Christianity from the 43 bus: 12. Bunhill Fields

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.

If you've followed through this blog series you will be starting to understand how many amazing Christian stories litter the 43 bus route.  But one place, opposite John Wesley's house, has so many stories that a long blog series would be needed to tell them.  That place is Bunhill Fields.

For people like me, at least, it contains so many figures whose writings I have come across - but most notably perhaps Isaac Watts (so many hymns), Daniel Defoe (As in Robinson Crusoe etc.) and William Blake (Author of the hymn Jerusalem).  The Wesleys mother Susannah is buried here as well as other worthies like the three Johns: John Owen, John Rippon and John Gill.  The reason for this galaxy of non-conformist names is that this was a convenient burial place just outside the City of London available to non-Anglicans for burial.

The grave that catches the eye - mainly because of its prominent position - is that of John Bunyan.

For someone who spent so much of his life in Bedford gaol - which we have to thank for his unequalled Pilgrim's Progress - this seems an unlikely place to be buried.  A preacher of such brave heroism I felt sure I would discover an amazing story, matching his writings, of how his death came about in London.  Perhaps if I were wiser I would have considered that there is probably a reason why I have never heard a story about Bunyan's actual death.

Anyhow, here it is.  He rode his horse from Reading to London in very heavy (August) rain.  He got soaked.  He fell ill at his friends house as a result.  His cold turned to a fever.  He died.  In summary, he was killed by the British Summer . . .

Baptists for a pandemic 2. John Bunyan

When Church of England envoy Terry Waite was held captive in Beirut by Hezbollah in the late 1980s he famously received a postcard from well wishers in England.  It bore an image in stained glass of John Bunyan writing in prison.  The meaning was - good can come from confinement.

It is impossible to overestimate the literary and spiritual value of Pilgrim's Progress, a book so skilled that people of any religion and none can enjoy it while deep-thinking Christians can mine it and children can engage easily with its story.  It is inevitably still mentioned in lists of primary English literature.

Yet Bunyan spent about 12 of his 60 years in gaol.  He was primarily known in his day as an Independent/Baptist preacher but his lasting fame belongs to his writing and his writing owes much to his years of lockdown.

Very unwise it is of us to dismiss lockdowns as unproductive.  Had Bunyan been a Baptist Pastor today he would have been out of prison more but, if he had written anything, it probably wouldn't have outlived him.  I feel I know - I've read what today's preachers write . .. 

Novemberish

The past day or two have not been heart-warming meteorologically speaking.  November has been in full swing with wind and rain and rain and rain and grey cloud and rain.  The adjectives for November say it all really.  T S Eliot called it sombre November; Robbie Burns wrote of chill November; for Ruskin it is dark; Thomas More labelled it sullen: Walter Scott calls it drear.

Once upon a time, one November day, an event of apparently little relevance happened at Lower Samsell, a place that few people had heard of then and scarcely a soul now either.  That November day was especially drear, dark or whatever other miserable adjective you can think of for one man.  He had been taking a Christian meeting in a farmhouse.  These, however, were times when the government prescribed how each person was to worship and this meeting did not fit the frame.  And so that November Sunday the speaker was arrested and incarcerated in the County gaol.

The gaol, understandably, offered few preaching opportunities.  He might have expected some clemency from the local Justice but his retort whenever asked about whether he had learned his lesson was, "If you release me today, I will preach tomorrow".  So of course he wasn’t released and it was, to all intents and purposes, 12 years that he was inside.

But you and I would never have heard of him if it were not for that dark November day.  For in that gaol, the silenced preacher discovered another ability entirely.  Honing that ability over the long enclosed years eventually gave birth to a book which from that time 450 years ago has never been out of print.  For in that gaol in Bedford, the prisoner preacher John Bunyan wrote Pilgrim’s Progress.  

