Some churches make a thing of Pentecost being “the Church’s birthday”. Which like December 25^th being Jesus’ birthday, you wouldn’t want to be too pedantic about.

So, this year, low and behold, a birthday cake! As great aunt Edna would say, “What’s a celebration without cake!”

And as great aunt Edna didn’t say, but assumed, you also need people. Indeed, Church being a collective noun, you definitely need people! For people are the church and without people there is no church.

And, then, to paraphrase Forrest Gump, “Church people are like a box of chocolates, you never know what (or who) you’re going to get.” Which is a sweet way of interpreting both of our readings today – Jesus’ Parable of the Banquet and the Coming of the Spirit in Acts 2.

The former being a reminder that at God’s birthday banquet the whole kaleidoscope of humanity is invited: rich and poor, strong and weak, somebodies and nobodies, coming ready or not.

And Acts 2 continues this theme of universality with peoples from right across the known world: “Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs.” A great, glorious, geographers’ mix!

The Church always has been and still is a teeming mass of humanity - of all races, cultures, genders, classes, ages, and beliefs. And talking of beliefs, while the hierarchy of the Church over the centuries has tried to enforce some uniformity, declaring some of us orthodox and some heretical, it’s never been wholly successful. People being people always seem to have their own unique takes on such things, regardless of moderatorial and episcopal huffing and tutting. (Our current PCANZ moderator is unfortunately of this ‘needing uniformity’ huff and tut variety).

Although I think our commonality as Church is simply Jesus, it is both wonderful and painful, that the likes of a JD Vance, Pope Leo IV, Brian Tamaki, and you and I all are part of this thing called Church. As Forrest Gump might say, we are like Liquorice All Sorts, or Peppermint Oddfellows.

Which brings me to my bag. The one with the question mark on it.  What’s in the bag?

Well, firstly, some more sweetening (All Sorts and Oddfellows). And secondly, a few odd knickknacks that I’ve acquired, not for their worth but for their memories of Christian All Sorts.

Let’s start with this one, definitely the oldest in my bag: a fossil of a shell, in a rock, acquired at the Dead Sea, and I hasten to add, not by me. Acquired in the late 1940s, I think. It was a gift, given to me by one of the more colourful sweets in the bag of life.

Her name was Ruth Mary Coyle. Born 1908. Her family name was Innes (as in Innes Tartan). But after graduating from Elam Art School, she ran away from the privilege and constraints of her family and eloped with Arthur, a plumber(Shock! Horreur!). And lived and loved happily ever after.

When, late in life, Arthur died, Ruth planted a Gingko tree in the churchyard in his memory. Then Ruth, being Ruth, collected Gingko leaves to make tea. She would invite me to join her for a morning Gingko cuppa ‘with Arthur’. She was quite a character.

Ruth was a founding member of the Rutland Group (1935-1958), and had great stories about renegade artists and their antics. She was a painter. But a dabbler too in all sorts of art. When I knew her in her ‘90s, she was taking a class in iconography.

The Church for most of her life had been deadly and dull, permission-denying rather than permission-giving. She looked for beauty, but wasn’t encouraged. Fast-forward to the mid-nineties and Ruth was a cheerleader for anything innovative, anything language-stretching, or mind-expanding. She told me that she wished she’d been born 50 years later, and I told her that she was one who by her quiet anarchical subversion had made the now possible.

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The second odd knickknack in my bag is a bronze medallion. Not picturing arace-winning prize, but of a breast-feeding baby. All mothers deserve a medal.

The artist is Marion Fountain, a well-known kiwi sculptor. I came to know Maz in the 1970s. We were at university together. She was a Baptist, slowly breaking free. She and me, (hold on to your seats!), were elected onto the executive of Auckland University’s Evangelical Union. There we bonded as spirals in a square world. Mind you, that said, president of the square that year was Andrew Beecroft, who has since advocated for the sort of justice I think Jesus would applaud.

The Baptist church, and Maz’s uncle was a well-known minister, was also a square world. It didn’t surprise me to learn later than she attended an Eastern Orthodox Church – icons and incense would have been more her thing – before moving to Paris and finding her spiritual needs met through art and other mediums.

One of her pieces, which I borrowed once for a communion service, is a chalice. The stem is four women, like the legend of Atlas holding the world/the cup on their backs. Or maybe the reference, given the Parisian influence, and four women holding the world, is to the fontaine des quatre parties du monde. Maz’s chalice is a whole sermon in itself: women collectively holding the lifeblood and hope of faith.

On her homepage, Maz’s art is described as “In search of the poetry of life.” Which is another way of saying ‘I have decided to follow Jesus’.

My third and last knickknack is also a solid piece of bronze. This one is a replica of Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker”. He was made to be part of Rodin’s “The Gates of Hell” (inspired by Dante’s Divine Comedy). “The Thinker” was an observer on the edge, contemplating the worst but seeking to transcend it. Thinking, but with mercy and hope.

My last ecclesial ‘All Sort’, though probably not considered by church folk as odd as others, is Selwyn Dawson. He was a parishioner in my time at Glen Innes. He was in his retirement years, in the pew, and me, just beginning, in the pulpit. He had been the President of the Methodist Church, President of the National Council of Churches, the Minister of Pitt Street and, Takapuna, Durham Street, and Gisborne. He’d served on the Auckland City Council, taken Sir Robbie’s funeral in the Town Hall (without mentioning ‘God’), and written regularly for the Auckland newspapers. He’d also been, unbeknownst to most, a pastor to a number of politicians, including Don Brash and David Lange.

I ,in turn became, and continue to be, his family’s pastor. Much later when he died, I – along with Gordon McLaughlin, the author and avowed atheist – took his funeral. Which also tells a story.

Not that Selwyn and I always agreed. We were from different times and theologies. But he, following the Wesleys (who Methodists remember today, Aldersgate Sunday), saw the world as his parish. The Church was not a club for members but a way of life to enrich all life. So, he wrote regularly and often. And in those days, newspapers usually printed what ministers wrote. Selwyn was a great encourager and mentor to me. He was a thinker, offering thoughts immersed in mercy and hope.

And you can’t mention Selwyn without mentioning Enid, his wife. She was bright, vivacious, and fun-loving. Whenever Selwyn got too serious, Enid would make us laugh. All ministers need some ‘essence of Enid’ in their lives.

I could go on mentioning all sorts of people, the great and the good, the not-so-great and the not-so-good, people from all walks of life and experience who I have had the privilege of knowing and who make up what we call the Church. A vast collection of Oddfellows and oddments. A rich tapestry of all sorts of people.

And this ecclesial tapestry, regardless of its origins – when, who, where – is worth celebrating. For it holds the dream of community, of finding commonality, of tolerance and mercy, of building purpose and hope. This is the Church, and this day – its birthday – we celebrate its being and our belonging.

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