Village Shepherd

Wearing a clerical collar is an interesting exercise, especially when out in the world. The girl at the till in one of the local supermarkets, who had been quite grumpy with the people ahead of me in the queue, spotted my dog collar and was suddenly charming. When I go to events wearing my dog collar, I'm never alone for long. People smile and chat and pass the time of day, and generally treat me well. But when I attend events alone and incognito without the dog collar, I'm generally ignored altogether.

So it seems that the dog collar is a kind of passport, admitting the wearer to pleasantness and being noticed and being included. In some parts of the country it might have the reverse effect, but here in rural England the dog collar is not only recognised, but also respected.

The trouble is, I feel uncomfortable with all of that. I want to be treated as me because of who I am, not what I am. And I feel that if people can't treat me with respect and pleasantness in the normal course of life, then I don't want the special privilege of niceness simply because I happen to be wearing a badge of authority.

On the other hand, I know that if I were to meet the Queen, I would probably act differently to the way I act when meeting ordinary people. If, for instance, I was to have tea with the Queen, although I hate to admit it, I'm certain I would suddenly become incredibly aware of my table manners, a topic which doesn't normally concern me in the least.

We're all a bit of a mixture. In fact, we sometimes refer to people who are very confident and happy with themselves as being "together" or "all of a piece", as though they have the different aspects of their personality in some kind of unity. And perhaps this is the aim of all of us - that we should be so happy and confident within ourselves that we never find ourselves slipping into a different mode with different people.

Jesus was like this. He had no side, and he treated everyone, from the highest Roman official to the lowliest beggar, exactly the same, with no thought at all for the consequences. He was the most "together" person it's possible to be.

But perhaps most of us are a bit like Legion, the man with multiple personalities whom Jesus healed. With Legion, the difference in the many personalities he displayed was exaggerated to such an extent that he seemed like a whole host of different people. He was regarded as quite mad and very dangerous, hence he was banished to live in total isolation amongst the tombs.

Legion was fragmented within himself, and this is a common experience today, although not usually to the point of madness as it was experienced by Legion. But that individual fragmentation is perhaps symbolic of the larger fragmentation of society which is so apparent in Western society today.

We are separated from each other in so many ways; through religion, race, age, gender, ability, money, and so on. And we live in an individualistic age, when we're encouraged to think only of ourselves. We're bombarded by the sort of advertising which constantly exhorts us to get more for ourselves and to beautify ourselves and make ourselves appear younger and so on.

Even our religion has become individual to a large extent. There's much more room for individual thought, which is probably a good thing, but if taken to its logical extremes, that could mean "anything goes". The worrying side of this individualistic religion is that people don't meet together for worship anything like as much as once they did.

Many people hold the opinion that "you don't have to go to church to be a Christian", but I think they're confusing living a good life, with Christianity. You certainly don't have to go to church to live a good life, but Christianity is a community religion in which members love each other, and that can't be achieved without those members meeting together. And the emptier our churches become, the emptier our religion becomes.

Christianity isn't a religion of lots of individuals, it's a religion of people together because it's based on community and loving one another. You can't love somebody you never meet. As Jesus said when he was challenged on something very like this issue, "If you don't love your brother whom you do see, how can you possibly love God whom you don't see?"

In today's reading from the letter to the Galatians, St Paul went even further. He said that all of us are one in Christ Jesus, and he went on to expand that thought by saying that because we are all children of God through faith, there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female. The Church, the body of Christ, should no longer be fragmented as if we were Legion, but should be united, as Christ is united within himself. We are all equal within the Church.

Unfortunately, what we actually display to the world through the Church is much more Legion-like than Christ-like. We are actually fragmented almost to the point of madness, and the result of that fragmentation is that we tend to live not basking within the healing warmth of God's love, but dying amongst the tombs.

If we want God's kingdom to come in this world, we - the Church - must begin to ditch our suspicion and uncertainty of each other and begin to take the risk of accepting all Christians as equal, no matter how strange other people's worship may seem to us.

We, here at the ground floor, are the Church, the body of Christ, and we need to begin to reach out to each other and to non-Christians with acceptance and love. As St Paul said, we must begin to ignore status and gender and race and colour and individual preference in order to become united within ourselves, within the body of the Church.For it's only when we're truly united despite our differences of opinion and worship and when we truly love one another, that Legion will become truly healed for all time.