Stars

Last Wednesday night we filled the Abbey for a large Diocese of Bristol service where hundreds of churchwardens (including our own, truly awesome, Lesley Wilson and Diana Crowe) were commissioned for a year serving in leadership and administration in their local churches. At the service the Bishop of Bristol, Mike Hill, recounted this true story:

A local church wanted to tell every member of their community about Jesus so they purchased 13,000 DVDs about the life of Jesus and delivered them through the letterbox of every front door in their community in Buckinghamshire. The vicar was delighted until the Parish Office received a call from a surprised member of their town saying that the DVD in the box just delivered wasn’t about Jesus at all, but was in fact the Hollywood movie ‘When Harry met Sally’ starring Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal. (A really funny film, but not something you’d show at the parish supper.) The parishioner in question also informed the press of this huge mistake and the press ran the story that the local church had delivered ‘When Harry met Sally’ to every house in the town by accident, and had a bit of a laugh at the church’s expense. The vicar then phoned his Bishop (Bishop Mike) in a bit of a state.

However the journalist hadn't done his research before he ran his story, and in fact only one DVD starred Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan, the other 12,999 were all about Jesus. But because of the local media coverage, massive numbers of people sat down to watch a Hollywood movie with a glass of wine and instead saw a biopic of Christ. On the back of this, the church had over 400 inquiries about their forthcoming Alpha Course, and many, many people came to faith and were baptised.

Two weeks ago I hope I mentioned that the Last Word in the Bible is one that the Spirit and the Bride say together: Come! We live with hope today because Christ is coming again. Today, as we enter Revelation 2, we discover both the resilience and the frailty of the early church. Issues far more serious than delivering the wrong DVD were perplexing Christians in the first century. But last week we were left with the mysterious, beautiful, but overwhelmingly encouraging image, that  Christ holds the imperfect church, the seven stars, in his right hand. (Revelation 1:20) Before he speaks to the church, he reveals that he holds it, eternally.