Church				2 Corinthians 5.14 – 6.2
The life and death of Jesus was offered that we might find faith and hope and love in the living God. In coming as he did, Jesus was the fulfilment of the Scriptures and indeed inspired the writing of new Scriptures – what we call the New Testament. Act Five of the Biblical story is about those who have taken up that invitation to believe through Jesus Christ. It is clearly borne witness to in the New Testament but equally clearly it is a continuing story, a story not yet ended. Thus we find ourselves spoken to in those pages; and the struggles and the questions we deal with may be related to what was before written.
Just as Jesus’ own story picked up key elements of the Old Testament, so also did the experiences of his early followers. The book of the Acts of the Apostles opens with Jesus’ parting instructions and not least his anticipation of the coming of the Holy Spirit – who had spoken before through the prophets. If Jesus’ followers now were to be filled with “power” (Acts 1:8), that power would be to enable a continuing witness, “in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth”. Charged batteries, so to speak, are there to be used.
Well, how did they do? The evidence of the New Testament contains both account of joys and surprises and frustrations and difficulties. On the positive side there was a revisiting of the confusion of the Tower of Babel. That story in Genesis which offered something of a climax to human wanderings and ungodly ambition was reversed on the day of Pentecost. The knowledge of God went out to people despite their differences of language. And for Jews, given that the feast of Pentecost demanded that Moses at Mount Sinai should be remembered, there was a poignancy in the recording of three thousand men being baptised given that when Aaron et al. had fashioned the golden calf, three thousand had then met their deaths. The fire now came on all the believers, not just on the mountain and the great prophet; the mistaken sense that these believers were drunk rather beautifully pointed to the fact that it was like a wedding-feast, where joy overran.
Thus far in Jerusalem, but what about the rest? Judea and Samaria were hardly bosom pals, in fact Jews kept well apart from Samaritans. There was a delicious irony as persecution on the back of Stephen’s martyrdom (see Acts 8) obliged the believers to go out from Jerusalem into those different areas. And so we are told about Philip who not only preaches to Samaritans but has the most fascinating encounter with an Ethiopian eunuch. As a eunuch he was also well outside normal Covenant boundaries; as an African he represented the beginning of the rest of the story. (We might even note he’s riding a chariot but this time (unlike in the Old Testament) not for the sake of war but in order to continue on his way, full of joy in the Spirit.) Or we read of the Saul who was the persecutor heading for Damascus, again outside the close borders of Jewish life, and learning so dramatically of the need to go outside the borders of his own believing (Acts 9). Again and again the way in which the Christian gospel demands a re-evaluation of closed Jewishness becomes the theme of the book of Acts. It is in Antioch, far north from Jerusalem, that Paul and Barnabas are set apart (Acts 13). The language reminds us of the setting apart of the Aaronic priesthood but now the mission is rather different. The holy presence of the Lord is on the move and not at all confined to the Holy of Holies. The apostle Peter has his learning experience in the home of a Roman centurion (Acts 10). Undoubtedly there were tensions and problems as this new fact of God’s blessing upon the Gentiles as well as upon the Jews asserted itself, but there was no stopping it. There can be no stopping it. The church cannot be a closed society.
So “he died for all”, as Paul wrote to the Corinthians (2 Cor.5:15). There is a new creation, and there is a task of reconciliation, of breaking down barriers between peoples and acknowledging the reach of God’s grace, held out to us with ample forgiveness. “Today is the day to be saved” (2 Cor. 6:2). Thus the church finds its raison d’etre, the very reason for its existence, in being a community which bears witness. Alas (to follow on from where I preached this morning on Matthew 6) a significant alternative that pitches in against the task of witness is the love of comfort and wealth. In itself the attraction to wealth is only a road to living by worry (as opposed to living by grace!); perhaps even worse, the temptation to settle down and to regard our state of wellbeing as more a right and entitlement than the gift of God is again powerful in disabling our witness. It’s not a massive leap then to just fit in with anyone else, be it pagans or rulers of this world; our distinctive word to the world is most powerfully silenced when we shut our own lips.
