When the Pope dies unexpectedly all the Cardinals gather in the Vatican to vote for a new leader. However, there is division between those of a more conservative persuasion and those who are more liberal, ambition rises to the fore, and as the movie goes on we discover things that lie in the shadows. At one point, when danger breaks into the proceedings, one of the cardinals says this – ‘The church is not tradition, the church is not the past, the church is what we do next.’ A phrase which set me thinking about Jesus’s call to ‘Follow me.’ He says this to James and John and Matthew and other disciples. Calling them to begin moving forward with him, in a new life that will incur change and fresh beginnings.
When Jesus met Nicodemus in the heart of the night he told him that following involved being born again, a phrase which sums up this call to new starts. We can easily be tempted to see the church as the place in which we gather for worship, but the church is of course the people who gather, and the people who go out of that building into their weekly living. The people who carry Jesus within them wherever they go. The people who wrestle with what it means to live out lives of truth and grace when we are flawed and easily distracted. People who know their need of God and frequently find forgiveness and change in Jesus. The church is what you and I do next. We make good and bad choices all the time, but we have Jesus with us, the one who has promised to never leave us, and who wholeheartedly chooses us to be his friends and followers.
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