Friday morning- Ken Comfort, Northwest Yearly Meeting

Ken Comfort, Northwest Yearly Meeting, addressed the Triennial during worship on Friday 17th August 2007 as follows:

Our first hymn is ‘Holy Spirit, Come With Power’.

I am reading from II Corinthians 12:4:

God's various gifts are handed out everywhere, but they all originate in God's spirit. God's various ministries are carried out everywhere, but they all originate in God's spirit. God's various expressions of power are in action everywhere, but God Himself is behind it all. Each person is given something to do that shows who God is. Everyone gets in on it, everyone benefits. All kinds of things are handed out by this spirit and to all kinds of people the variety is wonderful: wise counsel, clear understanding, simple trust, healing the sick, miraculous acts, proclamation, distinguishing between spirits, tongues, and interpretation of tongues.

All these gifts have a common origin, but are handed out one by one, by the one spirit of God. God decides who gets what and when. You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts - limbs, organs, cells - but no matter how many parts you can name, you are still one body. It is exactly the same with Christ. By means of His one Spirit, we all said good‑bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We used to call our own shots independently, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which God has the final say in everything. This is what we proclaimed in word and action when we were baptised. Each of us is now a part of his resurrection body, refreshed and sustained at one fountain, His Spirit, where we all come to drink. The old labels we once used to identify ourselves - labels like Jew or Greek, slave or free, programmed or unprogrammed, liberal or evangelical - are no longer useful, we need something larger, more comprehensive. I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn't just a single part blown up into something huge, it is all the different, but similar, parts arranged and functioning together. If Friend foot said: ‘I am not elegant like Friend hand, embellished with rings, I guess I don't belong to the body’, would that make it so? If Friend ear said: ‘I am not beautiful like Friend eye, limpid and expressive, I don't deserve a place on the head’, would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all Friend eye, how could it hear, if all Friend ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where God wanted it, but I also want you to think about how this keeps your significance from getting blown up into self‑importance. For no matter how significant you are, it is only because of what you are - a part of an enormous eye or a gigantic hand wouldn't be a body but a monster. What we have is one body with many parts, each its proper size and in its proper place.

No part is important on its own. Can you imagine Friend eye telling Friend hand: 'get lost, I don't need you', or Friend head telling Friend foot ‘you are fired, your job has been phased out’? As a matter of fact, in practice it works the other way - the lower part, the more basic it is, therefore the more necessary. You can live without an eye for instance, but not without a stomach. When it is a part of your own body you are concerned with, it makes no difference whether the part is visible or clothed, higher or lower. You give it dignity and honour just as it is without comparisons. If anything, you have more concern for the lower parts than the higher parts. If you had to choose, wouldn't you prefer good digestion to a full body or head of hair?

A reading from I Corinthians chapter 12 beginning with verse 27:

Now you are the body of Christ and each one of you is a part of it. And in the church God has appointed first all the apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles and also those having gifts of healing. Those able to help others, those with gifts of communication and those speaking in different kinds of tongues are all apostles, are all prophets, are all teachers, do all work miracles, do all have gifts of healing, do all speak in tongues, do all interpret, but eagerly desire the greater gifts.

And I Corinthians 13, 1 - 8 and 14.1:

If I speak in the tongues of mortals and of angels, but do not have love I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have prophetic powers and understand all ministries and all knowledge and if I have all faith so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give away all my possessions and if I hand over my body so that I might boast, but do not have love I gain nothing. Love is patient, love is kind, love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way, it is not irritable or resentful. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. Pursue and strive for the spiritual gifts and especially that you may prophesy.

(The hymn ‘Diverse in Culture, Nation, Race’ was sung.)

We have just had an example of diversity in nation, culture and race with the reading of our scripture this morning. I need to give a big ditto and maybe this would make this talk a little shorter, a ditto to Marion, Bill, Lizz, Stephen and now also tomorrow María. I felt this week that we have been standing on holy ground, as we have been discussing the issue of our prophetic witness. Yesterday we heard the news of an earthquake in Peru and a landslide in Kenya - devastating. In those two countries, nothing will ever be the same, geologically, emotionally, structurally. I am hoping that in our hearts the same is true of a Triennial like this.

