The in's and out's of Church

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Andrew’s Wickford:

For Easter 2017 the church I was at in the City of London, St Stephen Walbrook, we were involved in a two-part art work based on the Stations of the Cross and the Stations of the Resurrection. The first part of this project involved the artist Mark Dean in projecting filmed Stations of the Cross onto the central, circular Henry Moore altar at St Stephen Walbrook throughout the night on Easter Eve.

Mark Dean’s videos were not literal depictions of the Stations of the Cross, instead he appropriated a few frames of iconic film footage together with extracts of popular music and then slowed down, reversed, looped or otherwise altered these so that the images he selected were amplified through their repetition. In this way he brought images from outside church into church and made them central to the Easter Vigil by projecting them onto an altar which had been designed for people to gather as a community around the place where God can be found; the Eucharist, the central act of Christian worship, the re-enactment of Christ’s sacrifice.

In St Paul’s Cathedral for the second part of the project, the staging was inverted as the dancers performed in the central space under the dome, whilst Dean’s video was played on television monitors placed around the edge of this circular space. Five dancers emerged from the shadows around the edge of the stage and started to navigate the space, sometimes individually and sometimes in groups, to form tableaux which were visually reminiscent of the acts of protecting, comforting and carrying each other. The dancers regularly perforated the boundary, moving out beyond the stage and the audience, before returning to the centre and reconnecting in different configurations. As a result, the on-lookers found themselves within the action of these movements.

Among the themes that these projections and performances explored therefore were notions of being in and out with the crucifixion as an internal interior focus and the resurrection leading to an outward focus. Similar notions of in and out also inform Jesus’ teaching about the shepherd and the sheep (John 10. 1 - 10), which have traditionally been interpreted as being about the in’s and out’s of salvation meaning that the sheepfold has been seen as representing heaven. Being locked in to a sheepfold overnight seems a strange way of picturing heaven and so I want to explore the imagery of the sheepfold instead in terms of understandings of church.

One part of the role of the shepherd mentioned in Jesus’ teaching is to bring the sheep in to the sheepfold at the end of the day. Thieves and bandits are able to use the cover of night to attack the sheep if outside or not adequately protected in the fold. Jesus says that he is the gate which provides access to this safe space. Those who enter through Jesus are those who are legitimately in the sheepfold, whether sheep or shepherd.

This imagery pictures church as safe space in which rest, recuperation and healing can occur because we are sheltered for a time from the challenges and opportunities – the activity – of the daylight hours. Mark Dean’s decision to project his Passion films onto the central altar at Walbrook, the place of Communion, is in line with this teaching about church, as Christ’s Passion and the Eucharist which re-enacts that Passion is our source of renewal and restoration. Having said that, we also need to acknowledge that there are those for whom church has not been a safe space and hear those valid voices while seeking to build safe spaces in the churches of which we are part.

Gates, however, are two-way. They are entries and exits, because we do not experience fullness of life by being shut up in places of safety; if that is our only experience then we are in prison. The life that Jesus envisions here is one of protection during the darkness when thieves are at large combined with freedom to graze outside of the sheepfold in the light of day. Interestingly in Jesus’ teaching here, finding pasture, finding food, growing and developing, are all things that happen outside of the sheepfold. Jesus’ flock find safety in the fold but they find food outside the fold. This focus differs from the traditional way in which the in and out dimensions of church have been thought about in Ecclesiology, thinking about the nature and structure of church. The IN dimension of church has often been thought of as being about fellowship and community while the OUT dimension is generally seen as involving mission.

On this basis, the IN dimension of church is described as being about fellowship and building community. Jesus prayed that believers would be one. This was a prayer for more than unity; it was a prayer for deep fellowship like that between the Father and the Son – may they be one just as you are in me and I am in you (John 17.21). Believers are to invite each other into their lives. The first Christians modelled this as we heard in our New Testament reading: All who believed were together and had all things in common (Acts 2.44). Church at its best keeps this tradition alive. In the Eucharist, for example, we are reminded that we belong to one another by sharing a common meal.

The OUT dimension of church is then seen as being about mission in its broadest sense. This mission, summed up in the phrase 'kingdom of God', is about bringing wholeness to the entire creation. Its sweep is therefore breathtaking! The mission of the church is seen in this wide context. The church is not the kingdom of God and we must not reduce the horizons of God's mission to the horizons of God's church. But the church is called to share in God's mission.

Although this thinking about the IN and OUT dimensions of Church has validity, as we have already noted, it does not completely accord with Jesus’ teaching here. This is, in part, because the Church has sometimes made an unfortunate separation between time together in the fold and time out in the world. When this has happened, churches have tried to get Christians to spend as much time together in the fold as possible and have therefore focused primarily on church as the place when God is seen and heard.

