The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Readings:  Daniel 12:1-3, Hebrews 10:11-14, 19-25, Mark 13:1-8
“Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together… but encouraging one another.”                                             (Hebrews 10:24-25)
On Tuesday, my post-ordination training group visited the Moot Community at St Mary Aldermary in the City of London, just behind St Paul’s Cathedral.  The Moot Community calls itself a new monastic order.  Based at the church of St Mary Aldermary, it draws together a group of people, who are committed to a life of worship, mission and community.  They share together in a regular Rule of Life, and seek to combine the traditions of prayer, worship and study within the church, after the pattern of Benedictines, with a more Franciscan, innovative and experimental mission to those outside the church.
Deep in the heart of the City of London, they seek to reach out in loving Christian service to those around them, right where they are and at their point of need.  Passers-by in that area are unlikely to be destitute.  They may well be affluent and engaged in all-consuming high-level jobs.
But when the Moot Community decided to offer a course in Christian Meditation, entitled “Stressed in the City”, they found themselves (somewhat to their surprise) bursting at the seams.  The participants were largely those deeply entrenched in a society full of the need to accumulate, and bombarded constantly with information.
Only some of these people already professed themselves to be Christians – some were thinking about it, others had had no previous contact with a church before.  But they were what Moot calls “Spiritual Seekers” – people seeking a safe space in which they felt welcomed and affirmed and loved and in which they were offered the opportunity to reflect on and understand themselves and what we might call their calling, away from the superficial self created by frantic consumerism.
St Mary Aldermary is a beautiful and ancient Guild church, which has maintained all its traditional décor.  But at the back, it has opened a café, called “Host”, a place in which the staff are all also trained listeners, a place where Christian and non-Christian alike may come and think, and talk, and feel at home.
The Moot Community are driven by their understanding of “Kingdom-building”.  As Christians in the world here and now, they feel we are called to loving service, to generosity of spirit, to the building here on earth of God’s kingdom of peace and justice and compassion.  So when I was reminded by our reading of the writer to the Hebrews’ exhortation to “provoke one another to good deeds, and to encourage each other”, I saw a clear example of this in the work of the Moot Community in our contemporary society.
I have also recently attended two different talks about research projects into the faith of “Generation Y” – those now aged between 15 and 35 – the generation, indeed, which is often strikingly absent from today’s Anglican congregations.  Both of these lectures emphasised that many young people exploring faith are no longer asking the question, “Is it true?” as Richard Dawkins and his generation might have done, but instead they want to know, “Does it work?”
We were told that if young people attend churches where they hear about the Gospel messages of love and compassion, and Christ’s command to love God and to love our neighbours, but within the churches, they do not see this message being enacted before them, they will conclude that this is not a religion which “works”, and will pursue it no further.  This is surely a huge challenge to those of us who have committed our lives to Christian faith and practice, and one which should indeed “provoke us to love and good deeds.”
It is as we practise kindness and compassion; as we reach out to those who are seen as less than significant in society; as we play our part in giving to the needy, perhaps through the many charities supported by this church at home and abroad, that people will be able to see that Christianity is a religion that “works”.  The huge and generous pile of Christmas shoeboxes here this morning is testimony to the fact that our Christian faith can provoke us to love and good deeds, and people of all ages can be drawn together in a project which is visibly making the world a tiny bit more compassionate and fair.
If our churches are truly welcoming and open, offering worship which is inspiring and accessible for people of all ages and backgrounds, and an atmosphere in which people are visibly drawn towards one another in love and respect, they will draw in these spiritual seekers, whom God is calling to himself.
But however good our churches are, we live today in a country in which a growing proportion of people have had no experience of the church at all, and for whom it seems totally irrelevant.  If, as Christians, we believe that Christ’s commission to go out and make disciples of all nations lies at the heart of our faith, it is surely important that we seek to reach people where they are, even if their stance seems increasingly unfamiliar, or even incomprehensible to us.
In an effort to “provoke” good deeds, I would go as far as to say that this is primarily the task of the laity.
Whilst we seek constantly to live out our Christian faith in the sight of all – and wearing a clerical collar certainly helps with that! – many clergy are so fully engaged in caring for the needs of their congregation that they may seldom come into contact with what are today known as the “unchurched.”  I would be the first to put up my hand and say that the majority of my close friends are also clergypeople, and almost all the rest are committed churchgoers, often of the type who spend most of their free time in church!
But those on the front line, those who can show that Christianity is a way of life “that works”, and who can model God’s peace and justice and compassion in a world which seems increasingly chaotic and frightening and self-absorbed, are those who day by day encounter the unchurched at work, at home, at the school gates, on public transport.
I sometimes picture God’s church as the “distribution centre”, the place where the Ocado or Tesco vans are packed with good food, whilst the laity are the drivers who deliver those supplies right into people’s kitchens!
We pray that within the church we may provide teaching and support, worship which nourishes and inspires, a safe place for discussion and understanding.  We hope that Sunday by Sunday, each one of us may, in Word and Sacrament, become aware of God’s love and grace and compassion towards us, so that those who experience it may go out, inspired and equipped to reflect that love and compassion with confidence into the places where they live and work.
Our reading from Hebrews told us that we should “hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful.”  We have God’s promise that his Holy Spirit will inspire us to share our faith in word and deed, and we may also be encouraged, as we reflect, by this verse from our Old Testament reading:
“Those who are wise shall shine like the brightness of the sky, and those who lead many to righteousness like the stars for ever and ever.”                                (Daniel 12:3)
Amen.