In his great story, Bunyan’s pilgrim also enters a Novemberish place.  It is called the Valley of the Shadow of Death and the pilgrim is warned by two other men to turn back at its threshold.  But the pilgrim says, this is my way to the desired haven, and launches, sword in hand, into the Valley.  He cannot see its end but he knows that the dark, dreary place is the path to a flowering destiny.  He emerges eventually, and singing,

   

Dangers in darkness, devils, hell, and sin,

Did compass me, while I this vale was in;

Yea, snares, and pits, and traps, and nets did lie

My path about, that worthless, silly I

Might have been catch’d, entangled, and cast down;

But since I live, let Jesus wear the crown."

Pliable or Obstinate

Lent is a time for self-examination.

Sunday morning we had read to us in Church the story of Pliable and Obstinate talking with Christian in Pilgrim's Progress.

There is no question about it.  When it came to following Christ as I grew up I was obstinate.  Or at least I thought that was true - until, well, I thought about it.  Even listening on Sunday morning it occurred to me that although these characters are allegedly opposites they are (and Bunyan cleverly makes this point) two parts of the same. They are always on the road together.

Obstinate and Pliable in pursuit

The reason I was obstinate and not willing at all to be baptised - to be a committed follower of Jesus - was because I wished to remain pliable.  That is, I wanted my options open, not my Self crucified to rise in new life from Someone else.

On further reflection I thought of the groups of young people in my home church who would return from camp or conference to be baptised in flocks while I watched obstinately.  Some are still my Christian friends, plenty fell away almost, as it were, before their towel was dry.  They were pliable.  Yet in meeting them occasionally - or hearing of them via their families - it turns out that they are now obstinate!

Broadly speaking the most obstinate people spiritually were previously pliable.  And any Evangelist will tell you that there is no more obstinate pairs of ears than the ones either side of a mouth that has said, "No, I've changed my mind about being a Christian".  Or as the writer to the Hebrews scarily and clearly puts it:
 It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit,  who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age  and who have fallen away, to be brought back to repentance. To their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace.  Land that drinks in the rain often falling on it and that produces a crop useful to those for whom it is farmed receives the blessing of God.  But land that produces thorns and thistles is worthless and is in danger of being cursed. In the end it will be burned.

Commuting

On average (allegedly) a person spends one year's-worth of life commuting.  I think that means in the UK.  It must be seriously skewed by the poor souls using the M25.

 

Someone remarked to me a few days ago,

"I suppose one of the best things about your job is that you don't have to travel to work"

 

 

I'm not convinced about that though.

It is true that it is only fifteen minutes walk from house to church (last church 10 minutes, one before that 5 minutes so it's getting longer . . .). 

 

It is also true that technically my home is my place of work - though if I spent the month there without leaving it is hard to imagine getting approval from the Church members.

 

A local pastor toddles to and from the local hospital(s) and places in the local community and people's living rooms nearby.  By apparent contrast, Hudson Taylor, the great missionary pioneer of Christian faith in China, travelled for the equivalent of 4 years of his life on a boat.  John Wesley racked up an average of 4000 miles a year.

 

Perhaps it is more profound than that.

 

On Sunday morning we read a little of Pilgrim's Progress.  Bunyan's contention is that life is one long commute.  What sets a pastor apart - even from the itinerant missionaries and evangelists - is that a pastor travels not only his own commute but the commute of hundreds of others.

 

No wonder it never feels as though life is standing still.

My Dad's Last Sermon: Part 5: I will help thee

So then, we rejoice in the fact that though we endure weakness like anyone else, yet we have an inner source of strength that the world knows nothing about when our trust is in our God, in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

But that’s not the end of it all, is it?  The power that God promises here is not just to strengthen.  He goes on to say, “Yea, I will help thee; Yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

The commentator Alex Motyer, as he expounds this verse, writes, 'The Lord promises a mounting tide of assistance.'  Not only does God say, “I will strengthen thee”,  he says, “Yea I will help thee, yea I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness.”

