Stewardship Sunday: I wouldn't start from here

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Ecclesiastes 5:8-20, 1 Timothy 6:17-19, Matthew 6:1-4, 19-21

There’s a joke that’s always confused me. It runs, something to the effect of, a lost tourist in Hammersmith asking someone how to get to, say, St Margaret’s, Putney, and the person replying, “Well, sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

I just don’t think it’s very funny. But it is helpful in analogical ways.

So if the Australian cricket captain were to ask you: how might we finish off the English and win the series: “Well, sir, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Or, if a lady were to ask you, how can I achieve consensus to secure the orderly exit of the UK from the EU? “Well, madam, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.”

Or, more to my point today, how can I become a Christian? You might well say, “Well, madam, if I were you, I wouldn’t start from here.” ‘Here’ being twenty-first century Britain.

And it’s not the inexorable drive of secularism, which since 9/11 has shifted to a much greater interest in the place of public religion; and the renewed interest in holistic attitudes to health, especially mental health, that drive against scientific materialism.

But the trend that’s more damaging to Christianity is the seemingly endless march of individualism; that after 50 years has developed to be not simply hostile to religion but to all public life. So while relativism became fashionable in the second half of the twentieth century, with the sense that people became more tolerant of other cultures and religions, rather than seeking to push their own convictions; we’ve reached a stage where world leaders refuse to accept the consensus of evidence, doubling down on their own stories and dismissing the credibility of public institutions. 

Fake news, which in the past has been called propaganda and ideology, has never had such a riot in liberal democracies. never has politics been so dominated by individual personalities. And with that we face more social division than in generations. Next year will be no doubt another divisive American election, while we continue to slog through Brexit towards our third election in 5 years.

It’s interesting that technology, which has sought genuinely to provide greater and greater connection, and has done wonders for many in isolation, has also fuelled division; polarising opinion and destroying the balance that existed within old media. If once you could assume that people were getting their news from the papers and a couple of television and radio stations, the news people pick up on today is seemingly just as likely to come from the bedroom of a teenage fantasist.

One of the fascinating, albeit alarming, trends in the army I saw was the rise of flat-earthers. Not as a religious thing, but it’s what happens if you believe everything you see on Youtube. And it’s a demonstration of a total loss of faith in public life, from government to media and science. Soldiers, generally, are a superstitious lot and prone to conspiracy theories, so I thought it was just an odd army thing – but I’ve already heard of two people in Putney with the same views. In Putney.

And perhaps this is peak-individualism. Where children at school no longer want to be policemen, dancers, or vets. They want to be vloggers and have set themselves personal goals like being a micro-influencer by age 6. You are your profile. I post therefore I am.

But I’m not about to don my sandwich board and parade through West Putney hollering “the End is Nigh”. Where we build consensus, it’s possible to make a huge difference. Because we love David Attenborough, Britain has transformed how it sees plastic. We’ve cut carrier bag use by 90% in 5 years. I suspect it won’t be long till you’ll be pilloried in the street for carrying a single-use bottle of water. “Shame” people will cry and ring a bell behind you as you walk along, “Shame”. And there is in ecology a surprising and needed return of ethics to our society. Where people are prepared to say: ‘it’s not just my opinion – you genuinely shouldn’t do that.’ Which for British people is normally pretty much anathema (with the exception of jumping the queue).

But, this also ties in with the business of churches. The parish church is inextricably tied to the local community. So if you’re getting annoyed because we’re having a lot of baptisms you should know that we’re legally required to baptise all who seek it.  Or if you can’t get a seat at the carol service, or if you think it’s odd that you can only get married in your local church or the one you attend, and not the gorgeous bijou chapel in smartsville, with its beautiful celebrity bijou vicar, where you booked your delightful bijou reception and spa retreat,  it’s because parish and community are bound together and with the parish comes the cure, the care, of all souls within it.

And this means that the parish church is a place to gather not just like-minded people; we’re not an internet chat-room. And it’s entirely possible that in every conceivable way, in politics, interests, in age, career, sexuality, personal wealth, the person next to you is both different and disagrees with you. What draws people to St Margaret’s, then, is a shared commitment to the beliefs and values of Christianity, and our parish: this peculiar little patch between Putney, Barnes and Roehampton. 

And while the world is increasingly virtual, what matters here, despite Laura’s excellent website, is physically coming together. While the matters of the world spin and turn, what concerns us here is eternal, and is largely unchanged for 2000 years. While modern life has created the individual in an impersonal world, what defines the church is our coming together as one body.

I think people often assume that the state pays churches to maintain their buildings, or that we receive support from the National Lottery or Libor. They might think Hilary is paid in her guard post at the back, or that church choirs are populated by those who have sung in choirs since they were children and are now duty bound to continue.

