I wonder if anyone remembers these? Perhaps you had one, or your children or grandchildren. Anyone going to own up? Now, I have two admissions to make. The first is that I thought that care bears were a thing of the past, but when I googled to find a picture of them, it became apparent that you can still get them. Who knew? The second admission is that when I typed it into google the first time I made an error. This is not a care bear. This is a car bear.
Why am I going on about care bears? Well, this term we are spending our Sunday mornings finding out a bit about what life was like in the early church, and what we might learn from this about our life together as a congregation. In previous weeks we’ve explored what it means to be a worshipping church and a baptising church. This week we’re thinking about being a caring church, which goes together really nicely with the sharing church theme that we’re going to be looking at next week in our harvest festival service.
This idea of being a caring church is one that is central to our core values of loving each other and loving our neighbours. We can’t love people without caring for them, and we can’t care for them if we don’t love them. It seems to me that caring is the practical expression of love. Caring is love in action, and I think that we see that in our two readings this morning.
The first is the well known story of four friends bringing someone to Jesus. I’m not going to spend ages on this, but I’d like to bring a couple of things out by thinking about some of the characters in the story and asking, “What do they care about?”
Firstly, what do the man’s friends care about? The man’s friends cared for him, and demonstrated this care by bringing him to Jesus. Now, whose faith is it that Mark says Jesus saw before he forgave the man? It was the faith of the friends. Mark is silent about the faith of the man. These friends showed their care for the man by exercising their faith.
Secondly, what does Jesus care about? Jesus cared for the man. He showed this by forgiving him and then healing him. Notice this order. I sometimes wonder if the friends up on the roof, and maybe even the man himself, heard Jesus declare this forgiveness and think to themselves, “that’s nice, but what about the legs?” Jesus did care about the man’s physical healing, but he cared more about his soul, was he right with God? Sometimes when we bring people to God, in faith, God doesn’t always do what we expect.
Thirdly, what did the religious people care about? The religious folk cared about something, but it wasn’t the paralysed man in front of them. They cared about the religious rules, and who was allowed to forgive people, and this stopped them caring about the man in need in front of them.
What about our Acts reading, our little glimpse into the life of the early church. What does that show us? Well, in these six short verses we find life turned upside down. There is so much practical love and caring here that it is almost impossible to imagine.
There are signs and wonders – which surely would have including people being healed as they prayed for each other. The believers held things in common. When one person had a need and another could meet that need, they helped, even to the extent of selling property. They met together, they shared meals together, they prayed and praised together.
This is practical love in action, it is caring and sharing. As I said, we’re going to be focussing on the sharing elements in our harvest service next week. But what about the other stuff, the sharing life stuff of caring? What might that look like in our church life? We live in a different time, a different culture, a different context. The temptation might be to try and explain this away as not practical, as not realistic. Maybe it’s just too difficult?
And, to be fair, the reality we discover as we read through Acts is that it didn’t always work out then either. In Acts 5 we read of Ananias and Sapphira who weren’t convinced by the “holding everything in common” thing, and lied about how much they were contributing to the common purse. It didn’t end well for them. In Acts 6 we read of disputes breaking out in the growing church about the lack of fairness in the distribution of food to the widows. In a number of Paul’s letters we read him having to persuade and encourage churches in one city to send support to poorer fellowships elsewhere.
So, the early church didn’t always perfectly put into practice what it aspired to, it was after all made up of people. But I don’t believe that it this should stop us aspiring to what they aspired to. Love in action. Caring for each other.
In his first letter John, the friend of Jesus, writes this, “If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongues but with actions and truth.”
Now, my sense is that we are actually pretty good at this. I see so much generosity, of time, money, care, attention, in our relationships in the life of this community. We say that we value loving each other and loving our neighbours, and as vicar I have the privilege of seeing this value being put in to practice in so many different ways, and in a moment I’d like to share a few of them with you.
Before I do that though, I do want to acknowledge that we don’t always get it right. I don’t always get it right. You might be sitting here this morning feeling angry or upset because you haven’t received the care that you needed when you were hurting. And if that’s you this morning, I want to say sorry to you. I’m sorry that we’ve let you down. I’m sorry that I’ve let you down. If you feel able, please get in touch with me so that we can change what we do, so that others don’t get left out in the same way in future.
You might also be sitting here thinking, “I need some help – but I’m embarrassed to ask.” I want to assure you that if you get in touch with me, requests for help are handled with discretion and care. Whether it’s financial, emotional, spiritual support you need, there is help available, and we will do all we can to support you in a way that empowers you.
So, here are a few examples of what I see happening in the life of All Saints which we can celebrate and join in with as we care for each other.
Today is luncheon Sunday, when members of the church open their homes to those who would normally eat alone for Sunday lunch. This is a lovely, practical way to express love and care through hospitality and sharing life. It’s probably a bit late for this month, but if you would like to be part of this in future, either as host or guest, please speak to Lynda Bunn.
Every week, on the notices, is a little reminder that we have a Prayer Chain here at All Saints. This is a group of people who are committed to pray for whatever is emailed to them via the chain. If you would like to be part of this, to commit to pray for people, then just drop me an email. If there is something you would appreciate prayer for, then use the email address on the notices, and we’ll pray for you.
I could go on all morning, about Oasis lunch, the bowls club, small groups, the Pastoral care team, the Hospitality and Pastoral Care Action group, all the informal things I see of people loving and caring for each other, and I’d still miss some.
There is one more initiative that I would like to highlight though, as I know that it impacts so many of us in different ways. This is our intent to be a dementia friendly church. Gill Reeves and Rose Kershaw have taken the lead on this and have helped us be more aware of the ways in which we can support those living with dementia in our church family.
One of the resources that they have pointed me towards is a series of videos made by a Christian family in the diocese about their journey with their Dad in his dementia. I’d like to share one of these videos with you now, as it seems to me to be such a good example of practical care.
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