Village Shepherd

The Church of England seems to hold an unlikely fascination for the media. Most weeks, the Church features in some article or other, however small. Not so surprising when it's headlines like "Vicar runs off with choir mistress" or "Sex abuse case priest held in custody" or the like. But strangely, the sort of headline like "C of E worshippers fall to record low" also often makes the news.

If that's sufficiently newsworthy to make the daily papers, it would seem the country does still care about religion and the church, albeit from a safe distance. The Church, for its part, agonises over ways of making worship accessible to the millions.

One result of this can be trendy churches trying to pull in the crowds by appealing to popular culture. Some churches tend to be associated with a certain style of worship, which is perhaps more likely than more traditional forms of worship, to appeal to those who have no previous experience of church. But another result may be middle-of-the-road churches like ours, beginning to feel inadequate and marginalised.

It is, of course, important that people should hear about Christianity, and be provided with an environment where they're able to worship. Churches which nourish their people won't be empty. But it would be a mistake to assume Church would ever be acceptable to all people. It would be a mistake to believe that if churches were doing their job properly, they wouldn't suffer from rejection.

According to Luke, when Jesus started his ministry in his own country area of Galilee, he was rejected. The good religious people of the day, the church-goers, were enraged by Jesus and not only threw him out of the synagogue, but tried to murder him as well (Luke 4:28-30). Not a very auspicious start to ministry.

The people, the ordinary people came to Jesus, but they didn't come to the synagogue. They met him on the hills and the lake, while they were hanging about in the marketplace or while they were mending their fishing nets. They had supper and parties with him, and invited him into their homes. There's no indication in the gospels that the synagogues ever had any more worshippers because of Jesus. If anything, the synagogues may have lost worshippers through him.

Today's reading from Luke 9 marks the start of the travel narrative, the beginning of Jesus' journey to Jerusalem. Jesus had reached a point of change in his ministry. No longer would he minister simply in the country. The time had come when he felt he had to take his message to the centre of Jewish life, to the city of Jerusalem.

But again, the start is marked by rejection. Jesus sent his disciples ahead to make arrangements to stay presumably overnight or for a while in a Samaritan village, but the village refused him hospitality. The disciples responded in a very human way. They responded with anger. They wanted to use what power they possessed to teach those Samaritan villagers a lesson, so they asked Jesus if they might call down fire from heaven upon the village.

But they'd got it wrong, again. God's power is not to be used in that way. God's power isn't about shows of strength, but works best through weakness and vulnerability. And so Jesus accepted the rejection and moved on. And this is typical of his ministry. When he's rejected, he always accepts the rejection. He never tries to argue or persuade or cajole, but if people want him to leave, then he leaves. The ultimate rejection, of course, was the rejection of the cross. People not only wanted Jesus to go away, they wanted to kill him. And so he accepted even that rejection.

In contrast, not everyone rejected him. There were many people who were enthusiastic about Jesus, and wanted to follow him. Jesus didn't use any gimmicks to attract them. He spoke to the unchurched people mostly in simple stories, and hardly ever explained those stories except to his own disciples. But to his disciples he gave much deeper theology. He spoke about himself as the "bread of life" and he instituted Eucharistic worship using the everyday elements of bread and wine, but giving them deep symbolic meaning. Incidentally, when he referred to himself as the "bread of life", he lost so many of the disciples who had started to follow him, that he had to ask the twelve, the inner circle for affirmation (John 6:66, 67). Even Jesus was unsure of himself when the rejections became too heavy.

Nevertheless, he still didn't become trendy to appeal to the popular taste, but if anything, tried to put off would-be followers. He tells them straight out what the cost will be in terms of commitment: "Foxes have holes and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head."

That may be more than a simple statement about a wandering kind of life. It may also be a warning about rejection. Jesus and his followers had just been refused hospitality by the Samaritan village, so perhaps he's saying, "This is exactly what you must expect if you become my follower."

It's not just the establishment which rejects Jesus. Even ordinary individuals refuse his invitation, although they're generally too polite to say so overtly, and wrap up their refusal in plausible excuses: He said to a man, "Follow me." But the man replied, "Lord, first let me go and bury my father." Still another said, "I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say good-bye to my family."

Jesus had fitting retorts for both of those men, again using very colourful, pictorial language. But he still didn't indulge either in anger at their rejection of him, or in arm-twisting to persuade them to join him. Neither did he offer them a more superficial level of commitment. He told people the score, then it was up to them whether or not they joined him.

I don't believe the Church is the place for gimmicky attractions. It's the place to nourish those who have already made a commitment to following Jesus. It's the place for some depth of theology and teaching, and to enable worshippers to deepen their experience of God. That's not to say we should never change our style of worship, or that modern and relevant equals gimmick. Worship should be the best we can offer, and that means worshippers must be able to relate to God through their worship.

But perhaps one of the purposes of their deepening experience of God is to give disciples the courage and the knowledge and the will to go out amongst the people and enable them to experience Jesus where they are. On the hills and the lake, hanging about in the marketplace or mending their fishing nets, at supper and parties, and in their own homes. The Church of England may not gain any more worshippers through that strategy, but does that matter? We're not really here to support the institution, but to worship God and to enable others to experience him.

And my bet is, if we (the Church) put all our energies into doing that, then the Church would actually grow like wildfire.