Institution of Nicky Gumbel |
In his Sunday sermons Nicky has been outlining his vision for the church using the letters which make up the word LIGHT. If you add B for bishop to light you get ….well you know what you get but I come here in a very different spirit full of thanksgiving and full of confidence in God.
Full of thanksgiving for what has been achieved in this place. I do not like speaking well of people behind their backs but the partnership between you and Sandy has by the grace of God produced a rich harvest. Nicky used T to stand for “together”. It is one of the great virtues of the HTB family that you have high standards and a firm faith but you can see and serve Jesus Christ in people who are not like you.
One of the many virtues of London and the Church of England is that we stand in a place from which we can move in all directions and where we can communicate with the whole world. Leaders of black churches feel at home here and we can rejoice in their missionary zeal. Metropolitan Philaret of Byelorus feels welcome here as he told me and he realised that heart to heart communication in the spirit was possible here despite all the differences of culture.
The task for our generation of Christians in this city is to re-connect with the people of London for the sake of God and to re-connect with God for the sake of the people of London; if we connect with London, this world in a city, we shall find ourselves as you have found in the growth of Alpha being used by God to connect with the whole world.
We are here tonight full of confidence in God.
As the prophet Isaiah says “instead of mourning we are anointed with the oil of joy”. I shall be anointing Nicky for his new task as a living symbol of the joy which is the gift of God who clothes us with the garment of praise in place of the spirit of heaviness.
There are prophets of gloom in plenty. One report last week entitled “The Future of the Church” calculates on the basis of present trends that church attendance will decline by two thirds over the next three decades and that the church is “rapidly moving towards virtual wipe out”.
Now I do not conceive it to be my duty to behave like some kind of ecclesiastical Butlin’s [or even Pontin’s] redcoat going around assaulting people with breeziness and claiming that it is all marvellous and crying “crisis, what crisis?” Of course I realise that God for many people has been relegated to the suburbs of their pleasure; that much worship is dreary and spineless; that the Church, the Christian community seems to have so little impact on social, cultural and political life that it is hardly necessary to debate God’s existence since his absence is so evident.
Yet the absence of God is the way in which he re-engages our attention. Human beings living without the true and living God, un-rooted in the field in which our lives unfold, un-connected to our anchor, people adrift are prey to boredom, despondency, to addictions, to the mournfulness and the spirit of heaviness the prophet describes. Sometimes it is even worse and the place which God should occupy in our lives is occupied instead with some idol, some projection of ours, some false god who is manufactured out of our rage and lust for power. Soon after the dreadful events of July 7th a friend said to me, “these suicide bombers have fire in their minds but we what have we got?”
The prophet Isaiah again knew the hiddeness of the true and living God. In LXIV 7 the prophet cries out – There is none that calleth upon thy name, that stirreth up himself to take hold of thee; for thou hast hid thy face from us. But VIII 17 - I will wait upon the Lord that hideth his face from the house of Jacob and I will look for him. Behold I and the children whom the Lord hath given me are for signs and wonders in Israel from the Lord of hosts which dwelleth in Mount Sion.
The hidden God is making himself felt in the distress of those who find themselves not so much living as just killing time. But the God who anoints with the oil of joy and gives us the garments of praise is at work in this church and I believe has called this new partnership into being because although much that is familiar and lovely may be passing away, the door stands open and what we can see through that door is, as he said to his friends, - “the harvest truly is great but the labourers are few.”
We need more ambassadors for Jesus Christ and some of them must be young. We need ambassadors with the fire of love in their hearts and minds, love for our neighbours in whom we see and serve Christ himself, ambassadors who know the art of communicating the truth of Jesus Christ by building his body in a way that is attractive and healing. Jesus spoke of these things in one breath we are to “heal the sick” into whatsoever city we enter and say unto them, “the Kingdom of God has come nigh unto you”.
A healthy Christian community studies and discerns the signs of the times, prays the kingdom into the present, touches and seeks to heal those who are adrift and distressed and in ministering to them discovers the need for deeper prayer and understanding. A church re-members rather than dismembers Jesus by immersing itself in his story with prayer and praise while laying itself open to his presence day after day, more and more by following his way of love. This way leads out of the comfort zone in the spirit which called Abraham to leave his household gods and journey beyond the horizon of his knowledge to the land of promise.
You have re-engaged as a community through work like that done by the Besom Project and have discovered in the process the need for deeper prayer and profounder understanding. I believe that you are following an authentic vision in complementing your existing work with a new emphasis on education, calling and forming and training new labourers for the harvest. The plans for St Paul’s Onslow Square are ambitious but vital to the capacity of the church to hold together healing the sick and proclaiming the kingdom and to embody the good news so that it is really believable. As the prophet says we have been anointed with the oil of joy and given the garment of praise that “the Lord might be glorified”. In the verse after our first lesson the prophet goes on to say “And they shall repair the waste cities, the desolations of many generations.”
We are engaged in a life and death struggle for the soul of this world in a city. I have no doubt that if we are given the grace this evening to offer ourselves body and soul to be an ambassador for Christ as part of this community which is already a great sign of hope; if we are given the singleness of heart to give ourselves to the service of his love then we shall see great things come to pass.
Later in the chapter from St Luke from which our gospel reading was drawn Jesus “rejoiced in spirit and said I thank thee O Father that thou hast hidden these things from the wise and prudent [and we might add the statisticians] and hast revealed them unto babes” and turning to his friends he said, “Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see for I tell you that many prophets and kings have desired to see those things which ye see and have not seen them and to hear the things that ye hear but have not heard them.”
