Our readings this week are 1 John 2:7-17 and Matthew 11.16–19, 25–end.

I'm sure it's a truth across all vocations and occupations - but a thing I'm particularly aware of in mine is that whatever you do you can't please everybody!  Whether it's pews or chairs, drums or organs, long-grass or finely-mowed graveyards there's always someone who thinks we should be doing the opposite... so I'm sorry, for whatever it is I've got 'wrong' most recently!

Jesus himself faced the same sorts of contradictory criticisms - as he points out in Matthew 11:18-19, 'For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, “He has a demon”; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, “Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax-collectors and sinners!”' There was for him, too, no way to be a prophet that would please everyone.

But Jesus wasn't driven by popular approval.  I might even push that to say he didn't seek or need anyone's approval.  At least not anyone mortal.  His measure seems always to have been, in any moment, whether or not something was pleasing to God.

In his first letter, St. John invites us to have the same attitude, 'Do not love the world or the things in the world,' he writes, 'the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.' It's an invitation to follow the example of Christ, seeking first not the approval of the moment's trends, fashions or ideals - all of which will pass in time - but instead seeking to please the one who creates and sustains us both now and for ever.

In the way he puts it (and indeed in pretty much everything he writes!), he offers us a very quick litmus test to check what would be pleasing to God: is this, whatever it is, loving?  Does this way of thinking/being/behaving leave this person in front of me more fulfilled, more realised, more whole? As he writes, 'Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling.'

And that's actually why I think the massed variety of our thoughts and opinions about who and what we are as a community is such a great thing. It's why the fact I can get it 'wrong' so often is a testament to something wonderful: the church of Christ is not a cult. We're not an homogeneous group, same-thinking is not our purpose or agenda. We are a found-family, a vibrant tapestry of all sorts of people, with all sorts of opinions and ideas. That we are held together through those differences, that we can seek a common good in and through them can be miraculous, and a potent sign of the presence of God's Kingdom - because we can only do it in and through love.

We have to see the person in front us, not what they think - or whether or not we agree with how they live, or the choices they've made (about hymns or anything else!) - because when we see the person, we see the child of God. And when we see the child, we see the Father.