Such thinking overlooks the fact that Jesus’ parables are stories of everyday life, often of working life. They are stories of the kingdom of God being seen and experienced and that happens most clearly in our everyday lives rather than in church. When we gather together in the fold, in church, we expect to hear from and experience God, so it is when we then scatter to our homes, workplaces and communities that the real test comes. Do we also encounter and feed on God in those places too; in our homes, workplaces and communities? If we do, then we are experiencing and revealing God in the reality of our lives and that is what actually forms a real and eloquent witness to the reality of God in our lives and world. That is why mission is part of the OUT dimension of church.

Then, like Mark Dean bringing images from outside the church into the church to inform our reflection on crucifixion and resurrection, we, too, can bring back stories of encountering the reality of God in the reality of our lives into our gathering together in church to encourage one another that God is to be found both in church and also in the world he has made.

That thought can also help us with another concern that is rightly raised when there is talk of being in and out in relation to church or salvation; that is an understandable and right concern for those who are or who think themselves to be on the outside. Despite the language of in and out, Jesus’ teaching here is inclusive. The sheepfolds he used as his illustrations were communal. Everyone in the village who had sheep brought their sheep to the communal fold overnight. That is why Jesus talks of other flocks and of the sheep recognising the voice of their shepherd. Metaphorically he is referring to the Jews as one folk and the Gentiles as another to say that in God all will ultimately form one flock. Additionally, as we have seen, the boundary separating those on the inside from those on the outside is only for the creation of a temporary safe space and is then breached as the flock go back into the wider world during daylight hours.

The job of the shepherd – the role that Jesus says he plays - is not to keep the flock cooped up together in the sheepfold but to lead them out to find pasture because the sheep are to experience life in all its fullness and find God in this fullness. We see an example of this happening in practice when we look at the reading from Acts 2. 42 - 47 that we heard earlier. There, the early disciples spent time together in their homes, sharing what they had with each other – possessions, money, food – and learning together from their shepherds, the apostles. But they also left the safety of their own gatherings and went out into the city to the Temple and met and taught there too. So, in their practice there was the same pattern of coming in and going out that we have found in Jesus’ teaching. There was also the fullness of life that Jesus spoke about – we can sense the energy, excitement and enthusiasm of these people as they responded to all that Jesus had done for them by talking about him and sharing what they had with others. They had really come alive, their lives had meaning and purpose, their joy was to share all that they had.

We need this same pattern within our lives too; times of joining together with other Christians and with those who teach and lead us and times of being out in the world, in our families, communities and workplaces. Both are essential to us as Christians. If we are just out in the world without the support of times together in the fold, we are likely to become lost like the sheep for which the shepherd had to search. If we just remain in the fold then we do not experience life in all its fullness and do not reveal the reality of God in the reality of our lives. When we leave the fold - the gathering of God’s people – we do not go out on our own, the good Shepherd, Jesus, leads us out and goes with us that we may experience life in all its fullness, finding God in the reality of our lives.

May we, like the dancers at St Paul’s, learn to navigate the spaces of church and world, coming together for protection and comfort then perforating the boundary and moving out, before returning to the centre and reconnecting in different configurations and, as a result, enabling others to find themselves caught up within the action of these movements.

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Strawbs - Is It Today, Lord?

The lost things at the centre and at the edge

Here's the sermon that I shared this morning at St Catherine’s Wickford:

“I’m not religious.” I wonder how many people you’ve encountered locally who use that phrase when they come into this building or learn that you go to church. Those that we encounter who use that phrase, “I’m not religious,” are among those who are on the edge of our churches. They might come to one of the groups that use our facilities or be a friend of someone who does come to our services, maybe your friend, or may just be someone in the wider community who is well disposed towards the church, but doesn’t actually attend regularly.

Jesus spent time – considerable time – with those on the edge. We learn at the beginning of today’s Gospel passage (Luke 15.1-10) that he was criticised by the Pharisees and the scribes – the religious leaders of his day, those who were at the centre of the religious community – for welcoming and eating with tax collectors and sinners. Notice the phrase that is used about this, “the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him.” That means they weren’t near originally – they were on the edge – but they were coming near because they wanted to hear what Jesus had to say.

