Start:Stop - Rising from the ruins of exile

Bible reading

These are the words of the letter that the prophet Jeremiah sent from Jerusalem to the remaining elders among the exiles, and to the priests, the prophets, and all the people, whom Nebuchadnezzar had taken into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon … It said: Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat what they produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile, and pray to the Lord on its behalf, for in its welfare you will find your welfare. (Jeremiah 29. 1 – 7)

Meditation

The Israelite Exile had several phases. In 721 BC the Assyrians conquered the Northern Israelite kingdom. Assyrian policy was to stamp out national identities by mixing up populations. Therefore the 10 tribes of that Kingdom disappeared. The Southern kingdom, Judah, was not conquered until 597. By this time the dominant power was Babylon, whose policy was deportation. So, when Jerusalem was captured, the leading citizens were taken to Babylon. Then, in 587, Jerusalem and the temple were destroyed and all but the poorest were taken.

Walter Brueggemann writes that “Jerusalem was burned and its temple destroyed, the king was exiled, the leading citizens were deported and public life ended. For ancient Israel, it was the end of privilege, certitude, domination, viable public institutions and a sustaining social fabric. It was the end of life with God, which Israel had taken for granted. In that wrenching time, ancient Israel faced the temptation of denial—the pretence that there had been no loss—and it faced the temptation of despair—the inability to see any way out.” This was a crisis of faith, not simply defeat in war and separation from homeland, but the loss of every reference point that explained who they were as a people and the failure of their God to protect them. They had believed they were a people chosen out of all the nations to be in a special relationship with the one true God who created, sustained and controlled the cosmos. This testimony developed as God made covenants about their land, city, and kings. All were lost and this normative testimony was fundamentally threatened.

The Exile was a crisis to which the Israelites responded initially with grief and anger, but, as the Exile continued, they reacted, or were asked by God to react, in terms of reflection and reinterpretation. David Sceats has noted that “all the evidence points to the fact that the Old Testament came into existence in substantially its present form in and immediately after this period of defeat, exile and religious disintegration.” The purpose of both collating and organising older material, and of writing new material, was reflection. Those who put together the Old Testament in this way were reflecting on Israel’s past to “remind the nation of its identity, to help it understand its place in God’s purposes, and its responsibility as the covenant people, and, above all, to remember the universal claims of Yahweh, and his authority over all nations, including Babylon.” Sceats argues that the act of reflection undertaken by the Israelites was also about reinterpretation. God was, through the exile, revealing himself in a new way and therefore, in organising the religious literature of Israel, it was also necessary to reinterpret that literature “in such a way as to make religious sense of the crisis of faith it had gone through.”

As Western Christians in the twenty-first century, we have faced a crisis of exilic proportions. An increasing process of secularization has occurred within the West with Christianity being dethroned from the dominant position that it held at the end of the Medieval period. From the Reformation through the Enlightenment to Modernism, Christendom came under increasing threat and has now been gradually dismantled. Enlightenment thinking questioned the historical validity of central Christian doctrines, developed alternative ‘scientifically verifiable’ means of explaining the origins of species, positioned Government as the central means of meeting social/welfare needs, and created a consumer culture of aspiration and progress. The result is that for many in the West “God is dead”, “Man has come of age” and Christianity is dead in the water.

The theologians of the exile can help us in hearing and responding to the call of God in our day and time. Their pattern of reflection and re-interpretation based on the tradition gives a biblical means of reviving our roots and re-claiming our disputed lineage. We need to dream up what Church is and can be for future generations all over again. We should not expect to have all the answers to hand but should engage in a re-examination of our roots in order to imagine our future on a scale that is at least equal to that of the theologians of the exile. Our God is a God of new beginnings, of fresh starts. He is the resurrection God and, therefore, the one who gives hope that we can rise from the ruins.

