Chaplains

The end of life is difficult when it comes slowly, but what better place to live out those last days that the coast of Florida? Be prepared, though, that should you end up in one particular hospice you may find the chaplains have a limited spiritual input, limited by sometimes not being allowed to include God in what they say!

I've spent time (alright, I confess, had meals) with two very interesting chaplains on my Sabbatical and both of them also work with limitations, though not the ridiculous one from Boca Raton.

The first was a chaplain in the British Army for 22 years. These days he's a local vicar and, needless to say, the services in his church always start (and finish) exactly on time! He told me how, as he went further into his chaplaincy, he could always spot a newly-appointed chaplain. He would be the one who carried books or Bibles, mini communion sets and other religious encumbrances.

"When you've been a chaplain a while," he said to me over lunch, "you understand that all you have and all you can carry is you and your faith."

The second chaplain is blog-sensitive because he is working in a medical facility in a fiercely Islamic country where any proselytising would get him on the next plane and the convert possibly into the next life. Yet despite that apparent limitation he was hugely excited about his work and his witness.

"There's a lot that I cannot say and some things I cannot do, but there are a lot more people watching who I am than would ever happen in a parish."

Chaplaincy is perhaps a reminder to believers that wherever we are we can bear a witness to God. Except, possibly and ironically, in a dying corner of Florida in the land to which the Pilgrim Fathers fled to secure religious freedom . . .

Everything

After a few weeks reading and hearing depressingly vacuous accounts of the origins and meaning of the natural world I've become more convinced than ever that we must learn to love God in order to appreciate the world and ourselves!

Denmark

Here's a Church building in Denmark. It's the Baptist church at Roskilde, former capital of Denmark, and I was graciously given a tour by two of the members. Although Baptist work in Denmark is limited, this is a great facility with a glass-enclosed cafeteria that exuded a friendliness not found in much Danish church architecture. It is squeezed onto a site between suburban houses.

Like many European Baptists, having lunch together is as much part of church as the service itself, a strong sense of being a family of believers.

Meanwhile, down the road in the main square is the magnificent 'Canterbury Cathedral' and 'Westminster Abbey' of Denmark, Roskilde Cathedral. The State Church is still, in its way, an arm of Government in Denmark and there is a Government Department of Ecclesiastical Affairs.

Roskilde Cathedral has some alarming features that I for one would not want to exchange for an airy cafeteria. It is the burial place of Danish monarchy and one or two of the earliest monarchs were Harald Bluetooth (predating mobile phones by a thousand years) and Sven Forkbeard (father of King Canute who, of course, the English 'share' with Denmark - if 'being beaten by' is the same as sharing).

I don't think it would be overly frightening to worship with these scary viking guys if they were down in the crypt, as with a dead pope in the Vatican.

But they're not down in the crypt.

In the manner of Lot's wife, their bones are embedded in the pillars behind the altar, with murals to remind you they are there. In Lutheran worship the congregation sit down for the hymns (and stand for the Bible reading) but here Bluetooth and Forkbeard just keep standing . . . .

My time in Denmark ended in church without the buildings at all. It ended in one of Copenhagen's most famous department stores over a croissant and coffee. I was there with a Danish believer who I had spent time with. Magasin's coffee shop counter doesn't look like a church, but there I had the privilege of praying for him and his family.

Where two or three have come together in my name, I am there among them. (Matthew 18:20)

Church building not required!

Ssshhhhh!

One of the interesting things about a Sabbatical is the challenge of worshipping in other places and in other ways. It is the reason that I always encourage people who go away on vacation or business to find a local place to worship. Sometimes it can make you grateful for your own church! Sometimes it can challenge you in a way your own church never will.

I fulfilled a long-standing intention on this Sabbatical by going to a Quaker Meeting. It seemed that I had been in Buckinghamshire, with its strong Quaker history, far too long without making the effort to attend a Meeting. I thought I knew what to expect. Mostly silence, maybe a few words by one or two present, and a handshake to signal it was all over. I knew that coming from the wordy world of Baptists this might not be easy, or feel very useful or even very Christian.

It was impressively simple to be a visitor (as long as you knew not to speak!). With no music and no interaction, no clergy and no platform, no special clothes and no standing or kneeling it was impossible to get it wrong. How much easier to be a visitor at a Quaker Meeting than your average Christian Church! On the other hand, you left with what you brought. Apart from a two-minute 'Query' (challenging question) read from the Quaker Faith and Practice Book (read after 15 minutes) and 30 minutes later four minutes' comment by a non-Quaker visitor (not me!) applying the Query to the Middle East we sat there, in true Quaker fashion, dependent on our Inner Light. Which would be rough if you visited because you felt in the dark.

To my surprise I discovered that I agree with the Quaker contention that the silence is worship rather than emptiness, though for me this was influenced by access to a Bible in which I could read, meditate on, and understand the voice of God. But every week? What could I do with the New Song that the Scriptures tell me the Lord puts in my mouth?

When hands were shaken and the hour was over I was faintly disappointed rather than, as I had expected to be, relieved. I felt a kinship with these peaceable and silent people even though their hour of worship was like nothing I had ever experienced.

Then, just when I felt we must for ever remain friends but without common experience, the equivalent of the Church Secretary or Administrator stood up, the Meeting for worship being over. And he gave the notices. Familiarity at last! Not just one announcement, not just two, not just three . . . Others chipped in who in worship had remained silent. Seventeen and a half minutes after the hour of silence was over the announcements were finally completed! And that for a body of about thirty Friends. I felt that these good folk would, after all, feel more at home in a Baptist Church than I had ever imagined! And though a Quaker Meeting could find nothing for an organist or a preacher to do, it will always offer an alternative place of service for a Church Secretary.

http://www.quaker.org.uk/

Sonia

Famously there are many curved platforms on the London Underground where the straight carriages do not align with the platform edge creating gaps. Formerly a male voice boomed the announcement; in recent years a female voice - for undisclosed but presumably deeply psychological reasons - repeats the mantra instead. Somehow the announcement has the quality of being irritating even when you wait for but one train on one platform. What it is like to be a staff member hearing her all day can best be imagined by the voice's nickname, Sonia. Sonia is allegedly short for "Get's on yer nerves"!

One of the most irritating allegations made against God is that He is (more strictly was) a god of the gaps. By this weary reasoning, 'God' is simply the explanation of all that human beings cannot explain and as the gap shrinks God also shrinks. Now the gap aka God has shrunk out of existence except in tiny minds. Atheistic Peter Atkins, a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford, in a classic example of the maxim that statements by scientists are not necessarily science wrote;

'There is no reason to suppose that science cannot deal with every aspect of existence'.

Whilst this statement is laughable, Christians must beware that we do not turn our faith into one believing only in the irritating Sonia, goddess of the gaps. Ponder one of the most famous Bible texts;

The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.

It derives from the very ancient patriarchal story of Job. When we read the catastrophic series of events that preceded it we find an extraordinary mixture of inexplicable phenomena (gaps) and tribal raiding parties (observable explanation). Yet - and this is the not-to-be-missed point - all these gaps (that ancients couldn't explain) and non-gaps (things anyone could explain) are alike interpreted by the ancient patriarch as the works of God. The easily-explained Chaldeans and the difficult-to-understand fire from heaven is all, in some way, God at work.

Echoing from the mists of early humanity this story shows that it has never been true belief to see God only in the gap; He is on the platform and the train as well.