The truth is that churches are autonomous and depend at every moment on their congregation. Everything that happens, paying the vicar (the most important thing) the roof, the choir, the website, the silver, the garden, the magazine, cleaning the church, our social events, playgroups and Sunday school. Everything is written, bought, maintained by this group of people, who simply turn up each week, give, and pitch in, building this dais, decorating it, this altar frontal that was commissioned just before I arrived, fulfilling the last wishes of a parishioner. The pews, every one of which I’m told, has been repaired by Ted.

It is a huge collective work built on the love and sacrifice of generations of West Putney; which makes it a terribly exciting place. The chances are that most of the people who have lived in your house gave to this church, their time, their money: built the extension, the church hall, weeded the garden, read the lessons; left their mark, in visible and invisible ways.

Today’s readings all appear to be about money. They’re really about our attitude to life. In Ecclesiastes, the Eeyore of the Bible, there is an ambivalence about wealth that comes and goes, with the well-attested warning that ‘The lover of money will not be satisfied with money.’
‘Sweet is the sleep of labourers… but the surfeit of the rich will not let them sleep.’ His advice in the end is that ‘the gift of God is to find enjoyment in [your] toil.’ Which is to say that it is the manner of our life and how we find purpose in living that brings happiness.

Similarly, for Paul, the point is not to set your security, your hope, on your riches, recognising that all we are given comes from God, given for our enjoyment. ‘The life that really is life’ means using those resources to be generous and so to share that enjoyment with others. And this is echoed in the Gospel, which again is trying to take our eye off the pretty shiny things of the world, in order to use our riches, in whatever form we have them, to build up our common life; here the alms that would have been shared by the poor of that community.

With all these passages, then, the argument is that the pursuit of riches for their own sake, or the comfort and security of wealth, will not bring happiness, and will not last. Our treasure in heaven is what we are able to give, what we contribute with the work of our hands and how we serve others. 

The word community is one of the most abused today. Faith communities are one of the few places that gather people across demographics and generations. They are also themselves the sum of the work of generations, shaped by hands given in prayer and work. Today is a chance to reflect on our place in this community, where our treasure in heaven is, and how we can shape the future of St Margaret’s. How can webuild a community that celebrates all the good things we have here, that shares its pain and builds something extraordinary.

Well, sir, this is exactly where I would start.

Pentecost 3: 100 years of the Dover House Estate

3rd Sunday after Pentecost

Sermon by the Reverend Doctor Brutus Green

Readings: 1 Kings 19. 15-16,19-21, Galatians 5.1,13-25, Luke 9.51-62

Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.

There’s an expression well known in the army: there’re no atheists in foxholes. Meaning that in a tight spot people will always reach for the Bible. This is borne out in studies of war and religion, and, still today, services on operations, such as in Iraq and Afghanistan, are well attended even if this doesn’t translate to garrison churches on returning home. One bishop during the First World War reported from the trenches: ‘The soldier has got religion, I’m not sure that he has got Christianity’; without doubt, soldiers are a superstitious lot; and despite its peace and quiet, if South West London has a lot of anything, it’s foxholes.

Thinking ourselves back to 1919 (partying or not), the First World War had brought about an unprecedented upheaval across Europe and the world. The nineteenth-century had seen the coming together of Europe into blocks. In 1800 Europe contained 500 political powers. By 1900 there were just twenty. In that century the percentage of European ownership of the world rose from 35 to 85 percent. Britain claimed a quarter of the world’s land; Russia covered one sixth of it. Many of these great empires, the Romanov dynasty’s, the Hapsburgs’ Austria-Hungary, Kaiser’s Germany, and the Ottoman empire were in ruins by 1918. In 1914 there were three republics in Europe. By 1918 there were thirteen.

And by the end of the First World War, 65 million soldiers had fought. Nine million were killed, eight million held prisoner, twenty-one million were wounded — not counting the scores crushed by post-traumatic stress. Then Spanish Flu, in the year following the war, as the Dover House Estate was being planned, outdid the four years of violence, carrying off 30 million.

It’s often assumed that the War shattered confidence and belief in the British empire and humanity. In the same way people assume that the soldiers returned from the dreadful carnage atheists to a disillusioned secularized nation. The opposite is true.  Statistically, by reports and church attendance through the 20s, war returned soldiers with greater piety. It’s also striking how many, Christian or not, spoke of the presence of the ‘White Comrade’ on the battlefield, and the amount of poetry given to finding a common language for the soldiers’ experience and Christ’s passion; it seemed that in the trenches Christianity had ‘stooped from the sky… It had become incarnate’.

The war also brought about a great deal of Social change - the Archbishop of Canterbury declared field work on Sundays acceptable in 1917. Unsurprisingly for British culture, binge drinking, particularly from soldiers, became a problem. Before the war pubs were open from 5am - 12.30am on weekdays. These were shortened, particularly to prevent morning and afternoon drinking.  By 1918 illegitimacy rates had increased by 30% and divorce rates through the war tripled. While there was a set path for dealing with war widows and their children, what should be done with bereaved girls and illegitimate children? Victorian attitudes to unwed mothers now seemed heartless.

