Perspectives of St John's 3: Going Deeper into God

 The series continued with probably the most challenging questions. We can look from a perspective of outside the church and look around inside, but overall it comes down to each one of us. We have to look around to see where we stand and consider how we respond to the challenge of 'Going Deeper into God'.

‘I rather think things are going to get more personally challenging,’ she said as we began another conversation. ‘You’ve talked about what people outside the church might think, and given some thoughts about how we operate as a church community at St John’s, but I can’t help thinking that it all comes down to each one of us as an individual.’ I smiled gently. ‘You’re not wrong. What happens to us as a church community directly depends on our own individual situation. Put precisely it depends on our relationship with God. That can sound a bit profound, but before we get too concerned about it we need to remember that we are talking about good news, about how things happen as we get closer to God and nothing could be better than that.’ ‘But we’re not all perfect, we’re not nuns or monks or priests or whatever.’ ‘Quite right, we are all different. The point is not getting marks for where we are right now, but that we are part of a process of growth. It’s what our bishops are calling Going deeper into God. When I was working for SB and GSK we had something similar called continuous improvement. It worked in the same way. It’s good to be where you are and to recognise the good things that have been done, but there is always more that can follow and build on what has already happened.’

‘Still, it can seem a bit depressing,’ she said, frowning a little, ‘that means we never make it.’ ‘I think we have to look at it rather differently,’ I replied, being quite sympathetic to this point of view. ‘As I said, the spiritual life is not about passing exams, reaching a standard, collecting badges as in the Brownies, or any kind of qualification. Scripture is quite clear about this. It’s there in the parables (think of the hired workers in the vineyard) and Paul knows about it too when he talks about all the different gifts and roles we are given. So it’s none of these. It’s about commitment and growing in holiness, going deeper into God in fact. None of us will reach the holiness of God in our lifetime. Only Jesus did that.’

‘Ok, so how do we grow in holiness? It’s not easy being a Christian and living a normal life as well.’ I agreed with the basic point and indeed as we’ve noted frequently being a Christian is not normal now with respect to most of the population. Once again, we need to recognise and support each other bearing in mind that for us at least living as a Christian is normal. It is our default setting. So I began to develop the idea. But first I said, ‘Now we come to the challenging bit. At least that’s what I think whenever I try it myself. Shall we go ahead?’ A possibly tentative nod gave approval.

‘Remember we are talking about a continuing process. Things change. The way we may think about things next year may well be different from the way we think about them now. I’m sure you’ll agree that your spiritual perspectives (we might call them) are different from ten years ago?’ ‘I don’t know. I’d have to think about that,’ she said, looking a bit puzzled. ‘Well, that’s would be a good place to start. See what you think. What I’m going to say now takes a bit of work. It requires thinking about some of our deeper background thoughts and experiences. I’m afraid it’s not really what people want to hear in a sermon. I have tried it a few times before. Left the whole congregation silent!’ ‘That’s just a preacher’s trick to amuse them and get them interested!’ she replied, and I had to agree that that was indeed the case.

‘Let’s have a go. The first thing to say is that everything must be done in prayer and be supported by prayer. As we go on we need time for listening to what God may be saying, or making us aware of, or drawing our attention to through the Holy Spirit. And we can’t do everything at once. Sometimes a particular occurrence will encourage us to think about where we stand. For example, we may have surprised ourselves by being strongly irritated by a particular turn of events or by a certain person. There may be good reasons for that, but one useful reaction is to look at the events prayerfully. It’s quite possible that there is an opportunity here to go deeper into God, to grow spiritually. I think it happens all the time.’

I could see that she was thinking about whether she had any recent experiences like this, so I said, ‘we don’t need to talk about an example now, but it’s good to do it at some time if you want. Let’s look at a more general process which anyone can try at any time, although I’ve often recommended something like it in Lent. It may sound rather dramatic but it’s worth looking at in this way. Perhaps without realising it we all have what we can call a Rule (capital R), or perhaps a Pattern. I don’t mean something rigid and monastic. What I mean is the way we have decided to live our lives as Christians, the way we do it at present.’ ‘I’ve never thought about it like that,’ she said, ‘what would you include in a Rule?’ (again with a capital R). ‘I’d firstly look at what you do now. Do you pray?’ She nodded. ‘That’s great. So we can think in more detail about it. For example, when, and how often? What do you pray about? Do you allow some time in silence to allow the Holy Spirit to direct your thoughts? Do you tell God exactly how you are feeling about things, what your concerns are, what you are pleased and happy about, what you think you could have done better …’ She interrupted, ‘Come on, I can’t do that all at once.’ ‘Quite right,’ I agreed, ‘but you can check out your current pattern of prayer and see if there are ways in which you might develop it.’ She seemed to agree, but also looked a bit uncertain. ‘Yes, I know it is a challenge. The more we are prepared to offer things to God in prayer, the more we are likely to come across things that need attention, shall we say. But, as I said before, this may seem paradoxical, but it is a good thing. It means we are going deeper into God. And if we decide to go that way we know the Holy Spirit will support our decision.’

