London Challenge Service |
Blessed are all those who wait for him. You shall weep no more. Your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, " This is the way, walk in it. "
St Paul's is ringed by building sites. You can't have missed them. Actually looking around there is a building site inside as well. The Dean has had misery for two years and now it is our turn in the Old Deanery. They are tearing the guts out of the building opposite. Drilling through concrete in the demolition phase is deafening us and covering us with dirt. This is the experience of many Londoners.
Our life together as citizens also seems to be in the demolition phase. The institutions which hold us together, Parliament, the Churches, the Law, the Royal Family all seem to be subject to daily drilling. But when do the builders come on for the next more positive phase?
There is a wonderful self righteousness about the demolition experts who seem to be in tune with the spirit of the times. We are being taught to regard ourselves first and foremost not as citizens with responsibilities for the common good but as critical consumers. Good news for consumers is the removal of any restraint on individual consumer choice whether in goods or in morals. This is reinforced by an inadequate idea of what freedom is. We tend to think that freedom is essentially freedom from any constraint whereas that is only part of the truth. Real freedom as taught by Jesus Christ is not freedom from but freedom for relating to God and one another.
But blessed are all that wait for him. There is no cause for despair in the period of demolition although there is no cause to be complacent either. This is God's world and if we try to live editing him out of his world the result is breakdown; demolition until the misery of broken relationships and the sterility of life with lots of things but without lots of point, causes us to hear and attend to the voice behind us saying, " This is the way, walk in it. "
Prayer is how we discern what is happening beneath and beyond all the noise of the passing moment. Prayer opens us to the energy of the Spirit who brings us hope and anticipations of a different way so powerful that our present is flooded with light. Prayer unites us with God in Christ through the Spirit and makes us as St Peter says " partakers of the divine nature ".
We come together on St Andrew's Day with demolition going on all around but with much reason to hope and cause to praise God. The London Challenge is the Challenge given to us by Jesus Christ in the life of this great city to be, together, expressions of the love of God in Jesus Christ for all the citizens of London. This is not an add-on initiative but an add-up exercise so that we can see our community at work not only in our local area but serving Christ at every level, in every structure, in every part of this world city. If we get used to thinking of ourselves as a church united in service of Jesus Christ then we shall discover fresh energy for hope and building in the period of demolition that still has some way to run.
T.S. Eliot, poet and churchwarden of St Stephen Gloucester Road wrote, " The Church must be forever building, for it is forever decaying within and attacked from without;
For this is the law of life; and you must remember that while there is time of prosperity
The people will neglect the Temple, and in time of adversity they will decry it. "
I hope that it helps you as much as it helps me to tell the tale of two churches and to anticipate what our church might be like in 2030. To anticipate that time sufficiently clearly so that we have boldness to build in the present while the demolition proceeds all around us.
So to 2030 and the first Church of Fragmented Fellowships.
Anglicans have not disappeared in the London of 2030. There are a number of well attended churches in the more prosperous parts of the capital.
The growing tide of crime and social fragmentation, the breakdown of relationships in neighbourhoods and the marginalising of marriage and the family is noted and condemned in these Anglican fellowships. There is however genuine bewilderment as to how to break out of the economic and cultural ghetto that Anglicans seem to inhabit to bring the Christian message to London as a whole.
There is some regret that Anglicans did not appreciate and follow the example set by the Muslims in Tower Hamlets, as long ago as the beginning of the century, in organising themselves to represent the whole community at the various levels of public life. Opportunities of being present at every level have undoubtedly been squandered.
There is also some criticism of previous generations that they did not do more to reach out to the newer communities of London citizens especially after 2001 when Anglo-Saxons themselves became a minority in Greater London. Still there is gratitude that the Christian standard is still being held aloft by the Afro-London Christian Alliance and the Chinese Community Church.
There is much talk of reaching the young and there are some clubbable young people in the fellowships. But the disappearance of University Chaplains for financial reasons and the loss of opportunities for other kinds of campus Christian work which followed the growing political correctness of University Authorities, causes regret and anxiety about how the church is to engage with the hundreds of thousands of students in London.
