By Revd Dr Elizabeth Welch

[Bible readings: 2 Corinthians 5: 14–20 and John 17: 20–26]

It’s a joy to be back here today. I realise that I’ve mostly come back in recent years for funerals of people we’ve known and loved for many years. We’ve celebrated All Saints Day this week, and I’ve been remembering many people who have died. In particular I give thanks for the lives of Revd David Goldie (CofE) and Sr Maureen Farrell (Roman Catholic), who were such beloved ministerial colleagues in the time I worked here, and who sadly passed at a time that seemed far too early.

I remember with gladness and thanksgiving the time that I worked here, at first in the library, where the church initially met, and then in the new building. The Dedication Service will always stay with me. We were honoured by the presence of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth and by the Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury and the Catholic Archbishop of Westminster.

Those early days were a time of hope and possibility, as we built a new church in the developing community of Milton Keynes, a church which gathered together people of different traditions and backgrounds, to offer a common witness to the one God in whom we place our trust.

The time here equipped me to move on to senior roles within the United Reformed Church, including as a synod moderator (the nearest the URC gets to a bishop!) and as the first ordained woman to be the Moderator of the URC General Assembly. I also benefitted from the ecumenical experience here when I was invited, in more recent years, to be co-chair of IRAD, the International Reformed Anglican Dialogue. My fellow co-chair (Howard Gregory) became the Anglican Archbishop of the West Indies.

As I grew closer to retirement, I became aware of God’s call to engage in further study. So I went to work half time and undertook a PhD on the Holy Spirit and Worship, which was, somewhat to my surprised, published, soon after I finished it. It was good to take time to step back and reflect on where God is leading us today, based on where the Spirit has been present over the centuries, and the significant role of worship in the life of the church.

I’m aware that in recent years the church in the West has been facing challenging issues, including that of decline, and of fewer and fewer people feeling that faith is significant for the living of life. The ecumenical agenda is not as strong a driving force as it used to be, as churches look more inward to the struggles they are each going through.

However, I believe that if we can’t be more united as different Christian traditions, sharing together God’s call, it’s hard to see how we will grow and have more of an impact on this increasingly depressing world in which we live.

There are so many challenges in the world today: the neglect of God’s created world and the abuse of creation; the pressures on the NHS in this country, especially in a time of rising ill-health among both young people and the elderly; the wars in the Middle East around Israel and Gaza; the conflict between Russia and Ukraine; the misuse of social media; the growing level of political strife in public life.

We live in a post-Enlightenment period when the turn to the self, rather than the turn to the other or the turn to God, lies at the heart of many people’s lives. What matters is ‘what I can get’ not what I can give, ‘what I can buy’ rather than what I can offer to other people.

Today we celebrate the renewal of the covenant, God’s Covenant that has shaped the life of this church.

I believe that the Covenant is God’s gift and call to live as God’s people for all of God’s world.

I want to draw out three elements with regard to the nature of God’s Covenant, as seen in our readings today: creation, reconciliation and love.

The idea of covenant goes back to the beginning of time, to the early years of humanity, as we see in the story of Noah [Genesis 9: 8–17], and the promise of God’s gift, embracing all of creation, as symbolised by the end of flooding. We know today that the reality is that flooding has not come to an end, as we’ve been seeing so sadly in Spain. And as I’ve reflected on this, I’ve felt that, in some ways, it’s not been surprising, when creation is something that is seen today to be exploited rather than cared for.

If we stop believing in God the Creator, it means we stop nurturing God’s precious gifts of animals and plants, of land and sea, of all the joys of this natural created world.

Participating in God’s covenant in the church means setting an example to the world of the way in which creation needs to be nurtured and cherished, rather than sat lightly to or destroyed.

The Psalmist reminds us [Psalm 105: 1–10] that we are here to give thanks to God as we remember his wonderful works, and it takes us to the idea of the covenant as one that is made with particular people.

The second area of covenant that is significant today, is reconciliation, as we see in the words from Corinthians, which combine creation and reconciliation:

Therefore, If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: … All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: ….

2 Corinthians 9: 17–18

Paul, in writing to the Corinthian church about reconciliation, knew what he was talking about. In the early part of his letter, he looks at the church and sees people divided and supporting different factions. Some are saying they are followers of Paul, others that they are with Apollos, still others that they are in Peter’s camp. Paul doesn’t write to them and say ‘in the midst of all this, actually I’m the one who’s got it right, follow me’. Instead, he points them to Christ, as the foundation upon which each one’s work will be built.

