One Month back in London

Celebrating this Anniversary today it strikes me that there are a bunch of London things that I am reliving after years of being away.

 

1. My driving has diminished.  On ringing the Car Insurer to discuss my new (higher of course) premium the receptionist suggested I might do only half or less of my previous mileage.  She was right.

 

2. My driving has deteriorated.  Perhaps not in quality, but certainly in politeness.  The tipping point occurred about the third or fourth time I was cut up by a white van that was deliberately using the wrong lane to get past a line of traffic I was in.

 

3. My parking has improved.  Basically, if you can't park your car in a space that is smaller than it there's no point in having a car in London.

 

4. I no longer associate the Oyster with the seaside but with Red Buses.
 



5. I now assume that everyone in church comes from a different country to everyone else.  e.g. Brazil, Japan, Costa Rica, Iran, South Africa, Nigeria, France, Cyprus, Poland, Malaysia, Singapore, Romania, Italy, Burma . . .

6. I am reminded that every church building in London seems to have at least two churches meeting in it, and usually one or two based in a different language.

7. I assume everyone in London has a baby - it is not at all hard to understand why London is projected to grow by a million people in the next ten years as I negotiate a thousand prams in the shopping street.

8. I have rediscovered that, while everyone outside London thinks of living there as their worst nightmare, nearly everyone who does live there loves it to bits.

9. Every loft is converted.

10. There is always an airliner overhead.

 

Wrong Way

 

Here's the YouTube clip we showed in Church on Sunday.  What is truly amazing, as the reporter points out, is that not only does the player run the wrong way when he was on the verge of a touchdown: everyone on the field seems to join in the mistake.  So he gets tackled by the team that stood to gain if he kept running, his team-mates help him to run the wrong way too.

 

When we head the wrong way in any area of life, there's no telling how we disorientate others around us.  Well, there will be a telling one day in fact  . . .

There are two places in the world where men can most effectively disappear

(according to 19th century American novelist Herman Melville)  — the city of London and the South Seas.  He might have added - Sundays at Church.

 

In these weeks of being effectively between pastorates I get to experience what happens when you go to church as an outsider.  Of course on one level I am far from an outsider.  I was at a church today where we recited the Nicene Creed and was possibly the only person in the room that knew it off by heart.  I rarely stand up at the wrong time, rarely fail to know who wrote a hymn or song, let alone how to sing it, rarely fail to find the Bible reading quickly and even know where to sit and where not to sit.  Nevertheless, no-one knows that about me when I arrive.  This morning I attended my fifth service during this personal inbetween-time.  My wife and daughter add a couple of extra experiences to this mid 2014 survey of being a newcomer at British Churches of all kinds.  As I have found on Sabbaticals gone by there is a nearly unfailing theme here.  Let's try a picture:

 

I count it the highest privilege to belong the church of Jesus Christ.  I do not deserve it.  My sin properly excludes me from its fellowship but One has paid for my sin.  The cross is the reminder I did not properly belong apart from God's grace.  I do not need the gathering Christians to act out my deserved exclusion. Yet time and again I walk through open doors, receive a wan smile from a busy steward, find my way to a seat or bit of pew, then watch 50, 80, 150 people come in, sit around me and talk to each other with warm welcoming reunions.  The key word there is watch.

I conclude that this is a British Church epidemic of inhospitality.  I am the same person who has people gathering around me when I am the known Pastor or visiting preacher.  I wear just the same aftershave and am indeed far more friendly and relaxed than when I am about to lead a service.  My wife and daughter are the same people that people gather round when they are known.  But become a stranger and at once you are strange.  Where that leaves you if you really are generally strange in some way I dread to think.

 

A very special moment happened in one church where a pleasant older lady eventually engaged me in conversation well after the service had finished.  Her husband moved away and returned with two mugs of tea.  I was very grateful.  He gave one to her and then to my surprise turned away and drank the other one - his!

 

I note that Christ's measure of discipleship is not how we welcome each other (though how we love and forgive each other is another story).  His measure is how we welcome the stranger.  I am embarrassed that the average Estate Agent is (albeit from other motives) more exemplary of Christ's pattern of welcome than his alleged people when they gather to worship.