The tax collectors and sinners were those who were excluded from either the life of the community or the worship life in Israel in Jesus’ day. The tax collectors were collaborators with the hated Roman invaders and often exploited the people in order to make money for themselves, while those labelled here as ‘the sinners’ were a mixed group of people excluded from worship either because of behaviour that was considered immoral, such as prostitution, or because of disease, that because it couldn’t be cured and might be contagious, was considered a threat to the community.

That’s the context for the two parables of Jesus that we’re thinking about this morning – the parable of the lost sheep and the parable of the lost coin. It’s a context that is relevant to us as we think about those who are on the edge of church in Wickford and Runwell.

Jesus was criticised by the religious leaders of his day for drawing those on the edge to him but, in response, he told a story about leaving those at the centre to go to the edge. In the story of the lost sheep, the shepherd leaves the 99 sheep that are with him in order to seek out and find the one sheep that is on the edge and lost from the flock.

Jesus told several parables about sheep and shepherds and, in another of those parables, he tells us about the sheepfold. The sheepfold was the enclosure in which the sheep were gathered at night so they were all together and safe in one place. The shepherd would lie down across the entrance to the sheepfold and sleep there in order that his body acted as a gate preventing the sheep from leaving and preventing others from getting in. When the shepherd leaves the 99 behind in order to search for the lost sheep, the sheepfold is where he would have left the 99. So, it was not that they had been abandoned and were free to roam wherever they liked, but the shepherd in the story does care so much about the sheep that got lost that he is prepared to leave those at the centre in order to find the one that is on the edge.

The religious leaders were not prepared to do that and were even critical of Jesus for attracting those on the edge to the centre. By contrast, the parable tells us that God is concerned about all people everywhere – those already at the centre and those who are on the edge. That’s also what we see God doing himself, through Jesus. Jesus left the centre of the universe – being at the side of God the Father – in order to come to the edge by becoming human himself. He wasn’t content simply to become a human being, he was born into poverty, lived among ordinary people, went to those who were excluded, made himself the servant of others, and laid down his own life on the cross for the sake of every one of us.

That’s the example given to us by our Lord and Saviour and that’s the pattern of mission and ministry that he shares with us; all predicated on the basis of love for all people, especially those on the edge.

The stories don’t stop there, however, because Jesus also tells a story – the story of the lost coin – about something lost in a home. This is not a story about leaving the centre to go to the edge, this is a story about something being lost at the centre – in a home - and searching there until it is found. Those who are part of the community of faith and therefore at the centre of the church, inevitably have a wide range of different and sometimes challenging experiences. Many of us know something of that at present, having come through the pandemic only to now face a cost-of-living crisis. In such circumstances, some may find it difficult to maintain their church involvement and begin to drop off the radar. Jesus’ parables are encouraging us to notice such people and to do all we can to support and encourage and maintain them in their faith and church commitment. These parables, then, are stories encouraging care for those on the edge and those at the centre, however those two spaces are defined.

In our Parish we are using several initiatives to engage with those on the edge of our church communities. Unveiled, our Friday night arts and performance event, connects with people who enjoy the arts but don’t necessarily want to come to church. Contemplative Commuters offers reflections and mindfulness exercises to those commuting from Wickford Station during the week. For those within our church community struggling at present for whatever reason, our pastoral visitors, together with the clergy and LLMs, visit people in the congregation for prayer and often to take communion to them at home. Our Prayer Circle also provides prayer support for those in particular need.

These are initiatives which are contemporary equivalents to the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin. They are ways to connect more closely with those on the edge, whilst also offering care and support to those in our congregations who are at the centre. Please do support these initiatives and those involved in them in prayer, by your continued financial giving to the church which enables us to develop such initiatives, and by joining in with these initiatives if you are able. Do let me or any of our ministry team know if you would be interested in doing so.

Jesus came for all people everywhere – those on the edge as well as those at the centre. He has a special concern for those on the edge, being prepared to sacrifice himself in order to be with those there and rejoicing when those who have been lost are found. He calls us to have a similar care and to be involved in similar action. How will you respond to that call?

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Damien Jurado - Life Away From The Garden.

St Stephen Walbrook - family-friendly visits

At St Stephen Walbrook today we held the first of an occasional series of family-friendly visits to the church designed to enable church members with young families to have an opportunity to come to the church together, which, as our ministry is primarily weekday, is generally impossible for them to do.

We began with a Treasure Hunt ... various clues led each family to different parts of the church ...

... before the treasure was found.

The treasure included the wonderful Step Outside Guide - London's Splendid Square Mile.

Then we made sheep at the craft table just using cups, cotton wool and pipe cleaners. This was followed with a game herding sheep balloons into the sheep pen.

We enjoyed a welcome break for snacks ...

