Acts 17: 22 – 31; 1 Peter 3: 13 – end; John 14: 15 – 21
Back in 2003, one commentator wrote these words: “In a world in which everything has a price and can be found in some marketplace, spirituality has become a commodity and a business”. Now imagine, if you will, this scene. “A vast exhibition space with all sorts of stalls, plus an area for demonstrations and classes and a stage. It was quite noisy because of the music from the stage and because there was a stall selling drums in the next aisle. There was a lot of incense and other smells. The stallholders were all sorts of people. Some were psychics – there were big tents of people doing tarot readings – there was Ayurvedic medicine, various sorts of massage, strange machines, books and dvds offering to change your life and all sorts of weird and wonderful spirituality and healing. There were also Sikhs and Hindus there – and I think some Buddhist monks. And then stalls just selling things – crystals, clothes, art, silk scarves… . There were many visitors trawling the stalls; some, I noticed, seemed almost frenetic in their anxiety not to miss anything. The whole scene was a microcosm of the human search for ultimate meaning, – and considerable amounts of money were changing hands.”
Those words describe my impressions of my first visit a couple of years ago to the London Mind, Body, Spirit Festival at Earls Court. On Friday I returned for another visit, and I’ll tell you shortly about what I was doing there.
Our reading from Acts this morning is about Paul’s visit to Athens. It seems he spent a bit of time there waiting for Silas and Timothy to join him. While he waited he debated the Christian faith in the synagogue and the market place. He was then invited by some popular philosophers to speak at the Areopagus, the site of the high court of Athens. In a sense therefore, the new faith was on trial. It seems that, a bit like the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival, Athens was the place to be for debates over new religions and philosophies. So much so that the city even had altar to an unknown god – just in case there was one they’d missed. Paul takes advantage of this; he begins with a bit of flattery about how religious they are and quotes one of their poets. Greek philosophy had popularized a kind of philosophical monotheism amongst some more sophisticated thinkers, and this was why there was considerable respect for Judaism. Paul goes on to speak of the universal need for repentance and the resurrection from the dead. He gets a mixed reception, although some believe.
So – what was I doing at the Mind, Body Spirit Festival on Friday? Well, not quite preaching or debating like Paul. I was on a stand amongst, as the publicity put it “over 100 cutting edge exhibitors and therapies”. The range was enormous – classical Indian dance, psychics and mediums, conscious chocolate – which I was relieved to find was not alive!, light frequency essences and a Love Dome where one possible activity was to write a special wish and put it on a wishness tree. That gives just a small flavour of the breadth and variety on offer. The stand I was on is called “Dekhomai” which means ‘welcome’ in ancient Greek. It’s run by a group of churches who seek to engage with people who are searching – for meaning, for spirituality, for God. We don’t tell people to repent, we don’t thrust the Bible down their throats, but we offer listening, prayer, blessings and other ways of approaching Christian spirituality. We’re out there in the marketplace where so many people are looking for something – just quietly letting it be known that Christianity also has a spirituality. That the church still has something to offer. Unlike most of the stalls, we don’t charge, although we accept donations.
It seems to me that people often are searching for God, and not only the sort of people who visit the Mind, Body, Spirit Festival. We’re fortunate here to have a thriving congregation with plenty of people joining us. But across the country others have been leaving the church. In the year 2000 a couple of academics called David Hay and Kate Hunt produced some research on understanding the spirituality of people who don’t go to church. It’s quite sobering to read the reasons why people decided to leave. Sometimes the church disappoints; people may have a bad experience, perhaps they catch a member of the clergy on an off day – a sobering thought for me! One woman identified an obsession with control, living in the past and a failure to be concerned with humanity as a whole as things which put her off her local church. People also react strongly against perceived hypocrisy, and it can be embarrassing and difficult if you are completely new to church and don’t know what to do.
I’m not for one moment suggesting that we’re guilty of all these things here, although the report might give us pause for thought. But I wonder how we might respond to the thought people are searching for God, but not necessarily finding Him in the Church of England. Could we make it easier for them? Could we be better at introducing newcomers with no experience of church. People who might appreciate our style of worship and our deeply thoughtful approach to our faith?
In June 2013 the Diocese of London launched an initiative called Capital Vision 2020 . It’s centred on three themes: confidence, compassion and creativity. As part of this the Diocese hopes to commission 100,000 ambassadors for Christ in daily life. We’re invited to join in with this and we hope perhaps to hold a commissioning service here later this year. This initiative gives us all an opportunity to think about how we live out our discipleship not only when we’re in church but in all the rest of our lives. Writing under very different circumstances from ours, where persecution was a real possibility, the apostle Peter urged his readers, “Always be ready to make your defence to anyone who demands from you an account of the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.”
What then, will be our response to the 21st century spiritual marketplace?
Amen