Easter 4 April 25th 2021

This Sunday in Easter is often called good shepherd Sunday. The image of shepherding is a good one for us on the day on which we hold our Annual Meeting. Shepherds need to have good knowledge of the sheep, keep them safe, and take them to places where they can be nourished. This is our image for now. We begin to see light at the end of the tunnel of the pandemic and we look to the future in a place of nourishment.  In doing this we have been helped this year by very positive input from the RESURGAM questionnaires, so I’m going to use these responses as the basis for my short reflection today. They are in three sections- Resurrection, Resilience and Restoration.

Resurrection: The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the focus of everything we do in these 50 days of Easter. Every baptised person is baptised into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. His destiny is ours. It defines our humanity. One of the depressing things about the leadership of the Church of England at present particularly in the debate about race and racism is that the Church appears to have no defining policy of its own and is simply reacting to a secular agenda, but 25 years behind the curve. The report published on Thursday of this week, From Lament to Action, on racism in the Church of England, is in that vein – light on theology, and with hardly any references to what is happening on the ground in places like this. In other words, classic top-down managerialism with very little soul. What it does do effectively is to highlight the many reports over decades on which little or no action was taken, and this is shaming, though all is viewed from a top-down perspective.   Our position at St John’s is different. We live the reality of being an intercultural worshipping community because we start from theology, not ticking a government diversity box. Our theological position is that we are defined by our baptism as the new humanity in which there is neither slave nor free, male nor female, Greek or Jew. Put it in another way, the is one race – the Human Race and we are that new humanity. Everything else flows from that- it is bottom up and inside out, not the other way round. The present leadership of the Church of England appears to believe that nothing is happening on the ground therefore everything has to be top down. Look at the triangle diagram for the Diocese of London’s 10-year programme if you want to see a picture of a top-down institution. This is the new medievalism. By contrast, we burst with theological, interconnected trinitarian energy in the joy of the resurrection. We are an Easter people and Alleluia is our song – recognisable in every language.  

Resilience: The Corona Virus pandemic globally has been ruthless in exposing weaknesses – social weaknesses, economic weaknesses and cultural weaknesses. Businesses which are not resilient have gone to the wall, societies which are fragmented have fragmented further, cultures which are not confident in their own skins decline. This we have seen very clearly and as a Church and Parish our starting point and resilience mechanism (as in the debate about race) has been in theology. Our theological position is that we are an open, live, worshipping community and that the boasting of many of the hierarchy about the future being virtual and on line is both a fig leaf and a mirage. It took the Courts of Sessions of Scotland to remind us that “online worship is not worship”. This is not to be a stone age Luddite and anti-technology but to offer to our society the mental and spiritual wellbeing which live worship gives. We have therefore remained open as much as we can. As a result, we are one of the few parishes whose three electoral rolls have grown significantly throughout the pandemic. This is not to pat ourselves on the back as we have much work to do looking ahead – our priorities will be our children’s work, building up the use of our building by many more groups and making the inspirational changes to this building which will give it a wow factor in our secular desert. We are currently completely redesigning our website to reflect this. One of our USP’s as a Parish is also our awareness of the phenomenon of Christian persecution and our determination to do something about it. In the autumn of this year, we will be welcoming a monk from the persecuted and small Christian community in Turkey to work alongside us for a few months.  Sociologically, one of the most distinctive aspects of this Parish is the very wide gap between rich and poor, a gap which has grown exponentially in recent years. This has been the history of this Parish from 1845 onwards – high immigration and a huge disparity of wealth.  In 1958, the first race riots happened in Notting Hill, and this Church stood against the prevailing racism of the time in a prophetic and bold way. Political life at the time was different.  In 1968, the politician Enoch Powell made his notorious immigration speech predicting that it would result in rivers of blood. This is the opposite of our vision.  We have not been wringing our hands about this – we realised very quickly that the solution lies in the energy which becoming an intercultural community has given us, and we build on this as we look forward to the future. The intercultural energy of this place has been and is its strength, and this is recognised and celebrated in the questionnaires.

Restoration: As you can see from what we have done already, our starting point is theology, and we have something distinctive and beautiful to offer. This is our worship especially music. The restoration and enhancement of music in our worship came through the questionnaires loudly and clearly, and we salute all the musicians who have led this work, as we look to the future with a renewed focus on music for children.  The questionnaires also understood very clearly the rapid growth of the aggressive secular agenda of contemporary Britain, which edits out the contribution of Christian Churches to a healthy society. This building stands as a highly visible alternative model, and we will use it to maximum effect. As we emerge from the pandemic, people will long meet together in a shared space which is uplifting, transcendent and numinous, like this place. We are that place – open, free, with exciting plans in hand to renew this building yet further by new lighting, restoring the original beautiful roof and introducing new art. Let’s refresh our secular desert with the living Springs of water from the font.  Everything flows from that. It is both challenging and exciting in the same measure.

So, in this Easter period, and today when we celebrate Christ the Good Shepherd leading us into the future, we pause, take stock, and thank God for all that has been and for all that will be.  And what of the future? In the light of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, our good shepherd will lead us on to even greater things, and I for one am up for the challenges ahead.  To the future we say “Yes”!