A bonfire of cassocks?

Reading: John 1.29-42

There is a great deal of movement in this morning’s service, if you listen for it carefully enough.  Not just in the Gospel — though that is where it is most obvious — but in the hymns we sing, the prayers we pray, and even the notices we skim on our way to coffee.

“Jesus calls us, o’er the tumult of our life’s wild, restless sea.”

That hymn doesn’t begin with certainty.  It begins with turbulence.  With restlessness.  With noise.  And it insists — rather cheekily — that the call of Christ is still audible even there.  

Let’s ponder, for a moment, how the Gospel describes a process of transformation within the restlessness of its main characters.  First, John the Baptist, who is doing what he does best: pointing away from himself.  “Look,” he says.  “There he is.” — pointing to Jesus.  And two of his disciples do something quietly radical.  They move.  They don’t denounce John, or reject him.  They simply walk after Jesus.

They move past and beyond a framework that had done its job.  John’s preaching was full of dramatic imagery — valleys filled in, mountains laid low, axes poised at the foot of trees.  Powerful metaphors of judgement, upheaval, and political transformation.  Necessary words, for a time.  But Andrew and Simon sense that something new is happening.  They lay down a language that no longer quite fits, and walk instead after the reality of the Messiah, Jesus himself.

And notice this: Jesus does not give them a lecture.  He doesn’t say, “here is what you must understand before you proceed.”  He asks a question.  “What are you looking for?”  And then he offers an invitation that has echoed down the centuries ever since: “Come and see.”

Andrew accepts the invitation — and immediately becomes a bridge.  He goes and finds his brother Simon and draws him into the momentum of that moment of change as well.  And before Simon has said a word, Jesus renames him.  Not because Simon has earned it, but because Christ can already see who he is becoming.

That is Epiphany faith.  Not God revealed as a solved problem, but God revealed as a summons.  A light that moves us on.

And that brings us — very deliberately — to where we are today as a church.

This morning we are launching a process of discernment about our Mission Development Plan for the next five years.  You will hear more about the practicalities shortly, during the notices.  But before it becomes a set of meetings, working groups, and documents, it is first and foremost a spiritual question.  The same one Jesus asks in the Gospel: “What are you looking for?”

Not “What can we realistically afford?”

Not even “How do we maintain the growth of recent years?”

But this question: “Where is the life of God drawing us now?”

The material we’ve produced at the back of the service sheet speaks about welcome, inclusion, spiritual searching, community engagement, and financial integrity.  All very sensible.  All very necessary.  But underneath them all lies something deeper and more demanding: a willingness to move when Christ moves.

Because here is the uncomfortable truth the Gospel insists upon.  Faithfulness sometimes requires us to let go of ideas, habits, and assumptions that once served us well.  Simon does not stop being a disciple when he follows Jesus — but he does stop being only what he was.  He discovers that God is larger than the framework that first brought him to faith.

Churches struggle with that.  We are very good at mistaking familiarity for faithfulness.  Later we will sing, “Great is thy faithfulness… thou changest not.”  And God doesn’t.  But we are not God.   God’s unchanging faithfulness very often shows itself by calling us to change.

Let me offer you a small example that has been exercising my questioning brain in recent months.  I recently met someone who told me that they were very interested in the Christian faith, and that they liked our inclusive and liberal attitude to matters of doctrine and tradition.  “But why,” they asked, “do you have to wear those silly robes?  They make you look old‑fashioned, out of date, and frankly laughable to modern people.  Like something from a comedy show, a horror film, or a cultish rite.”

Now please be re-assured.  I’m not announcing a bonfire of cassocks.  But it is always illuminating to see ourselves through other people’s eyes.  And that question is one I shall be asking the Worship Group to wrestle with as part of our Mission Plan discussions.

Which is why it matters that today also marks the beginning of the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity.

The prayer at the preparation of the table puts it starkly.  We will ask God to “draw the scattered flock of Christ into a visible unity.”  Not an invisible, theoretical unity.  A visible one.  The kind that requires humility, generosity, and the courage to recognise Christ at work beyond our own theological comfort zones.

Christian unity is not achieved by pretending differences don’t exist.  Nor by insisting that one tradition has finally got everything right.  Unity begins when we accept that no single church, no single style of worship, no single set of dogmas can contain the fullness of Christ.  That, too, is movement.  And it can feel unsettling.

At the end of the service we will pray that through us “the light of God’s glory may shine in all the world.”  Not be hoarded.  Not be kept local.  But carried outward — into our community, into our partnerships with other churches, into the shared work of love and service.

Andrew didn’t persuade Simon with arguments.  He didn’t demand agreement.  He simply said, “Come and see.”  That remains our calling — in our mission planning, in our ecumenical life, and in our own discipleship.

So perhaps the question to carry with us today is this.

As we begin this shared journey of discernment, do we trust Christ enough to move forward with him? Amen.