... and then finished the session with the story of the Lost Sheep, the Butterfly song ...

... and prayers thanking God for his love.

A good time was had by all and our next such visit will be organised prior to Christmas.

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The Butterfly Song.

Allow yourself to be found by God

Here is my sermon from today's Eucharist at St Stephen Walbrook:

As a seven year old I got lost on a very busy bank holiday in the Parade Gardens in Bath. The Parade Gardens are popular pleasure grounds which overlook the River Avon and the weir by Robert Adams’ Pulteney Bridge.

So, for my panicked parents as they searched for me, there was not only the fear that I might have been taken but also the fear that I might have gone in the water. As it was, while they were combing the whole area looking for me, I was happily enjoying an ice cream at the local Police Station where I had been taken by those who realised that I was lost. Eventually, my parents also came to the Police Station and we were reunited.

Their searching for me was a sign of their love. Understandably, because of the love that they had as parents for their children they would not stop searching until I had been found. The shepherd and woman in these two stories are exactly the same. Because of their concern for the sheep and coin which are lost, they will not give up searching until they have been found. The sheep and the coin are loved and this love is revealed or proved through the search.

The point of these parables then is for us to know that we are similarly loved by God because he also searches for us until we are found. This search is the story of the Gospels:

Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself
and became obedient to the point of death—
even death on a cross. (Philippians 2. 6 – 8)

Christ went on this search to seek and save those who are lost. That is why these parables are told in the context of the welcome Jesus gave to sinners. As a result, we find Paul saying, in 1 Timothy 1:15: “The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost.”

John Newton was another who came to regard himself as the foremost among sinners and who wrote: “Amazing Grace, how sweet, the sound. That saved, a wretch like me. I once was lost, but now I'm found.”

Christ’s search for us, his journey of salvation, shows how much we are loved by him. He gives up all he has in order to seek us out and rescue us. This is love, we read in 1 John 3, “not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

How much are you loved by God? So much that his Son left all he had in heaven to become a human being and die to rescue you for God. Imagine how I felt as a child to be found by my parents, imagine how the sheep in the story felt to be found by the Shepherd. That is what it means to be loved by God, to be found by God.

Do you know that kind of love? Have you been sought and found? The Good Shepherd searches for the lost with God’s attentive love, looking and listening, finding and carrying; carrying us home, like a sheep on the shoulders, from the cliff edges of our lives.

The lost almost universally consider themselves worthless but these parables specifically deny that assumption. What is lost is the most precious thing or person of all; the person or thing for which everything else will be given up or set aside. What is lost and found is us. We are the ones for whom Christ searches at the expense of all that he has, including, in the end, his own life. We are the most precious lost person for whom he searches. We are precious, we are loved. Do you know that love? Have you received that love?

The Revd Richard Carter says:

“Christ is saying forgiveness is not about our punishment, it’s not even about our repentance, it’s about being found, being found by God, and allowing ourselves to be found. That’s all you have to do. You have to allow yourself, allow yourself to be found by God, and it is the greatest gift you will ever receive; a free and undeserved gift. The extent of it is astonishing, it takes your breath away.”

“Amazing love! how can it be That Thou, my God, shouldst die for me.”

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And Can It Be.

Review: The Perceptualist Eye & Well House Gallery

My latest review for Church Times is of The Perceptualist Eye by Tim Harrold at the Well House Gallery:

"Tim Harrold has an eye for the lost. Like Joseph Cornell, who loved to roam Manhattan’s dime stores in search of antique books, postcards, and small objects, amassing a vast collection of treasured finds that became the raw materials for his assemblages, Harrold also works with “found” objects, collecting disparate and discarded objects before combining them in boxes and frames to create 3D tableaux.

His perception is that the finding and restoring of lost objects by giving new life and fresh context is symbolic of a lost sheep being found by the Good Shepherd."

I also note that:

"The vision of Well House as a gallery that champions artists, and connects creative people in the area, developed from four years of running exhibitions linked to 24/7 prayer communities, and demonstrates what can be achieved when artists and entrepreneurs who are Christians engage constructively with creatives in their communities and regions."

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Iona - Wind, Water & Fire.

Held in the divine memory

Here is the piece I wrote for this week's parish newsletter at St Martin-in-the-Fields:

During the recent Living with Dementia evening at St Martin-in-the-Fields several people expressed the hope that has been articulated well by scientist and priest, John Polkinghorne, that "the immensely complex ‘information-bearing pattern’ (memories, character, etc) carried at any one time by the matter of my body ... is the soul and, though it will dissolve with the decay of my body, it is a perfectly sensible hope that the faithful God will not allow it to be lost but will preserve it in the divine memory in order to restore its embodiment in the great divine act of resurrection."

