May I speak in the name of the living God, who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
Today is the last day any of us can wish each other a happy Christmas - or until December, that is. Today - the feast of Candlemas or, to give it its full name, the Feast of the Presentation of Christ in the Temple - is the last of the 40 days of the Christmas season. (Now you know why we started out by singing ‘Angels from the realms of glory’!) At the end of these 40 days we can look back and take stock. We've celebrated the birth of Jesus as the baby in Bethlehem, the visit of the Wise Men, his Baptism, his miracles, and now (shooting back 30 years) to the time when Mary and Joseph took him to be presented (or offered) to God in the Temple.
Candlemas is about looking back and taking stock.
But it's also about looking forward. This festival stands as a sort of watershed in the Christian year: poised between Epiphany and Lent, between Christmas and Holy Week, between the birth of Jesus and the death of Jesus. Tomorrow, the Crib will be gone, the white and gold vestments will be put away and we will have moved on, with our sights set on Lent, Holy Week and Easter.
In today's Gospel, we also have a watershed, in that it gives us a picture of Jesus still as the Christ-child; the baby in his mother's arms - but also an indication of what Jesus will become.
The central figure of the Candlemas Gospel is Simeon, an old and godly man who recognises at once that Jesus is the one he has been waiting for: God's promised Saviour. And being godly and wise, Simeon is able to speak prophetically about who Jesus is:
'a light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of God's people Israel'
(in other words that he is the Saviour not only of Israel but of the whole world)
but he also speaks prophetically about who Jesus will become in these rather chilling words to Mary:
'This child is destined for the falling and the rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be opposed so that the inner thoughts of many will be revealed - and a sword will pierce your own soul too.’
(In other words, he looks forward to the cross, and to the place Mary will take at its foot, as she sees her Son crucified.)
Simeon sees things as they are, and also things as they will become.
We can’t see the future as Simeon did. But this doesn't stop us trying to predict and project. The cynics will tell us that the C of E doesn't really have a future - that it has had its day. Last week, the churchgoing statistics for 2002 were published, and you could say that they made depressing reading: another year of decline across the board. So we could say that the future is a church in terminal decline - which is rather depressing. But we mustn't forget that that's just one kind of future, and that that particular future is not inevitable. There is a real danger in looking at the future through fatalistic spectacles.
What Simeon saw was effectively God's future: the future that God was to bring about through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. God's future is not something that just happens, in a fatalistic sense, but something that is built - with God as the master-builder and we as his co-workers. As it says in Psalm 127:
Unless the Lord builds the house
Those who build it labour in vain.
If we look at the 2002 church statistics, we see that decline is not quite across the board. Not, as it happens, in this Diocese, which saw growth. Not, as it happens, in this parish. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in his foreword to the report was encouraging. He wrote:
In the short but not exactly uneventful time during which I have been Archbishop, I have regularly been surprised and deeply heartened by the widespread sense that the Church of England, for all the problems that beset it, is poised for serious growth and renewal. Many feel that, as various streams of development over the past decade or so begin to flow together, we are at a real watershed.
There's that word again - watershed - for us as a national church. But it's also a word for us as a parish church. Here, I believe we are seeing signs of that growth and renewal - signs that point us towards God's future. There is much that is good happening around the parish. Next week, 5 of youngsters and 5 adults will be confirmed - and 4 of those adults have become part of our church and have taken a leap of faith because we've simply done our job as a parish church - through baptism and wedding ministry. There are things we do well, but there are also things we could do so much better.
The clergy invest a good deal of time and energy in funeral ministry - but there's always the need to follow that up with proper ongoing pastoral care for the bereaved. We have attracted a good many younger families into our midst - largely through our contact with St Anne's school. But what about our outreach to those whose children do not attend St Anne's? Our track record there isn't so good. We have a thriving work with under-5s, through Building Blocks and 0s-5s; and we are about to embark on Godly Play. But at the moment all these activities have to take place elsewhere. We don't have facilities available during the week to support and enable our outreach and mission. If we are to move forward into God's future and continue to grow - for growth is after all what marks a living organism - then we shall need to develop: in vision, in terms of human resources and in our facilities. We have a lovely medieval building - with a duty to pass it on to the next generation - but, as any member of the fabric committee will tell you - the list of essential fabric tasks is never-ending.
