Building

The old riddle goes:  why is it called a building when it has been built?  It's a difficult one to answer but London contains some clues.

On any map of Britain there is an enormous, usually grey, blob toward the bottom right with LONDON written over it.  A glance at the map legend will confirm that the grey represents  'Built Up Area'.  Living and working here it is quickly apparent that this is not strictly true.  It is in fact a Building Area.

Take our Church premises for example.  Behind it is a building site of some proportions, the property next door to the left as you look at it has been rebuilt on the inside this past year, round the corner to the right there is large building works on both sides of the road, and looking across London from that same hilltop position you can see as many cranes as high rise buildings.

None of this begins to compete with Central London and Crossrail with vast chunks of prime junctions and thoroughfares turned into building sites.

It is the curse of every vibrant city that it is a building rather than a built site.  Perhaps the word was coined in some such city.

It was pre-thought in the Scriptures however about something even more exciting:

The Lord Jesus is the living stone. The people of the world decided that they did not want this stone. But he is the one God chose as one of great value. So come to him.  You also are like living stones, and God is using you to build a spiritual house. 

I Peter 2:4,5

Dry Bones

The fuss made over the alleged bones of Richard III took a new twist this week when prayers were said for the repose of his soul.  I certainly could not have said them

a) because of my Protestant theology

b) because I would not know what to say

c) I would have burst into a ceremonially destructive giggling fit in the middle of them.

I am not convinced that God is a Protestant as such, he always knows what to say but I think He might share with me (c) a fit of giggles  - always assuming he isn't offended by English ecclesiastical eccentricity.

OK, we all know that this is a City publicity stunt and one can only admire Leicester for managing to get so many of us to take the whole thing at all seriously.  I imagine the city fathers (sorry, parents) of Derby digging furiously under car parks to unearth some bones that can also put their neglected city and cathedral on the map.

But why the Church has to stick its mitre in is a matter of reflection.  Is this a reminder that although the Church is becoming less relevant by the day in this century it was really important 500 years ago?  That'll achieve what exactly?  Or is it a sign that as so many churches are surrounded by dry bones in the graveyard, dry bones are a Church specialty in a crowded marketplace where many other niches have gone secular?

I can't help noticing two things.

1.  As Crossrail digs its underground way through the old plague pits of London nobody is queuing up for the sight of the bones of the ordinary people, nor clergy praying for the repose of their long-gone souls.

2.  Dry bones in the Bible only have any meaning at all when, as Ezekiel saw it, they live.  It is hard to equate the ceremonies with the same set of beliefs really.  Whatever did those hundreds of worshippers grasp about life and living faith?