Proper 16 - what is the church?

 Romans 12: 1-8;    Matthew 16: 13-20

It was great to be at the County Show this last week  - my fourth time. 
I am almost used to the question now “which church are you at?” and have learned to answer “I’m involved in 5 chapels, all outside Haverfordwest”.
The fact that I am URC - and not Church in Wales - is important to some people, and ‘chapel’ is still a useful term to help people know where I’m from.

But the New Testament doesn’t use the word chapel at all, but only refers to ‘church’ - and it means neither a Medieval church nor a historic chapel - but the coming together of God’s people in the name of Jesus Christ.
Ans the tent at the County Show had signs declaring we were ‘churches together in Pembrokeshire/

What does it mean to be ‘the church’ or churches together?
I had fun this week putting ‘the church is like..’ into a search engine on my laptop.
The church is like…     a table
                a body
                a hospital

even .. a tortoise, because someone has written a parody of Onward Christian Soldiers which includes the line     
    “like a mighty tortoise moves the church of God, 
    brothers we are treading where we’ve always trod.
    We are much divided, many bodies we 
    having different doctrines and not much charity”.

The point of the silly song is to get us thinking about how we should be, one church, one body, moving a little bit faster than a tortoise.

Being in the Churches Together tent at the show gave me hope that we are not just a tortoise, but that together, we are capable of being the church like  a table, a body, & a hospital.

Like a table - where there was room and a welcome and endless tea & coffee & biscuits for everyone. A place where people could come to talk, to worship together, to gather prayers of concern.

Like a body - the one body, the body of Christ. We had information in the tent about Street Pastors & Open Table - things the churches do together, and anyone coming in could simply see Christians of all sorts and denominations spending time together as sisters and brothers in Christ.

Like a hospital - a place where the weary could sit and rest without being sold anything; a place where the lonely could find someone to talk to; a place where the worried could find a listening ear.

Our Bible readings today can help us deepen our understanding of what it means to be a church all the time, not just for 2 days a year.

The reading from Romans instructs God’s church to understand what it really means to be a body. Not only that we belong together, joined as one and working as one, but that we are one even though we are all different.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness.

Being one body means that we belong together and acknowledge our unity, yet we do not expect uniformity - we are not all the same and in fact the body works together more fully and healthily when we acknowledge that we each have different gifts and abilities and are meant to appreciate that.

And the reading from Matthew’s gospel begins with a question from Jesus, about Jesus “who do you say that I am?”.

Peter is inspired to answer “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God”.
And Jesus responds -
“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.”

There can be many understandings of what Jesus means when he calls Simon ‘the rock on which I will build my church”.

Some Roman Catholics might say that it is on St Peter himself that the church is founded.

Others might point to the moment of divine revelation Peter has just experienced - and say that it is by God’s action in revealing Godself to Peter that the church is built.

Or we might think that it is Simon Peter’s words about Jesus that are the foundation of the church - the understanding of Jesus as saviour.

But behind any interpretation of Jesus’ words “on this rock I will build my church”, there is the truth that who we say Jesus is affects who we think we are.

Peter says that Jesus is ‘the Messiah’ - the one chosen and sent by God - and ‘the son of the living God’. 
‘The son of God’ is the one who shows us most clearly what God is like, what God’s love and grace looks like in a human life on earth. 
And Jesus is the son of the living God. 
When others have said that Jesus is like a dead prophet - Elijah, or Jeremiah or John the Baptist - Peter declares that Jesus is the son of the living God.
In Jesus God is alive and active and with us here on earth.

When we wonder what the church is - or should be - we need to remember that we are all a part of showing the world what God’s love looks like. And since God’s love is so vast and amazing, perhaps it shouldn’t surprise us that there is great variety in the different ways the body of Christ is represented by different churches.

But in this week in which we’ve come together in the County Show I pray that will all continue to give serious thought to how we grow more closely together, as one body, offering the world a diverse yet united view of how the love of Jesus is available to all people, to gather around the table and to receive healing and hope together.
In the name of Jesus - the son of the living God. Amen.