A Vicar Writes: March

I love March, it’s the month when Spring officially ‘springs’ and that means that’s it’s the official start of a new motorbiking season! If you’re a biker, you’ll understand why I’m excited! The long winter months of riding in the cold, the rain, with freezing fingers and toes, of not knowing whether that shiny bit of road surface is an icy patch or not – is coming to an end and we can look forward to warmer road surfaces, sticky tyres and summer gloves (instead of thick winter ones which hinder feel and movement!) of long days in the saddle and catching up with other biking mates.

You see the biking community is perhaps the friendliest group I have met. Wherever I go on my bike, I can guarantee someone will come and talk to me, whether that’s a fellow biker who might sit and share a coffee at a roadside cafe, or a general passerby who is either still riding or used to ride and wants to talk about bikes or have a look at mine. Complete strangers become ‘friends’ through a shared interest, a common bond. Its also such a broad group of people, from all types of backgrounds and all ages. Many people have a stereotypical impression of a biker – let me tell you most bikers are normal people! (just like me – well I think I’m normal anyway!!!!)

As I think about getting out on the bike, the excitement begins to build and I look forward with anticipation to all that it encompasses. I wonder is this our experience with the Christian faith and our experience of coming to church? You see, if church is done well, then it should be something that we are excited about. We should look forward to meeting together each week. To sharing with each other in fellowship and friendship. Paul writes in Hebrews 10:25 that we should not give up meeting together, but that we should encourage each other. It’s the idea of sharing life together, both the ups and the downs, so that we can help one another and encourage one another. Its also crucially about building each another up in our faith.

That’s one of the most amazing things about the biking community, the number of times that total strangers have stopped to offer assistance when I, or a friend, have been stranded, is amazing. Car drivers go by without a second thought, but a fellow biker will stop and offer to help- it’s a camaraderie that only a fellow biker will understand.

It should be the same with us as Christians, we should be able to see when someone needs a little bit of assistance. That’s when we can act and show God’s love. It should be that we can meet up and share a coffee together or pass the time of day together because of our shared interest which is our shared faith in Jesus Christ, which incidentally means we are brothers and sisters in Christ, we are not strangers, but we are related through Him! (Matt 12:50). We should strive to build up our fellowship so that we can laugh together and cry together. This takes hard work, we all have to play our part in this and be pro-active, but the hardest part of that is already done – we have a common interest, something that unites us.  If we call ourselves Christians, then it runs in our DNA – the Holy Spirit unites us! Jesus himself prayed for that to be case in John 17:20-23

‘I pray also for those who will believe in me, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.  I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—  I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.’ This Spring, lets focus on being hospitable and lets build fellowship together.