The following is the text from a talk given at a Service celebrating Christian Unity held at Rugby School for churches in Rugby and surrounding area. The talk was given by the school chaplain who has kindly given me permission to pass it on. You may do so also but please ensure that you give appropriate credit. Thank you.
Rugby Churches United Service, 22/1/12
Three words that have the same meaning in almost every language in
the world are “Amen”, “Alleluia” and “Coca-Cola”. Amen means “Let it be so”. Alleluia means “Praise God”. Coca-cola is a carbonated soft drink. Now let me tell you something you didn’t know.
Coca-Cola was invented in 1886, and for its first thirty years the
company grew slowly. It wasn’t until
1915 that it began the boom in popularity which continues to this day. What happened in 1915? Well, that was the year when they commissioned
the new bottle. They wanted a bottle
that would be instantly recognisable, and not just as it stood on the
shelf. It must be made so that you could
throw it against the wall and smash it into a hundred pieces, then pick up any
one piece and still recognise it as part of a coca-cola bottle.
We all realise just how brilliantly that goal was achieved. If you were digging in your garden and you
turned up a small piece of glass, you’d know immediately if it came from a coke
bottle. You wouldn’t need to excavate
the entire bottle; just the fragment in your hand would tell you what you
had. Each piece is a different shape,
but a small part stands for the whole; any portion of a broken coke bottle
indicates the bottle in its entirety.
That was the first example of what came to be known in the
advertising world as a smashable brand.
Just as a coke bottle can be broken up and any part of it evokes the
whole thing; so a strong smashable brand means that any part of your product,
your company, your organisation or your project points beyond itself to the
whole. Coke was the archetype of a
smashable brand, but you can think of many others – whether it’s Guinness,
Ferrari, IKEA or the Girl Guides. The supreme
example, of course, is Apple. Take any
one of Apple’s products, their services or their people; and evident in that
one thing you will see the design, philosophy, values and ethos of an entire
organisation.
To do its job in the world, the Church of Jesus Christ must be a
smashable brand. In other words, you
have to be able to break it into a hundred pieces and yet see, in each piece,
the characteristics that tell you it’s part of a whole. Why is that so important? Because the Church of Christ IS broken
into a hundred pieces. Many more than a
hundred. According to the Revive
website, there are 64 pieces in the Rugby area alone.
64 churches and Christian organisations. Just give a little cheer if I mention
yours. We have the Congregational Church,
the Baptist Church, the Methodist Church, the New Testament Church of God. The
Quakers – you don’t have to cheer, just give a little wave. We have the Roman Catholic Church, the Orthodox
Church, the Rugby Christian Fellowship, the Evangelical Free Church, the
International Fellowship Church, St Andrew’s Church, M2O, the Grapevine
Christian Fellowship, the Harvest Fellowship.
If I haven’t mentioned your church, give a little cheer now.
I used to serve in an Anglican Church before I came here. Did you know that you can tell which church
you’re in just by walking into the vestry?
In a Roman Catholic vestry they often have a picture of Jesus and his
Sacred Heart. In a Methodist vestry they
have Jesus the worker. In the vestry of a
Baptist Church, it’s Jesus the teacher.
In our Anglican vestries, we have a full length mirror.
Anyway. 64 church
communities in Rugby alone. Can this
huge diversity of Christian expression be a strength and not a weakness; an
attraction and not a barrier to the people around us whom we serve in Christ’s
name, who we call to repent and turn to him?
In other words, can we be a smashable brand, so that every single one of
our broken pieces points beyond itself to the whole, and so that someone who
encounters any part of Christ’s Church, encounters Christ himself?
Well, hear the word of the Lord.
The Bible passage that was read tonight is his message to each one of
us, whether we have come here from the Basilica of St Pious the Pompous or from
the Full Gospel Hallelujah Triple Blessing Church of the Latter Rains. Let me read it again, and you hear again what
it is that unites us all, the characteristics that identify us as the people of
Christ:
In order that our
service may not be brought into discredit, we avoid giving offence in
anything. As God’s servants we try to
commend ourselves in all circumstances by our steadfast endurance: in distress,
hardships and dire straits; flogged, imprisoned, mobbed; overworked, sleepless,
starving. (That
sounds like your Minister. . . .)
We commend
ourselves by the innocence of our behaviour, our grasp of truth, our patience
and kindliness; (That sounds like your Minister’s wife
. . . .)
by gifts of the
Holy Spirit, by sincere love. We declare the truth, by the power of God. We wield the weapons of righteousness in the right
hand and the left.
Now, see who this next bit sounds like:
Honour and
dishonour, praise and blame are alike our lot; we are the impostors who speak
the truth, the unknown men whom all men know; dying we still live on;
disciplined by suffering, we are not done to death; in our sorrows we have
always cause for joy; poor ourselves, we bring wealth to many; penniless, we
own the world. *
Does it remind you of anyone?
Yes of course it does, it reminds you of the Lord Jesus himself. And this is what we are called to be, for we
are being made like him.
Dear Christian brothers and sisters in Rugby, smashed into many
pieces as we are, with our weakness, incompleteness and sin, with our widely
different styles of worship and models of ministry, we are a smashable
brand.
People may point at our diversity and say, “How can you expect me
to believe in God when you Christians can’t even agree among yourselves?” Well, you know, we don’t have to beat
ourselves up about that. It is not our
job to be like one another; it is our job to be like Jesus; dying, yet living
on, poor himself and bringing wealth to many, penniless, yet owning the
world.
We sing different songs in our churches, and we accompany them
with different instruments, yet we sing them to the same Lord; we have
different names for that table at the front of the church, but it is redemption
through Jesus’s broken body and shed blood that we all celebrate there; we have
different ways of using water and different ideas about who it should be used
upon, yet it is the Holy Spirit’s cleansing of our hearts that is his free gift
to each one of us. One Lord, one faith,
one baptism. Even in 64 pieces we are
the church, a smashable brand in which each part stands for the whole; Christ
in you, the hope of glory.
Yes, people may call us frauds and deceivers, but let us confound
them by the innocence of our behaviour and by patience and kindliness. They accuse us of hypocrisy, and they may
well be right, but we are the impostors who speak the truth.
Honour and dishonour, praise and blame alike will be our lot in
this world. But we know of an even
better world to come where Jesus will take the broken fragments of his faithful
community in his gentle hands, and restore them like shattered fragments of
glass being re-formed into a sparkling bottle, one church to sing his praise
for ever. But of that day no-one knows,
not the angels in heaven nor even the Son, but only the Father himself. So let us joyously live each day that he
gives, commending ourselves as God’s servants by steadfast endurance as we
await the glorious coming of Christ our Saviour.
If you agree, say “Amen”.
And if that sounds good to you, say “Alleluia”.
And if you want your church’s life and your own life to show forth
Jesus to the world, say “Coca-Cola”.
Richard Horner, Rugby School, 22/1/12
*(2 Cor 6:1-10)
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