The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Radio Four’s Thought for the Day is often derided. Six days a week at about 7.45am a person of faith reflects on life, the universe and everything. It’s all too easy to switch off at least mentally until the next item of real news is announced but on Thursday last week Angela Tilby provided a moment of real revelation. She talked about adjectives, about the way in which they spuriously brighten up the language of officialdom. She provided me with a great idea for piloting my way through official documents. So the next time the postman delivers a document from Camden or from a political party seeking your vote, just cross out all the adjectives to see what is really being said. We should all be suspicious of adjectives and their tendency to float free of concrete reality and get lost in the ether of aspiration. Nouns and verbs are the important words; they are words about being and doing, about naming and locating and identifying. Adjectives qualify and if they are to earn their keep they have to be used sparingly and made to do a lot of work.
As I listened to this broadcast I was reminded of one of my favourite lines from a not very well known film. A young man is being attacked in a New York back street and he tells the gang of queer bashers that he’s armed. They tell him that they’ve got knives and ask what he’s got. He replies, ‘Irony, adjectives, and eyebrows.’ He then gets beaten up because in the end even adjectives can’t defend us, though we try hard. We use adjectives to build up images of what we would like to be like and to put down the people we don’t like. I remember my college chaplain almost at a loss for words describing someone in the most outraged tones as, ‘Deeply shallow.’
When we come to the Bible, however, we find adjectives used far more sparingly than we might expect. In our first lesson for example there are only two and the distance between them is a mark of the change that is being brought about by God in Jacob. At the beginning of the story Jacob comes to a certain place – an undistinguished any old sort of place with no name. Jacob then sleeps, dreams, and hears promises made to him by God. Jacob wakes and the any old sort of place has become a special place, a place of revelation. ‘Surely the Lord is in this place and I did not know it. How awesome is this place.’ And there is the second adjective – awesome. The place has worked hard to earn that description. Jacob is running away. He is leaving his familiar territory for the unknown. And he has a vision of angels ascending and descending. It is as though the angels are changing guard. The old guardian angels of his home are ascending and being replaced by the guardian angels of unfamiliar places. God is with him wherever he is and he had not realised it. He had not dared believe it. In this one place he has seen the truth that he can be at home with God in all places. A certain place becomes the gate of heaven. So we might ask ourselves has this place, this parish church earned for itself the adjective awesome. Is it the place where we can learn to be at home with God any and everywhere, because God is here in this place?
When we look at our gospel reading we find again only two adjectives and they fall into the category of what Angela Tilby in her broadcast called ‘small words that qualify great realities’. Jesus is in Jerusalem and the gap between him and his opponents is growing towards its climax. For his opponents it is a matter of plain words, of defining nouns. Is Jesus the Messiah? For Jesus it is the verbs that count, the actions; the works that God has done through him. Some people see what he is doing and follow. And what Jesus gives to his followers contains our first adjective, ‘eternal life.’ And what God is giving to Jesus contains the second; it is greater than all else. And what defines these two gifts is that they cannot be taken or snatched away. These gifts are unsnatchable because they are eternal, they are greater than whatever else could be imagined. Suddenly we see that these adjectives are different and difficult because they don’t work in the way adjectives normally work. Adjectives are supposed to qualify but these adjectives stretch out beyond all qualification. What is eternal and greater than all else is unimaginable. We have perhaps been brought back to where we began. What Jesus offers through all his actions, is a glimpse through the gate of heaven, a glimpse of what can never be pinned down not even by a host of adjectives – it is too awesome for that.
We on the other hand are a church that is I suspect rather too fond of adjectives; if you look at our mission statement, they fairly pour off the page;.reverent, imaginative, genuine, dignified, inspiring, beautiful, quiet, open, welcoming, inclusive and so they march on hoping to lure across our thresh hold the kind of people we like to see ourselves as being. It’s time perhaps to rewrite it, taking out the adjectives and putting in a lot more verbs, actions to which as a community we commit ourselves.
And today is the day on which we commit ourselves to such actions. Our Dedication Festival is the start of our stewardship month – the month for considering just one adjective and how it works. We have recently proved ourselves to be a generous church – we did it in our preferred mode, we raised over £70k dramatically in six weeks. But generosity can also be quiet, inconspicuous, and persistent. We need generous people to commit themselves to the tasks you will find advertised in the crypt after this service. We need more and more generous people to commit themselves to giving however much money they can manage week by week to maintain the life of this church. If we don’t, we shall be forced to cut down on our verbs; we shall be able to do less and provide less. At the moment the clergy of London are some of the poorest paid in the country. The diocese is committed to keeping churches open and increasing clergy stipends; at the moment both seem unlikely. And as things stand at the moment we as a church face a monthly shortfall of £2.5k a month. You’ll find a lot more information at the back of the church please read it and respond in whatever way you can. It’s a month for remembering that adjectives only earn their keep when the verbs are in place. What would we give to be awesome!