For the soldiers on the continent a different problem arose, as British chaplain Tom Pym remarked: ‘gonorrhoea is a minor discomfort compared to wounds or death cheerfully faced in battle, and is much more pleasurably obtained’. I suspect this is the Works of the Flesh St Paul talked about. Padre Geoffrey Studdert-Kennedy, also known as “Woodbine Willy”, (who won the military cross for bravery helping the wounded and whose son was vicar here through the 50s) noted the number of soldiers who brought up versions of the Problem of Evil: how do you reconcile Christianity with ‘the bayoneting of Germans and the shambles of the battlefield’? It seemed to many that Christianity and war were entirely at odds. At one point Kennedy found himself in the front line when a strafe started. ‘Who are you?’ asked a Sergeant, to which Kennedy replied “I’m the church.” The sergeant countered “Then what the ****** hell are you doing here?”

Here we can see a shift in emphasis in theology also reflected in the building of the Dover House Estate. The Dover House Estate was built over a decade from 1919. It arrived as part of the ‘Homes fit for heroes’ movement, that tried to improve living conditions for the those returning from the war. The attempt to clear slums and build decent housing was as much to do with the threat of Bolshevism as social concern, and it struggled through lack of funds and skilled builders, which is why it took a decade to build; but this estate is certainly one of the success stories.

It also plays an important role in the history of St Margaret’s as although we became a Church of England church in 1912, we only became a parish in 1923, undoubtedly because of the many new souls coming to West Putney. So while the Son of Man might have nowhere to lay his head, or as we shall shortly sing: ‘In life no house, no home my Lord on earth might have’; for the returning soldiers here was a place to lay your head, and a ready built church to bring the new community together. And here is the connection.

 At the heart of Christianity is a doctrine which for some seems very strange and contradictory, but which is the whole of Christianity. That God became Man. God became Man in order to share our suffering; to teach us how to live; to place eternity is within our grasp. The kingdom of heaven is here. That as we love, we encounter and grasp something of the reality of God. And actually the doctrine makes sense. How could we connect with God if he had not already connected with us? Why would God create a universe if he did not intend in some way to be part of the fabric of it and know it from the inside out? Where is God to be found if not in the most human of experiences: in rigid fear, in life and death moments, in loyalty and service to the point of death?

The incarnation that was grasped in the war was febrile, human, it was the blood, sweat and tears that made the Passion an everyday reality. These are those who knew what it meant for fire to come down from heaven and to leave the dead to bury the dead. But there is an incarnation in a community. There is the old foundation stone that reminds us of the faith we have inherited. There is a spire that points our hope to God, an altar that gathers the people as at a feast, in brotherly love.

St Margaret’s, which became a parish as the Estate was being built, is the incarnation of West Putney’s faithful. And for those people returning home with the experience of trauma, service and sacrifice, who stood firm for freedom, not for self-indulgence, but as servants of one another; this was their church that they shaped through their faith and experience. So the choir stalls behind me are the only ones I know which are themselves a war memorial, decorated with symbols of war and peace; while Humphrey has written a piece on the crucifix above the pulpit, given by an officer who had received comfort gazing on the large wayside crosses of Northern France. His speculation was that perhaps this was given by a soldier who was recuperating at Dover House, which was used as a hospital for amputees during the war. Whatever the story, the answer to the sergeant who questioned Studdert-Kennedy on what the hell he, the Church, was doing in the middle of a strafing attack, is that that is exactly where the church should be. Incarnate in the midst of people in difficulty. That is in fact the whole of the Gospel.

We are not so far from this generation. Very likely one person here has met someone who knew our first vicar. Our first hymn this morning, All my hope on God is founded, was sung at the consecration of St Margaret’s in 1912. So for us St Margaret’s is human and divine. It bears all the marks of the many hands that have shaped it over the years, the vicars, the churchwardens, the artists, the singers, the carpenters, the youth-workers, but it is here as a work of God. It is here to remind us that between the many offerings of time and talents, the imperfect lives of the faithful, there is a work of God to be discerned. Gently raising the prayers of the people, and shaping lives to follow Christ more nearly, day by day.

The church is the visible reminder of God’s presence in the life of our community. But it is we the faithful who are truly the church, sharing God’s love as the living reminders of the Incarnate God who came amongst us in hardship and tragedy, to share our pain and teach us to love. It is we who continue to sing ‘Great is thy faithfulness’ – written in 1923, just before St Margaret’s became a parish, as a tie to that generation and as a reminder that through all the changes of time, for strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow, God remains faithful and his mercies remain for evermore.