and from one generation to another
Here’s a response to a pastoral question, inspired by reading Matthew 5:1-12 and, particularly, Revelation 7:9-end for All Saints Sunday in a rural Warwickshire church. John’s vision of the “multitude that no one could count” amazed him. I wonder whether it might help us move from bafflement to delight.
I’m going to begin with a question.
Our thinking often begins with a question’ doesn’t it?
Our Google search history is full of questions.
Who does my leg ache?
Is there a recipe for using green tomatoes?
For some questions there are no answers
from Google or anyone.
The question I begin with
was shared a few weeks ago.
This is my paraphrase of it.
Those of you heard it
may judge how accurate it is.
Maybe it was a couple of months ago,
Sue opened up in the notices
a question about her family,
a question she keeps asking herself,
a question close to her heart.
But she spoke of her family,
and their lack of engagement with the Church
and her sense of failure
that she’d not managed to bring them with her,
in spite of her best efforts and a lifetime of devotion.
At that moment it felt like Sue was naming the question of a generation,
the generation of us Babyboomers,
but a question that goes further back to the previous generation –
the so-called Silent Generation.
My paraphrase is this:
What happens when the faith we have lived by is not a faith our children can make their own?
On Thursday, I heard the same question again,
from an old friend, Keith,
at the funeral of his son-in-law.
The funeral was led by a celebrant.
Keith was deeply disappointed.
He had hoped for something more,
something that spoke of the faith
which has been important to him.
And his disappointment brought him
to a much deeper question:
had he been a good enough witness?
Had he failed?
Two different people.
Two lifetime servants of the Church.
Serious Christians for whom this is a serious question.
Perhaps not just Sue’s question,
or Keith’s question,
but one many of us carry.
A question that comes in the dark.
Have we failed?
Have we done it wrong?,
Perhaps we need to put our question
in a longer history.
We sometimes talk as if the Church’s troubles
began with ourselves,
with our children,
or with the swinging 60’s,
or the world we find ourselves in now.
But the story goes back further,
to the late 1920’s
to what historians call,
“a quiet demographic tipping point”
in the delayed shadow of the First World War.
The young adults of the 1930’s
were the children of the “lost Generation”,
growing up through the Great Depression,
with disruptive unemployment and poverty
and the breaking up of tight-knit communities.
And the Church was left anxious,
with its massive and expensive infrastructure,
wondering what would happen next.
And there were other things to do.
Cycling clubs were opening up,
the car was hitting the road,
the BBC was starting, and, as always,
there was the possibility of a lie in.
And some found ways
of enjoying God in their day-to-day,
in walking, in nature,
in their work of care,
beyond the walls of the church.
So we are not the first generation
to wonder what has happened
to the faith we hoped to pass on.
Nor the first to be baffled by it.
And perhaps bafflement is the word.
Not necessarily disappointment.
Not even a sense of failure.
But the puzzlement of not quite understanding
why something that has meant so much to us
doesn’t seem to mean the same to them.
My own children fall into that category,
though I don’t think I feel the question as keenly as Sue does.
But church doesn’t seem to figure in their lives.
They don’t go.
And it’s not clear what they believe.
But I trust them.
I love them.
I respect them.
And I’m inspired by them
and the spirit in which they live their lives.
And I know that is how Sue views her children.
She appreciates their values,
encourages their spiritual quest,
and is intrigued by the questions they are asking,
even as she wonders what they are missing.
I’m going to suggest we take our children out for coffee,
an imaginary Starbucks
and you become a fly on the wall
because the person they’re really meeting is Jesus
and Jesus listens to all that matters to our children.
He encourages them to talk.
One thing after another pours out of their mouths:
their work and why it matters
how they might do it better,
the beauty they’ve found around them,
and the weather – there’s always the weather –
all they’re doing for their families,
encouraging growing minds and bodies,
providing the taxi service,
their disillusionment with the powers that be,
their impatience with how the vulnerable are treated,
and their questions about God,
their sufferings and struggles
and Jesus just listens
as if he’s heard it all before
and he has – we know he has:
“He’s the one who told me everything I ever did”
as the Samaritan woman told the people in her village.