‘But let’s move on. Prayer is very important, but there are a couple of further elements we could add. What do you think they might be?’ ‘Reading the Bible?’ she offered. ‘That’s right. Reading the Bible and other spiritual writings (there are so many) are also important. Scripture provides a window for us onto so many important things. It’s good to have our own pattern of reading scripture as well as following the sequences we follow in our Sunday worship.’ ‘Ah, and that’s the other one,’ she said, looking pleased. ‘The other main activity is worship.’ ‘Yes indeed,’ I said. ‘And worship can be a great delight because we celebrate together. This brings us back full circle to where we were in our last conversation. Remember that coming together in worship has lots of give and take. We receive and give support to each other and we all receive support from God.’

Then just to summarise I said, ‘So if we were doing a review of the kind I suggested, developing a Rule or Pattern of our Christian life, we would want to include at least these three components – prayer, reading scripture and worship. We’d need to think about what we do under each heading and we’d need to think about how often and when, just as I’d asked about prayer a moment ago. Then, and this would be listening part of the prayer, we’d need to discern whether we are being led to a development in any of these areas. A different pattern of prayer, timing and frequency? A plan of scripture reading? Or a change in coming for worship? – if our pattern is to come once a month, how about one more time a month, on Sunday or on another day when we have a service? Whatever we decide, these could become part of our Rule, which we would decide to follow for the time being. Then in six months or a year we could review it and make changes where it seems appropriate.’

At this point I thought I could not really add anything more because each of us has to make the next steps ourselves. The important thing is that we do continue to move forward. We may feel we don’t have the time. But it’s my experience that when we feel called to make a move and offer it to God, and if it’s the right thing to do, we will be supported, the time will be there and we will indeed find ourselves going deeper into God. And for a Christian there is nothing better than that.

Perspectives of St John's 2: Inside the church

 

  

The second of the series of October sermons about St John's Church, its community, the challenges it faces, both for the community and for individuals. Here we begin to think about what happens in the church and what it means to St John's people and what a visitor might make of it.

 

 ‘You’re going to ask me the questions I can’t answer,’ I said, to start the ball rolling. ‘It’s much easier for people to criticise from the outside than for us to keep going on the inside.’ That’s how the discussion got going following up my earlier conversation with another friend and former colleague who had been gently challenging about the church in general and St John’s as part of it. ‘So,’ she continued, ‘what do you think about the situation for St John’s congregation at present?’ How about that for a first ball fast yorker! ‘I’m glad we are just having a conversation,’ I replied, ‘I’ll probably say things I wouldn’t dare to say in a sermon. You know, it’s not what I think that is the important question. It’s what everyone together thinks. We should look around and see what is going on. For example, we have a very active and dedicated core membership. It is as strong as anywhere and nothing would happen without them. Looking more widely, I know that it can be depressing when we see relatively few people in a large church, but if we think about that all the time we will just freeze. We have to make sure we are focussing on our core activity.’

‘What do you think the core is?’ she asked. I thought of replying, ‘what do you think?’, but I thought that would be too flippant, so I left a few moments to allow the question to mature in the mind and then offered an answer. ‘When you talk to people outside the church, as we did last week, they will often say that it is about being good and following rules. Many people in the church fear that may be the case too. But here we are clear that we do not start there. What distinguishes the church from everyone else? Anyone can try to be good and kind and helpful if they want. The difference of course is that we do it in a different context, the one offered by God through Jesus Christ. That’s the story we tell to each other every week. St John’s is a place of prayer and worship, as it has been for centuries, and everything we do flows from that.’

‘But that’s just the thing people outside the church don’t understand,’ she said, insightfully picking up the theme of my previous conversation. ‘It makes no sense to them.’ ‘I agree,’ I replied. ‘Church going these days is counter cultural. And we spend a lot of time working out for ourselves how everything fits together – that’s part of our prayer – and we don’t expect to find complete solutions either. But even though people want that certainty, it’s not the point. We are simply called to go deeper into God, as Bishop Alan would have us call it, and we are called to do it together.’

