This week's theme, "The People of God", is of course immense for a tiny article. It includes "all people that on earth do dwell", in all times and space. We notice the way the faithful applied the gift of faith through all the changing scenes of life, through change and decay. In a remark by Archbishop Simms there is food for thought by pilgrims of progress: "Let your worries become concerns."
The people of God are consoled as they realise their companionship with God and others in the Communion of Saints each day. Sometimes we are helped on the way. A friend said, in talking about his vision of the people of God: "I like them because they believe God is their boss and are faithful to Him." They are perturbed when He or His church are rejected for silly reasons or faultfinding too often based on surface thinking or passing fashion.
There is wisdom in an old saying: "Ex abusu non arguitur ad usum" ("From the abuse no argument is drawn against the use"). That could have stopped the mouths of the silly persons around the Cross as they hurled words of hatred at the perfectly innocent Jesus. Maybe the words of the Centurion nearby caused them to feel ashamed. Maybe the opponents of the early church were looking for an excuse to reject it by picking on its human faults and mocking ("See how these Christians love one another!"), rejecting and insulting the perfect King of Love, the divine "Boss", to whom the people of God were trying to be faithful.
Now, nearly 2,000 years later, with the emphasis on "churchianity", there is a similar danger lest by rejecting human errors in the people of God we find ourselves offhand and impolite to the founder of Christianity. In a report of the Lambeth Conference we have a wise stress on the church's main business being the worship of God, despite its shortcomings. "We may not be better than others but we serve a better Master."
In the parable of the sower Our Lord warns the people of God of ways in which even the strongest faith can be undermined through a lack of persistent and deep faithfulness to Christ. In the early days of the church the faithful were not undermined or "put off" church by being told of their human failures. Faithfulness in the Spirit of Christ is the key for all members of the people of God, expressed in the Prayer for Faithfulness: "Remember, O Lord, what thou hast wrought in us, and not what we deserve; and as thou hast called us to thy service, make us worthy of our calling; through Jesus Christ our Lord."
Herbert O'Driscoll is well known for his gifted authorship of hymns for today. His hymn (No. 98 in Irish Church Praise) is about the People of God:
"Who are we who say one creed?
We are God's people.
What the word we hear and read?
Word of God's people.
Through time, in every race,
From earth to farthest space,
We'll be, with Christ's good grace,
A faithful people." W.W