First Sunday after Trinity Sunday (Pentecost 2)
As we think back to the last few weeks of Pentecost Sunday, the birthday of the Church, and Trinity Sunday remembering the threefold nature of God, and even Corpus Christi which was celebrated on Thursday, we could easily look at the great expanse of ordinary time, right up to All Saint’s day, and think that church was going to be a bit boring without a good festival for a few months.
However, these are the weeks when we can relax a bit, and think about all the great gifts God has given us. It is time to hear parts of the Bible that we just don’t hear usually, and to think how this affects us on a day-to-day basis.
Over the last few weeks, we have been hearing about the gifts of the Spirit, and today we are hearing about the gifts of God, and there is a difference. The gifts of the Spirit are many and varied, but as far as I can see, the gifts of God are always the same. And that gift is people. God sends us to people, and he sends people to us, to reveal his purpose and the meaning of his love for us. We are in relationship with others, and however those relationships happen, they may just be a gift from God.
Like all gifts, there are ones we like, and ones we do not like – like those presents at Christmas that you still haven’t tried on – the socks or jumpers - There are people we are uncomfortable with, and others we are happy with. However, to be in relationship with others is to receive a gift from God.
The cup of water
In the Gospel reading this morning, Jesus says to his disciples ‘Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me’.
The message is clear – We are to be involved in the lives of others – because they are God’s gift to us and we are entrusted to take Christ to them.
He then goes on to say that ‘and whoever gives a cup of water to these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.’
Even the smallest kindness (like a drink of water) is important and nothing is lost.
The greatest part of being a Christian, and the best part about what I do, is being allowed into the lives of others. I’m lucky enough to do this through marriages, baptisms, funerals. These are all great opportunities for me. They all help me see God working out his plan for us slowly in the world.
A few years ago, I lectured at Trinity College Carmarthen. I don’t think I preached about it at the time. It was the one and only time I did…I wonder if it went down well?
Anyway, I was preaching to Theology students about the ‘perfect community’, that would give us the opportunities to be ‘as Christ to others’ and in the context of this morning, give us more opportunities to ‘give each other a drink of cold refreshing water’ more often.
I looked at the First Christian communities, the early church – but many of the communities expanded so quickly, with struggles and difficulties that St. Paul and others needed to put them back on track. I wondered whether these could be good role models for us, but they grew and changed so quickly, they expanded way beyond the first community in Jerusalem throughout the Hellenistic world and even beyond the Roman Empire. I wasn’t quite sure if that would help us to think more clearly about our own church today. They were too diverse and changed so quickly.
I then looked at ‘Christian Base Communities’ primarily in Latin America, where groups of the poor and oppressed live together to learn and share, to work and survive, usually supported by the church and a priest or lay person. They are concerned with the material things of life; food, medicine, housing and justice for the people who live there. They study the Bible, then act accordingly in terms of social action. I wasn’t quite sure if this would be the ideal model either, for us to consider in our quest to find some ideas how to bring God to others. In our community, we aren’t oppressed to the same degree, but we continue to pray for those who are.
I thought a little more, and when I was looking at the BBC website yesterday morning, I realised what community we could emulate.
The SMURFS give us a model for community that is hard to beat…
It is a place where neighbours are always willing to lend a hand, where everyone has a certain skill and is willing to employ it, without personal reward and for the benefit of everyone.
The Smurfs were created in 1958 by the Belgian Artist Peyo, and In 1981, Hanna-Barbera began to produce a cartoon series that resulted in 256 episodes, dubbed into some 30 languages (Including Welsh, where they are called ‘Y Smurfs’), they are still being shown on more than 120 television channels around the world today.
The SMURFS live without money and use their individual skills for the common good, without individual reward, to ensure the community thrives. Each SMURF has sufficient food, clothing and housing (even though they live in mushrooms) and even though there are stereotypes from the everyday world, lazy, grouchy and brainy Smurf they all fulfil the tasks required of them.
The stories from the community are tales of bold adventure where wrongs were righted and the underdog had been given justice.
It might be at this stage in the sermon that you think I have lost all the wheels from my wagon, and I realize that. However, there is one important piece of evidence for the SMURFS being a perfect example of community – a community that we could do well to emulate.
A community, in the context of the Gospel that would give us many more opportunities to take the refreshing cold water to others.
There original name Les Schtroumpfs, was a word born at a meal when Peyo was having a meal with a French friend and had temporarily forgotten the word for…’the salt’.
The SMURFS are ‘the salt’, in Peyo’s bad translation. But for those who read the BIBLE this is very interesting.
TO be SALT and LIGHT, as it says in the SERMON on the mount, differs slightly from being the SALT OF THE EARTH, found in the Gospel According to St. Matthew, but they are both reminders for us to be ‘in the world’ but not ‘of the world’, to take God with us into the very human situations, and speak the words of life to them…
The next time we meet someone who is considered to be less than human; the homeless, the criminal, the disabled or the poor, even those people we find difficult to love; We should take a moment to think…
They may just be God’s gift to us, an opportunity to be as Christ to them, taking them the cool living water.
The overarching irony is that we cannot live out our faith on our own, we need others to share the love of God with. To do that, we need to realize that we are dependent on each other in our communities, our nation, and that world.
So (and I’ve been looking forward to saying this);
May we live together like the SMURFS, being the salt and light to those around us.
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