Third Sunday after Easter
26th April 2009
Preacher: The Rev'd Dr Ann Solari, Hon Deacon of St John's Cathedral

Readings: Ezekiel 37:15-28, A Song to the Lamb, Rev 19:4-10


I grew up in South London in the 1960’s. All the children we knew went to the local primary school except for a few who lived in the big houses on the hill who went to the private schools. All the children who went to church went to the Baptist Church at the shops because they had a great Sunday School and didn’t mind if your parents didn’t go to church. We knew the rich kids because they went to Sunday School with us and most of them weren’t too bad, but it was a long walk to their houses if you wanted to play with them, so we usually didn’t.

There was another group of children who we had nothing to do with at all – they were the ‘Catholics’ – and they went to their own school and their own church. We were all a bit scared of them, they were different and we had nothing to do with them at all, even kids like me and my siblings whose father used to be a Catholic. Their priest wore funny clothes and they had nuns too. We knew they had special water, and saints who they worshipped in some way, and they drank ‘blood’. We didn’t know them and didn’t want to, although we would really have liked to go into their churches.

I remember when, at the age of about 12, I had my first Roman Catholic friend. I was a Girl Guide and the Catholic Church didn’t have Guides so she came to join our group. And guess what – she was normal. She was just like us and when we went to her house, which was less than 2 blocks from ours, that was normal too. And when she took us into her church, guess what, nothing, absolutely nothing happened!

It all seems so ridiculous when I look at my daily life now. Every day I speak to Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, Hindus, Jews, people from all nationalities and religions including many, many atheists. The beauty of my relationships with them is that I know them as human beings and find that I have so much in common with them, that the similarities in our lives, our feelings and our hopes are far greater than the differences.

The first reading this evening, from the book of the prophet Ezekiel, describes how God was going to bring the Jewish nation back together, to bind the northern and the southern tribes together and make the people become a living, vibrant nation together. We live at a time when for many people the church, religion, faith have become irrelevant. Children are often not taught the basic faith stories. Many would say that we no longer live in a ‘Christian society’.

So what does this mean for us? How does this passage speak to us both as individuals and as a worshipping community?

Do the Christian churches function together to promote God’s kingdom or do we treat each other with suspicion? Do we look at what we have in common or do we continue to focus on what we disagree on?

We need to ask ourselves how God is calling us to live as Christians, and what does that mean? We need to consider what being a Christian means to each of us and what kind of life we are being called to live. Are we being called to live and follow Christ as individuals or are we being called to live and work as communities, as churches? When we read the scriptures we find that God frequently speaks to individuals but calls them to speak to communities; that we are called to work together to bring God’s Kingdom into being here on earth; that we are being called to live and work together as one, as many united together in love and with love.

So do we see ourselves primarily as Anglicans or as Christians, and where do the other denominations that belong to the Christian church fit into our vision of what God wants us to be?

The Anglican and Roman Catholic leaders in this region are working together to improve communication, to build on opportunities to worship together, to move closer together. Are we as individuals ready to move with them to experience being one with Christians who come from different traditions? Are we willing to open out minds to the possibilities that are opened to us and allow God to help us grow together to be one? Can we allow ourselves to dream of a world where there is only one church and work towards that? Can we let ourselves trust God enough to let God work through us and beyond us to find out who we really are and what we can become?

I hope so.

©Ann Solari