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Posted Aug 11, 2009
Thursday Evening Communion Service
Community Week July 2009
Sermon ( Readings: Luke 6:20-26 see also Ephesians 2: 8-10)
I am not in the habit of reading my horoscope however at the turn of the year with 2009 potentially a year of great change in my life, I idly turned to the horoscopes given for the coming year in the Observer magazine, so this was a quality horoscope. See what you think.
ARIES
In 2009 your professional destiny calls you to ally your formidable willpower with the energies of fellow travelers - to make common cause, in short. Lone ranger you may be, but joining forces with those who share your ideals is where you find inspiration (and money).
… Jupiter, the planet of prosperity and optimism, makes this the time to schmooze and seek induction into the committee, team or Masonic sect of your choosing. (OM 28 December 08)
We are amused but behind our laughter we know that there is a fine dividing line between being a community and being a sect. Every social grouping – family, club, church – has its boundaries, its insiders and outsiders, and that which can foster a sense of belonging and identity can also exclude and marginalise.
Those on the new members programme of the Iona Community have been reflecting on this during our time together last week at Camas, our centre on Mull, and no doubt each will have been asking themselves – Is this the kind of Community to which I wish to belong? I have asked myself the same question especially over the past four days!
My first visit to Iona was during Students Week in the Spring of 1980. I had heard about George Macleod and I knew little about the Iona Community. The island was as beautiful as I had been told and I really enjoyed the company of my fellow students and Abbey staff but I remained cautiously intrigued by the Community. Much of what I had seen and heard greatly interested me but I was still a little suspicious, what kind of ‘community’ was this? I did not want to get involved with any sort of cult or sect.
I had already noticed that the evening service on the Tuesday was billed as a service of healing. Now I am a Presbyterian and I had never come across such a thing – faith healing was definitely for religious sects and snake oil charlatans. So I sat, not here in the body of the Kirk but up in the nave, two or three rows back, from where I could observe the proceedings with a little detachment.
At first there was nothing to concern me but then those who wished were invited to come forward for the act of healing. Alarm bells rang. The first person to come forward was an elderly woman, bent double, walking with a stick. I covered my face with my hand and watched through my fingers. Imagine then my surprise when that woman turned to lead the act of healing. Not only my hands fell away but also my assumptions, my prejudices, my suspicions. That woman’s name was Margaret, Margaret Wright, who was a friend and inspiration to many of us gathered here this week. The incident taught me more about the wounded healer, the paradox of the gospel, the community of faith than any book I had read or lecture I had attended.
It was a moment of revelation for me and it was not the worship, it was not the act of healing, it was the person of Margaret – elderly, female, frail – and yet she was leading, she was an agent of God’s loving power.
I soon realised that this insight, this theology, this truth, lay at the heart of all that the Iona Community was about and I wanted to be part of that.
This truth is not something that our founder George Macleod developed through intellectual endeavour nor the Community by great theologizing pouring over the fine print of scripture.
It came, it comes to us as a gift. It is revealed to us in this place and in all our other places, it emerges from our common faith, our common task, our common life.
Last week at Camas, one of our young volunteers, Andrew, led a reflection in which he spoke of those who feel that ‘who they are is wrong’. I was struck by that phrase – ‘who they are is wrong’ – not what they have done or failed to do, not their behaviour or attitude or lifestyle but something much more penetrating – ‘who they are is wrong’.
Andrew is right, isn’t he, some people, some of us, are told or believe ourselves that who we are is wrong. Think for a moment of people, past and present, around the world or in your own land, who have been told by social, political and religious systems – who you are is wrong.
Think of people in this Abbey church tonight, within these ancient walls, perhaps someone sitting very close to you who has been told – who you are is wrong.
Think of a time in your life when you have been told, or have believed yourself that who you are is wrong.
Held in our thoughts tonight too many people seeking acceptance and belonging and justice and love, too many hurts to be acknowledged and named and healed and shared.
It first struck me at that healing service nearly thirty years ago and in the intervening years it has nurtured me and challenged me – that insight, that theology, that truth at the heart of all that we do – the awareness of a greater gift than even the gift of community, the gift of the grace of God.
‘Who you are is wrong’ is never a good starting point for faith. It places a never to be fulfilled obligation on the believer to get ‘right’, to win divine acceptance and approval, forever falling short, forever trying to please, never ‘right’, always ‘wrong’. The God of conditional love is not a good God but a tyrant, a guilt inducing, life denying, confidence draining impostor, with whom none of us, not one of us, can ever be ‘right’ or in right relationship.
The Iona Community, volunteers, staff and members, through our worship and work, bears witness to a God whose love is unconditional. Through our common faith, common task, common life, we experience and mediate for one another and to others, the grace of God.
God’s grace moves us from apathy to empathy, from passivity to prayer, from indifference to engagement. It inspires our worship, calls us to discipleship, gathers us in community, stirs in us a passion for peace-making and a ‘holy rage’ at the injustices perpetrated by those who always seem to believe that who they are is right, always right, and by systems, by the principalities and powers which divide and dehumanise, enslave and impoverish.
We are gathered this week as the Iona Community because of the grace of God, we are seated tonight around this table because of the grace of God. We are loved in our brokenness, our imperfection, our wrongness. Each and every one of us or not a single one of us for through the grace of God all are blessed. Amen.
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