“so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
Romans 12 v.5

This month marks a year since the Hamas attack on Israel and the subsequent unrelenting attacks on Gaza. As I write the region is on a knife edge as Israel invades Lebanon…and Iran bombards Israel.

Please if you can spare a moment join our Vigil for Peace on October 10th.

We are called to be a people of prayer, and of hope, and it is in that light that I am offering an hour of quiet contemplation and mourning for all the lives lost in the last 12 months.

Here in Chaldon, we do not experience anything that equates in any way whatsoever to the horrors of war but we
do have our own domestic, community peace to consider.

I have been deeply saddened over the last month to discover that two of our families have felt unable to continue to worship with us because they no longer feel comfortable in our pews.

I can never ever achieve full inclusivity on my own and nor is it not for me alone to achieve but this, but this sad news is an opportunity to remind ourselves that as a Christian community we are committed to work towards fulfilling the words at the head of this letter.

These words were penned 2000 years ago by St Paul to the new Christian community in Rome. Their faith, our faith, calls us to be a different sort of community, one where we can live out ‘the way’ shown by Jesus, in our lives, our choices, our behaviours in ways that reflect the ‘one body’. These may be ways that invite us to reject the patterns we find elsewhere in our lives. We are called to build a community where our faith shapes our behaviour, where we resist the temptation to replicate the unjust structures of society, where we resist the temptation to tut, to judge, to shun, where everyone belongs and feels welcome.

Yes, it is difficult, it takes work and sacrifice but if we are to make Chaldon church a place where we live in love, where we are one body, it will mean forgiving each other our foibles and differences of opinion, of lifestyle, of parenting, of politics. Where we let go our annoyances, where we try our hardest to model something different, something radical, because if we can’t do it here then what hope is there for the world?

However, we are not expected to do this alone, we do this within the love of God and this is the belonging bit, we all belong in God ‘s love, we together create the one body and that should be a great leveller.

None of us is anywhere near perfect and our attempts at community will waver and wobble but I hope we can work together to make sure that anyone who chooses to cross our threshold knows that they have found a place of belonging; not because they conform to our expectations but because they have chosen to join in with us.

I love so much that I see and experience in our little community, and I hope you do too. So, let’s make sure we can build on what we have, and build on our foundations as a welcoming congregation not a closed clique.