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. 

Show me the data

A sermon preached by Revd Dr Keith Suckling SOSc to the Society of Ordained Scientists at their Annual Gathering and Retreat at Scargill House, July 2013.

I had a colleague based in the USA who ran a department similar to mine. I would visit him every so often and I was always amused to read the slogan over the door of his office which proclaimed ‘show me the data’. He wanted to slow down the natural enthusiasm of his colleagues who would come to him with exciting and significant conclusions (as they thought), very often the ones they wanted, but his prime question was - do the data support the conclusion?

I think we would all agree that we should look at the data first, but this obvious and rigorous approach is not practiced as widely as it should be. It is easy to jump to conclusions before absorbing the data, even being selective with the data themselves, neglecting sources of error or ignoring ‘unhelpful’ statistics. Often the conclusions end up reflecting our own preconceptions and prejudices. That is serious enough just for one dataset from one experiment but if we want to construct a wider description, theory, model or narrative, it is important that the data hold together and provide a coherent picture.

So when we come to try to provide a basis for a coherent world view, in our case a theistic one, it is particularly important that we are able to make clear what the data are before applying the conclusion. In our case as ordained scientists we have a conclusion that is hard to appreciate and understand without reference to the basic data, and of course others may choose to interpret the same data in different ways. What data do we have available? Let’s look at some of it.

Over the last couple of days, Ruth has provided us with a fascinating and inspiring overview of that sense of wonder and awe which unites science with a sense of the divine. The data are indisputable. They are the shared experiences of us all. These natural experiences we all have directly from nature and from life provide an agreed starting point from which we can begin to develop our interpretation.

But in our worldview we have sources of data which take us further, beyond the observation of the natural. Taking the lead from Ruth’s synopsis, our readings this morning illustrate how scripture enriches our sense of wonder. Curiously, beauty in the wide sense we understand it now does not seem to be a major strand in the Bible. The sense of awe or even fear is much stronger, but hidden away in the book of Wisdom (Wisdom 13.1-9), we find the broad sense of beauty being referred and related directly to God, almost as a correction to the more fearful interpretation. It is curious that the more contemporary romantic-derived sense of the beauty of nature coincides historically with the beginnings of the historical-critical approach to scripture.

There is always a great sense of beauty, wonder and peace when we read the passage from Revelation (Revelation 21.1-4). For many it is one of the most comforting and beautiful in all scripture. Coming after the chaos of the last battles it offers us a sense of peace, beauty, comfort, wonder, care and love all at once. It reaffirms the goodness of creation with which the Bible begins.

Ruth talked about Jesus’ parables being an example of creativity, the mark of a good teacher. Here (Matthew 13.44-50) we see a number of very concise examples with different images to illustrate the same thing. At least one image, the pearl of great price, is intrinsically beautiful as well as valuable. The robustness of the parables to telling in many different ways emphasises the power of the images and of imagination.

Much of what we have shared over the past couple of days relates to experiences that everyone has access to, so these are excellent data for us to build on. But I’d like to add one further element to the dataset which we partially referred to in our discussion yesterday when we talked about presenting science and religion in the church community and wider. The further element in the data is ourselves and our Society. It is an inspiring thought for us that for many people we are part of the data, part of the evidence. People say when they hear about SOSc that they did not realise such a thing was possible. It means that those who have divided their minds so that science and religion are kept safely apart may now find themselves able to be conceptually integrated people. Then they can’t stop telling others about us.

Let me tell you a story of how this works. We have friends in the North East of Scotland and on one visit I was introduced to a very charming family. The father was a very experienced teacher with a strong Christian faith. He was curious but wary about my position as an ordained scientist. I can’t say anything more about his views because we did not discuss it. I think he was, like many people who hear about us, impressed that we exist but cautious about the potential challenge to his position. So we had a delightful visit but did not discuss any theology.

Quite recently a friend of the teacher was diagnosed with terminal cancer. The friend had a technological career but no background of faith and was clearly desperately trying to find a meaning that gave his condition a context he could accept. Our teacher friend thought of us and asked if he could have a copy of the SOSc Anniversary Collection book for his friend. He had seen the book on one of our visits. I posted one to him right away.

I don’t know how the story has progressed, but I am moved and impressed that someone who has a theological position that we probably would not agree with has been sufficiently struck by our existence to be willing to offer our perspective to help in a case of deep pastoral need. This is perhaps the strongest example I have come across, but I know of many similar situations where just our existence has been significant point. No detailed debate was necessary.

This is why I think we need to be as aggressive as we can in making people aware that we exist. I don’t mean going out recruiting, though we do need to keep that going. I mean simply saying clearly ‘here we are’. We know we don’t have a final and definitive model based on all the data that we have access to. We don’t all express the model in the same way. Some of us, including me, would want to say that the limitations of our language and intellect prevent us from getting a anywhere beyond a deep sense of longing. Yet that too is coherent with scripture and so can be part of the overall story.

As we drive away this afternoon there will be many things we will be thinking about from what we have shared together, and no doubt we will share them with others when we get home. I hope it is not too fanciful for us also to amuse ourselves with this thought: we are the data. We as individual people and as a Society support the model. When we show the data, which is ourselves, to others we hope and pray that they will come to the right conclusion.