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Come, Holy Spirit,

Fill our minds with your truth;

Fill our hearts with your love;

Fill our lives with your strength;

Holy and gracious Spirit of God.

AMEN.

A friend of mine has recently retired after a very long Incumbency in a Parish.  When I last saw him, he told me that when he arrived in the Parish, decades ago, he found three pieces of paper from the previous Incumbent.  One was a list of where he should go to buy things – milk, papers, vegetables, meat, etc.  The second was a list of ‘Useful Parishioners’.  And the third was a list of ‘Awkward Parishioners’.  One of the people on that final list was a lovely woman, who became a huge support to the Incumbent, offering him quiet counsel in good times and bad, and for whom he had recently, and wonderfully, led her Funeral Service.  I wondered what sort of view of the Church the former Incumbent had – judging solely from those lists, it must have been a fairly utilitarian view, rather a Vicar-centric one, where people were either ‘useful’ to him, or ‘awkward’ – or, in the absence of a further list, unimportant.

Contrast that with a Licensing Service at which I was Officiating along with the Archdeacon of Bournemouth on Thursday.

The Parish of Lord’s Hill and Lord’s Wood in Southampton is a young Parish on the Western Edge of the City, on a relatively new estate, founded only in 1981.  From the start it was an Ecumenical Parish, and has had a series of wonderful community-minded Vicars.

The Church is built by a Parade of shops, next door to the pub and the Sainsburys, and across the road from the Bingo Hall.  It’s in a challenging part of Southampton.  When the previous Vicar moved last year, the Church asked whether it would be possible to go into a partnership with the Resource Church of St Mary in Southampton City Centre Parish.

Negotiations ensued, and the result was that, in a very joyful Service on Thursday, from the city Centre Team, the Revd Jon Finch was Licensed as the Priest-in-Charge, and the Revd Tom Boulter as Curate-in-Charge, of the Parish – Tom and his family are living in the Vicarage next to the Church.  They are sharing resources with the City Centre Parish, and hope to revitalise the Church at Lord’s Hill, and to reach out to the community there.

Again, I was led to reflect on the nature of the Church, this time modelling a pattern of collaboration and sharing of resources, supporting those in need and reaching out to what are often called, ‘The Missing Generations’, those in their twenties to forties.

In the Gospel records, Jesus only uses the word ‘Church’ twice – both in St Matthew’s Gospel.  Once in Matthew 16 [:18], the so-called ‘Confession of Peter’, when, after Peter responds to Jesus’ question, ‘Who do you say that I am?’ [Matt. 16:15], with the words, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God’ [Matt. 16:16], Jesus replies, ‘I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it’.  This is a much-contested verse, but Jesus here is clearly talking about the Universal Church, what we will describe in a few moments in the Creed as the ‘One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’ [Nicene Creed].

And the only other time Jesus uses the word ‘Church’ is in the passage from Matthew 18 which we have just heard as our Gospel Reading.

Here, Jesus, as related by Matthew, seems to be talking about the local expression of Church – the Church in a particular place – and seemingly, a Church like any other, where people are not always perfect, and we sometimes need to have our faults pointed out to us.

You need to come back next week for part two of this narration – or, if you can’t wait, read the whole of Matthew 18!  Having ended at verse 20 this week, we take up the narrative at verse 21 next Sunday, with Peter and Jesus discussing forgiveness.  Spoiler alert – Jesus is strongly in favour of forgiveness!

The context of Matthew 18 is interesting.  The chapter begins with a conversation about who is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.  Jesus places a child in their midst, and tells his followers that they must become like ‘these little ones’, and then talks in very dramatic language about people becoming ‘a stumbling block’ [Matt 18:6].  This is followed by the Parable of the Lost Sheep, and then moves seamlessly on to reflect on the life of the Church.

In our passage, Jesus seems to be developing the teaching of Leviticus 19 [:15-18], which urged showing love to an offender, but also reproving them if necessary [See: Ox. B.C., p. 867].

The ‘binding and loosing’ of v. 18 has often been used in the Church to bolster hierarchical or central authority, and has been so used across the spectrum of theological interpretation and Church practice.

But given the context in which these words are set, it doesn’t seem that Jesus or Matthew is thinking about doctrine, or about determining the boundaries of who is in and who is out of the Church.

It seems to me much more likely that Jesus is talking about the last, those who are forgotten in society; the least, the little children whom he places in the centre of the Kingdom of Heaven; and the lost, as in the Parable of the Lost Sheep.

These are the ones, the last, the least and the lost, whom Jesus is calling his followers to care for, and to pay attention to.

And where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.

So, where does that leave us as we reflect on the calling of the Church in our own times?

We often use the image in our Worship of ‘The Body of Christ’.  All of us gathered for Worship this morning, whether in the Cathedral or on-line, constitute the Body of Christ in this place at this time – ‘where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them’.

That means that all of us, as the gathered congregation here, whether we’re sitting in the choir or the Sanctuary part of the congregation, or whether we are sitting in the Nave part of the congregation, or whether we’re part of the on-line congregation – all of us are equally important parts of the Body of Christ.  Whether it’s your first time here, whether you’ve come intentionally to Worship, or somehow stumbled upon it, whether you’ve been coming here since before the Ark, or whether you’re here because your work brings you here – all of us constitute the Body of Christ in this place at this time.

There are many people here with a deep and confident faith, people who have been committed to following Jesus for many years, many decades.  There are also, I’m sure, people who are dipping their toes in the water, wondering what it’s all about, and what all the strange words and strange clothes and strange music mean, and how they could possibly lead you to our Father God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit.

St Gregory the Great, who died in 604, wrote this of Scripture: ‘Scripture is like a river . . . broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim’ [Gregory the Great, Moralia on Job, section 4].  He could equally well have been writing about the Church and its worship and life  – it ‘is like a river . . . broad and deep, shallow enough here for the lamb to go wading, but deep enough there for the elephant to swim’.

We are the Church – and what a magnificent lot you all are – we are the Church, and those who have been here often have a particular responsibility to those who have more recently come – it is our task to look out for the last, the lost and the least.  Some here will be exploring the meaning of faith and worship for the first time; some will have thought and prayed about it a lot.  But for all of us, there is a call from God upon our lives.

And as well as a calling, for all of us there are gifts from God.  St Paul, writing to the Corinthian Church, says, ‘The Holy Spirit is given to each of us in a special way and for the good of all’ [I Cor. 12:7].

Our callings and our giftings may be different, but they all come from one source.  There are those whose gifts are in  service and pastoral care; those whose gifts are in caring for our finances; those who look after this wonderful building; those who offer music or preaching; those who are simply able to come alongside others in friendship and love.  All are called, and all are given gifts.  Our task, with God’s help, is to hear that call and discover the gifts we can use in his Service.

We are the Church.

It may be that you’d like to reflect on some of these thoughts around your gifts and calling – do speak to someone here if you’d like to, and they’ll be able to help, or find someone who can.

I’ll end with a famous prayer of St Teresa of Avila.

Christ has no body but yours,

No hands, no feet on earth but yours,

Yours are the eyes with which he looks with
compassion on this world,

Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good,

Yours are the hands, with which he blesses all the world.

Christ has no body now on earth but yours.