Reflections...

A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Sunday 19th September 2004, the church’s 80th Anniversary, by David Gill. Scripture readings heard during the service were Isaiah 56:1,6-7, Ephesians 2:12-22 and St Matthew 28:16-20

When the Fifth Assembly of the World Council of Churches gathered in Nairobi, the capital of Kenya, in 1975, the famous American anthropologist Margaret Mead was one of the advisors. At one point she managed to managed to get to a microphone.

For a moment she stood there, surveying the vast, incredibly varied crowd. Thousands of people, from all over the world, speaking hundreds of languages, wearing the labels of all parts of Christ’s family of faith. People ranging from a Memphis used-car salesman to a Ghanaian high court judge, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to a tribesman from northern Kenya who had walked for three days just to be there, to listen and to pray.

Dr Mead studied the gathering. Then she gave us her professional opinion on us all.

“You people,” she said, “are a sociological impossibility. You have absolutely nothing in common – except your extraordinary conviction that Jesus Christ is the saviour of the world”.

That extraordinary, unifying conviction was what brought Kowloon Union Church into being eighty years ago. It was what held our forbears together, through good times and bad. Yes the faces changed, the international mixture altered, the challenges varied. But that extraordinary unifying conviction -- that Jesus Christ is the saviour of the world -- has always been the secret of this church’s life. It still is.

Of course, we have our differences – of faith and spirituality, of culture and language, of morality and ethics. And let’s not forget the most tricky of the lot, our very different personalities! We do have our differences. But none of them, not one, can ever be as important, as powerful, as decisive, as the extraordinary, unifying conviction at the heart of KUC.

My friends, in recent weeks we have been reminded, again, of how desperately the human community needs unifying. The terrible scenes from Iraq and Russia, from Dafur and Jakarta, have been on all our hearts. We have gazed, again, into the eyes of evil. We have wept, again, for the suffering of the innocent.

We have grieved, again, over the terrible flaw in human nature, in human history, that keeps turning friends into enemies and dreams into nightmares. The streak in us that makes people suspect each other, fear each other, hate each other, yes even kill each other.

That is the world. The world that keeps wanting to build walls between black and white, between north and south, between rich and poor, between male and female, between gay and straight, between citizens and aliens, between “us” and “them”, between those who belong and those who don’t.

At times, that world even invades the Church. It did long ago, when some early Christians wanted to maintain the wall separating Jews from gentiles. It does today, when contemporary Christians want to define boundaries to exclude, build walls to separate. But, as we were reminded a few minutes ago, Christ has brought us – all of us – near by the blood of his cross, breaking down the walls, ending the hostilities, drawing us into his astonishing new community of reconciliation.

In the midst of the world’s madness, his wall-shattering cross still stands. Still it points those with the eyes to see towards a God whose unconditional love embraces all people. Still it proclaims there are no limits to the divine compassion. Still it invites Christ’s followers to put their energy into demolishing walls, not building them. Still it inspires the Church to become a community of sanity amid the madness.

Hong Kong’s churches, today, are well placed to make a fresh response to this gospel challenge.

For one thing, the whole world is here. “Asia’s World City”? Yes we are; well, okay, we’re one of Asia’s world cities. The whole Christian family is here too: Roman Catholic, Orthodox, and just about every kind of Protestant you can imagine. And the whole human drama is here, in all its fascinating, bewildering complexity. Hong Kong is the perfect setting in which to try to embody the inclusiveness of the Gospel, and close by the corner of Nathan Road and Jordan Road is just about the perfect location from which to be doing it.

The gift Kowloon Union Church is called to offer Hong Kong at this time is a continuing, clear, consistent, courageous witness to the One whose unconditional love embraces all our people, whose mercy encompasses all our sins and whose grace overarches all our years. It is a message this city needs to hear.

More accurately, it’s a message Hong Kong needs to see. People will get the message best not through sermons but through lives, and through the shared life of congregations like KUC.

There was a love song on the hit parades a few years back with the words “Don’t just tell me. Show me!” Good advice for the Church! It invites us to live out the divine love. To create congregations in which people encounter the mystery of grace, find unconditional acceptance, discover the joy of forgiveness and experience Christ’s reconciling power.

Such congregations are not formed by slogans or sentiment. They are what emerge as the people who comprise them learn the delicate art of faith, hope and love. Our greatest need as KUC sets out into the future is not more activity or more affluence. Our greatest need is a more profound, more disciplined growth in grace.

Impossible? Of course. Just as impossible as that assembly Margaret Mead found herself contemplating. Just as impossible as the eighty years we’re celebrating today. Just as impossible as a God who so loved the world that he gave his only son. Just as impossible as a saviour who triumphed over the powers of hatred and division, sin and death.

For the glorious impossibility of the whole enterprise – including all that KUC has been and all that KUC may become – we give thanks this day, to our impossibly gracious God!

To whom be praise and glory, now and ever and to ages of ages. AMEN