Prayer

God of all times and all places, as we gather this day, we are mindful of the many who are in exile, living in temporary shelters as a result of war, poverty or extremes of weather. We pray for those who have been in exile for long years, those who are trying to make a life and care for their children, planting gardens and seeds of hope and survival in refugee camps with scarce resources. For all those without the comfort and safety of home, we pray rest and respite, courage and comfort. For all who are afraid and wonder if their exile will ever end, grant the peace that passes understanding. May we recount your promises, your provisions, your power and encourage hope in those longing for healing and home.

Thank you for seeing us, claiming us, healing us, making your home in us, so that no matter where we are, we are never alone. Thank you for the people on the journey with us, the ones who’ve opened their homes to us, those who have called us family, friends who have loved us, strangers who have cared for us, all who have been the hands and feet of Christ to us. Thank you for those who right this very moment are feeding the hungry, healing the sick, tending the dying, and in countless ways serving for the sake of others. May we recount your promises, your provisions, your power and encourage hope in those longing for healing and home.

(https://pres-outlook.org/2016/10/pastoral-prayer-storm-exile-hurricane-matthew/)

O God, the Creator and Preserver of all humankind: we humbly pray that it may please you to reveal your ways to all people and your saving power to all nations. In particular we pray for your church that it may be guided and governed by your Spirit in such a way that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. May we recount your promises, your provisions, your power and encourage hope in those longing for healing and home.

(http://www.churchsociety.org/publications/englishprayerbook/EPB_Prayers.asp)

The Blessing

May Christ, who makes saints of sinners, who has transformed those we remember today, raise and strengthen you that you may transform the world; and the blessing of God almighty, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, be among you and remain with you always. Amen.

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The Brilliance - Brother.

The convergence of historic Anglican worship with online connectedness

At St Stephen Walbrook this week we have had the second session of our Start:Stop reflections, hosted students from Trinity Western University, toured the Bloomberg development opposite the church, considered being doers of the word in our midweek Eucharist, hosted a meeting of the London Internet Church trustees and held recitals by Mainly Two and Mark Williams.

I was particularly interested to meet Dr. David Squires, Dean of the School of the Arts, Media + Culture at Trinity Western University, a Christian liberal arts university on the west coast of Canada, who brought a group of university students to St Stephen Walbrook this week as part of their courses in the arts and worship. One of his concerns in the course is to investigate the vital issues of worship in our postmodern culture including the convergence of historic Anglican worship with online connectedness. As a result, the relationship between the London Internet Church and St Stephen Walbrook was of particular interest.

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Mainly Two - Violin Duet No. 1.

Bread for the Work: Living sacrifices

The weekly Bread for the World evening Eucharist at St Martin-in-the-Fields is an opportunity for us to gather as a community to share together in prayer, music, word and reflection. At last night's service I was interviewed about my journey to St Martins and St Stephen Walbrook and about the partnership development role with both churches. My comments were made in relation to Romans 12. 1 - 8:

One of the reasons why I am here at St Martins in the partnership development role is because I have an interest in supporting people in living out their faith in their workplaces. In other words, doing what St Paul talks about in his letter to the church in Rome; offering the whole of your life to God as an act of worship, which includes your work whatever or wherever that may be, paid or voluntary. Or as Eugene Peterson puts it in his paraphrase of this passage: “Here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering.”

This was an important passage for me when I worked in the Civil Service for 18 years prior to ordination. What did it mean to offer the work that I was doing then – which involved seeking various ways to assist disabled people to find and keep jobs – to God as an act of worship? For me, it meant doing my work as well as I could – bringing all my experience, skills and understanding to the role – and doing my best for those I was seeking to assist – by offering as holistic a service as I could within the constraints of the role instead of going through the motions by doing the basics of the role but no more. I also explored opportunities to make connections between the work I was involved in and the social action that churches and other faith groups were engaged in. This led to a project which demonstrated the value to Jobcentre staff of engaging with their local faith communities and provided them with resources to enable that engagement to happen effectively.