‘So you think church is a community thing?’ ‘Church has always been a community thing. It began with people coming together with a new way to live their lives, and, passing over centuries of history, that’s what it has returned to now, much more like the early years of the church than recent centuries. We find ourselves in a minority which is not understood, so we really do depend on each other. This is very important. Whenever we come to church we are saying yes to God and to everyone with us. We support each other just by being here. And it’s a good thing to do, as scripture confirms in the Psalms:

I was glad when they said to me, let us go into the house of the Lord.

And: One thing I have asked of the Lord, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life; to behold the beauty of the Lord and to seek him in his temple.’

‘That’s what we do here. Whatever else happens, prayer and worship, sustained by this community must continue. We, the community will in turn be sustained by it. It’s the energy source for everything we do.’

‘It sounds a bit simple and not very worked out,’ she commented. I partly agreed. ‘I don’t think we get given a detailed work schedule planned months into the future. It can seem trivial to say, but the way ahead is not always clear. It requires patience and faith to discern where we are being led and a sort of stubborn persistence as we keep going. The life of faith individually and as a community is like that. Much of the time we don’t see more than a step or two forward, but that’s all right if we continue our life together in the Spirit.’

‘Do you really think it makes a difference here at St John’s?’ she asked, perhaps sceptically but also thoughtfully. ‘Certainly. You can’t always put your finger on what it is, but very often when you go into a holy place you know it, you can feel it. That’s what St John’s can be like. Any visitor coming in from Monks Rise should be struck by it.’

‘I think I know what you mean,’ she nodded gently in agreement, ‘but St John’s is rather hidden. Not many people find their way in.’ ‘I think that will change,’ I replied, ‘as we increase the number of events here people will be coming from every local corner. And when they walk in they will say, as many do “what a beautiful place”, and then they might just begin to ask themselves why, what is it that is beautiful and peaceful about it, and they will see some hints around them. They may want to light a candle. Children often get their parents to do that.’

‘I’d love them to be led to thinking something like this. It’s based on a meditation I found visiting an abbey church in Germany. I found it very moving so I’ve translated and edited it for St John’s. Imagine coming into the church, sitting down in one of the many quiet corners and reading and thinking through this:

Now I'm sitting here in this church.

It has become quiet as I have come in. Old and new things surround me. There is a lightness in the new and stillness in the old.

I've come in away from the main roads and routes of Welwyn Garden City. The church is hidden away where it has been for centuries, and for all that time people have come here to pray…

It is good to be able to rest here. I find myself thinking of where I have come from: of all of today's business, of my work, of my family.  Here in this church I can set everything down. Every burden and care I can leave behind. I know I am lifted up. I am able to rest. I am thankful that there are people here who look after this place of stillness.

Whether I am able to stay for a short or long time I sense that things are different. From a place like this I can gain a new perspective.

Here the old meets the new in a place of rest.

Father, I am on a journey. People share my journey with me, some who have already accompanied me just for a time and some who continue to travel with me. I think of them too in these quiet moments. I leave the church with a happy feeling. These few minutes in this quiet corner of Hertfordshire have helped me. May I continue to find these moments of peace and stillness which offer help, support and the opportunity of a new beginning.

Perspectives of St John's: 1. The view from Monks Rise.

This is a series of sermons from October 2013 looking at St John's Digswell from a number of viewpoints. The first is from Monks Rise, the road that runs by the church and presents a dialogue with a fictional friend who is an outsider to the church.

      ‘So’, said my friend, ‘are you still involved with that church near you?’

I hadn’t seen him for some time, so I knew he would have no idea at all how much I was involved. He looked surprised and rather incredulous when I told him I was Priest in Charge at St John’s. That provided a pause for thinking time. He wondered – should he pursue the topic or let it go for something else? And if he pursued it, should it be as a challenge or just for interest? Something spurred him on and he decided to challenge.

I was ready. I knew what some of the questions would be. Probably more about the church in general than St John’s – but that’s fair enough. The way the church is perceived from outside through the media doesn’t really help and the church seems to do its best to confirm the prejudices. He began, ‘How can you believe all that stuff? It does not make sense.’ ‘What stuff?’ I asked, just putting a little pressure back to see if he had anything specific in mind, or whether he really wanted to talk about it, or alternatively just wanted to undermine any discussion there and then. He decided to take up the challenge himself.  ‘Well, all of it really. I mean, these days you can’t believe in God and prayer and miracles and all of that sort of thing -’ and then came the expected assertion which played right into my hand, ‘– after all, science has explained or will explain everything.’ 

