Easter 7 - Year B

Where oh where has your parish priest been?
Looking at churches - to a degree most obscene.
Why of why does she need to go abroad?
When our own churches of beauty are of wonderful accord.

 

Indeed. For the three Sundays on pilgrimage we worshipped in Lindesfarne Island's church, Bath Abbey and Westminster Abbey respectively. And wonderfully. In the days in between we journeyed to many, many more holy sites, Abbeys and churches. Let me assure and reassure you all, that none are more beautiful, or indeed more meaningful, than St Matthew's and All Saints' churches, Grovely Parish, Brisbane. We have been stunned by magnificence, overwhelmed by age and history, dismayed by commercialism, awestruck by mixes of mystery and reality, delighted in choral splendour and silenced in the privilege of it all.

But we have not separated ourselves from the whole, or isolated ourselves from who we belong to. That is, the Body of Christ, which is us all, and is all those communities we journeyed into. Pilgrimage is not visiting, nor "going to church". Pilgrimage is not ticking off buildings seen and entered. And nor is it the seeking of religious experience, which I think could often be seen, and given, as reason for such a trip. Searching and continuing the journey yes; but not a separate search, nor a different journey.

In the final reflection whilst away in the pew bulletin two weeks ago, as we wound up our pilgrimage in London, I shared with you a likening of pilgrimage to worship. Perhaps you have been thinking upon this, with either some agreement, disagreement or "I wonder what she is on about now" thoughts. Well, I will share with you, I did the same. I thought more about what I had said.

After sending off that final email to the parish - which I have to tell you I did at great personal cost - Jo had set me up in an internet café in Earls Court, and I was next to this coughing girl who really made me wonder if I was going to conclude my journey in a less palatable way than envisaged. Anyway, I rushed off and swallowed a litre of orange juice and hopefully vitamin C soldiers, and I live to tell the tale of no flu (yet).

It was soon after, that I concluded one of the inspirational books I had collected on the trip. That is, "A Room with a View: ministry with the world at your door". It is written by Nicholas Holtam, the Vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, the church of great fame and location, Trafalgar Square, London. Holtam was fulfilling an obligation to write the story of the eleven years of project refurbishment and building, at a cost of 36 million pounds, to the iconic St Martin-in-the-Fields church. The story is not of fundraising, nor of achievement of bricks and mortar. The story is of the relationship of the parish with London, of the relationship of parish with affirming ministry discerned and avowed, and of affirming a connectedness with the whole of God's creation. St Martin-in-the-Fields has long sustained a ministry to the poor and marginalised of London's inner and west end areas. The refurbishment project was to create business opportunities to continue that ministry, as well as care for this lovely, open-to-all church, with its amazing musical gift to the community as well.

You can tell that I am attracted to Holtam's theology. He and the people are continuing to create more than image of what the church should be - they are living it out. Not perfectly, but certainly in realms of social justice and equity that many of us only talk about. The wonderful restaurant they have created in the crypt is always full, and it is full of people who know that all profit goes to social justice ministry. One visitor is quoted as saying; "You're like the Salvation Army; I'm not sure exactly what you do but I know it's good."

The world visits churches, drives past churches and looks at churches expecting to find evidence of that goodness. When they do, they join the pilgrimage, a journey of life shared. When they don't, we remain as tourists, aliens in a foreign land. There is a deep, inner, human sense of what a church should be - a community beyond self, a place where it is not "all about me", where this a people willing to share in a way that the world sorely needs.

Which leads me into that further reflection of worship and pilgrimage. When I likened them, I was trying to articulate that both are part of a whole, and neither should be separated into the quest for ‘religious experience'. As I read Holtam's book, he made a very similar comment which included that that deep sense of goodness, of being beyond self, that everything indeed that is church, must begin with worship. He quotes... "worship disinfects our egoism"... that "worship lifts the soul out of preoccupation with itself and its activities, and centres its aspirations entirely on God."

So, can you see, that it doesn't really matter where you are in the world, what church or abbey....... the beginning of being church (the holy people of God) is gathering together to centre our lives and the life of the world entirely on God. It is not human achievement; worship is an intention that rests and waits on God for no other reason except God is God.

Worship, and pilgrimage, are therefore of the soul - but it does not deny the intentionality of such exposure to that experience. Nor, I hope, the joyful response of it all. We are in the Easter season, the season of pure joyful response to the truth of the resurrected Christ. We hear today from Christ himself that his action on the cross was made so that "they may have my joy made complete in themselves." Early in this discourse of John's Gospel we heard that his very presence with his disciples, and the world, is that "my joy may be in you" and that the subsequent action of his death and resurrection completed that joy... "I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete."

The overwhelming feeling of pilgrimage to these Christian places of beauty and story was of witnessing other pilgrims' joy in building such enduring presences in their communities. We build churches not to please God, but as pure response of joy to being of God's family. In that sense, they are (and should be) worshipful response, beyond egoism, even beyond human endeavour. And most importantly, they are kept alive by the continuing community which endeavours, through continuing worship, to live out God's goodness in the world.

We did not always meet that life on our recent pilgrimage; and that helped us reflect on what makes a church a living, God-centred community. I have certainly come home inspired to continue that real living of God's goodness. We need worship to receive that grace in our souls; we need each other to discern how to live that grace in our own particular neck of the woods.

We all have dreams about what the church, the holy people of God, should look like. I believe we have the great challenge of God's spiritual call on how we must restore and care for our environment at present; I believe we also must be more real about living out social justice and the equity of all human beings.

It is the right time to have dreams for ourselves, the church. Next week is Pentecost, the occasion we celebrate the birth of the church. On that day, so long ago, the Holy Spirit inspired those gathered into action - and that is how the church began. Inspired into action - and Apostle Peter stood there and said that this action comes from the inspiration of Christ's Spirit into prophesy, into visions and into dreams of who we can be as followers of Jesus Christ.

Next week, all of our dreams are going to fly around the All Saints' altar. You have each received a bird, the symbol of the Holy Spirit. I am inviting you to each name your dream for the church, of who we should be, of what we should look like. Tomorrow at Saints Alive! the birds will be decorated with materials (that also symbolises our Hope for Hatton project), and the church prepared for the great party of Pentecost. If you could write your dream by the end of worship......

We know that our dreams for the church cannot be achieved by ourselves.
I cannot even discern by myself the right way forward - that is, God's way forward. We need each other; to be listening and reflecting together, to be discovering and testing these dreams together. Above all, to be practising - more than practising, actually living out - that goodness Christ calls us into. We need his Word more than ever to "disinfect our egoism", to discover our real self beyond our self.

I am glad to be back amongst this real, aspiring into goodness, community. May we continue the pilgrimage together. Amen.