It is good
that this evening’s the second lesson begins where last week's ended. The
author of the letter to the Hebrews is still giving advice on how to live
together as a Christian community. To put it simply we are not to neglect doing
good. We are then to use each and every opportunity which we have to do good:
to do the right thing regardless of the costs, or the consequences. We are to
share what we have, because as Christians we are to be loving and generous
people who live out our faith in our lives, who cannot fail to help those in
need.
With such
love and generosity comes obedience. The leaders are not specified in the
letter as priests or bishops, however they ‘watch over your souls’. These then
are people who exercise of pastoral care of the people of God, which is a great
responsibility. Next comes the main point, they are ‘those who will have to
give an account’. I suspect that you are familiar with the parable of the
talents (Mt 25:14–30) . Well, those of us ordained priests and bishops are told at our ordination are
consecration but we will have to answer to God on the day of judgement for our
care of his flock. It is perhaps the singularly most terrifying thing which
anyone says to me in life. It scared me then, over a year ago just as it does
today. The fact that I will have to answer for my stewardship of God's people
fills me with terror. As stewards go, I'm a pretty poor one, a miserable sinner,
in need of God's love and mercy, who is absolutely not up to the task I have
been given. I can but trust in God's grace, his love at his mercy and cry ‘Lord,
have mercy upon me a sinner’. Given the current state of the church in England
I can only hope that priests and bishops reading these words this evening will
be similarly moved. St John Chrysostom once wrote that ‘the way to hell is
paved with the skulls of bishops’, and I can only hope and pray that they will
listen to the advice of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews and not find
themselves wailing and gnashing their teeth, having been found wanting in their
stewardship of Christ’s flock.
The care of
Christ's flock is a solemn undertaking which I hope and pray is pondered long
and hard before decisions are taken in the forthcoming months which have the
potential to disfigure the body of Christ in this land. One can I suspect feel
rather like Moses standing before Pharaoh simply asking ‘Let my people go that
they may worship me in the wilderness’. To be in the wilderness is to be in a
place upon which the world places no value whatsoever. To be in the wilderness
is to be with God and to be opposed to the ways of the world, the ways of
Pharaoh, and the ways of his power. To be in the wilderness is to wander, but
also to be with God knowing that as Christians then is our true home, that the
politics of the Gen Synod are as nothing compared to being with God, fed by
his word and his sacraments, with true shepherds and not hirelings to lead us
so that we may do God's will, working in us that which is pleasing in his
sight that we may serve God the Father, God the son, and God the holy ghost to
whom be ascribed as is most right and just, all might, majesty, glory, dominion,
and power, now and for ever
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