IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU!

The Risen Christ stands among us this morning and says I am among you as one who serves.

Both our readings today make uncomfortable listening. They both underline the painful truth that we Christians cannot ever be wholly at home in our culture. Or if we are, there is something amiss.

Let's start with the Gospel. The disciples have been arguing about who is going to have the top jobs when Christ establishes his Kingdom in Israel. They assume that he's after regime change (like the Russians in Georgia) and will be giving them jobs in the new government. “Right, Peter, you can be Prime Minister but I'm going to be Foreign Secretary and Judas can be Chancellor of the Exchequer – he's good with money”. “No, Philip can be  Foreign Secretary, he speaks Greek”. “Hey, I want to be Home secretary.” And so forth and so on.

Jesus rebukes them sharply. “In the Kingdom it's not like that at all. In the Kingdom all these worldly ideas of power and prestige are unknown. In the Kingdom the greatest among you will be like the youngest and the leader like one who serves.”

That is one of the most radical and destabilising things Jesus ever said. It runs counter to all our assumptions about the way institutions work. Authority and power are surely exercised from the top down. Schools, The Army, Hospitals, Businesses, local authorities, Yes, and the Church, are top-down organisations. That's just how things work.
Jesus is saying that the Christian community can't be like that – it is a bottom up institution. The agenda of the Christian church should always be set by the needs of the human community, the poor and marginalised and children. I suppose the Salvation Army is the only Christian group in this. country of whom that could be said to be true – and they rather spoil the effect by having Colonels and Generals.

Now this is not just a bit of Utopian speculation with nothing much to do with us. We have just had appointed a new Vicar who is going to be our leader. I wonder what kind of leadership you are hoping for? The Archangel Gabriel? A bit scary. A large charismatic character with huge charm?   Hmm. Not sure about that. A man who will go on to be a Bishop or Archbishop? Surely we don't deserve anything less?

But if we listen to what Jesus said to his disciples, perhaps we have to think very differently. One of the finest parish priests I ever met was very quiet and unobtrusive.. He knew everyone's name.  Somehow he enabled everyone else to  feel valued and to have a role and a ministry. Now I haven't met Leonard Doolan – but I have been told by a close friend who happened to be in one of his parishes that “he quietly transformed the parish.” I like that. Transformation is what it's all about. Now, after over 50 years in this trade I know that human personality is wonderfully various and that like everyone else clergy come in all shapes and sizes and God's grace works through them in amazing and often unobtrusive ways.
But I think as a congregation awaiting a new priest we all need to review our own expectations in the light of what Jesus is saying to us – the Jesus who stands among us this morning and addresses us directly. “It shall not be so among you.. I am among you as one who serves”. Just think what that means. It is the role of the unobtrusive waiter in the restaurant who puts your food in front of you, fills your glass and watches in the background in case you need something. He really wants you to enjoy yourself.  It is the shop assistant who helps you choose the right dress and is delighted when you walk out looking stunning. It is the old boy who one night slips an envelope through the letter box of a flat down the street, an envelope full of gift tokens, because he knows the single mum inside is desperately hard up.
Jesus dramatically set the Kingdom model of leadership when he did the job of a household slave and washed his disciples' dirty and smelly feet. And then he tells his stunned friends: Right, now you must learn to wash one another's feet. Who? Us? We're not servants!

Well, that is a bit disconcerting isn't it? And it leads us rather neatly into today's epistle

Paul is writing to his wayward congregation in Corinth who are well-to-do and rather pleased with themselves and with their highly educated culture. They tended to treat Paul rather as sophisticated people living in Oxford might treat a newcomer from Liverpool or Tyneside. I expect he spoke Greek with a thick Hebrew accent; he probably had few of the polite urbane manners of his flock. They were highly cultured people. He was  a provincial and possibly a bit uncouth. But he had discovered that being a disciple of Jesus meant for him a radical break with his own home background. He no longer fitted in to the culture of his own people. He was an embarrassment to good orthodox Jews. He was a transformed man.

But that was hardly surprising. After all Jesus had been a threat to his own people and their customs. We are told “ he came to his own people and his own people received him not”. He just didn't fit in.
Now the Corinthians had eagerly welcomed the Gospel brought to them by Paul. It freed them from all the superstitions and fears of the pagan world. It gave them direct access to God. It promised them eternal life in the New World of the Resurrection. It gave them a new purpose and meaning for life. It was good news indeed.

But they didn't see why it should make any great difference to their social life. They weren't too keen on mixing with the riff-raff of slaves and poor folk and foreigners who had begun to crowd in to church to hear the spell binding message of Jesus. They enjoyed their social world and went on accepting invitations to dine with their smart pagan friends at the city clubs – some of them night clubs where all sorts of naughty things went on. They had the best of both worlds. But they probably kept quiet about their membership of the Christian church when in smart society.

Paul asks them in effect, but where is the Cross in Corinth? Look at all the trouble being a disciple of Jesus has got me into! What are you doing to confront the pagan worldly culture of Corinth with the challenge and the promise of the Gospel? He writes to them:  “Do not be conformed to your local culture, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds by God's Spirit.” When outsiders look at you are they startled, intrigued or even disconcerted by your way of life? Are you visibly different from other people in Corinth?” There's that word “transformation” again. I dare say quite a lot of Corinthians would have said, “Transformation? We're OK aren't we? Quite a successful church in fact. We have more church people here than they do in Thessally or Philippi! What on earth is Paul on about?”

I wonder what he would have written to the church in Corinium? Corinium Castra. Well he might not have known anything about us at all. But he knew dozens of churches intimately and loved all of them. He knows all have the same need – transformation by the Spirit. The Gospel is about transformation. Paul was a transformed man. He puts the same question to them and to us. How is the Cross and Resurrection of Jesus made visible in your community and your relationships?
Where are the signs of the Spirit? How are we different from the surrounding culture? Are we offering people water in the desert of consumerism in which we live? Are we a sign of Hope in the fears and anxieties of 2008? A gift of Love when so many are lost and alone? With our new priest are we open to our own personal transformation? That is the question the Risen Christ who stands among us is putting to us.

When Christ lovingly puts his bread into our hands and shares his cup with each of us he is making us sharers in his transforming Resurrection life. It has been the faith of the Church for 2000 years that when we bring this ordinary bread and wine to God in the Eucharist he gives it back to us transformed as the vehicle of his own life and love. But that will involve our own personal transformation - a transformation which each of us has to welcome if we are to enter into his joy. But there is a Cross involved isn't there? This is my blood shed for you. Now wash one another's feet.

Aug 2008