I was reminded by this of the parables Jesus told in which a sheep, a coin and a son, respectively, are lost. Each story ends with rejoicing over the finding again of that which was lost. These stories hold out the possibility that, in God, nothing is lost. Certainly, the importance to Jesus of that which was lost being found is emphasised by his choosing to tell three different stories on this same theme.

In the context of a condition like dementia in which memory is progressively lost, it could be a source of some hope that nothing is lost and that all we are and have been is held in the divine memory. If we are, in some sense, as Psalm 139 suggests, fearfully and wonderfully made by being formed or knit together by God in our mother’s womb; if our frame is not hidden from God when we were being made in secret, if God’s eyes beheld our unformed substance, and if all the days that have been formed for us were written in God’s book when none of them as yet existed, then it would follow beautifully and logically that those memories and knowledge would be retained in the divine memory for eternity. Maybe, as the saying goes, nothing lasts but nothing is lost.

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Simon & Garfunkel - Bookends Theme.

Discover & explore: Love

Here is my reflection from today's Discover & explore service at St Stephen Walbrook:

When I preach at weddings I often tell the story of the Love is … cartoons. ‘Love Is...’ began as shy love notes from the artist Kim Casali to her future husband, Roberto. Each of these notes involved a little drawing and a personal sentiment that perfectly captured Kim's thoughts and feelings for the man she loved. She began these drawings when they were dating, and she would leave the cartoons where Roberto would be sure to find them. After they were married, he showed her that he'd kept them all the drawing she had made for him. The cartoons were picked up by the press, were first published in The Los Angeles Times in January 1970, and then their popularity grew globally and they were published daily in 50 countries around the world and translated into 25 languages.

I use this as a way of introducing the original ‘Love is …’ from 1 Corinthians 13: “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends.”

The ‘Love is …’ cartoons and 1 Corinthians 13 both agree with another well-known ‘love is’ statement; ‘Love is a many-splendoured thing.’ Love cannot be captured or summed up in one cartoon or phrase or even in a series of cartoons or phrases. Love constantly bursts the bounds of our descriptions or definitions and this is why there is no end to songs, poems, novels, films, dances and plays about love. At the Guildhall Art Gallery we can see that the subject of romantic love preoccupied Victorian artists who addressed themes of unrequited love, social incompatibility, family disapproval, and separation at war.

Nearer our own time, C.S. Lewis is well known for looking at some of the different loves described in Greek thought - familial or affectionate love (storge); friendship (philia); romantic love (eros); and spiritual love (agape) - in the light of Christian commentary on ordinate loves. Despite his writings on The Four Loves he was himself surprised by love as his own relationship with Joy Davidman developed. The experience of love confounded his earlier more academic perceptions of it.

It is possible that the definitive Biblical statement on love is that which is found in 1 John 4. 16 where we read that, ‘God is love’. This is also where Ernesto Cardenal takes us. Our experiences of friendship, familial and romantic love all enable us to know God as love. Therefore, he writes, ‘My former loves have taught me what love is. I know how you love me because I too have loved, and I know what passionate and obsessed love is and what it is to be madly in love with someone. And God is mad about me.’

The strength of God’s love for us was revealed among us through his sending of his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. ‘In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.’ Christ searches for us like the Good Shepherd searching for the lost sheep. His journey of salvation shows how much we are loved by him as he gives up all he has in order to seek us out and rescue us.

The extremity of God’s expression of love in giving all in self-sacrifice reveals the limitless nature of love which constantly escapes the limits of our experiences, descriptions or definitions. If God is love then, just as God is infinite and cannot ever be fully grasped by our finite minds, so love also must be inexhaustible. As St Paul stated in 1 Corinthians 13, ‘Love never ends’. Love, like God, is an infinite ocean into which we dive and can always swim deeper and further.

In The Last Battle, the final volume of his Narnia stories, C.S. Lewis sums up the reality of God, heaven and love in the phrase, ‘further up and further in.’ The children in his stories discover heaven as the real Narnia which is bigger and better than the shadow Narnia in which they had lived out their finite lives. When they reach the centre of this real Narnia, they find that their journey begins again as there is always a deeper layer to this real Narnia, meaning that there is no end to their exploration of the reality of Narnia. If God is love and love is God then, as T.S. Eliot wrote in Little Gidding, ‘We shall not cease from exploration / And the end of all our exploring / Will be to arrive where we started / And know the place for the first time.’

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Healey Willan - Rise Up, My Love, My Fair One.