I had to be careful here. I can get a bit carried away with the subject, so I simply offered the view that science cannot explain everything, despite the claims of enthusiastic practitioners. Not all agree, but many believe that there are limits to knowledge of every kind. But in parallel I also admitted that theology and its presentation by the churches needs to be more modest in its claims too. The interaction between the Christian world view and the secular world view is dominated too much by fundamentalists on both sides. He stopped to ponder the implications as I finished by saying that Christians have to accept that they live with uncertainty.

What would he try next? – Ah yes, the issue on which the media love to attack the church, human sexuality. Of course this is a question which divides many in the church, so I explained that there are a number of questions like this on which committed members of the church hold different views. One of the sad things is the way in which the discussions are often conducted. We shoot ourselves in the foot here, and this was particularly clear in the way the debate on women bishops was conducted. It’s not surprising that people outside the church cannot understand why there should be anything to debate. I was ready to concede that in areas like this the church is too inward looking and many of us have found this to be very frustrating. I don’t think he had expected that, but why try to defend something that could have been done much better?

The conversation continued to what we can call the historical challenge. Religion is bad because it causes great evil. This is just a selective historical view. It’s true that many wars and atrocities have happened in the name of religion, but it’s also true that much good has come out of the church. Certainly most of the atrocities of the 20^th century, which are probably the greatest in history, have been carried out by explicitly atheistic regimes. It’s people who are the problem – because, we can say, of what theologians call the fall.

It was interesting that the conversation was focussing on issues for the church in general, but I suppose that was not surprising. After all, it’s these prejudices that we have to get past if we are going to interest others in the church. So he followed with yet another common attitude, ‘Although I don’t really understand any of it, I suppose it’s OK if it’s just something you do in private.’ Well this just won’t do! It’s impossible to separate life as a Christian with life in the world around us. Christians are involved and are motivated by their faith. Just as an example, the parishes of St Albans Diocese gave away £2m last year and nationally the Church of England provides 20 % of the total voluntary service in the community, which comes to around 23 million hours per month. Some parts of our society would collapse if religion were an exclusively private thing.

At this point I thought it was time for me to take a lead since by now I’d heard many, though not all, of the common challenges to the church. ‘Have you ever been to St John’s?’ I asked. ‘It’s a lovely church, a place of prayer and worship for centuries. You should come and have a look. We’re having more and more concerts and events in the church, so there are opportunities outside services if you don’t want to come to one. But why not come to a service? We’re not a large congregation, but we love to come together and be with God.’ I think the invitation was a bit blunt: it’s not easy to get the approach right at the time. Still, it put him on the spot as I looked inquiringly at him. And after a short pause he gave a very honest answer. ‘You know, I don’t think I need that sort of thing.’

This is the real point we have to contend with. All the rest can be seen as excuses. I was very sympathetic. It was indeed a very honest answer. The way things are now, many people don’t think they need God, or at the least need to spend time with him. ‘Perhaps he’s there in the background, but I don’t need to do anything about it, I’ve got too much to do,’ they say. Most of us are not philosophers. We don’t ask the big questions of existence. Most likely we avoid them if they come to mind. They are not compelling questions because if all is going well they usually do not seem to relate to what is happening to us now. This is the question of relevance, of obvious, compelling relevance. I went into a quick thinking pause myself.

Relevance is a word that has been widely used in church discussions, often in relation to worship. Make it relevant to people and it will be fixed. This is too simplistic. It’s not to do with styles of worship. There are different ways of playing football, but people decide to play football because they like football, not because of the style of the team or the facilities of the club. My friend had put his finger on it and I thought I should work up his ideas to tell the people at St John’s. People have to become aware that they need God. Maybe some coming into St John’s would sense that he was there waiting for them. That’s why we have to keep this holy place holy… for us now and for when people need it.

 
End of pause. I had realised that there was a lot coming out of this conversation that needed further thought. Can we as a church community help awareness of a need for God? To do that, maybe we need to develop that awareness more ourselves. Plenty for us to think about. As for our conversation, it was moving on in another direction. I was glad to have had the discussion. Even if you don’t agree with what someone is telling you, it can certainly help clear the mind and bring things into focus.