Advent 12 - the in-crowd?

After our service with the Bishop on Sunday there was a soup lunch and a small number of the congregation stayed behind.

The Flower family were joined at the table by a handful of our most marginal members; early teens who are I think it's fair to say equally delighted and repelled by the strange beast that is "church".

I don't think they've ever made it to an entire service, they usually manage to upset someone and don't have a clue about the subtle nuances of a communion service but they've hearts as big as themselves a fact they like to keep hidden behind a high decibel level of bluff and bravado.

Looking around to the other tables it was interesting to see the characters taking part in this holy meal, people who shape and form our rag tag community with their obstacles overt and hidden.

I've always felt that one of the biggest gifts the church has for the world is community, with all the struggles and challenges that creates. We're designed to live in community and this is a place to work out what that looks like, complete with joy and pain ...and a lot of necessary grace.

Anyway, browsing the internet I found this post on www.maggidawn.com

“…the church has been criticizing itself for too long, and it ought to start celebrating its unsung and remarkable achievements. The trouble is that the faults of the church are so obvious – the gap between its ideals and the reality is so glaring. But the other trouble is that most of us do not have our eyes open to see the miracles of grace> They are to be found in such ordinary, unremarkable, simple things that we do not even notice. We think our worship is dull, and miss the movement of the Spirit in the secret places, the everyday saints, who are there among us but we dismiss them as ‘old so-and-so.’ In my experience the church is capable of transcending the divisions in our society, it is capable of integrating the odd and unacceptable, it is more sensitive to basic human values than wider society. It can act as leaven, and we should no disparage this. Maybe we all need to go on a voyage of exploration into unlikely places to meet unlikely people – not the great ones of the world but the marginalized and afflicted who will teach us what true human values are.”

Frances Young, Face to Face, 105-6