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Author Patrick Lencioni is fond of talking about 'good conflict'. He says avoiding conflict is not helpful, but when we are able to disagree in a mature and constructive way, conflict can be really helpful and even creative. Of course, this means that there is also such a thing as bad conflict, which can be so terribly destructive. You can be sure that where we are experiencing bad conflict, there will inevitably be a failure to communicate well and any number of misunderstandings, based on false assumptions about the motives or actions of the other parties. When we have a distorted view of reality, things fall apart.
The verse that stands out for me in this Sunday's gospel reading is a quote from the psalms that is applied to Jesus after he chases the money-changers out of the temple. His disciples watch his anger and they quote Psalm 69:9 "Zeal (or passion) for your house consumes me".
I was lectured some years ago by a Dutch Reformed minister who wrote a short book on the subject of listening for God's voice in church meetings. It's a brave idea, don't you think? Meetings are not typically spaces for deep listening to God or even to each other! But Frederick Marais' book invites the church to commit to nurturing a listening culture and he argues that making this a priority will have a profoundly transformative effect on a community.
For their planned activity on Valentine's evening, many of our people chose (online or in-person) to join our Ash Wednesday service :) From where I stood, the in-person service seemed better attended than in recent years and my colleagues in our circuit reported the same of their Ash Wednesday services. Why is that, I wonder? It's not a light-hearted worship service - on the contrary, it is heavy on liturgy and symbols of our frailty and mortality. What draws us to this kind of service?
Our hope is that no-one will feel anonymous or unseen on Sundays. It's the reason we make name tags for everyone and invite you to wear them to tea. But it takes a conscious effort from all of us to intentionally seek out new faces. It's completely natural that we are instinctively drawn to familiar faces, but when we make the effort to cross boundaries, strangers become friends and our community grows. I challenge you to try and meet one new person each Sunday.
I am no longer my own but yours. Put me to what you will, rank me with whom you will; put me to doing, put me to suffering; let me be employed for you or laid aside for you, exalted for you or brought low for you; let me be full, let me be empty, let me have all things, let me have nothing; I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things to your pleasure and disposal. And now, glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, you are mine and I am yours. So be it. And the covenant now made on earth, let it be ratified in heaven. Amen.
But, as with Moses, and Mary, and Peter and so many others, God uses ordinary people in surprising ways. We see it again and again in the Bible, but somehow it is hard to believe that it may be true of us too! I can't tell you how many times I have resisted taking something on for fear that I may not be up to it. At such times we need someone in our community to be the angel who says to us "God is with you, O mighty warrior!"
St Paul offers an alternative way - he invites us in his letter to the Philippians to be people who very deliberately turn our minds to good news. We can expect to live more hopefully if we take his advice: "my friends, fill your minds with those things that are good and that deserve praise: things that are true, noble, right, pure, lovely, and honourable." (Philippians 4:8)
I am conscious this week that there are numbers of families in our community who are grieving, mourning the passing of loved ones. These can be impossibly hard times for us - we may long for things which cannot be changed to be different, but we have to deal with the reality that faces us. As Christians we genuinely grieve with hope, but it is still so hard to sit with mystery, ambiguity and unanswered questions.
In the gospel reading last Sunday, we saw the old man in the temple in Jerusalem, Simeon, rejoicing at the coming of Jesus. He spoke about God's salvation being revealed and talked of a light being shone for the Gentiles.