Love your Church
Sunday 8th October 2023
“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” Matthew 5:3 (NIV)
Dear Brothers and Sisters,
Love your Church
As a staff team we have just started reading our church’s ‘book of the term’, Love Your Church by Tony Merida. We were struck (at least I was!) by Ray Ortlund’s foreword, partly because it links in with what we have been learning from the Sermon on the Mount. It is worth quoting him:
“Jesus did not come into this world merely to start a new community. He came to start a new kind of community. In a world of grandiosity and brutality, Jesus gave his very lifeblood to start a community set apart by beauty – his own beauty.
“For example, his famous Beatitudes – the ‘ground rules’ for his new community – begin this way: ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven’ (Matthew 5:3). His word ‘blessed’ means ‘Congratulations!’ It’s a high-five. So Jesus is congratulating, high-fiving, celebrating and welcoming the poor in spirit. He looks past the big-shots, the heavy-hitters, the insiders, the cool kids. He looks to the poor, who have nothing to offer him, nothing to boast about, nothing but need – these are the very ones he rejoices over and welcomes and enriches as the heirs of his kingdom.
“Who would think to start a think-tank with dropouts? Who would start a business with bankrupts? Who would start a bold new venture with failures? Jesus. He builds his new kind of community with sinners so bad they can’t give God a single reason why he should even notice them. He gathers those very sinners into his arms and says to them, Congratulations! You stand to inherit everything worth having forever!
“In his new kind of community, we don’t bring our strengths. We bring our needs. And he provides everything – and on terms of his grace, too. There is no room left for our swagger. All we have now, all we need, is Jesus in his all-sufficient mercy. And that surprising strategy is how is beauty enters into this world of ugliness.”
Is that how you think of the church? Of your church family? Of yourself? Of Jesus? How encouraging to think of ourselves as “a community set apart by beauty – his own beauty” even as we live in “this world of ugliness.” As Ray Ortlund goes on to say, “Walking into church Sunday by Sunday with this awareness living in our hearts, we can start breathing life into everyone around.”
Father, we thank you for the beauty of your Son Jesus; may his beauty be formed in us more and more as his new community and seen by everyone around. Amen.
Yours warmly, in Christ
Chris Hobbs (Senior Minister)