Monday, 26 July 2021

SERMON 163 - SUNDAY 25 JULY 2021

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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