It is always an honour to share with God's people whatever the circumstances, but there is a great difference when this comes as a once off, rather than in the week by week teaching of a regular pastor. Perhaps the greatest difficulty is to know what to say, and the greatest temptation for the preacher is to preach too long, because you try to say everything in the one hit, because well you wont be back for some time. I hope that I can avoid this temptation.

As an Anglican, we work to a scheduled pattern of readings and themes that covers the Bible in three years, and the process of writing a sermon begins with a prayerful consideration of what is set. For a day like this, I have had to begin in another place. Given that I have almost free reign as to what I could say today, I have perhaps spent more time in asking God, about what it is that he wants said at this time, than working from the text of Scripture and bringing a message from it to the hearers.

Over this period of preparation, I have felt that we should take some time to explore the basics, because there is often a temptation when preaching in these circumstances to assume them, yet from time to time God wants us to think about the first principles.

For many of you who have had an extended faith journey, consider this a period of revision. And for people, for whom faith is a new exploration, let us nail it down in simplicity.

Many of you only know who I am and not much about my history. I am a minister in the Anglican church partially because I was raised an Anglican, but principally because of its form which ministers to areas and not congregations. It means that within my parish boundary, I minister to all who call themselves Anglican, indeed to all who wish to have ministry. If you ask, and you live in my area, then my commission is that I have a responsibility to respond. In myself I recognise that I am a country parson and the Anglican system is the best placed to enable me to fulfil this ministry.

The faith journey of Louise and I has taken us through many different places including a couple of years in West Africa and we have spent time doing different things with the different churches in Launceston. In essence, we have seen a lot of the church in different places and different circumstances and the one observation that I could make is that no matter what, the simplicity of the Christian faith is continually being complicated by the impositions of human thoughts and action. We somehow lose the plot, when we impose human rules to God's message. Have you ever taken time to think what it is that divides Christians? It is man made rules and allegiances.

I find that the expression of faith in a Community Church - not in name but in fact - a church in a community (a definable group of people) has the essence of the vision of God for what the church should be. And it is our tendency to subdivide the faith into little lots that is the work of the devil.

We are taught to define another's faith (or Christian status) by the distance they are from our own position or understanding or by what rights or rules they have been through. It seems that we develop the thinking that Christians can only be perfect in order to claim that name, although the essence of perfection is principally that they are like me - in experience or belief.

Or the words from our reading, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved."

These are not conditional but relational.

One of the things that we did while we studied in Africa was that we spent some time looking at other faith systems. Of particular interest was the West African Traditional religion. Perhaps this is so because of my interest in the rural church, but the feeling was that through various rites and activities, the gods would be pacified and would then respond. At the beginning of the planting, you would make sacrifice to Asase Ya (the earth Goddess) and she would respond with a bountiful harvest.

This is the framework of most of religion - we act, and the god or gods reacts. But the message of Christianity is quite different. We can all quote (I hope) John 3:16-17 - "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. "Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. And Easter is the celebration of the fulfilment of this promise. In Christianity - God has acted and we react. God is the initiator and we respond and our response is about our relationship to God.

Can faith be more simple than that?

Christians are those who have responded to God's action. Who, as Paul puts it, "One believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved."

Perfection - preparation for heaven - is the on-going work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of others. So at any time and in any church it is a bit like the Midland Highway - there will be road-works in progress as God brings first one and then the other to a higher level. For some, the imperfections are obvious but in others they will be hidden from all but the closest scrutiny - But I can state with assurance that in each of us, you and I, God has more work to do.

So do not caught up in the game that divides the church- comparing one persons faith to another, but begin with the simple rule that all who call on the Lord are on the journey to heaven. Occasionally, God will bring us up against someone whose expression of faith is radically different to our own, and we must take care that we neither reject them because they are different, or take for ourselves a superior position but rather to love them and learn from them and let them learn from you.

Paul left us, in the simplicity of the Galatians reading a challenge: By contrast, he says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

These are not a list of criteria by which to judge another, but a checklist for our own lives. The measure of these things in ourselves: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; is the measure of our closeness to the perfection that God is calling us to. This is for self-assessment, and our calling together as a church is to encourage one another to reach these goals.

Here then, is a wonderful opportunity to gather as the community of Christians within the community and to learn from each other and to learn to love each other (even the imperfections) as together we journey to the perfection that God calls us to.

Let us recommit ourselves to our relationship with God and the simplicity of faith that this brings and together build one another up on our faith journey.