I am a Birthright Friend with a long family history that stretches down through time originating here in England and Ireland. My family emigrated to the colonies and across the expanse of the frontier known as the United States of America. My family has always been Quaker. I need to tell you that I am also a Convinced Friend. Whether born into or convinced, each of us comes to understand and believe in the truth as the Spirit writes it on our hearts. I am recorded in North West Yearly Meeting as a Minister of the Gospel, I have been released by the meeting known as Reedwood Friends Church in Portland, Oregon to minister among them. I want to be sensitive this morning to those who are questioning the place of people like myself, who are released to minister in pastoral Yearly Meetings. I truly believe that Christ is the True Shepherd, he is our True High Priest and the gifts He gifts are not meant to be lorded over anyone else. Paul wrote in I Corinthians 14:29: ‘ when one speaks, others need to weigh what is being said because prophets are subject to the gathered body and are not exalted over it.’ Hold these words in the Light and the weigh them according to what the Spirit is saying to us as a gathered body.

Isn't it great to be here representing so many Yearly Meetings and so many countries from around the world? I have dreamed of being a part of a gathered Meeting like this for many years. We are a great number here in Ireland, but we represent so many more people who make up the Society of Friends in places that we come from. George Fox's vision of a great people to be gathered continues to come true. It is meetings like this that help us focus on the task at hand of gathering more people into the light of Christ. Christ has given us a great light to be shown and we are called to be torchbearers of Christ's truth to all people and all nations. Christ's message is simple: He is sufficient to speak to our condition, to bring all people out of darkness and into glorious life-giving light. Our faith, the Friends' faith, is so simple yet so profound. Christ is our High Priest. He alone is our Shepherd. He is the Saviour of our souls. He alone brings us into relationship with our Creator. There is no other mediator or sacrament needed to merit or to maintain God's love or His redemption. Christ continues to welcome all into His holiness. He continues to teach and to empower people with spiritual gifts so that God's kingdom on earth will continue to grow - that people everywhere would be unified in the task of proclaiming God's message in whatever way possible so that others will come to believe and trust in our God who loves all humanity equally. Christ empowers us to love as God loves, to bring peace as God is peace, to care for humanity as God cares for humanity, to administrate the creation as God intended it to be and not to exploit it for our own greed. We are a body made up of many parts that is designed to minister in Christ's name and in His power to care for the needs of the world. So Paul wrote: ‘ it is love then that you should strive for, set your hearts on spiritual gifts, especially the gift of proclaiming God's message.’

Love proclaims God's message. I once lived among a people group who did not have the word for forgiveness or for reconciliation. I have asked them permission to share this. The ideas behind those two words - forgiveness and reconciliation - are as foreign to the Aymara people as if I was to talk to you in their language. Love was not an idea or an emotion that was expressed very well; even the word ‘friend’ meant traitor. A friend was someone who knew things about you and then could use those things against you so that they could gain an advantage. Imagine their understanding of John 15: 14 that gives us our name: ‘ you are our friend if you do what I command you to’. This people group believed that there was only so much good in the world and it was a scramble or a fight to get what you could for yourself. Sharing, giving, caring always had an ulterior motive of what one could get back for their own benefit. Unity was not something that people strove for because of love for each other. The idea of community was a means of survival in the harsh environment of the high Andes, the concept behind this word was control because of distrust of one another. Community rules brought everyone to the same level and provided little room for personal advancement.

It was only through the transformation of God's love in the heart of the people that brought about change. God's light penetrated the darkness of the human soul and today in Bolivia and Peru there are over 40,000 Friends who walk in the Light. To be a Friend of Christ brings peace and liberty to share freely about the unending love of God that is available to all; it is not limited. It also witnesses to the change of attitude of those in Christ who live ‘not as the world lives’ in fear and greed, but in freedom and love for each other. People like Noe, who as a 16‑year‑old (he was my translator) felt compassion for the families of his classmates in high school; he would walk for two hours over the mountains to go and share the source of all things good in those remote villages. Juan was another who was ridiculed because he didn't have children and he had epilepsy. He would leave his community every Sunday after Meeting to go and share the good news with his rival communities. Juan brought the Light of Christ to so many people that he is no longer ridiculed, but he is seen as one who truly cares for all people. Ruth's spiritual gifts were recognised even though she was an unmarried woman. She pastored at a Friend's church in a male dominated society that looked down on unmarried people. The list is so extensive of people like this that it is impossible to tell you all of their stories. I do need to tell you about Manuela who is here with us today. She is the first woman Clerk of a South American Yearly Meeting. We need to hold her in the Light not just during these days together, but continuously. You can tell from what I have just said about their culture, she has a hard way to go. Friends gathered through the Andes are witnesses to the power of the Spirit, moving and breaking the social norms so that God's message is proclaimed. People are responding to the Light and living in unity through the Spirit because of what Christ has done and continues to do in them.

