Jesus didn’t found a religion.   Jesus didn’t found a church.   What Jesus did – and still does today – is call men and women to follow him, to be his disciples.  These people were – and so we are - to share in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God, not as something that would eventually arrive, if only everyone started to behave themselves properly, but as immediately present, all around us.   Of course we believe that as the years passed God’s Holy Spirit inspired the first generations of followers to create an institution to embody and carry out Jesus’ teaching and example;  and indeed that the Holy Spirit continues to inspire us today to develop the shape and structure of the church, for God’s revelation is never static, once-and-for-all:  there are always new and fresh insights to grasp, new challenges to face.

I’m thinking this autumn about the primacy of people over the institution – disciples come before the church – because, in one crucial sense, we glimpse the love of God through the love of our neighbour, through those around us. The Body of Christ in this place, our tripartite parish of St Mary Abbots, Christ Church and St Philip, is composed of individuals, each with our particular gifts and abilities, our unique blend of goodness and challenge.   Recently we have known far too many deaths, the loss of those who have made crucial contributions to our life together here – Ethne Rudd, David Griffiths – and others more privately mourned.   Their passing diminishes us all, because our common life is made up of the contribution each one of us makes, our mutual witness to the presence and love of God here in Kensington is the aggregate, as it were, of what we all together bring.   We do not work out our salvation in solitary isolation.   

But not all is loss.   We also celebrate a very new ministry – one never before realised at St Mary Abbots – as we recall the joy of Rachel’s Ordination and her first Eucharist, StMA’s pioneer woman priest.   It is a particular delight for me to welcome her as a priestly colleague, and I know how much her personal ministry means to so many of you.   We have also announced with great pleasure the arrival of our new Associate Vicar (we’ll mainly think of him as our Curate, I suspect) the Revd Gareth Wardell.   He has served his Title at Selby Abbey in Yorkshire and we look forward to all that we will do with and for us in the months and years ahead.   We greatly look forward to coming to know him and value him as friend, pastor, priest and neighbour.

It’s not just new clergy.   Autumn is the season when the greatest number of new people either join or return to the church – and we have all seen examples of this in all three churches.    The Body of Christ on earth is never static, but dynamic, developing, growing new faces come, people take on new ministries, dearly-loved faces move from our sight to the greater light of heaven.  Thanks be to God, unchanging yet ever new.