Sermon at Winterslow Baptist Church, Winterslow, Morning Service -– Sunday 25 July 2021
It is lovely
to be back here at Winterslow Baptist Church, and whilst I have taken a few services
at All Saints Church here over the last few months, it seems an absolute age
since I was addressing you here in what you affectionately call the “tin
tabernacle”.
I have to
confess that I did struggle a bit putting together today’s talk as I was not
sure how and where we would be doing today’s service. The original plan was for me to come here and
preach in person at a normal service, then possibly on Zoom or via a recording
made at home; but finally it was decided in view of the continuing Covid-19
guidelines you would have a café-style church with limited numbers and I was
delighted that I could come here in person and talk to you. When Jason phoned me a couple of days ago to
find out what I might need by way of hymns and themes I decided that it would
be good to keep it simple and rather than a formal sermon, in view of the
café-style approach you might like to hear my musings on how my faith has been
affected and survived these eighteen months of restrictions and lockdowns.
I thought
about biblical examples too and, of course, the obvious one is the Great
Babylonian Exile of seventy years at a time when the Jewish nation were
separated from their place of worship, the Temple at Jerusalem, and encouraged
to worship other idols in Babylon. There
seems to me to be a parallel with our experiences of late – the inability to
sing songs of praise and worship in our established churches of whatever
denomination. The Book of Daniel has
been, for me, a great encourager during these unusual times. Like the faithful of today, Daniel found ways
to continue to worship his God despite all the obstacles and restrictions put
upon him and I do recommend you to read that wonderful book of the bible again
in the context of where we have found ourselves in recent days.
So a
question for you, how have you managed to remain connected with God, Father,
Son and Holy Ghost? How has your faith
suffered or grown through these dark days of pandemic? Let me tell you my story and my own thoughts
on this subject.
I think a lot
of us, right at the beginning, thought of the first lockdown as a bit
inconvenient but also a “bit of fun” – an opportunity for the old Spirit of the
Blitz” to be restored to this nation.
Following the divisions in this country caused by Brexit when families
and friends had argued with each other over whether it was a good thing or not
to leave the European Union, there needed to be a healing process and I think
many saw this pandemic and restrictions on each and every one of us an
opportunity to pull together and help one another irrespective of colour,
creed, sex/sexual orientation or religion. I personally witnessed many genuine
acts of random kindness and understanding particularly in the community in
which I live in Downton and I knew that this also happened in great measure in
Winterslow. The Clarendon Ministry Team,
of which I am a full member, actively sought to ensure that we found
alternative ways in which to bring Jesus into the homes of anyone seeking Him
through Zoom – something I had never heard of, let alone used, before March
2020.
Our wings
were clipped though, and my weekly visit to the homeless hostel in Salisbury as
chaplain stopped and I had to content with my ministry becoming a weekly and
then fortnightly telephone conversation with the manager. Liz and I continued to recite the Morning
Office together and read our bibles and pray together although as time went on
we started to pray less frequently and not necessarily together. My praying occurred during my daily allowed
walk when, during those early few weeks the weather was glorious and I was able
to walk five or six miles a day around Downton.
Additionally I would keep a journal and write down, each day a Thought
which I shared with others online.
As time went
on I have to confess that I stopped missing the actual going to church and
reciting similar liturgy and turned to connecting with God through the wonders
of nature – a realisation that God had left the building – because we could no
longer attend – and was to be found within the community and within nature
itself. The wonders and mysteries of God were to be found all around us, and in
my case, especially above us!
Many of you
will know that I write the monthly article in the local parish magazine about
what any casual observer might see in the night sky in any given month. I have been a keen amateur astronomer since I
was twelve years of age and bought my first telescope with my paper round
money. Over the last several decades of my life I have added further
instruments to that first little 60 mm refractor so as today I have five
telescopes of differing types and sizes as well as a number of binoculars.
However,
during my busy life as a lawyer and then, following early retirement, my
retraining as a church minister and then a spiritual director, I had little
time to pursue my passion of astronomy as I was busy building on my career,
bringing up a family and then, concentrating on my theological training –
writing endless assignments and attending lectures and courses. My interest in the night sky continued but
got shoved to one side and became a casual pastime.
When the
pandemic struck in March last year, the weather was glorious and the night
skies beautifully clear and dark – no aeroplane trails across the sky and the
sky seemed to be generally much less polluted.
Out came my telescopes and I made a conscious effort to re-acquaint
myself with some favourites – stars, planets and other celestial objects which
I had observed as a 12-year old boy from the back garden of my family home in
Lincolnshire. It was an amazing feeling to see these objects unchanged from
back then – a feeling of continuity and closeness to the faithful unchanging
face of our Great Creator. The vastness of the Universe and the mysteries of
those objects that we can only just see on the edge of the visible Universe
make me feel extremely humble and small and yet so amazingly important to think
that we exist on this small fragile planet, orbiting an average star, on one of
the arms of an average galaxy amongst billions.
How is that possible? And to
think that we are so important to God that he sent his one and only Son to save
us.
When the
space probe Voyager 1, having flown past and taken images of the outer planets
of the Solar System was on its way out of the Solar System, it was instructed
by Mission Control back on Earth to take one final photograph looking back
towards the Sun. The image was taken on
14th February 1990 when it was at a distance of 3.7 billion miles 6
billion kilometres) from the Sun. The photograph captured, in the glare of the
Sun, a tiny pale blue dot – the Earth. The photograph was later to inspire the
tile of Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot: A vision of the Human Future in
Space”. He said “Look again at that dot,
that’s here, that’s home, that’s us”.
To me,
though, that same little blue dot image inspires me to say “Pale Blue Dot: A
Vision of the Human Future on Earth”. For me it should always remind us, as did
that famous “earthrise” photo over the Moon taken by Bill Anders on Apollo 8
that we live on a fragile space craft spinning at a vast speed through
space. We are fragile enough without
trying to destroy it ourselves with wars and climate change activities.
I once more
return to the Book of Daniel. Despite
all the efforts of the Babylonians to make Daniel conform with their ways – how
they ate, how they dressed, how they worshipped, Daniel remained faithful to
God. In recent times we, as Christians,
have faced many challenges and persecutions and the stronger we become the
greater those challenges will be. We
should look upon these challenges, including the pandemic we have faced and
continue to face, as opportunities to grow our faith – perhaps in new ways
beyond what we have done in the past. A
certain decree of traditionalism is important but too much legalism can
actually destroy our true purpose.
The lessons
for me during these difficult times has been to look at things afresh – to find
God in new places – to “boldly go where we have not gone before” to paraphrase a
famous space sci-fi series. The church has left the building just as Jesus left
the synagogues and preached on the mountain tops and in the streets.
Yes, it is
good to meet together and worship – that is one way of expressing our praises
and thanks to God, it is also a way of helping and supporting each other but
Jesus probed the unknown, went to the houses of sinners, ate and drank upon the
ordinary people. He left us the Holy
Spirit to inspire and impassion us. I
once heard a preacher say to his congregation “What is your passion? What do you really care about? “What really gets you excited?” Answer that
question and you will find God for where your passion is, there is God because
he inspired you to it!
I shall
continue to attend church but I shall also continue to seek God in heavens
above as well as amongst the communities below.
Amen MFB/163/24072021
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