A church without walls - leaving a place

 

This is the text of the sermon I preached at Christchurch Marlborough on Sunday 8th January 2023 (the final service at the Methodist chapel. The congregation will be joining the congregation at the local Anglican church St Marys.)

I confess that I don’t know the history of Methodism in Marlborough. That said I think we can safely assume that John Wesley on his travels between London and Bristol may well have passed through here. And I gather there has been Methodist worship taking place on this site for over 200 years.

Some of you will have worshipped here for many years. Perhaps you have only ever worshipped here. For others of you your connection with this building won’t be as long. Nonetheless you will all feel some attachment to this place. Therefore, to leave this place is sad and painful. And please note. I’m purposely making a distinction between Place and People. This place is closing but you as Methodist people will be together albeit in a different place.

That said for time immemorial people have needed a sense of place to worship God.

If we look at Genesis 28, we have the story of Jacob having his strange dream

“a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. ¹³ There above it^[c] stood the Lord, and he said: “I am the Lord, the God of your father Abraham and the God of Isaac. I will give you and your descendants the land on which you are lying.” 

What was Jacob’s response to this?

¹⁶ When Jacob awoke from his sleep, he thought, “Surely the Lord is in this place, and I was not aware of it.” ¹⁷ He was afraid and said, “How awesome is this place! This is none other than the house of God; this is the gate of heaven.”

¹⁸ Early the next morning Jacob took the stone he had placed under his head and set it up as a pillar and poured oil on top of it. ¹⁹ He called that place Bethel,

The story of Jacob shows us this sense of sacred place. This sense of us wanting to set aside a place where we feel connected to God and where we can worship God.

And that sense of sacred place has been with people of faith for millennia. The anguish of the Jewish people in exile in Babylon came from their separation from Jerusalem and the Temple and hence they felt apart from God. Of course, that wasn’t so. The prophets Jeremiah and Isaiah in particular assured them that God was with them even in their exile.

At the time of Jesus the Jewish people had long returned from exile and once again the Temple figured greatly. Perhaps more so than ever before. It was in the great Temple in Jerusalem that the Jewish people believed God was living, in the Holy of Holies, behind the great curtain.

When we look at the Gospels there are very few references to Jesus being in a synagogue or in The Temple in Jerusalem. He ministered in the open. He prayed outside as far as we are told anyway.

Part of Jesus’ message was that the Jewish people should not be fixated on the Temple. On one occasion when the Pharisees criticised Jesus for allowing his disciples to “work” on the sabbath (after the disciples had picked some grain to eat because they were hungry) Jesus said ⁶ I tell you that something greater than the temple is here. Matthew 12:6

And Jesus foretold a time when the Temple would be destroyed. In Mark 13 we are told:

As Jesus was leaving the temple, one of his disciples said to him, “Look, Teacher! What massive stones! What magnificent buildings!”

² “Do you see all these great buildings?” replied Jesus. “Not one stone here will be left on another; every one will be thrown down.”

In 40 or so years after Jesus his prophecy came true when the Romans destroyed the Temple once and for all.

It seems to me therefore that Jesus was saying that his followers should not become fixated on a certain place to be his body. To be his Church. It’s a theme the apostle Paul picked up on in Acts of the Apostles.

In Acts 17 we find Paul in Athens having a theological debate at a meeting of the Areopagus. A council of learned men. Paul had noticed statues and monuments to various gods dotted around Athens including one marked “To the unknown God”. Paul explained that he knew who the unknown God was and had experienced him through Jesus Christ his son. Paul, then goes on to say:

²⁴ “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 

Paul says these words to challenge these wisemen of Athenians. To point out to them that God and his son our savour Jesus Christ is not worshipped via statues and idol or buildings for God is everywhere. We encounter God in many places and in many ways not just in a building.

Nevertheless, we as people can’t get away from our buildings. Sacred spaces where we can worship and where we can be together as part of the Body of Christ, the Church.

Paul wasn’t saying we should not have buildings. He was just reminding us that being the body of Christ isn’t wholly about a building or a particular place. The Church is its people collectively.

Paul was advocating something that the late Revd David Gamble, a past President of the Methodist Conference of Great Britain, called a church without walls.

What it means to have a church without walls.

In English there are at least two meanings of the word ‘without’.

