Each week since lock down in March, I have written a Pastoral Letter to our church community in Montrose. This is the one for this week.
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Dear Friends,
Across our country we and our neighbours face more weeks, perhaps months, of disrupted family life and interrupted community activity. The recent measures to control the Covid 19 virus push back further any return to full social interaction. Being unable to visit another household helps stop the spread of the virus, but it also creates disconnections between us and our family, our friends, and our neighbours. That’s a hard ask, and yet it’s a necessary public health policy.
I’ve been wondering what these continuing situations of disruption and separation mean for us as a church community. One thing’s for sure. As the likelihood of increased loneliness, anxiety and depression increases, human contact becomes more and more important. So in a time like this, what should church communities be about these days? In the absence of regular services, having to stop the usual social coming and going of family life and church life; with restrictions on movement, on the company we can keep and on where we can go, here’s the question. How do we demonstrate our Christian faith in a way that is compassionate, prophetic and expressive of the love of God in Christ?
The biggest disruption the disciples ever faced was when Jesus told them he would be crucified, risen, and return to his Father. During that long last evening, he spoke to the disciples about how they would survive, what their mission would be, of the coming of the Holy Spirit to bring courage, vision and energy to take the good news to the world of their day, and ours. That night Jesus said something that is forever true: “By this everyone will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.” (John 13.35)
That’s it. Not our welcoming building, not our preached sermons and well sung praise songs, not even our social engagement with community café, support of food banks, and much else that is the practical outworking of our church community. All these are important, some are even crucial to the life and health of every church. But what gives each of them the Jesus quality, the hallmark of the follower of Jesus, is whether all that we do and say and think and plan is energised, motivated and made real by the love of Jesus demonstrated in the shared life of a church like ours.
So, what should the church be about these days? What it has always been about. Making known the love of God, sharing the good news of forgiveness of sins, living as a Kingdom people, open to the pushing and pulling of the Holy Spirit urging us to be the embodied love of God. So the church's mission, in days of lock down and restrictions on social contact, is to look for and discover imaginative, innovative, generous and faithful ways of loving and living for the common good.
And that means loving our neighbour with the love with which God loves us. It means beginning to think how we can look after each other; perhaps especially those mentioned above, those for whom these restrictions increase feelings of loneliness, make troubling anxiety worse, and wear away the supports of hope and happiness.
One of the most thoughtful people around these days is Rabbi Jonathan Sacks. His new book is about restoring the common good in divided times. I was taken with a couple of his sentences, which seem to give us some clues about how to live a faithful life for Jesus in our local communities in these difficult times:
"For most of us it is other people who make the necessary difference to our lives, guiding us, inspiring us, lifting us up and giving us hope. It is the quality of our relationships that more than anything gives us a sense of meaning and fulfilment. Most important of all, it is the ability to love that lifts us beyond the self and its confines. Love is the supreme redemption of solitude."
Remember, way back at the very beginning, God said, “It is not good for man to be alone.” Eve’s creation was God’s gift of company, support, shared life, and yes, love of each human being for the other. Jesus came back to it again and again. “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
He even told a parable about sheep and goats, and about how whatever we do or don’t do for other people, we do or don’t do for Jesus himself. People who are hungry, thirsty, lonely, strangers, ill, in prison – it isn’t an exhaustive list, it’s more a wide sample of what we will see if we pay attention. And what we will see as we pay attention to someone in need, is that this person, the least of Jesus brothers and sisters, is one for whom Jesus died, and in whom we are called to serve Jesus.
So as we live through these difficult days, Jesus words can be a guide as to what is asked of each of us. Love your neighbour. Like Jesus, be one who goes about doing good, and bringing goodness into the lives of others. That’s how folk will know we are Jesus’ followers. The phone call and text and email; the card, the flowers and the smile; the cumulative power of compassion, kindness and thoughtfulness; all and each are acts of love, the notes that make up the symphony of the life we live for Jesus.
In such ways we will look for and discover imaginative, innovative, generous and faithful ways of loving and living for the common good. And in such ways we will discover that “Love is the supreme redemption of solitude.” Early Christians were called followers of The Way. By our love, folk will know we are followers of The Way, and what’s more, every step of that Way Jesus is with us, redeeming our solitude and sending us into the world as witnesses to that redeeming and renewing love of God,
Your friend and pastor
Jim Gordon
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