News Flash - IT'S NOT ABOUT YOU!!

I am catching up on the news after spending yesterday afternoon and evening tied up with a meeting at Uniting Church headquarters in Pitt Street. The news that has had me reeling this morning is in no way connected to the adverse State of Origin result in Melbourne. Surely we have plumbed new depths with the ABC’s showing last night of the latest Chaser’s garbage. Apparently their warped minds think that making fun of sick and dying children is a source of humour.

Author, theologian and Philosopher, G. K. Chesterton once said that when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing, they believe in anything. Whatever garbage happens to bubble up from the cesspools of depraved brains is okay and is occasionally even lauded as something called art?!

One of the major reasons I keep doing what I am doing is that I still firmly believe that the local church is the hope of the world. Of course I understand that many people – even those within the church – find this statement perhaps naïve, or even presumptuous; but I can cope with that. Frankly, as I look around the world I think that most of the evidence is on my side.

Church confuses me! It seems to me that for so many it is about what the church can provide for ME and those close to me? It is about the music, or the preaching and teaching. It is about correct doctrine and theology. Then I look at Jesus.

I can’t get around the fact that Jesus spent a fair amount of his time getting up the nose of the religious? I still stumble over the unavoidable reality that Jesus enjoyed hanging out with people that many ‘churched’ people don’t enjoy hanging out with? We (the church) can sometimes demonise sinners, while Jesus welcomes them. Jesus went out of his way to be with people on the fringes of society, while we too often seek the safety zone of church buildings and church friends.

As a local congregation we have a little tag line that hopefully defines us. Building communities of care and hope is a mirror of what Jesus appears to be on about. One day Jesus was on his way to help a local dignitary when an outcast woman desperately grabbed at the hem of his robe. People were pushing and shoving as Jesus and his disciples moved along and who could be bothered with a sick woman? Jesus could. Jesus specialised in bringing care and hope to people. What do we specialise in?

I saw a T shirt recently that simply said – ‘It’s not about you’. It seems to me that we have convinced ourselves that actually, it is all about us! When we reach this stage of course anything goes. Hence, we have seen the growth of a selfish lifestyle to go along with the growth of voyeuristic TV shows. If we can’t be famous, at least we can watch people just like us, who can be. We have such enormous capacity to do good and continue to see this in our response to various disasters, and yet we can tap new depths of care-less and hope-less life styles. We can even make fun of dying children.

‘There is nothing like the local church when the local church is working right’, says Pastor Bill Hybels, and I remain convinced of this truth. If we can build enough communities of care and hope, then I would like to believe that we can see a new Pandemic sweeping the world that is far more potent than something called Swine Flu.

The problem of course is that our message is not a popular one today. We have convinced ourselves that it really is all about us and those close to us. With that mindset it becomes an enormous risk to trust ourselves to others and jointly work for something bigger and better than ourselves. Stupidly, I continue to believe in that risk.

Cheers - John