This week I was reading an article. Robert Colls writes about Westoe Methodist church in South Shields where he went as a child and young adult in the 1960s, and which closed in 2022.[1] He reflects on the ‘world within a world’, where a vibrant community life centred around the worship of Jesus took place. He reflects on Sunday mornings for worship and Saturday evenings, his parents dancing, 'where in the break you got a home-made supper that proved the parable of the loaves and the fishes.' He reflects on being part of the Boys Brigade company — 'Silver pips, stripes and badges came and went for all these things, but the cadences of the Bible stayed. They come easy to me now. Best of all, there was lots of football and cricket, although the kit was something else.' Older, he joined the Young People’s Fellowship. 'If you wanted to meet the girls, you had to go church.' He says 'The YPF was important in ways I’m still trying to figure out . . . Sundays provided the venue. Bible and hymnbook provided the wonder. Local preaching provided the ‘oracy.’ The minister provided leadership, and the books.' He says, ‘Clubs’ and ‘squashes’, ‘fellowships’ and ‘sisterhoods’, ‘Packs’ and ‘leagues’, choirs and Sunday schools, Communion and ‘contact’ groups — the names said it all in a common round that brought people into regular and informal union.' He says, 'we talked about Jesus Christ almost as if he was a member away at university (long hair, at Oxford, probably).' The article is called The Death of the Church. He says the closing of churches ‘leaves a gap in who we are . . . Scanning a screen is not the same as belonging to anything as complex as a church.'
Last Friday, I took the train to Streatham in South London. This is where I group up. We lived in Thornton Heath, but church was Streatham Baptist Church, known by everyone who went as Lewin Road. The church was a second home. Being back in the building — which had a big redevelopment after we moved as a family to Stevenage in 1992 — I could still remember places I sat in a service; where a door and steps down into a small garden area had been; where an outside staircase that went up to the room I went into for Sunday school. The hall was still the same where I attended playgroup as a toddler, and 7ups as a junior aged child. Being in the building also brought to my mind a community of faces, who had been part of the congregation, who had been part of my life, a community of generations, from 0 to 90 — so many names. My life, my faith, owes a lot to that church, in ways I can only recognise now. I could tell a similar story about the church I joined in Stevenage, Bunyan Baptist, in which I spent my teenage years, and early adulthood. There again was a community that loved me, encouraged me, took an interest in me, prayed for me. I can tell another story of the last thirteen years being here, at Belle Vue.
Today is Good Friday, why am I sharing this? Partly because it has been on mind this week, but more importantly it reminds me of the power of the cross. The cross of Jesus is the beginning of the church. From the death of Jesus comes something new. And we see it in the words of Jesus to his mother and the beloved disciple. The last time we met Jesus’ mother was in Cana. Jesus said then ‘My hour has not yet come.’ On the cross his hour has come. If the water into wine was the first sign of Jesus, the cross is the supreme sign [2], to be equalled only by what happens on Sunday morning. The supreme sign of God’s love for the world and for his only Son being given for the salvation of the world.
Ahead of his arrest, Jesus had said, ‘when I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all people to myself.’ Here at the cross he is drawing a new community together. Here on the cross, Jesus is the vine, and he is creating branches which will bear fruit. A new family is born at the cross who share the same blood, the blood of the cross [3] The impact of Jesus’ words, are that the beloved disciple receives this woman as his own. This has been the good news from the beginning. Jesus comes to his own, and to all who receive him, they become children of God, born not of natural descent, but born of God. The community of Jesus — the church is where we are thrown together by Jesus and freed to call these people whom we have no natural affinity, nothing in common, ‘brother’ and ‘sister.’[4]
This is the work of Jesus, the work the Father gave him. This is what Jesus says is now finished, It is the creation of a community of love, a new family of grace and truth, a fellowship centred on abiding, receiving, living. Its source is Jesus, and its power is the cross. Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground a dies, says Jesus, It remains only a single seed, but if it dies, it produces many seeds.
I was speaking to someone from Lewin Road this week. Someone I’ve not seen in over thirty years. She told me how her family came to the church. A few years later, when she was not even ten years old, her mum died. Afterwards her father struggled to cope. One day she came home from school, to find the police there, her father was having to be committed, and they asked her did she have anywhere to go? (This was the 1960s!) She ended up going to the home of a woman called Lois, by then in her sixties. And later she was fostered by a couple in the church. This young girl was loved, as a daughter, as a sister: from that hour she was received into a home. This was salvation in its fullest sense, a kind of heaven on earth. She went on being welcomed at Lois’ home, and later when she was older, married, and had a child of her own, she would visit Lois with her own daughter. Lois then much frailer, then in her eighties.
That’s the gospel. That’s the power of the cross. That’s why we call Good Friday ‘Good.’ The Good Shepherd lays down his life for us. The Good Shepherd who knows our name. The Good Shepherd who says, ‘here is your son’, ‘here is your mother’, ‘here is your brother’, ‘here is your sister.’
[1] Robert Colls, 'The Death of a Church', New Statesman 22-March - 4 April 2024
[2] David Ford, Gospel of John (Baker Academic, 2021)
[3] Timothy Radcliffe, Seven Last Words (Burnes and Oates, 2006)
[4] William Willimon, Thank God's Friday (Abingdon, 2004)
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