'This Memorial Stone was laid by Alexander Maclaren D.D. LittD., President of the Baptist Union 1875-76 and 1901-2 on Wednesday 24th April 1901.'
Many of us have benefited from the Dr Maclaren's sermons, published with an enthusiasm not so far short of those of C H Spurgeon (though without the same earthy wit). What would the good doctor make of the disengagement of this building that he witnessed in its proud inauguration?
He might do quite well - here is Maclaren preaching on God's refusal, delivered by the prophet Nathan, to allow King David to build him a house (i.e. a Jerusalem Temple):
Unless we can with our hearts rejoicingly confess, 'Thou art the King of glory, O Christ! Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom,' we do not pierce to the full understanding of Nathan's prophecy. He, that is Christ, has built the true Temple, in that His body is the seat of sacrifice and of revelation, and the meeting-place of God and man, and inasmuch as through Him we are built up into a spiritual house for an habitation of God. In Him is fulfilled the great prophecy of 'My Servant the Branch,' who 'shall build the Temple of the Lord' and 'be a Priest upon His throne.' In Him, too, is fulfilled in highest truth the filial relationship... In that filial relation lies the assurance of Christ's everlasting kingdom, for 'the Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into His hand.'
God's work is never ultimately about buildings.
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.
One memorable day the builders laying the foundations of the Church's new building downed tools and left the site. They had found human remains.
A very detailed plan of the graveyard the Church had between 1845 and 1854 (after which it was closed) exists. However it has no reference point, just lines of named graves. If you could find Mrs Jones you could possibly find Mr Smith a few feet along but there was no way of fining either of them. Tales were told of a line of headstones that once formed a kind of fence down the side of the property next to the car park. The assumption was that they had been moved in some previous building enterprise. They exist no longer. Plainly Baptists are a lot less careful about the dead than the Church of England who seem to have graveyards of antiquity well-kept around many of their churches.
The coroner however did not question my predecessors' carelessness in respect of their predecessors remains. Instead he declared me entirely trustworthy - 'as priest' - to judge the remains as old and to 'reinter them with suitable dignity'. I suppose this conjured up the idea of the churchyard sexton doing the honours with a robed vicar overseeing with prayers.
Baptist Colleges, though useful in many ways, help little with the really scary things of church life like baptising people without drowning them, dedicating infants without dropping them or marrying people without embarrassing them. Failure in such common practicalities indicates the total unpreparedness most Baptist ministers would feel at standing on a building site with a builder in a suit holding a black bag full of unearthed bones of former members and the Church Administrator standing nearby watchfully. I duly felt unprepared. The coroner's trust weighed heavily on me as the builder turned the sack over and a pile of old bones fell at my feet. This action did not lend itself to great dignity, any dignity really, though I was wearing a jacket and tie as a start.
The plot of land where Mrs Jones and Mr Smith and the others would end up would be hidden under the path and entry way of the new building. The temptation (had I been alone) to leave the pile intact would have been strong. A sort of old Baptist ballast. My onlookers and the distant brooding instruction of the coroner ('due dignity') led me to attempt a certain dignified reconstruction.
Suppressing the part of me that wanted to burst out in despairing laughter, I began the task of placing the parts of Mrs Jones and Mr Smith in reasonable order - two leg bones, two legs, two hips, the middle bit (if the reader is unfamiliar please rewatch the earlier YouTube). I laid these ancient Baptist remains with admirable dignity given my internal sense of the bizarre. But like any old jigsaw from before 1854 there were pieces missing - most alarmingly a shortage of skulls which created special problems as it was not a lack that could be hidden from the beady-eyed builder in a suit. There were too many legs as well though that was easier to deal with by some clever positioning as I learned my new trade.
Quite what parts of Mrs Jones and Mr Smith ended up in what order I shall never know and I trust the Good Lord to sort matters out on the Great Day. I reflected that it was the one experience of Christian Ministry when I had the most authority over Church Members and even then I couldn't get them into order . . .
