A Sense of Place

We’ve spent my day off this week exploring the streets of Spitalfields.

We were there because one of our sons has just set up a stall, selling re-cycled clothing, at the Vintage Market in Brick Lane.  So, we thought we’d do the ‘parental’ thing of giving encouragement to a venture we barely understand!

Like many areas of London this patch, between Shoreditch in the north and Whitechapel to the south, has many layers of history.

Back in 1612 Spitalfields saw the foundation of the very first Baptist Church in England.  It was led by Thomas Helwys who, just a few years later, was thrown into Newgate jail for his ‘dissenting’ views in matters of faith.  Us Baptists have always been part of the awkward squad!

Towards the end of the 1600’s Spitalfields saw the influx of thousands of French refugees who we have come to know as Huguenots.  Louis XIV’s Edict of Nantes declared that France would no longer tolerate their Protestant belief, so 50,000 of them settled in Britain, many in the East End of London.  The Huguenots were tremendously industrious and made the area famous for their silk merchandise.  They settled so well because Spitalfields was outside the legal and financial jurisdiction of The Guilds and Companies of The City.  An obvious sign of the success of the Huguenots was the establishment of ten small Protestant Meeting Houses in which they worshipped.

As if to teach them how the English really built churches, the Parish of Spitalfields commissioned Nicolas Hawksmoor to come up with a truly grand and monumental design for the new Christ Church, standing at the centre of this community.  We had lunch in the church grounds this week and the building still towers over everything around it – it’s truly massive.  Recently Christ Church has become one of the many satellite congregations of Holy Trinity, Brompton.  It’s contemporary worship style and heavy support from HTB has re-energised it so much so that it now regularly holds three services on a Sunday.

Another example of ‘thinking outside the box’ is the recent establishment of a Community Café on Brick Lane, Spitalfields, sponsored by Baptist Home Mission and set up as a ‘crossing point’ between church and community.

Oh, and of course, Spitalfields is also the famous location of many Jack the Ripper cases.  We even did the tour!

Well, it’s a fascinating place with a long history and a contemporary multi-cultural feel.

The Bible regularly invokes a ‘Sense of Place’ as shorthand for various observations and messages about faith and life.

We talk of The Garden of Eden in terms of a lost paradise.  Whilst Sodom and Gomorrah stand for all that is beyond the pale.

And isn’t it significant that Jesus was born in the, comparatively, insignificant town of Bethlehem and died on a cross outside the capital, Jerusalem, at Golgotha, a place of shame.  All making the point that this King never lived in a palace or sat upon a cushioned throne.

There is a modern Call to Worship that says:

This is the place
and this is the time;
here and now,
God waits
to break into our experience;
to change our minds,
to change our lives,
to change our ways……

This is the place
as are all places;
this is the time
as are all times.
Here and now
let us praise God.

And it’s surely an inspiring thought that God is with us at all times and in all places.

Money - you just can't give it away!

 Last week Bill Gates, the world’s 4^th richest individual, vowed to give almost all his money away.  Eventually, he wants to fall of the ‘rich list’ and he says this feels, to him, like an ‘obligation’ to society.  To that end he has made a further donation of £17bn to his Foundation which is combating diseases like Malaria across the world.

Yet, it seems just giving money away isn’t as easy as it sounds.  After all Bill Gates made this same promise back in 2010 and since then, with a decade’s growth on the stock markets, his wealth has doubled.  So, even more to give away now!

Andrew Carnegie, sometimes thought of as the Father of Modern Philanthropy, had a similar experience.  From his humble beginnings in Dunfermline, Scotland, he ended up one of the richest men in America.  He gave away $350m in his lifetime (his money helping to fund the discovery of insulin) yet at his death in 1919 he still retained, apparently to his great disappointment, some  $30m.

It was the St Paul, writing to young pastor Timothy who said The love of money is the root of all evil, and I also note he spoke of such avarice as ultimately bringing many sorrows.

Money itself is, of course, neutral.  It’s its use, or our insatiable quest for more and more of it, that can be so destructive.

The Bible doesn’t shy away from talking about money and the good it can do.

In the Jewish Scriptures there’s the idea of a Temple Tax, meaning that all men over the age of 20 paid half a shekel to the Temple and half a shekel to God annually (about four days wages) on top of their free will offerings.

In Jesus’ day we are told that a group of women financially supported his ministry.  Luke even lists three of them by name: Mary Magdalene, Joanna (who husband, intriguingly was the Administrator in Herod’s household) and Susanna.  The Greek word used to describe them is the root of the word Deacon, meaning one who serves.

The Church has not always been good with money, gaining a reputation for filling its own coffers at the expense of the poor.  In the time of the Prince Bishops in England that meant Cathedrals and Abbeys owned huge swathes of land, whilst on the Continent Martin Luther spoke out against a greedy Church selling Indulgences to pay for building work in Rome.

Today, the debate about money, and especially taxes, rumbles on and is central to the current leadership race in the Tory party.

Having enough money can bring all of us a reassuring sense of security.  Striving to make taxation fair, and government spending well targeted, is seen by many Christians as a matter of justice, one that stands at the centre of our faith. And, if recent reports of the actual unhappiness encountered by some lottery winners is to be believed, it seems St Paul was right; money can bring many sorrows.

