Ragbag of Saints and Fatheads

A RAGBAG OF SAINTS AND FATHEADS

The church is made up of a pretty rum lot of people when you think about it.

There are some who have a pretty short fuse and will burst a blood vessel at the slightest provocation, whilst others are so placid that you

have to prod them to make sure they are still alive.

Some people are always fighting to have their own way and will go to any lengths in order to achieve it, whilst others will seek for compromise in order to accommodate everyone's point of view.

Other people appear to be stuck in a time zone and are always looking back to the good old days, whilst others tend to live in the present and are open to change.

Some people find it comparatively easy to forgive whilst others prefer to nurse a grudge out of all proportion to the original cause of hurt.

Then there are those people who come to church to be soothed and reassured whilst others come to be challenged and have their faith rekindled.

Again there are some people who contribute generously of their time, their energy and their money, whilst others just sit back and expect it all to happen.

Yes, they are a pretty rum lot who often appear to be squabbling about the most trivial of things when viewed from the perspective of eternity and our ultimate destiny.

To the outside, the Church of England can also appear to spend an awful lot of time squabbling. Whilst a sizeable majority voted in November 1992 for the ordination of women to the priesthood, some parishes have pulled up their drawbridges and are refusing to allow women, or even Bishops who have ordained them, into their churches. Others are leaving to join the Roman Catholic Church.

As regards Church unity, the Church of England often appears to be very good at encouraging courtship only to jilt the proposed partner at the

altar. Thus it rejected unity with the Methodists in the 1970s, and rejected the Covenant with the Free Churches in the 1980s. Some would say it has also rejected the prospect of unity with the Roman Catholic Church by ordaining women to the priesthood.

When one looks into history, alas there are several skeletons in the cupboard we would prefer to forget. There is no doubt that the Christian Church has done some€ horrendous things, such as the organised massacre of the Jews, the Crusades against the Muslims, the execution and burning of opponents, religious wars and missionary colonialism.

As Bishop Geoffrey Paul once said: "There is no way of belonging to Jesus Christ except by belonging gladly and irrevocably to the glorious ragbag of saints and fatheads who make up the One Holy Catholic Church".

I love that expression "the glorious ragbag of saints and fatheads". It recognises that the church consists of ordinary human beings like you and me with all our faults and failings; and that gives me hope; it gives me confidence; and, above all, it gives me strength.

The trouble is, we often think that the church is a haven for saints and not a reformatory school for sinners.

I may well be bad, but how much worse would I be if I did not belong to the church!

The secret of the church's continued presence, in spite of its many ups and downs, and the secret of my continued discipleship, in spite of my many ups and downs, is Jesus. He is the one who calls us to follow him, as he did that mixed bag of disciples some 2000 years ago. He is the one who draws us to himself. He is the one who seeks to bind us together within the life of his body on earth - the Church.

Perhaps I can try and illustrate what I mean by the symbol of a cart wheel.

The rim at the edge is linked to the hub at the centre by means of spokes. The closer those spokes go towards the centre, the closer they go towards each other until both the spokes and the hub become united into one.

Now, the members of the Christian church are like those spokes with Jesus at the hub. The closer we grow towards Jesus, the closer we grow towards one another until we become totally united with one another in Jesus.

The problem is that we so often turn our back on Jesus and walk away in the opposite direction. As we walk away from him, we also walk away from each other. We readily neglect meeting Jesus in worship, in prayer, in Bible Reading and above all in the Eucharist where he offers to feed us with his very self.

When this happens, we become lost and confused and, as a consequence, become increasingly unChristlike in our everyday life because our eyes are no longer fixed on Him. As we drift away from Jesus, we also drift away from each other because we have lost sight of that one person who can give a sense of meaning and purpose to life and bind us together into a community.

Instead of those spokes of the wheel being for one-way traffic only, all going in the same direction towards the centre, they become roads for two-way traffic with people going to and fro in different directions. No wonder the life of the Christian Church often appears to be in such a mess. It is us who make it such by our lukewarm commitment to Jesus.

But life need not be like that. We can change it if we want to. All we need to do is to:

Turn round and face Jesus again, at the centre;

Repent of our past stupidity when we turned our back on him; and

Renounce the attractiveness of the evil which caused us to take our eyes off him.

Turn. Repent. Renounce. Three very familiar words. Three words which sum up the promises which were made for us at our Baptism by our

Godparents, and which we made ourselves at our Confirmation. They are three promises which we need to make time and time again as we journey through life, blowing hot and cold in our following of Jesus.

So let us thank God for calling us into that "glorious ragbag of saints and fatheads who make up the one Holy Catholic Church".

And let us resolve to turn, repent and renounce our former way of life and refocus on Jesus who changes our lives and binds us close together in himself.