Whaley Bridge Parish
August 22nd August 2021
At the beginning of September it will be a whole year since I started with you as Vicar here in Whaley Bridge. And what a strange year for all of us, a year of lockdowns, of distancing, of being church online. Being in ministry in the church is all about relationships: relationship with God, relationships with schools and community groups, relationships with wardens and ministry team, and fundamentally, relationships with you who are God’s people gathered here in Whaley Bridge – out congregation – a word which simply means a gathering of people.
Because of covid, making those relationships has been slower and more complicated than it would otherwise be. A year on I am still in the process of meeting members of the congregation in person. Mask-wearing means that I have been introducing myself to people in Whaley Bridge who have met me several times already! So I still feel new in my ministry here even after a year – and I do thank you for your patience in understanding that.
But the last month since restrictions have been easing has felt different. It was wonderful to go into school for the leavers assemblies. It is a joy to be able to sing in church, and to have a chat over a cup of tea after eighteen long months. It is such a pleasure after more than a year off zoom meetings to simply be able to invite people to round to the vicarage. Last week we were talking about fellowship of the Holy Spirit, the togetherness in community that usually happens over the sharing of food and drink. “Koinonia” in the New Testament. We have been deprived of koinonia through the pandemic and it lifts my heart that sharing together is becoming more part of life again. Those first awful weeks when the church doors were closed by law seem a long time ago now.
It's been a strange year, but a good year, and I feel we have so much to feel encouraged about in the life of our parish. It’s so encouraging that number have held up, and even grown modestly during this time. It is encouraging that people have continued to give generously. It’s great that around two-thirds of the congregation feel able to return to worship in person, and that we can connect with the remaining third via Zoom. In the last week I have had two wedding enquiries and two baptism enquires: the community is starting to knock on our door again. A constant encouragement to me is our midweek service on Tuesday morning where there is a depth of prayerfulness that I find very sustaining. God’s grace has been sufficient for me, even through the upheaval of the pandemic.
So as I begin my second year of ministry here, I am still in the early phase of finding out about the church and wider community here – what makes you tick, what concerns you about this community, what gives you joy, where do you most easily meet with God? And you are still working out those things about me! And yet alongside this first getting to know each other phase, we are moving into a second phase in which we can start to frame some other questions. How are we in Whaley Bridge Parish called to be a sign of God’s Kingdom in our community? In what ways are we being called to love and serve our neighbours? In what ways are we being called to share the good news of Jesus Christ? What does it mean for us to be the Church of God in this particular place at this particular time
Today is the last in our series “Living Bread” in which we’ve been following through chapter 6 of John’s Gospel. We’ve seen how Jesus is able to be living bread for us because of his unique nature: humanly divine, divinely human. We’ve shared some stories about mealtimes that have been moments at which we have been reminded of Christ’s unseen presence with us at the table. And we have reflected upon Holy Communion as the focal point for receiving God’s living bread for us. As we become joined to Jesus through sharing his bread, we in turn become bread for the world. We become the bread that is to be blessed broken and shared, so that Love’s redeeming work carries on through us.
Today’s gospel passage marks the end of the long conversation between Jesus and his followers, and the wider crowd, and it’s the crunch time. In the House of Commons when they have a debate it’s followed by a division when the MPs go to vote, ayes to the right and noes to the left. This point in John chapter 6 is a point of division for Jesus’ followers. It’s time for them to separate into the ayes and the noes. Some of them can’t cope with what they have heard; they can’t accept Jesus’ words about eating and drinking his flesh and blood. They object that “This teaching is too difficult”, and they turn away from following Jesus. And then Jesus gives the others a choice. Do you want to leave? And then we have Peter’s forthright reply. “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” Peter is voting yes to stay following Jesus.
“Lord to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life.” If bread is food for the body, then words can be food for the mind, and both are needed for the soul to be fed. We have them here this morning: the words of Jesus in the gospels– and we have the bread of Jesus which we’ll share later in our service. Words and bread. The Holy Spirit can speak to us in all sorts of ways, but from the very earliest days, Christians have had the experience that there were two key ways in which the Spirit of the Risen Christ came close to them. The first was when they shared the word of scripture together: the second was when they broke the bread together.
Remember the story of the disciples of the Emmaus Rd. The Risen Jesus is with the travellers on the road explaining the scriptures to them, but they don’t recognise him. Then when they break bread together they recognise him for who he is. In a way this story is a pattern for the life of the Christian Community everywhere.
And it has always been the pattern for Christian ministry. As priest in the church my ministry is a ministry of word and sacrament – to help people meet with God through the life-giving bread, to help people meet with God through the word of scripture. Breaking the bread together, sharing in the words of the scriptures together, as finding God present by his Spirit as we do so – wherever, and whenever church happens, those two particular things need to be right there at the heart.
Steven Croft writes “The Church, quite simply, is the community that is fed by Jesus.” Let me give you that again. “The Church, quite simply, is the community that is fed by Jesus.”
I am the living bread says Jesus. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. Jesus, you Have the words of eternal life, says Peter. We’ve spent several weeks now working through chapter six of John. It is important for us because it shapes our identity as the church. It reminds us who we are. We are the community that is fed by Jesus, fed in the word of scripture, fed in the bread and wine we share, fed in our common life together.
And of course that is not an end in itself; the church is never an end in itself. The purpose of the church is always as a sign of God’s kingdom, for the transforming of the world, to make it more as God wants it to be: a world where the hungry are fed and the oppressed are set free. Christ’s body is broken on the cross not for the church, but for the world. We break bread here in church in order to become bread for the world. A church that exists only for itself, that is only concerned with its own survival, its own growth, its own wellbeing has lost the plot. We are here for others.
So as we begin to ask questions of ourselves about what our purpose is here as the parish of Whaley Bridge, this is our starting point. We start with the living God, feeding us with his bread and his word. We start by knowing who we are: a community that is fed by Jesus, for the sake of the world he loves.