Yet, alongside Mary, Joanna and Susanna, I guess that most of us truly want to use our money wisely and well.  And like Bill Gates and Andrew Carnegie (although I suspect in much smaller quantities!) we will hope that the money we give away may be a blessing to others.

We live in unprecedented times...Do we?

 

Listening to the radio over the last few days I’ve been struck by a phrase regularly used by commentators that goes something like: We’ve never seen anything like this before. It’s got me thinking if that is actually true?

Take, for example, this current spell of very warm and sunny weather.  The grass is parched and Wimbledon didn’t have to be extended this year as rain hardly stopped any play.

Although this sort of weather doesn’t come our way every year, depending on the Jet Stream, I very much remember the long hot summer of 1976 – perhaps because I was sitting school exams – when the reservoirs dried up and the ice cream ran dry!

Or how about the Pandemic?  For us, this worldwide phenomenon started in December 2019, yet a hundred years earlier the world was emerging from the 1918/19 Spanish Flu Pandemic that killed more people than those who lost their lives in the First World War. 

And now there’s the political uncertainty as No 10 Downing Street falls vacant after a tempestuous few months.

It’s significant that the body organising the election of a new Conservative leader has the title of the 1922 Committee. This group, set up to represent the views of back benchers was actually established in 1923, a year after they effectively rose up in collective strength and forced the resignation of David Lloyd George whose Premiership of the Coalition was faltering because of accusations of sleaze and wrongdoing.  Baldwin described him as a Dynamic Force of the wrong kind!  All sound a bit familiar exactly one hundred years on?

We have been here before, yet we quickly forget that.

During these days of Covid I’ve often wondered why, at school, we hardly touched on The Spanish Flu Pandemic? And then, recently, I heard a historian point out that we have a tendency to forget the hardships we go through.  It’s a sort of self-preservation mechanism that enables us to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves down and try to walk more optimistically into the future, rather than get stuck overly conscious of the past.

Yet, in doing so, perhaps we forget too much.

We forget that we do, individually and collectively, ‘fall down’.  Often, we can recover and stand up again.  Indeed, that is the basis of the Christian idea of redemption.  We can begin again, receiving both the forgiveness, acceptance and new beginnings offered to us by God and those around us.  It’s the reason why the story of the return of the lost, prodigal son being greeted by the forgiving and welcoming father, remains one of the best loved and most relevant of all biblical narratives.

So, when I hear that phrase, we live in unprecedented times I’m just a little sceptical.  We’ve probably been here before in some senses, and we’re likely to be here again.  Yet we hang on to the belief that God shares every day and every challenge with us, be that in 2022, or 1922.

July's View from The Pew

 

This week's blog is a write up of our visit last weekend to Hampstead Garden Suburb Free Church on one of my Sabbatical Sundays.

Here's the report: July's View from The Pew

'Companions'

 

Yesterday we hosted an AGM and lunch at church for The Baptist Union Retreat Group.  The meal we provided for our guests was a corporate effort and I contributed by providing a few home-made lasagnes.  I’m not sure what came over me when I made that rather rash offer, but once made I had to come up with the goods!

As I sat through the morning AGM increasing self-doubt wafted over me as I could smell the lasagne cooking in the church kitchen.  What if it was a disaster?  What if I, single handedly, managed the bring down the whole Baptist Union Retreat Group with food poisoning!

So, my relief was almost palpable when I saw the guests not only tuck into the lasagne at lunchtime but also seemingly survive the afternoon.

Cooking for others might be something of a great responsibility but it can also be a great joy.

One of our relatives, when hosting friends for a meal, apologised to the guests that the pudding on that occasion wasn’t up to his wife’s usual standard.  He wondered why she kicked him under the table as he said this.  After they left she told him of her embarrassment at what he’d said because it was, in fact, the guests who had brought the pudding that night!  I wonder if they ever came back!

Judith Jones, the American editor best known for ‘discovering’ the Diaries of Anne Frank and promoting the food writer Julia Childs, spoke of cooking using ‘religious' language when she wrote: Cooking demands attention, patience, and above all, a respect for the gifts of the earth. It is a form of worship, a way of giving thanks.

So, I suspect that yesterday I was rather like Martha (rather than Mary) in the Bible story.  As we were discussing the agenda my mind was actually in the kitchen with my lasagnes!

It seems both natural and good that sharing meals plays a part in our corporate life.  Our Jewish friends probably lead the way with many of their rituals actually based around the family table rather than the one in the synagogue.

Even the modern discipleship programme ALPHA made sharing a meal together an integral part of its ethos.

I’ve enjoyed countless times around the table with friends at church.  None more so than an exchange visit to Australia and preaching in a rather remote village chapel on the banks of the Murray River outside Adelaide.  After the service we went over to the church hall for lunch at which just about every lady in the congregation produced a home-made shepherds pie.  I’ve never seen such an array of the same dish, yet each one just a little different from the rest.

The very word companion means to share bread with another.  At AFC we might do that at LunchBreak, Tea at Three, Lunch Club, Men’s Breakfast or our occasional Church Lunches. I think even sharing a biscuit at After Service Coffee also counts! 

Perhaps we might even twist a well known proverb and say that  A church that eats together stays together.

Of course, the most important ‘meal’ Christians ever share is Communion.  Breaking bread and drinking wine in  remembrance is the meal that nourishes our souls and draws us to God.