The vitality of the church will depend on how well we appreciate the hope that has been given to us. That is to say, if our hope is for this life only, or if our hope is for mere survival or maintenance, or if our hope is for freedom from trouble or effort, we are less a beacon and well on the way to extinction. If, however, our hope is for the gospel to go out to the ends of the earth, if our hope is for an end to mourning and crying and pain, if our hope is for resurrection life, if our hope is for perseverance and joy even through trouble (see, e.g. Romans 8 and I Corinthians 15 and Revelation 21-22), then the Spirit has begun to do his work within us, and there is a task set before us. 
Even for the people of Israel, Moses had to warn them that getting comfortable and established might be their downfall (Deuteronomy 8: 11-14). Therefore the Passover would be their regular remembering of the Lord who had brought them out of Egypt, from where they had cried out in pain. The Christian covenant was and is to be remembered by another meal, in which Jesus speaks to us of what it costs him to save the world and invites us to participate in the work, in anticipation of the day when all may come to the heavenly banquet. Thus the Lord’s Supper is both a vivid and essential part of our work, and I need to say something about it. Think of it in terms of its note of thanksgiving. Our life and our hope are anchored in thanksgiving – gratia – grace. It is a wonderful revelation to be receivers of grace. But then think of it also in terms of the note of sharing. For as Jesus shared himself with us, so we have a sharing role – of bread and wine, of that which sustains life and that which speaks both of rejoicing and of tears. As we are together to share, we are to be conscious also of those with whom we are not yet sharing. For we are not the only people who have a history of crying, of anguish, of lostness, of sin. As long as there are any who are not being fed in body and mind and soul, the sharing is incomplete. And so there is another note regularly rehearsed at the Lord’s Supper. It is that note of being the body of Christ, and none behaving as if there were no others. We meet for the supper with repentance in our hearts, with our own lives examinable and under scrutiny; and it is not for the sake of a religious ritual, it is for the sake of life – life that reaches out to all who hunger and thirst. There is a note of peace around the meal, but it is Christ’s peace, not some poor half-version of it: Christ’s peace is a peace between God and humanity, it is a peace as the letter to the Ephesians puts it, where barriers are broken down, so that all may be together at the feast. The Lord’s Supper therefore points to ultimate inclusiveness. No-one is there by right. All may come by grace through faith. And so in sum the meal of the new covenant is given as it were to turn us into being a covenant. Church is not somewhere we come to and then go away from. Church is something we become – a light to the nations, the living sign of the Lord’s mercy for all peoples.
Church is something we become, because God has called us. There was a text I noted as significant when I spoke about Israel: Exodus 19.4-6. There is held out the notion that the chosen people are to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. Even in that Old Testament context, where there were priests capital “P”, the calling was truly of the whole community. Even more so within the New Testament where that image is famously picked up in I Peter 2. 9-10 – “You are the chosen race, the royal priesthood, the holy nation, God’s own people chosen to proclaim the wonderful acts of God who called you out of darkness into his marvellous light. At one time you were not God’s people but now you are His people. At one time you did not know God’s mercy; now you have received His mercy.” There’s a lot in this. The royal calling is the calling that goes back to Adam but ultimately through Christ: it is about authority and about service, it is about honour and about humility. And if the king’s “patch” so to speak is the world, the priest has his or her patch in the realm of worship. As we play our part in the world, so we also work out our calling within songs of praise, around Word and Sacrament; six days out there, one day in here – but all, utterly connected.
Church – this continuing Act Five of the Bible – is the story of blessings. Blessings are received (as the Sermon on the Mount trumpets) and blessings are for sharing. It is salutary to note that as we embody the outstretched arms of Christ, we ourselves will be stretched out. This is not a calling without demands. This is not a calling which will be pain-free. But it is a calling which praises God for the knowledge that though through sin Abel’s blood so quickly ended up calling from the ground, now through the blood of Christ shed for the forgiveness of sins there is hope of God wiping away every tear. The world will never be the same, whatever the cynics say, because God is not wanting us to remain for ever the same.