‘Church without walls’ can use the word without in either sense, either as ‘church outside the walls’ or as ‘church that doesn’t have walls’.

There is a Good Friday hymn that in its original wording started

“There is a green hill far away,
Without a city wall,
Where the dear Lord was crucified,
Who died to save us all.”

Most hymn books now render it as “There is a green hill far away OUTSIDE a city wall”

There is something pretty significant for us in the idea that God’s saving, life-transforming act of love in Jesus, took place outside the city wall - on the rubbish dump, where people didn’t want to go, the place for those who were outcast. That tells us a lot I think about where God is at work. Without the church walls. Outside the church walls.

Jesus’ whole ministry was “without”. Outside. Outside the rules of the Pharisees. Outside the Temple. Resurrection is outside the normal expectations of life.

Yet going outside the walls, leaving our comfort zone, not allowing or assuming God to be locked up in a building, is quite a challenge! Meeting people where they are, outside the church walls, is not easy. And yet that is the DNA of the Methodist Church.

John Wesley had to preach standing on his father’s tomb as he was not allowed to preach inside the parish church in his home village of Epworth. And Wesley of course famously preached in the open air on many occasions. To the miners of Cornwall and Kingswood near Bristol. In this sense, clearly, “church without walls” is at the heart of a Methodist way of being church. It’s our history and how we developed. It’s what we did. Very often we Methodists seem to have lost that. Though in conversations I’ve had with some of you over the last couple of years as you’ve come to the decision to move from this particular place, I’ve been told how during the pandemic there was a rekindling of being church without walls through serving other people. By being freed for a time of the challenges of a building. To be church outside these walls.

The second meaning of ‘without’ is ‘not having.’ A Church that doesn’t have walls. ‘Church without walls’ in the sense of a church that doesn’t have walls, whether external or internal.

Walls separate people. Walls treat people differently and keep them apart. Walls protect people from other people and can suggest that ‘You are not welcome in here’. Belfast peace wall Wall in Israel.

It is ironic that the walls of churches can act in such a way. That’s not the intention, but that’s the effect. For those of us who attend church regularly or have been brought up attending church, we think nothing of it. But for those who haven’t been to church for a long time or have never been to church, it is daunting.

What if I don’t know the hymns? When will I know when to stand up or sit down? Where do I sit? What should I wear? Imagine going into a betting shop and you get the idea.

And it is something that has existed in the church from the very start. Not necessarily walls of bricks and mortar but barriers nonetheless. St Paul found this in the church in Ephesus. Where the church was split between those who had been Jews and those who were Gentiles. But in Jesus there are no walls or barriers

¹⁴ For he himself is our peace, who has made the two groups one and has destroyed the barrier, the dividing wall of hostility

Ephesians 2:14

Walls can exist inside churches too. Churches can create walls based on age, or ability, or gender or theological perspective or denomination. A church without walls would have none of these things. A church without walls is a place where people don’t have their separate compartments. A church without walls is a place where there are no, “no-go areas”. The generous hand of friendship being extended by the people of St Marys is a very good indication I feel that Christchurch folk will be moving to a church without walls.

But aren’t walls sometimes a good thing?

Yes, sometimes we do need walls. Church walls can provide a sanctuary; a place where people feel safe. The sense of coming home. But a church with walls that act as barriers to those within, and without, is not a good place.

The challenge for us all then is to be a church without walls. Firstly, a church that goes beyond the walls; a church where you take church out to catch up with Jesus where he is; with his people outside these walls. And secondly a church which has no barriers in it so that all are welcome, and all are called to use their gifts and talents to God’s glory.

I mentioned a moment ago the Jews being taken into exile in Babylon and their feelings of loss as they were separated from their homeland but most of all the Temple in Jerusalem. I could have preached on that but instead decided on the “Church without walls” theme. Nevertheless, I’d like to leave you with two short pieces of scripture to reflect on as you leave this place to pastures new.

They are words spoken by Isaiah and Jeremiah to give hope and consolation:

Firstly Jeremiah 29: 11 – 13

¹¹ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. ¹² Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. ¹³ You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart. 

And then an assurance from the prophet Isaiah of what God is doing:

¹⁸ “Forget the former things;
    do not dwell on the past.
¹⁹ See, I am doing a new thing!
    Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
    and streams in the wasteland. Isaiah 43: 18 - 19

Or as John Wesley put it “Best of all God is with us” Amen.