“I will help thee”.  There’s a contrast here between the people of God and the heathen people in the nations of the world.  If we look back to those earlier verses when we saw that the isles saw it and feared (verse 5) we go on to read, ‘They helped each one his neighbour and every one his brother saying, “Be of good courage”. So the carpenter encouraged the goldsmith and he that smootheth with the hammer him that smote the anvil, saying, It is ready for the sodering: and he fastened it with nails, that it should not be moved.”  Now this is almost a kind of sarcastic move on the part of the prophet.  You see these heathen nations, when they saw the enemy armies advancing they were panicking and saying, “What shall we do?”  “Oh,” they said, “we’d better make some more gods, better make some more idols and they will protect us.”  And so they were busy helping one another to make more idols and thinking that somehow or another that would put off the enemy.  What folly that was!

The Lord is saying to his people, “You need not join these other nations in panicking and trying to make gods to protect you.  You have a God you will already help you: I will help thee”.  How thankful we are for our helpers where we live but we have an almighty helper, an almighty carer, one who cares for us in all our distresses.

Those of you who are familiar with The Pilgrim’s Progress will remember that very early on in his journey Christian, after he left the City of Destruction and was bound for the Heavenly City he fell into the Slough of Despond.  He’d suddenly become very despondent and very depressed.  We read a very beautiful thing about that when Christian appeared to be sinking in that Slough of Despond.  Someone called Help came along and pulled him out.

“I will help thee”, says the Lord.

He knows all about our proneness to be despondent, to be depressed.  When such feelings come, he is there at hand.  He is ready to come alongside us.  He’s ready to say, “I will help thee” So we need not fear that when we are physically strong enough we get despondent in our minds.  Our God is there.  He not only says, “I will strengthen thee”.  He says, “I will help thee”.

Happy Hallowe'en!

Natural Wastage

There's nothing like a Church committee as a setting for making bizarre new theology.

The Daily Telegraph carried a report on the General Synod at which a member was quoted as follows:

“The perfect storm we can see arriving fast on the horizon is the ageing congregations,” he said. “The average age is 61 now, with many congregations above that.  … 2020 apparently is when our congregations start falling through the floor because of natural wastage, that is people dying."

The Salvation Army coined the term 'promoted to glory' for its members passing through death to life everlasting (a vertical contradiction of falling through the floor).  The Apostle Paul liked the phrase fallen asleep in Jesus.  John Bunyan in Pilgrim's Progress famously described arriving in a Celestial City:

Now, while they were thus drawing towards the gate, behold a company of the heavenly host came out to meet them: to whom it was said by the other two shining ones,

"These are the men that have loved our Lord when they were in the world, and that have left all for his holy name; and he hath sent us to fetch them, and we have brought them thus far on their desired journey, that they may go in and look their Redeemer in the face with joy." Then the heavenly host gave a great shout, saying, “Blessed are they that are called to the marriage-supper of the Lamb.” Rev. 19:9.

There came out also at this time to meet them several of the King’s trumpeters, clothed in white and shining raiment, who, with melodious noises and loud, made even the heavens to echo with their sound. These trumpeters saluted Christian and his fellow with ten thousand welcomes from the world; and this they did with shouting and sound of trumpet.

This done, they compassed them round on every side; some went before, some behind, and some on the right hand, and some on the left, ... And now were these two men, as it were, in heaven, before they came to it, being swallowed up with the sight of angels, and with hearing of their melodious notes. Here also they had the city itself in view; and they thought they heard all the bells therein to ring, to welcome them thereto. But, above all, the warm and joyful thoughts that they had about their own dwelling there with such company, and that for ever and ever; oh, by what tongue or pen can their glorious joy be expressed!

Alternatively, you can call it natural wastage . . . 

Christians would be wiser to value older people and reach them with the Good News of eternity in glory with Jesus than, "Hey, join us and soon become our natural wastage".