Last Sunday evening, the Bishop of Huntingdon licensed Jonathan Young and two other priests at Alconbury (in addition to their existing responsibilities in all the other parishes!) and, in talking about the conversion of St Paul, he made it clear that this - and anything else which happens in the church - is God's doing, and not ours. He said this: There is much talk of mission in the church at the moment – rightly so, in my view, in a country in which a very large number of people have no contact whatsoever with the Church. But we need to be clear that it is not that the church of God has a mission to the world but, rather, it is the God of mission who has a church in the world.
The future is God's future, and where we go as a parish is God's doing. What he asks of us is that, like Simeon, we open ourselves completely to him so that the Holy Spirit might work through us. Then, like Simeon, we shall be able to look back and see where we’ve come from - recognise the significance of what's going on now in the present - and look forward to see where we might go in the future. Only then will we see serious growth and renewal. Andrew Fawcett has a phrase which I really like - and that is that this is 'a Holy Spirit thing.' The progress of the church is not something we can engineer in our own right but can achieve only by God working within us.
But there's a serious practical problem. And put very bluntly it's this: there isn't enough money.
We can look around us, and see a large-ish, very viable congregation with plenty going on, and we can think 'everything must be all right.' But, much as I hate to disappoint you, it isn't. Apart from the very large churches in Cambridge, we have one of the largest Sunday attendances in the Diocese. But this is not reflected in the level of our giving, which is far below that of many less 'successful' parishes. In fact I was horrified to see some recent figures which show that, compared with one of the other parishes in our Deanery (and it wasn't Hemingford Grey!) our level of weekly giving per head of congregation was just half that in the other parish.
There is, of course, the big Anglican problem - that for hundreds of years we’ve had it so easy. Unlike the Baptists, the Methodists and the Roman Catholics, the C of E paid its costs out of the proceeds of historic investments. [The GMC benefice income - which is what comes from central church funds to pay for ministry here is £430 pa! The rest comes from the parishes, via the Diocese.] Now we're facing the real costs of ministry and of mission. And like our brothers and sisters in other branches of the Church, we have to learn to be realistic in our giving.
At the moment, here in GMC, our giving is not sufficient even to meet our day-to-day housekeeping costs. It doesn't enable us just to keep the show on the road. Hence I believe we have a twofold priority. We have to increase our giving in order to meet our running costs, and we have to plan and provide for the future. We could be tempted to say 'first we'll meet our current costs, and then we might be able to think about the future.' My view is that that will be too late. If we are to sustain growth and develop as a Church - and in my book that means making it possible for people who do not know God's love to experience that for themselves in Jesus Christ - then we have to be clear about where we are going and what that is going to cost.
God's future is an exciting thing to be part of. And because of that, it's vital that we are all involved. The PCC has done some thinking - and the result of that is that we shall be asking everyone who worships with us (whether that's weekly, fortnightly or monthly) to look afresh at their giving. After all, we are all part of that future. A brochure will go out to everyone. This will set out what we are doing at the moment as a parish (which, praise God, is a lot!), and a vision of what we would like to be doing, and the facilities and finance we need in order to move forward. Vision is crucial if God's future is to be a reality.
But vision needs to be balanced by realism - and so the brochure will also include an honest appraisal of our current financial state. And everyone will be asked to think afresh about what they are prepared to give for God's work - God's future - in this place - and to give (to parody the marriage service) 'reverently, responsibly, and after serious thought.'
Some people will probably thinking by now, 'How dreadful! When is he going to shut up? Priests shouldn't talk about money from the pulpit. They should stick to spiritual things!' But of course money is a spiritual thing. As Christians we can never escape the fact that, because God created and chose to enter the material world and be born into it, material things and spiritual things can't be separated. William Temple, perhaps the greatest of the 20th century Archbishops of Canterbury, reminded us that because of the incarnation, Christianity is 'the most materialistic of religions.'
Well, there is much more to say. Why should we give at all? How much? What is the best way to do it? This sermon is part one of two. Come back next week for the next instalment!
Finally, to return to Simeon. He could have easily contented himself with gazing at the infant Jesus and saying 'how wonderful'. But he didn't - he also looked forward - to a future that was troubled, but ultimately saw God's purpose worked out through the death and resurrection of Jesus.
As we stand on the watershed of Candlemas - we must do the same.
Amen.