I have a Nationwide Debit Card, because I have for years belonged to the Nationwide Building Society, still a mutual building society, not that I’m bitter about not getting any windfalls. I have a Visa Credit Card from the Co-op, so we belong to the Co-Op; a European Health Insurance card, we always carry that, it’s an important piece of kit (!) but it does show that I belong to Europe. I have my driving license on me, because I need to. I have my Wokingham Library card, a somewhat underused card, it doesn’t get swiped quite as often as the debit card. And I have 2 other cards: my Nectar card and my Co-op membership card.

In trying to work out this whole thing about belonging, I went online yesterday just to see what it meant to belong to the Co-op, and to Nectar. Well I couldn’t remember my password to get on to the Co-Op site, so I was locked out. I got onto the Nectar site, and you know what, I’ve got 610 Nectar points! 610! Isn’t that marvellous! Do you know what I can get with 610 Nectar points - £2.50 off bingo at Gala! I can get a money-off voucher for a meal at a Beefeater restaurant or I can give some money to charity.

Hang on minute, I hear you say, I thought these loyalty cards were all about being able to amass cameras and satellite navigation systems and TVs and exercise bikes and holidays abroad. Indeed they are: if you have 25,000 points, you can get a camera, you can get a sat nav system. 25,000 points equates to £12,500 worth of spending on that card. Don’t be fooled - these companies are not out to give us anything for free. Indeed, the more they give, the more they get. And what they get is information. They get information on how we spend our money, but it’s very subtle, the information they can glean. They don’t just get our spending habits, they don’t just get information about what we normally buy week by week, they get information about when our loved ones have birthdays, because roundabout the 17 July you always seem to buy a bottle of perfume, so round about then you’ve probably got a partner or a loved one with a birthday. Guess what drops through your door half way through June: a £5.00 off voucher for some very expensive perfume. They are very, very clever at getting information from us. The more information they get, the better they tailor their marketing at the individual, and it appears to me that their business strategy in direct opposition to Jesus’ teaching. They are deeply, deeply concerned about the ninety nine. Oh yes, they want more customers and they’ll advertise for the one that is lost, but what they really want is more information about the ninety nine, who are already part of the club.

I don’t blame them. I have nothing against the supermarkets in general, that’s what they’re there for. They are in business to make money and they get that money from you and from me. They are not in business to look after the lost; they are not in business to give the outcast a place to belong; they are not searching for the lonely, looking out for the misfits and wanting to say, ‘You fit in here, be lonely no more.’ I don’t blame the supermarkets, for they focus on what they are trying to do. I don’t mean their publicity strap-lines. This is nothing new, but don’t get thinking that Tesco’s does mean ‘Every Little Helps’ well it does, every little helps them, and Sainsbury actually about making life taste better. Supermarkets are about being the biggest, being the best, being the richest. That’s their vision in life, that’s their goal, that’s their ambition and everything they do is designed to bring that about.

So no, I don’t blame supermarkets. In fact we would do well as churches to look at their strategies and to learn from them. We need to be fully focussed on our vision. We need to know who we are, who we are here for and why. We need to be clear about how to respond to people with all their various needs. How do we respond older people with their physical needs? How do we respond to strangers in our midst with needs that we may not be able to perceive? And how do we respond to behaviours that make us feel: ‘Well, it’s not like it was in my day’. But those behaviours are there, in our midst. We need to be clear and we need to be resolute about holding fast to our vision.

What is it that we are here for? Why does this church exist?
 

Over the last few months we have been working in the Church Council and in discussions on a statement trying to capture what this church is about. And we’ve come up with a phrase that is not new, and is taken straight from the Lords Prayer:
 

God’s Kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven

That is the vision for this church. That is why we think we are here. That is what we think God wants of us. And so we pray for it, and we work for it, and we live it, here and now. We live to be a little bit of heaven, here on earth, searching out the lost, welcoming the stranger, accepting things we may not feel comfortable with and may not be totally to our taste, looking beyond this present moment which is located in time and space, looking beyond it and seeing in it the wonder of the divine, opening ourselves to the wonder of each human being, noticing the beauty of each individual person made in the image of God, and allowing the presence of God here and now to be know and seen and felt. Whenever we can do that, and let’s make no pretence, it’s not easy and it takes all our imagination and our effort all of the time, but whenever we do do that, whenever we see other people doing that in our midst and can say to ourselves, if not to someone else, ‘That reminds me of the time I failed’, and we can own the responsibility of not doing it all the time, each and every time we manage to do that, and it does can easier the more we practise it, then we too can rejoice. We can rejoice that the sheep that was lost is found, that the coin that was lost is found, that what was not at home has found a home.