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Moderator's musings
I have spent much of the summer in the company of our grandchildren, Harry, Oliver and Juliette – all under four years of age. It’s a great privilege to be able to be a real person with a real relationship with them; it’s immensely rewarding to engage in conversation, to delight in their learning of new skills and speech, to hear the "OK Grandma" as well as the loud toddler "NO!" It’s often unpredictable, messy and exhausting, but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to engage with their nurturing for anything. I choose to partner with the rest of our family in the raising of our children.
I’ve been musing about how messy church is these days, as we engage in our communities, with real people and situations. It might be much smoother and simpler to follow a set of rules that would nurture a Christian community (in Presbyterian style, with decency and order) without having to worry about all the unpredictability that disrupts our desire to get on with growing mature Christians and active, community serving churches. But being an incarnational, real church will always be messy and probably wearying.
The Catholic Orders use the idea of charism to describe the special nature of their witness and work. I wonder what the charism of our national Church might be. Amongst other things I want to put in a plug for being a Church that enacts partnership – justice-based partnership within the Treaty of Waitangi and within the multi-cultural community in which we are found; flexible ecumenical partnerships - at national and local levels; mission partnership with overseas churches; active partnerships with our communities and with those agencies such as Presbyterian Support who engage in a real way with hurting and stressed people.
It’s a high calling, I believe – but a really messy way to be church, because it requires more than mere tolerance of difference: it’s much more about mutual respect and just engagement, often questioning our need for power and status and allowing the edges of our identity as Presbyterians to become frayed. In the way of Christ’s hospitality, it is about making the agenda of our partners our real concern because they are like guests who bring us precious gifts. Our Church needs to keep watching for the moment when we can both celebrate the prodigal home and ensure that that older brother is included.
When the small voice by my bed at 5.30 am demands that it gets into my bed, I oblige, but internally groan as I won’t get much more sleep. Of course I could see this as an invasion of my space and refuse – but I choose to see it as evidence of a real, loving relationship of trust.
To quote a conversation out of Margery Willams’ childrens book the Velveteen Rabbit:
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.” “Does it hurt?” asked the Rabbit. “Sometimes,” said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. “When you are Real you don’t mind being hurt.” “Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?” “It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in your joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand.”
A Christ-centred, community-facing church is a “real” church, engaging in response to the Gospel in trustworthy, loving partnerships across the spectrum.
May you and your congregation be a
real part of your community, in the love of Christ.
Right Rev Pamela Tankersley