In today’s passage, he continues this theme, by pointing the people to Christ and Christ’s reconciliation. It’s not that people in the church shouldn’t have different views and different strengths and weaknesses. It’s a question of what undergirds these views, these strengths and weaknesses. Have the differences become primary and has Christ become secondary, instead of Christ being primary and the differences being secondary?

I remember the different views between different traditions when I worked here, and how hard we worked to bring views and people together, and to reflect on our differences and what we need to live with and celebrate that we receive from each other.

One example is the first time I preached at the Catholic Mass. I asked the priest ‘how long should I preach for?’ and he said, ‘Eight minutes.’ I have to confess I was a bit taken aback, seeing twenty minutes as the norm. I thought, ‘should I have an argument with the priest with regard to what preaching is about?’ But I accepted the challenge and preached for eight minutes. And I reflected on the nature of preaching and of the Mass, and how we have the conversation about the ways in which we are different, through which we can learn from one another.

The road to reconciliation can be a rocky one.

It can be much easier to be separated, to think, ‘I’m right and you’re wrong’ and to go our own way. Reconciliation takes a radical reappraisal of ourselves and who we are and what we think and say in relation to others around us. It can be hard to walk this road.

But then it took Christ to die for us in order to achieve reconciliation. God’s love was revealed in the journey to the cross, and then overcoming of death in the new life of Resurrection.

Reconciliation is not easy, simple or straightforward – for us as individual persons, as different traditions of the church, as countries across the world. It doesn’t mean all being the same, but it does mean that, in our faith, we are visibly rooted in our common Christian origin, and that that origin takes priority over our differences.

God’s covenant is about how we hold together and share our differences and diversity across different traditions, in order that we can proclaim the same message of reconciliation to our troubled and suffering world. This is what I believe we’re celebrating today in the renewal of God’s Covenant in this place.

The third aspect of covenant that I want to share today is about love – God as loving, and God’s gift of love that we receive and share.

I’m struck by the number of news reports I’ve read recently about the rise of loneliness in our country – amongst people of all ages. But at one level, I’m not surprised about this. If the church is declining, and people don’t have a community that they are embraced in by a loving relationship, what replaces this? There are groups and organisations that are addressing this issue, but for me, it’s about a call to grow God’s loving community, the church, in all our diversity. In this diversity, we can embrace and give hope to people.

I’m also struck by the arguments about social media, and how it seems possible to say anything, whether it’s true or untrue, whether it’s loving or full of hatred, whether it’s praising or condemning others. At times it feels like the negative and judgemental side of social media can take over.

There’s an imperative for us as Christians towards reconciliation; and that imperative lies in the way in which we are already loved by God in Christ.

In the reading from John’s Gospel for today, we heard a part of Jesus’s prayer for his disciples, that they may be one, addressed to his heavenly father, which ends with the words ‘so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.’ And in the lead up to these words, he’s prayed about how his disciples might be one., as Jesus is one with the Father.

I am struck by the way in which there is a twofold meaning of the ‘love of Christ’.

The first meaning is of Christ’s love for us. Whoever we are, whatever we might have done, God comes to us in love. Whatever our stresses and anxieties, our fears and doubts, God looks on us and raises us up out of our difficult times. It’s not that the difficulties just disappear. It’s that we’re given the strength of God to face up to whatever comes our way, and the power of the Spirit to have confidence that we can cope with difficult times.

The imperative for us as Christians, the imperative which drives us forward in the road to reconciliation is none other than Christ’s love for each one of us.

The second meaning is about our love of Christ – our responding to the love that has been offered for us. When we know the love of Christ for ourselves, then we are given strength to live in this love, for Christ and for all God’s people, this love which overcomes fear.

We can be fearful of all kinds of things, even of being reconciled, because it might mean giving up something we love, we might be afraid of ‘being taken over by others’.

But when we live in Christ’s love, our fears for our own lives, our fears of the stranger, our fears for this world, are overcome. We are enabled to live our lives for others. And it’s not that we’re meant to be worn out with our hard work. It’s that we’re each meant, in our different personal lives, and across our different churches, to discover what it is that God is calling us to both be and do at any one particular time.

So let us celebrate today the covenant that has shaped the church in this place, and pray God’s leading and guidance for all that lies ahead, as this covenant is renewed.

To our loving God, Creator, Reconciler, and Empowerer, be the glory, now and for ever.

Amen