The loss of the church school network in 2020 when voluntary aided schools were merged with all the rest is widely seen as a decisive point in the dis-engagement of church and society.
There is a disposition to blame a failure of leadership for this state of affairs but having failed to simplify its structures or negotiate a more equitable agreement with public authority over buildings, the few remaining non parochial church office holders spend all their time on committee work and justifying their existence to increasingly irate paymasters.
Fortunately the media attacks on the Church have abated. The Church is now really not significant enough to notice except when some Vicar does something eccentric.
The fellowships of course belong to communications networks according to their taste. Here they can speak words of fire among consenting adults. They associate only with the like minded and this diminishes painful challenges but at the price of creativity and the growth which comes from conversation with the other minded.
London is a mean place in 2030. The fellowships feel impotent and resent their loss of influence but console themselves with the feeling that there is a great future in the nostalgia cult.
Here is another glimpse of a possible future.
Bishop Cho has called a great assembly for prayer and celebration in the Cathedral. Leaders are there from many diverse kinds of churches. There are parish priests from those parts of London where a locality based church life continues to be relevant but there are also men and women from the various network churches, from the peace and meditation centres, from the Christian schools and the befriending projects. There are student groups with their chaplains, the deaf choir and a huge orchestra. More would have been there but the fire regulations put a ceiling on attendance. Not all are members of the Church of England because the Church has welcomed and worked with Christians of many traditions in the difficulties of past years.
The church has experienced a very turbulent time and a struggle to develop its identity as the body of Christ in a hostile environment. The godless global project of growth without limit with no end in view beyond the process itself continues and so does the official endorsement of an idea of freedom from all constraint on consumer choice in goods or morals. The result however has been social disintegration to a frightening extent.
In these circumstances, the church's witness to faithful relationships in marriage, family and friendship has impressed many people who have discovered the transforming energy that comes with life in Christ. The priority given to prayer also means that people who would describe themselves as seekers see the church as a spiritually credible place, in which to find inspiration and help.
One of the obvious strengths of the Church in a very compartmentalised city where the rich live behind razor wire and security guards is that it bridges all social divisions. When the Church in London lost its endowments in the early part of the century and the historic asset base contracted, the decision was taken to respond in a fresh way to the challenge of home mission and to strengthen the church's presence in what were then [although not now] Britain?s poorest boroughs.
The Church has faced many trials and in 2020 a real attempt to secularise the church schools. A united church with many allies from other faith communities defeated the plan. It was a campaign which brought together thousands of parents and young people throughout the capital who valued the work being done in schools which had recovered their Christian confidence.
Christian leaders have been regularly vilified in the media as mindless bigots or simpletons but such is the level of trust within the Church, that Christians do not believe everything they read in the tabloids, support one another and carry on un-deflected.
There is a grudging respect for Bishop Cho and his Church and President Blair and the London Government know that if they want to make an impact on some of the most intractable problems in the capital, Christians are an indispensable element in any solution.
That is a picture of the Communicating Church, communicating with God in Christ, communicating with the Spirit of Christ in one another, communicating with all our neighbours in the Spirit of Christ's compassion.
I have not presented any apocalyptic picture. One thing is certain and that is God will surprise us in the future. There are however obviously two ways that we can take. One is towards a Church of Fragmented Fellowships on the edge of being serviceable either to God in his purpose or to humanity in its distress. The other way is towards a Communicating Church, faithful to a God who has communicated himself in Jesus Christ and a sign of hope to a generation in confusion. The decisions we take now will shape the church in 2030. We all have a vital role in helping the communities from which we come, to re-imagine with prayer and by immersion in the scriptures the church as it could be in the power of the Spirit.
Eliot again says, " Of all that was done in the past, you eat the fruit either rotten or ripe. And the Church must be forever building, and always decaying and always being restored. " For " where there is no Temple there shall be no homes, Though you have shelters and institutions, When the Stranger says, What is the meaning of this city? What will you answer? "
With the help of God we can build together. To God in Christ be the glory now and forever. Amen.
