To be safely gathered in

We were out for morning coffee. There weren’t any unoccupied tables, so we joined a lady sitting alone. We soon got into conversation and passed a pleasant half hour. At some point ‘church’ cropped up (we were sitting 50 yards from an attractive, 15th century church building). I mentioned that I had frequently attended there and the lady told us that she had a friend who went to the nearby Methodist Church. ‘They do lots of good work there – they fill up shoeboxes with things for children who don’t have much’.

I suspect that for many people the notion is that church is akin to other socially active organisations like The Lions or Rotary Club but with the difference that God is the patron. For others, church will bring to mind buildings, religious ceremonies and God-type things that they’d prefer to keep at arm’s length!

The word ‘church’ has, at its root, the meaning of an ‘assembly or gathering of called out people’. This hits the nail on the head. Church is a term describing a community of diverse people, each of whom has known the call (or summons) of Jesus to come to him and be brought together with other similarly called people.

Jesus uses, by illustration, a farmer gathering in his harvest where people are the wheat. He uses a similar farming analogy with himself being the good Shepherd who is out calling his wandering sheep and gathering them into his flock. According to Jesus, that which isn’t harvested is chaff, which farmers consider as rubbish to be burned. Sheep that are outside the fold are vulnerable to rustlers and wild animals.

Consider these warm words taken from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘When he [Jesus] saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few.”’

The workers are those who proclaim Jesus as the promised Messiah and are indeed relatively few, so I’d say listen up when you hear them!

In this harvest season are you ready to be safely gathered into it like wheat into the barn or sheep into the fold?’

Too many voices

There are many rallying calls wanting to grab our attention, stir our emotions and move us to action or at least to express our support. In recent years this has included movements like Black Lives Matter, Me Too and Pride (LGBTQ). Then there is climate change, human rights, animal rights, human trafficking and immigration concerns. We are assailed by voices encouraging and even commanding us to listen and act. Under such pressure it is hardly surprising that so many of us struggle with mental health issues -stress, anxiety and depression. For many, God is squeezed to the periphery, hardly seeming relevant except in times of utter desperation.

In the Gospel of John we read of three siblings who were close friends of Jesus, Lazarus, Martha and Mary. The friendship probably started when Martha invited Jesus into the family home, offering him hospitality and a temporary base for his work. Of the two sisters, Martha was a doer, being busy-busy around the home and getting frustrated that her sister Mary took a more measured approach by prioritising what she should give her energies to. While Martha was getting hot and bothered in the kitchen, Mary was in the sitting-room listening to Jesus speaking about the one, true God and his purpose for men and women in general and her own life in particular.

Aware of the domestic strain Jesus said, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and upset about many things, but only one thing is needed. Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.’

Like Mary, we should not feel pressured into giving our energies to every claim made upon us. As a Christian, I would say that the one exception is the call of Jesus, the call to give him our heart and soul’s allegiance; he has our best interests at heart. That doesn’t mean us abandoning the needs of the world but Jesus, knowing our limited capacities, can make us more whole and therefore effective.

How may we listen to the rallying call of Jesus? We can pray directly to him, we can hear his words by reading the Gospels and we can find a church which prioritises biblical teaching about who Jesus is and why he came. When we do perceive him speaking to us, let’s listen well and not harden our hearts but welcome him in.

Many ways to God?

A friend who grew up in the Christian church has latterly become uncomfortable with foundational Christian teaching. Such teaching, he fears, appears to see God as dividing men and women into two groups – those who trust Jesus as the only way into God’s heavenly dwelling and those who do not believe and so are denied entry. His problem is that it looks to him like relatively few people will be, as it is called, ‘saved’.

What my friend is experiencing is nothing new. When Jesus was ministering on earth, someone seeing the miracles of Jesus and hearing his wise words also started to wonder, ’Lord, are only a few going to be saved?’ Jesus didn’t answer directly but re-focused the question and directed it back to those around.

‘He said to them, "Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to”.’ On a different occasion Jesus said, ‘enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction…’

What is that narrow door or gateway to which Jesus directs us? It’s nothing less than entering through Jesus as though he were a gate. This is how to enter into life with God both now and for always. It’s not so much that the way is narrow to keep people out but to illustrate that the way to God isn’t like a mountain with more than one path leading to the summit; there’s just one path says Jesus.

So, what are we to make of my friend’s view about how many people will make it to ‘Heaven’? I can’t answer that in terms of numbers or percentages but the same Bible where we read about Jesus, also tells us that in God’s heavenly kingdom there will be a ‘great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language…’ This quote is from the last book in the Bible.