St Peter's on Willis - 19 February 2012

A Living Christianity 

Tony Harcourt

Bishop Richard has invited me to speak today, "as a member of the congregation”.  No topic was specified. 

I am not a preacher.  Apart from 12 months at a Bible College 30 years ago, I have no theological training. 

I will not presume to give you a sermon then.  Relax.  Instead, I will take a few minutes to tell you a little about my past Christian journey, and finish at St Peters in 2012.

I never had the disadvantage of a Sunday School education.  Now, in my fifties, I occasionally meet people whose picture of what the Christian faith has to give, is overwhelming dominated by a childish picture of God as being some old, distinguished person reclining on a cloud, a man of course, either promising good things that you have since found never come true, or bad things that you hope will not.  Religion for these people is frozen at an eight-year-old’s perspective.

Like most of my rather thoughtless generation, I arrived at early adulthood believing Christianity was for ‘those-who-needed-that-sort-of-thing’.  Christians, if I thought about them, were people in need of some sort of ‘crutch’ to face life with.  I did not need such.  I was young, strong, and - in the nicest possible way - an arrogant so-and-so.  I was going to be an airline pilot.  The world was my oyster.

My prejudices about Christian people lasted until I actually met one, one whom I could not dismiss as a ‘bible-basher’, nor a weakly sort hiding behind some mindless code.  She was a very interesting person indeed.  She still is.  When I asked her to marry me she, fortunately, said ‘yes’ but - it had to be in a church.

Before I made any Christian marriage vows I decided I needed to find out what this Christianity was.  I took instruction.  For several weeks I attended confirmation classes with the Rev Gerald Baker, then at St Mary’s Karori, and subjected him to the kind of questions no Sunday School educated person would conceive of.  “If God is in charge, why do bad things happen to good people?”  “If God is so mighty, why is He not visible to me?”  At some stage in this process I was sitting in church at a Sunday service.  Gerald was preaching on Matthew Chapter 5, The Beatitudes. 

 3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit,
  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn,
  for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek,
  for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness,
  for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful,
  for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart,
  for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
  for they will be called children of God.
10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
  for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Immediately I knew, with absolute certainty, that this was TRUTH.  I did not fully understand it, I still don’t, but that did not matter.  I knew that this was the truth for me, and everybody else, whether God is acknowledged or not.  If this was true then, maybe other things were true too.  Maybe this Jesus really did then rise from the dead?  If that was true, then my whole world view was upside down.

I married Elizabeth a few months later.  I made my marriage vows in good conscience.  We recently had our 33rd anniversary. 

Life was different for me thereafter, and not just because of being married.  My ambition to work as an airline pilot got a new perspective.  I did other things for a while.  Eventually I, with Elizabeth and by then the three children, ended up in Papua New Guinea with me flying as a bush pilot for a Christian Missionary group.  In due course, we returned to New Zealand.  I did land a job as an Airline Pilot.  The children have grown into fine adults.  Life has been good to us.

Fast-forward 25 years.  In St Peters in 2012 we have just chosen a new Vicar.  I have, with others on the St Peters Nomination team, heard lots about people’s aspirations for St Peters. I have spoken to lots of candidates. I have thought a lot about what it means to be a Christian here and now.  Something that has come through over and again is this idea of Community.  As well as sharing some beliefs, as Christians we are a Community.  What does that mean?

There are Christian church communities where worship is conducted with great celebration and emotion, where most members of the congregation are in active house groups, where lives are shared much more so than here at St Peters.  Many of these are very good things and I hope we that might go some way in that direction, yet, in essence, a Christian community is something else as well.

I am in another sort of ‘community’ at my workplace.  Over time, some people there have become my friends, some have not.  This is normal.  I do not talk there about the holiness of God nor the transforming power of the risen Christ in my life - but I don’t do that here much either.  What is different?

It is this.  A Christian community is one where we have another model of behaviour.  It is where we do not accept the grudges, power games, gossip and barely-concealed antipathies of say a workplace community.  In a Church we are allowed, indeed required, to confront such matters.  It is not that we all have to be friends-together-holding-hands-in-the-sauna.  But we do have resolve differences.  We do have to respect each other.  We have to avoid innuendo, and gossip, and to rolling our eyes over ‘old so-and-so’.  We have to, wherever possible, think the best of each other. 

I have found St Peters can be the very best kind of community.  It is not like that all the time.  It can be hard work, but it does work and this already can really be a great place to be.  I am grateful to be here.  I look forward to some exciting changes in the years ahead.

©  Tony Harcourt, 2012

A pdf of the above talk is available here