Paul of Tarsus, who wrote the letters to his friends in Corinth, considered unity through love and proclamation of God's message as the most important activity of the people of God. Yet the picture that Paul paints in the whole of I Corinthians is not of a people waiting on God or listening to the Spirit. This group of believers was divided over a long list of issues. See if these issues might ring true today. These people were arguing if Paul was really a true apostle since he wasn't part of the original group of disciples who ministered with Jesus. There were discussions about what constituted true or essential religious practices that would identify them as followers of Christ. People were not in agreement about the covenant of marriage and some were consenting to an interpersonal relationship that had unchurched people in the city wondering about its correctness. Members of the church were dragging others into court to prove their rights over one another. There were some who did not share their food at mealtimes forcing those who had no food to watch and go hungry while the weekly banquets ensued. To top off the list of divisions, people lorded their spiritual abilities over others in the body and considered themselves better or more important than anyone else. It is plain to see that the communion of the body of Christ was broken in the meeting at Corinth and that the testimony of love and unity had lost its power. All of this confusion had derailed the lived out proclamation of the message of Christ's power to transform as the premier activity of that body. Disunity of purpose between the members has dissolved the message of Christ's love for humanity.

For this reason, Paul describes the cooperation of the body in chapter 12, in the definition of love in chapter 13 of I Corinthians and makes proclamation through diversity the highest aim of everyone. Love for others seeks what is right and true. Love unites people and seeks the best for every individual. Love for Christ and for each other is the basis for maintaining unity within the body of believers, but love in action is the greatest witness to the power of God to bring about blessing for humanity. Unity of diverse people is the greatest testimony of the power and the love of God to change lives.

A few months ago I learned a South African word: Ubuntu. Desmond Tutu defined the concept behind the word:

a person with ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others and does not feel threatened that others are able and good for he or she has a proper self‑assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs to the greater whole.

Everyone needs each other and is dependent on each other no matter what their rank or their status. So Paul writes: ‘ it is love that we should strive for’. Love is not a natural response of the human heart; face it, the problems in this world are caused by a lack of love for each other. The gospel writers tell us that true love comes from God and we respond to that love. God's love transforms our natural self and makes us into a whole new person. Love for our neighbour and love for each other is a Spirit event. Because of the transformational love of God in work in us, we work for God's glory not our own. We work and speak for peace, for human rights, for equality of all people, for care of the earth and for care of each other. The central theme of all these issues is the love of God that flows through those who make their lives available to God's transforming power and his love. We have seen in Portland, Oregon among children - and I am sure you have seen it in the places you live - that prejudice is a learned response, children aren't born prejudiced. In their early years they learn the attitudes from older people. It takes Divine love to transform hate into the opposite emotion. War and violence are a natural response to settle disputes. The way of love transforms all natural humanistic reactions into supernatural responses of seeking peace, forgiveness and blessing. Love speaks of God's intentions for the world, love seeks what is best for all people, not just a select few. Speaking out about the values of God's kingdom brings about a change so that God's justice and mercy can prevail in society. Loving all people as God loves is the ultimate aim. God so loves the world that He sent his Son to show us that love, to bring us into relationship with Him so that He can all model this love to each other. Our unity is founded in the love of Christ that flows among us. Early Friends could not hold back from loving all people because of the transformation that comes through Christ. Love sent people across the ocean into unknown places to bring Christ's light and love into a world filled with darkness and hate. Our forbearers sold themselves into slavery to free slaves. They traded places with each other in prison to care for ailing members, they visited and witnessed to authorities of many nations with the goal of communicating God's will for those countries. The powerful witness of early Friends to the power of God humbly brought people to their knees. Lives changed and history changed because of the unity of purpose through Christ that compelled early Friends to love and care for all people.

