Christianity from the 43 bus 9. People History

Continuing a journey through London on the 43 bus route - with a Christian eye.  The whole series is viewable on the '43 bus route' tag below.

St Mary's Church, Islington has a bus stop so it is hard to ignore from the 43 bus.  Were it not for that, though, it might be thought to be just another of a plethora of churches along the route.  It lacks the grandeur of Union Chapel, not far up the street.  

But this church has more history via its people than any short blog could ever tell.

Think Charles Wesley, for example.  The hymnwriter of such predominance that even in the fragmented Western church worship patterns of the 21st century all of us still sing his hymns in some form.  Charles, together with George Whitfield, were invited preachers by the minister of this church and preached regularly.  Complaints were made to the Bishop of London, and it was here that both of them were forbidden to preach in Churches.  Instead they adopted the open air preaching already embraced by John Wesley and the rest is (Methodist) history.

A hundred and fifty years earlier, this was the Church where Robert Browne was the preacher, the generally recognized founder of Congregationalism and therefore in some ways the inspiration for the Pilgrim Fathers setting out for the New World.  They were dubbed Brownists.  So that's two denominations that owe their identity somewhat to this parish church.

But Anglicanism too has history here.  The first black African priest was ordained here in the 1700s, that's right, the 1700s..  The man who later became the first Bishop of Nigeria was trained here.  The founder of the Lord's Day Observance Society was vicar here before becoming Bishop of Calcutta.  The England cricketer - later Bishop of Liverpool - David Sheppard was a curate here while still playing cricket for England!

And the list goes on.  This is not a church building to turn the head on a 43 bus, but its story surely would.

Thanksgiving Wisdom: 4. Flattery

The culture of the United States accepts, far more willingly than that of the UK, the idea of talking people up.  As someone who worked in the US I went through strange reactions to this.

At first I hated it, wanting my old British realism.

Then I started to love it.  How much more motivating to be told how great you are!  I started to see why many Americans I knew exhibited far more confidence than we did in the UK.

Then, later, I started to revert to type.  Flattery can only take you so far, and sincerity seemed a more beautifying companion.   Donald, are you reading?

Wherever this braggadocio derived from, we can be confident it did not travel over on the Mayflower from members of John Robinson's congregation in Leiden.  For he said of flattery:

Flattery is in all cases and persons a base sin . . . but in ministers of God's holy Word is most pernicious.  How few are there so hating their vices as may not rather seek friends that cover their faults than cure them by faithful reproofs.  A man needs no other flatterer than his own partial heart to infatuate him. 

Thanksgiving Wisdom 3. God's Love

As tens of millions have travelled in the United States to celebrate Thanksgiving with their families, it is a reminder of how much love there is in families.  Isn't it?

Maybe, maybe not.  

The public health officials travelling to gather in mixed ages from different States may just be the most dangerous thing a group can do towards each other mid-pandemic.  Endangering each other is not love.  And here lies an example of the problem with love. 

We define our own love.  And we will not be told what love really is by anyone else.  Including God.

John Robinson, the Pastor of the Pilgrim Fathers, was wise enough to see that self-defining love is true of just one being - God.  He wrote:

God loveth himself first and most as the chiefest good

Jesus made the same point in the prayer to His Father in John chapter 17.  

“Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.  

God lived, love lived, before any human love.  And any human love is to be defined by God, not human beings.  And this offends us very much, but that doesn't change its truth.

Love in the creature ever presupposeth some good, true or apparent, in the thing loved, by which that affection of union is drawn.

Our love is a victim of our unreliable attraction to things and people, sometimes worthy, sometimes pleasant, sometimes dodgy, sometimes criminal. But our love reaches out to what attracts us.  But God?

But the love of God, to the contrary, causeth all good to be produced in the creature.

His love gives the goodness rather than seeking it out.  Jesus came to seek the lost, the sick, the unlovely, the dead, the criminal, the leper.

Like all Western Countries - but bigger and better of course - the United States has a culture of self-defining love. Holywood has helped it along fabulously.  Yet 400 years ago those pilgrims were fed by their Pastor a view of love which would draw out holiness rather than Holywood.  And may that wisdom not disappear from either side of the Atlantic completely.

Thanksgiving Wisdom: 1. Not Back to Normal

In this week of Thanksgiving in America, I'd like to look back to the Pilgrims from whom the festival derives.  They have become lost in the current ferment of the United States, a later political creation, but 400 years ago a body of people set sail on the Mayflower (well, they actually set sail on another ship first) to join other settlers on the shores of the New World.

Many were from a church in Holland that had been formed from Christians fleeing England, and they have become known as the Pilgrim Fathers. The majority of the Church in Leiden, Holland stayed back, as did their Pastor.  It was the younger, more adventurous who set sail, yet the harsh conditions took many of their lives in the opening years of settlement.   Thanksgiving was born out of gratitude for their first Harvest.  

John Robinson, their Pastor, never did the journey from Holland (though he had previously fled England of course).  Yet his wisdom and determination played a large part in the Mayflower story and I want to look at a few things he said or wrote:  first this, from a letter to a sympathetic English nobleman who had supported them throughout:

It is not with us as with other men, whom small things can discourage, or small discontentments cause to wish themselves at home again . . . we hope not to recover our present helps, neither look ever to attain the like in any other place in our lives . . .

This quotation reminds us of wisely adopting a pilgrim spirit in this world.  Covid-19 has left everyone wanting to recover normality - these pilgrims understood they were giving up a lot in order to go forward.

As the disciples might have done when they left their nets by Galilee to follow Jesus. With Jesus most of the good things are in front, not behind.

Thanksgiving

Christians frequently bemoan the way Christmas is celebrated without Christ.  In the USA a similar issue exists with Thanksgiving, the great family, national holiday that occurs today.  

Year on year I go to school assemblies during our harvest period, mostly in October (the same month as originally celebrated in America).  It is a matter of wonder to me that you can have a fully-fledged all-school harvest without mentioning God once.  Or singing anything to him.  The trick is to call it a Festival, not a Thanksgiving.

When the Pilgrims celebrated their first harvest 'safely gathered in' in October 1621 they knew exactly what they were doing - they were giving thanks to Almighty God and his providential care.  Not only so, but it formed part of a pattern in which they had already held days of thanksgiving for other deliverances along the way.

Ah, we may think, those were very devout religious people and times have changed.  Awkwardly, for this view, there were nearly double as many Indians - native Americans - at the first thanksgiving as European settlers.

You do not have to be very devout to recognise that a greater Providence has laid out kindnesses that seem scarcely deserved in this world.  If humanity is all there is there is nobody to thank, no reason to be grateful and the world loses a whole vertical dimension as it dissolves into the shallowness of human experience alone.

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 . . .