies wings here at Cornerstone may just cause a hurricane in Canterbury, or Rome or at the Methodist Conference or the Baptist and URC assemblies.
While we wait, the challenge is for us not to get impatient but to get creative. That's my challenge to you to get even more creative than you've been in the past and let it be to the benefit of the community. Let it become constantly better than it has been in the past.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)