In a bacon-and-egg breakfast, what’s the difference between the Chicken and the Pig?
The Chicken is involved, but the Pig commits!
This little riddle is used widely in motivational talks in a wide variety of contexts, from sports managers firing up their team before a match, to sales directors encouraging their sales teams to give everything, to teachers exhorting their students to revise hard for their exams. It’s even sometimes used by vicars in sermons on church life and discipleship.
I can see the logic, after all Jesus did talk about dying to self, preferring others to ourselves and loving God with our whole selves. It seems to me, though, that there is a problem with this metaphor. You see, in the case of the breakfast neither the chicken nor the pig had any choice over their level of commitment to the breakfast.
What each provided was taken from them by the farmer and the cook. So, if we’re not careful with this picture, we end up casting God as the farmer, who might look after the livestock, but in the end takes what he wants, without so much as a “by-your-leave”. And that is not the God that I see in the Bible, or at work in the world.
Over the next five or six weeks we are going to be exploring together in our morning sermons what it means to get involved in different aspects of church life and mission. And as we do, I wanted to get this in right at the foundations. God does call us to self-sacrificial and self-denying love, absolutely, but as we’ve just celebrated at Easter this is nothing that God hasn’t already done for us. Our response is exactly that, a response to God’s love and self-sacrifice, not God’s will imposed on us.
At the beginning of the year we were exploring how we can express our church value of Loving God in different ways, and now we move on to our value of “Loving each other”, and how that might be expressed practically in different ways of getting involved in church life and mission. Each week we will explore some of what the Bible says about this, and have some practical examples of different ways of getting involved.
These are examples only. Part of the invitation of this month is for each of us to take the general principles of what we’ve explored in these sermons and to apply them to our own lives, to be open to the Holy Spirit’s river taking us in unexpected directions, perhaps especially those of us who feel like we’ve been left behind, or don’t have much to give.
This is not about us being useful to God, or God using us, I don’t believe that God does use us, because we’re people not things, but I do believe that God has a purpose for each of us and works that God has prepared for each of us to do. It is my hope that as we walk together over the next few weeks, each of us will grow in trust of that purpose, and be more equipped for the works that God has prepared for us to do.
So, with all that preamble in place, let’s dive into today’s passages and see what we can find, and let’s begin with our reading from Paul’s letter to the Christians in Ephesus.
The first thing that Paul focusses on is unity. In a moment he’s going to talk about some differences between the gifts and calling that different people have, but his starting place is unity. This is Paul’s foundation, and this is completely in line with our foundation of “loving each other.” He gives some practical examples of what this looks like.
“Be humble and gentle”. Whatever our role in church life is, it is all by the gift and grace of God, there is no place for boasting, or standing on status, or for prideful talk or behaviour. This is particularly important for those of us in leadership to remember and be mindful of.
“Be patient, bearing with each other in love.” Sometimes we can get frustrated with each other, when we see something being done in a way that we wouldn’t do it, or not being done as well as we would like, or that we think things should be done. Later on Paul talks about speaking the truth in love, and there are times when we do need to raise concerns, but our default position is this first one – being patient, bearing with each other in love.
“There is one body.” Now, this isn’t something we get a choice about. It is a fundamental reality of the created order. Those of us who have Jesus as our head are one body. We cannot deny each other, for to do so is to deny Christ, and we cannot get away from each other, or do without each other, for we are one body. We are different parts of the same body, with different functions, but we are the one body. This is the basic understanding of what the church is.
Having laid these foundations, Paul then goes on to talk about some different gifts. He talks about apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. In other places he lists more gifts. To be honest, each of these categories could take up a sermon of their own, so I’m not really going to go into them each, I’m going to return to their common purpose, which is, as Paul says in the next verse:
“to equip his people for works of service.”
The gifts that Paul mentions here are mostly different aspects of leadership gift in the church, and they are given to help equip God’s people for works of service. That’s a pretty good summary of the call on leaders in the church – to equip God’s people for works of service.
This is echoed in our reading from the end of John’s eye witness account of the good news of Jesus. After all the events that we’ve just celebrated at Easter – Jesus’ death and resurrection, he meets up with Peter and some of the other disciples for breakfast on the beach. Over grilled fish he has this conversation with Peter, in which he restores Peter to his position of leadership in the church. And what does that leadership consist of?
Caring for and feeding the flock. Here the emphasis is more on what we might call pastoral care than on sending out, but it seems to me that the basic intent of Christian leadership is the same – the focus is on the health, well being, and flourishing of the people of God in their lives and discipleship. As Jesus said and showed us, leadership in the people of God is all about serving the people of God.
We are really blessed here at All Saints with the servant leaders that we have among us, and who have shown us what this means over the years. I am grateful for the church council members, Wardens, Action Group chairs, staff team, and ministry team leaders that have taken on responsibility for different aspects of church life and mission and have consistently demonstrated this servant leadership. I believe that it is something to celebrate about our life together.
In a couple of months we will be having our Annual Church meeting, when we will have the opportunity to get together and celebrate what God has being doing here over the last 12 months. We will be able to thank those who are stepping down from the church council for their service. We will also elect new members to the council. We will also be looking for a new Church Warden to work alongside Fiona, who has been carrying out this role, on her own, so diligently over the last year. She has a written a letter describing some of the joys that she has found in this role, that will be sent out to everyone in the coming week, to help you in your prayers for someone to step into this role, and even for you to consider if it might be you.
In addition to new members of the Wardening team, are are particularly praying for someone with Health and Safety experience and expertise, someone to being learning the ropes of being Treasurer, and at least one new Action Group chair to join the church council. Church council members help us to discern God’s voice for the shape and strategic direction of our church life and mission, and we need a diversity of voices on it: young and old, long term church members and people with a fresh perspective.
We’re not looking for chickens or pigs. We’re praying for leaders who love God’s people, and have a heart to feed and care for them, to equip God’s people for works of service, and to build up the body, as each part does its work.
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