Steadfastness and conviction
Ordinary Sunday 29: 19th October, 2008
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's, Eastern Hill
A great Australian bush poet had a bewailing refrain: "We'll all be rooned, said Hanrahan." The past few weeks of international economic and financial turmoil have been a bit like that. The scale of events is completely overwhelming, even if there is some comfort in being in this country. We do not know how this is going to play out. Many people are now anxious about their employment, others close to retirement or already there have good cause to be concerned about how their existing and now diminishing resources will be able to stretch. Many of us have watched several years' worth of careful and prudent savings in superannuation simply vanish from the bottom line of our reported assets. Some of us hope that one fine day these figures will return again as quickly as they have departed. But we do not hold our breath. Maybe there is a sneaking suspicion, as with the changes in our weather, that there are some shifts that have occurred that are not going to be reversed. That requires some major rethinking. These are therefore very uncertain times. There is going to be an increasing demand for social services and emergency support from places like this at the centre of things. There is going to be an increasing need for healthy and welcoming communities of faith. The Church and Christians have a significant role to play in the necessary reconsideration of the priorities that have got us all into the situation we are currently in and to consider ways forward.
That this is something that is having an effect across the community, including the Church, was very clear at our diocesan synod last week. The diocese has enjoyed the good years. But we have lacked a Joseph who has gone before us storing up supplies for the bad years that have now so clearly arrived. Some hard decisions are going to have to be made in the next six months as a consequence. It will affect what the diocese is able to offer to the church as a whole. It will therefore become even more demanding on the local parish churches. Examples might include what can be done in major hospitals so far as chaplaincy is concerned. Or in our universities. Now that as it happens these are two of our own major works of outreach from here. We will therefore be asked to offer more if the ministry work is to happen at all. What has happened is that a deficit budget has been approved for 6 months and the synod will reconvene in June to reconsider what might be done for the rest of 2009. There will have to be some cuts to diocesan services. It is not considered that an increase to the parish assessments is a real option, since the parishes themselves will all be under a degree of strain.
So the local church may well find itself with more requests for ministry from the institutions that happen to be close by. In the eastern suburbs that could well be schools or nursing homes. We have neither of those. But we do have two universities and five hospitals. In addition we have parishioners from all over the metropolitan area, not from just a very small radius. This means that we need a ministry team and a fairly mobile one at that.
We have been blessed at the parish level by steadily increasing individual giving and financial support. Your response to the latest stewardship requests has confirmed this pattern. We are most grateful. The final figures for this just completed year and our projected numbers for 2008-09 will be presented at our forthcoming Annual General Meeting on November 16th. That generous week by week giving, plus the significant and generous bequests we have received, have enabled us to set up the St Peter's Foundation, covering both support for the needy and support for the repair and maintenance of our buildings. This post 1998 breakthrough means that this parish is well placed to see these current financial and economic challenges through.
It is of huge importance that a city church like St Peter's rises to the challenge of hard times. This is a spiritual challenge as much as it is an economic one. It means worship and prayer, but also study and the encouragement to grow and deepen faith, even as some of our presuppositions are being sorely tested. It is a challenge to this community of faith, brought together as we have been from all over the city and from all sorts of backgrounds. We are here together because this is the way we choose to offer our worship to God and this is the sort of community we have chosen to be part of. Our Parish Vision Statement lays it out quite clearly. That is the template. As the resources emerge, that is the way we are hoping to grow and deepen our life here. Especially in difficult times that is going to involve more than just some small bit of us that is said to be 'religious'. We are reminded of the wholeness of the call: 'with all your heart, with all your souls, and with all your mind, and with all your strength'. This then is both demanding and stretching. But what if it actually works? The God we worship was born of a woman into the very middle of everything that it is to be human. Even if we are not able to provide answers, at the very least we are able to offer a context. As ever that context is this: God with us.
Our epistle reading is the beginning of a letter addressed to a very early group of Christians in northern Greece. Paul has not been able to get back to them but he has sent Timothy. On Timothy's return with good report Paul sends this, the first of two letters we have to the Thessalonians. Paul is very happy. He writes that they are known and remembered for their 'work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ'. Paul says the message of the gospel came to them not only in word, 'but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction'. This is a community of faith that is indeed alive though of course none of these early congregations had it easy.
At least two key words stand out in the present context. That steadfastness or endurance of hope implies trial and challenges. That conviction that is said to characterise the Thessalonians is an assurance both of the message they have received and of themselves as messengers. That double assessment moves these Thessalonians into quite another league. They are there because they have something to say, something to do and a manner in which to do it. We might look for words like 'witness' and 'mission' to start to explain this. And then we might seek to translate circumstance and situation and seek to apply it to ourselves. But even in an extract as brief as this, we find ourselves with something significant to consider. Steadfastness and conviction then are perhaps two significant qualities that are being held up to us as a community of faith at a time like this. We could do far worse than to seek to apply them, could we not?
"We always give thanks.. .constantly remembering your work of faith and labour of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ". (1Thes 1:4)
The Lord be with you.
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