When I was ordained this continued to be a focus of my ministry. So I have provided working people with weekly work-based reflections and prayers, written resources on being a Christian at work, led a network on Faiths in London’s Economy and have set up ESOL courses and social enterprise projects in parishes. As a result, when the shared partnership development role with St Martins and St Stephen Walbrook was advertised providing the opportunity to minister to working people in Central London and set up partnerships between churches and the organisations around them, it seemed too good an opportunity and too close a fit with my interests to overlook.

St Stephen Walbrook is in the heart of the City of London. It is the parish church for the London Mayor of London, as it is located just behind the Mansion House where the Lord Mayor lives. As with all the City churches, St Stephen Walbrook has a relationship with the Livery Companies – the trade associations and guilds - that have operated in the City of London in some cases since Medieval times. Walbrook, itself, is the street which runs between Bank Station and Cannon Street Station. As a result, every weekday morning and evening thousands of people working in the City pass by St Stephen Walbrook on their way to and from work. Like most City churches, St Stephen Walbrook has a ministry primarily to those who work in the City and this has generally involved lunchtime services and recitals plus special services linked to Livery Companies and businesses.

As part of the partnership between St Stephen and St Martin we are shortly going to add to this mix three new initiatives. The first we are calling Start:Stop because we hope it will enable working people to start their day by stopping to reflect for 10 minutes. St Stephen Walbrook will be open on Tuesdays from 7.30am and every 15 minutes up till 9.30am, we will begin 10 minutes of reflection using a bible reading, meditation, music, prayers and silence. In time, it may also be possible to make these reflections available online for working people who are unable to get to Walbrook. The second new service will bring the Choral Scholars of St Martins to St Stephen Walbrook and enable us to build a partnership with the Guildhall Art Gallery and the City of London Corporation while offering Christian reflection on key life issues. The Guildhall Art Gallery has recently rehung its collection thematically using themes such as Faith, Family, Work, Leisure and Imagination. Our new service on Monday lunchtimes will explore these same themes through music and liturgy. Our third new initiative has been to invite the Lord Mayor of London to St Stephen Walbrook at the end of his year in office to enable him to give thanks to God for the achievements of that year. This service of thanksgiving in November will focus on the themes of the Lord Mayor’s Appeal Charity which are creating wealth, giving time and supporting people.

In the longer term, we would also like to build a network of people able to offer support and consultancy services which could enable businesses to address issues of diversity, ethics, faith literacy, relationships, social enterprise, social responsibility and spirituality as they affect customers, employees and suppliers in workplaces and the markets.

We often think of worship as being about the services which are held in church but, when St Paul says offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, which is your true and proper worship, he is saying that what we do outside church in our sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life is our real act of worship. Time spent gathered together as we are tonight should resource and re-energise us to live as Christian people in our homes, communities and workplaces, wherever those may be.

St Paul seems to be saying here that our natural inclination as human beings is to be focused on our own self interest. Our thinking needs to be transformed by our faith in order to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who was focused on the needs of others. It is when we are transformed by the renewal of our minds – so that we think and act, to some extent, in Christ-like ways – that we can then live lives, which through service of others, are an act of worship to God.

This has, I think, always been a key focus of St Martin-in-the-Fields as it helps people explore the Christian faith and the big issues of our times and involves people in caring deeply about building a more just and sustainable world. The new focus that is now being given to partnership development here - through the partnership with St Stephen Walbrook in particular, but also through many other existing partnerships - can provide an opportunity for St Martins and its’ people to share experience and resources with others but will also enable us to learn from the example and ideas of others so that our understanding and practice can also be challenged and changed. As we do so, we will be putting into practice other aspects of what St Paul says here about offering ourselves as living sacrifices. Being a living sacrifice means using our gifts and talents in God’s service but in such a way that we don’t end up thinking we are in some way better than others or better than other churches as a result.

As we reflect on what it means to be a living sacrifice, we can pray: Take my life, and let it be consecrated, Lord, to thee. Take my intellect, and use ev'ry pow'r as thou shalt choose. Take myself, and I will be ever, only, all for thee. Amen.

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Take O Take Me As I Am.