Christ said that ‘He could do nothing outside the will of His Father’. Christ showed this love and unity with the will of God in all He did. We too can walk and live this way, we do not walk in the light for our own benefit, but to become disciples of Christ, to witness to the world about the true Kingdom of God. We have been brought into life with Christ in order to love in ways that contrast with the world's ways. We can live, work, exist and minister together because we love Christ. Just as all cells and organs work together to maintain life in a body, God made it possible through the life and death of Christ to transform us into cells and organs of His new body. We work together with all of our gifts and abilities to give witness to God's redeeming love. No‑one is any more important than anyone else but divine love moves us to build each other up and to persevere in a task that we have been given.

God did not bless us with spiritual gifts for our own benefit. The purpose of the Spirit's blessing was, and is, to empower individuals to work collectively as witnesses of the Kingdom. God wants us to care for all individuals and to bring people into faith in Him, to live in His ways, to be holy. This is the covenant that God intends to have with His creation. It is through the gifting of the Holy Spirit that the body of believers is enabled to minister in the power of God. Early Friends realised this from the beginning. We continue to realise today that the goal of love and proclaiming God's message was and is to transform the world. Jesus said: ‘see, I am making all things new’. God touches the world when the faithful speak truth. When they proclaim good news, when we identify with pain, when we build community, when we share resources, when we grant forgiveness, when we give mercy, when we care for the less fortunate just as Jesus would do. The goal is ministry in Jesus' name through the power of His love. The spiritual gifts are meant to be utilised for the building up of the body. Some of us have gifts that help people with spiritual needs, some have gifts to live bold lives meeting physical needs, others are better equipped to explain faith issues. Everyone must desire unity of purpose so that Christ's message will be expressed in all of its fullness to all people. Together we reach out to those around us in a spirit of love, actively letting our lives speak of the hope that is in us.

The gathering of the faithful is to be a continuation of Christ's blessing to the world. We are called to live a life that brings the creation back into God's intended order that a life that speaks truth without fear, a life that proclaims the work of Christ for salvation in an ongoing relationship with God and with all of humanity. We understand that the spirit of God is already present and at work in the culture where we live. We are called to partner and to bring witness to the Spirit’s moving. We are to be bold about what God wants to do to bring wholeness in people's lives. Christ did this for us when he became human in order to show us the love of God. The Spirit comes with power to mend the fallen creation and to make all things new. The Spirit is present so that the world might be touched by God's divine grace, the body of Christ made up of all of its parts is placed as the witness and conduit of God's blessing in the world. We can’t help but declare God's mighty deeds through words and actions as we live out the values of the Kingdom every day through the diversity of ways that the Spirit has gifted us.

Proclamation rises out of our encounter with God. Proclaiming God's message is the natural and spontaneous result of being blessed with God's spirit. God speaks with those who are listening to His truth. Jesus said: ‘it is not you who speak, but the spirit of your Heavenly Father speaking through you’.(Matthew 10:20). God gives the word needed for any given moment. They are words that speak to the heart. Prophetic words are inspired words designed to build up, to encourage and to console those who hear. They can also be words that challenge, correct, and question motives. Our role is to corporately wait on God and listen to the Spirit. Once we have heard the Spirit speak, we cannot stay quiet any longer. What the Spirit says must become action. Rather than focus on our peculiarities or our differences, we are called as individuals and as a collective people to be a living witness of the love of God. We are called to be expectant of a new ordering of creation values that are not based on pride, ego, fear or greed but on unity within the kingdom of God. All people are to be seen in their true potential to live in harmony with their creator. This is the vision of Isaiah when he declared the lion and the lamb lay down together. The peaceable kingdom is possible because we live in harmony with God's unifying spirit and we don't react against it. We are called to be co‑labourers of Christ to minister in situations where healing brings wholeness and restoration where critical attitudes and destructive ways of living are left behind. We are called to speak God's love into unjust situations so that the power of Christ can make all things new. Our collective witness communicates the goal of equality of all through compassion and grace. This is the goal of love. People want to become participants of communities like this. The proclamation of Christ's gospel is to invite people to become a part of God's new community and to live in relationship with the Spirit, not against it.

