Life-blood

In every generation the future life of Christ’s Church depends on the faith of young people.
For those no longer regarded as being in that age group, and who are baptised Christians, it is logical to insist that if that statement is accepted as true, it is for the most part dependent on those among them who are themselves already members of the Church, and of these it relies heavily on the ones whose faith has been confirmed in their own experience and, where formal confirmation exists, have also received the Sacrament of Confirmation. These two forms of confirmation meet in the heart and spirit like hands clasped in prayer, with the resulting warmth nurturing the seed sown in baptism and germinated in an awakened spiritual consciousness; this rousing itself being the fruit of baptism.

In such conditions the sprouting seed cannot fail to grow, and depending on the ground we prepare for it, has the potential to mature, to blossom and to bear fruit. The Church is continually thriving or dying in the faith, the belief and doubt, and the consciousness of her members, particularly those who are no longer children but remain in the loosely named group we call ‘young people’: the youth of today and preceding generations: the teenagers who, in large numbers, are slipping away from a visible presence in our churches and church communities. Their absence is paralleled by their being one of the least mentioned and least visible age groups in scripture. (The other being the elderly, in whom the living and dying of the Church is also apparent; they are always present in numbers but they leave when they die. Who are the faithful old people in fifty or sixty years time if not the absent youth of today?)

But to restrict our thinking only to those young people who are already members of a church community, or who are at least known as the children of existing church members, is to fail utterly in our attempts to see the Church as Christ Himself would have us see it. The Church is not those who meet in the places we think of as ‘church’; it is not the buildings, and it is not one group of believers as opposed to another. It is not those who sit in church pews every Sunday and nor is it those who attend more lively forms of service and worship than is provided by traditional liturgy. (Many young people are to be found at some of these). It is all of these and more.
The Church encompasses all believers and reaches out to the far corners of society. Wherever there is someone who senses the existence and the presence of God, whether or not they realize or acknowledge that presence as what it is, there is the Church. It may be the very edge of its range and of its inclusiveness but the limit of its existence is not within that range but always just beyond it.
A whispered or anguished cry to an unknown God from somewhere in the wilderness at once extends the outer fringes of Christ’s Church to encompass the pain, the fear, the grief, the remorse, the need – whatever it may be – to include that one longing soul.
We do not recognize these outer areas as being part of the Church, and that is not so much because the limits we have subconsciously set for its definition are flawed, as because we think of evangelism, spreading the gospel, preaching the good news of what Jesus has done for man and womankind, as being something dedicated to areas beyond the fringes of the Church. This is the root of the traditional churches’ felt need to take all they have to those distant areas (distant in terms of understanding while being in our very midst) when they should be listening to the ever present guidance of the Holy Spirit and taking the core of their belief without the accustomed historical trappings and liturgical rigidity – the basic truth of the gospel – to those who are lost in their searching for its undeniable simplicity, truth and peace.

Where it has been allowed to flourish, it is in the simple and realistic innocence of youth that the Church finds hope for its future; it is in materialism and a bland experience of life that most of our young people build an indifference that is the ebbing away of the Church’s life-blood. This has, for a long time, been cause of much concern, bewilderment and hand-wringing, none of which will ever achieve anything without a mature understanding of what the Church really is, why Jesus founded it, and why being a part of it should be a truly meaningful experience.
Without being able to stand effectively in the midst of the world’s indifference, the Church cannot hope to manifest and express the love, the peace and the power at its disposal to counter the easy drift from disinterest to defilement.
Awareness itself can be perverted by the same gradual conditioning process that can smother our conscience, leading us through hesitation to lingering, and onwards through repetition to acceptance and an eventual unquestioned wallowing in our own wrongdoing. A simple thought, an inappropriate pause, a dwelling upon, familiarization, habitual use, misuse, abuse; the path is most clearly defined by hindsight, but however well mapped out for others by those looking back, the truth conveyed seems superficial and inviting further investigation and understanding. Nothing, it seems, can prevent us searching for truth - good and bad - through our own experience: in our turn, we each find ourselves reaching for the apple on that one tree.
Do I dream of walking in Eden? Or, does Eden live on in me?

This should tell all mature Christians something of immense importance regarding the individual nature of God’s grace, God’s calling and God’s touch. It should also tell all of us, mature or not, Christian or not, something important about our powers of understanding and awareness, about maturity, and about our journeying. Each one of us is held in the grip of something, good or bad. Addictions hold us: they become part of us, altering our way of seeing the world and the ways other people see us. An unhappy childhood holds us because we are unable to let go of it: it will not release us. Grief can clasp us tightly within itself, and so too can guilt. Equally, we can be held safe and secure by good memories, kind people, strong people, by unity, community, solitude, silence, ... The lists are endless, but faith, a confirmed faith in all its maturity, takes us beyond these things. St Paul’s having “learned the secret of being content in whatever state of life I am”, is the fruit of his being in the grip of something, being ‘addicted’ to something, belonging to something.
He belonged completely to Christ.

What do I belong to? What do you belong to?
Have we placed ourselves into God’s hands?
Have we asked the Holy Spirit to fill us and enable us to become the persons we are meant to be?
Do we belong to Christ?

He has called us – we have been named by Him. He has reached out to us – we have been touched by Him.
He has drawn us to Himself –we have been grasped by Him. He has claimed us – we have been held fast by Him.
He has enfolded us – we have been embraced by Him. He has raised us – we have been lifted by Him.

Having lifted us, He has taken our whole being to Himself. He has not taken only those parts we think may be good enough for Him to work on, or maybe even perfect, He has shouldered our weakness and our mistakes, our every fear and our disbelief.
We are now among The Carried.
He is with us every step of the way.
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