The way of Jesus radically transforms our existence to be one wholly focused on sacrificially living for Him and for others. This is truly in the nature of being a friend of Jesus and a friend of humanity. We are to take up our own cross in the ministry of uniting people to God so that they can also live in the power of His resurrection. Jesus told us to go into all the world to be His ambassadors. The power of our worship is so that we can respond to the needs of the world in power and in truth. Our worship does not end at the rise of the Meeting. All week long, we are to be in service to the Lord. Have we let our proclamation go quiet? Are we known more for our silence, the silence of our Meetings than for the power of truth that we stand for? Are we more interested in protecting our identity as a Society than in going to communicate Christ's love for all humanity by meeting people's needs? Are we questioning why our collective witness can proclaim God's love to those around the world? We must remember that we have been given a mandate to love and to serve in order to transform the world.

Words alone are not sufficient. How the gospel is lived out in our neighborhood, in our city, in our countryside is as important as what we say. We live as models of peace, restoration, unity, and love. We are a connectional people on a mission together. Love for God and love for others seeks to put the well being of our neighbours over our own. We are witnesses of integrity, morality and good character, compassion and we seek ‘the least of these to lift them up’. We are a people where men, women and children gather to grow in authentic worship and transforming discipleship. So we ask the question: what is God wanting us to do and to say to continue the ministry of Christ within our present community and in our global context?

In a time when persecution could have erased the powerful message of Friends through the imprisonment and threats on the lives of the faithful, George Fox called Friends to unity for the Gospel’s sake. From a cold prison tower, soaked to the skin in the middle of winter, Fox wrote his own rendition of Jesus' words to go into all the world and preach the gospel. Cold and wet, he knew that his human life could easily come to an end, but he also knew that God's message was more powerful that could be contained in a prison cell. Fox wrote in 1656:

let all nations hear the Word, by sound or writing. Spare no place, spare not tongue or pen, but be obedient to the Lord God, be valiant for the truth upon the earth; be patterns, be examples in all countries, places, islands, nations, wherever you go; that your carriage and your life may preach among all sorts of people and to them, then you will come to walk cheerfully over the world, answering that of God in everyone.

How is that for a last will and testament! It didn't turn out that way. Soon there were thousands who were speaking boldly about Christ's truth through the power of the Holy Spirit. Thousands were put in prison, but thousands more responded to the brave witness to the unity of the faith. The message prevailed and we are here because of it. George Fox called Friends to answer that of God in everyone. We believe that God's Light is available to all people and any person can respond to that Light. The Light shines inwardly to awaken the seed that is found in every person. In the Light the seed of the Word germinates, setting down its roots. It grows to maturity, producing identifiable fruit of the Spirit. Without the light of Christ shining into the life of an individual, the seed lays dormant.

Early Friends knew that they had been empowered through whatever gift the Spirit had given them to communicate the love of God for a world desperate and needing hope. These dedicated men and women spoke and lived in holy expectation of what God could do and how God would bless their events - people down through history (and you know the heroes that we have talked about so much): William Penn in his treatment of the native Americans, John Woolman and Anthony Benezet’s concern for slaves and their education, Mary Fisher's concern for the Turkish sultan, Steven Grellet's ministry to the Czar and even to the Pope, Elizabeth Fry's concern for the prisoners of Newgate Prison,. Literally millions of people have been impacted by the testimony of Friends. Governments have been called to account. People have been restored and lives have been changed because of the light of Christ that has penetrated the darkness.

Can we learn from the past? This is not a calling for a few, but for all. What is the Spirit saying to us today? Our present calling is a continuation of what our predecessors heard the Spirit say as they moved to transform their world. We also have to be in tune with what the Spirit continues to speak today. Ours is not a religion of the history book so much as a life of faith and love for God that is lived out in the world today. We do believe that the Spirit who spoke for the last few centuries continues to speak today. Healing of nations continues to happen, God's spirit continues to move. Do we love? Do we love one another in the things that are eternal? Do we love each other in the things that are temporal? Do we use our God‑given abilities or our spiritual gifts to work and act in unity? Are we a proclamational people? We do not exist as a Society for ourselves alone, but for the blessing of the world. Our task is to hear Christ, our present teacher. We are called to proclaim His truths as we work for His peace, for the restoration of all things. We are a consecrated people, spread throughout the world to scatter the seeds of the Gospel, and to water, to cultivate and to harvest as the Lord wills.

In his last prayer for his disciples, Jesus prayed that we here would be unified. He prayed that other people would come to know him and come into relationship with God because of what he gave to them. This is the proclamation that we have been given. For this we have been called to become prophets.