And he smiles at our children.
And he takes us by surprise.
We hear his words,
words so familiar to us,
but words we have never heard him address to our children.
He calls them blessed.
Over and over again we hear him say the word:
Blessed.
To the one in front of him,
our child, “blessed”.
Blessed are you for not being too proud to sit with me.
Blessed are you for grieving for the way things are,
and blessed are you for being gentle
and longing for wrongs to be righted.
and blessed are you for the purity
that goes to the very heart of you,
and for living to make peace,
and blessed are you who are
persecuted and ridiculed for who you are,
and blessed are you who are insulted,
enduring your ordeal with integrity,
with the faith, hope and love
which will be forever on your side,
like me,
who’ll never go away.
You are my beloved.
Of course,
some of our children
will have turned their back
on people Jesus loves.
Turned their backs on their neighbours,
on refugees and strangers,
on prisoners,
on the poor,
turned their backs on Jesus
using people
for their own selfish interests.
We mustn’t pretend otherwise.
But haven’t we heard Jesus
tell the story
of the son who turned his back
on his father?
And how the father watched for him,
and ran to meet him,
and welcomed him home?
The turning back matters.
But so does the welcome
that was waiting for him
as for all of us who turn back.
Is this then the picture
we need to have in mind?
The picture of the Father’s welcome,
and the imaginary picture
of Jesus with our children in Starbucks,
so that our bafflement
is consoled by celebration
of the way they are with Jesus.
Perhaps we need
to loosen our grip
on what we think faith should look like,
and on who we imagine
will be gathered into God’s kingdom.
Which brings us to John,
the writer of Revelation,
and the vision he was given.
When he looked
he saw a great multitude.
He didn’t know who they were.
He heard himself asking,
“Who are they all?”
And was told
that they were the ones
who had come through
the great tribulation,
who’d endured so much
in the ordeals of their lives.
There were so many,
a multitude no one could count.
And they ain’t all Jews.
Or Anglicans.
Or churchgoers.
Or even Christians.
They’re from every nation, tribe
people and language.
If we add our imagination to John’s
can we see our children there
amongst the multitude?
And if we can,
how does that leave us feeling?
Does it loosen something in us?
Does it allow us to breathe a little more freely?
We carry so much responsibility
for the faith we have received
and the faith we hope to pass on.
And the Church can add to that burden
with its suggestions
to try this, try that
to grow the church, reverse decline,
as if we’ve failed
as if there’s more we should have done.
John’s vision sees a multitude
no one can count,
In which every one does count.
He isn’t given a target to meet,
or a strategy to implement,
Or a list of people still missing.
He is given a vision
of a God whose welcome
is wider than he can imagine.
John is astonished by the crowd,
by their differences,
by just how many there are,
by the breadth of God’s gathering,
beyond anything he could count.
He shares that vision with his church
to help us to continue to be faithful
without believing that the whole weight
of God’s kingdom rests on our shoulders
and to help us love our children,
to honour the lives they are living,
to remain curious about their questions
and to love the world
in which we trust
God to be at work
in ways that astound us.
And it’s a vision
that invites us to imagine
our children
as part of the multitude
with Jesus
in Starbucks,
with a coffee,
at home in God’s delight.
Revelation 7:9-end
I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands. And they cried out in a loud voice:
‘Salvation belongs to our God,
who sits on the throne,
and to the Lamb.’
All the angels were standing round the throne and round the elders and the four living creatures. They fell down on their faces before the throne and worshipped God, saying:
‘Amen!
Praise and glory
and wisdom and thanks and honour
and power and strength
be to our God for ever and ever.
Amen!’
Then one of the elders asked me, ‘These in white robes – who are they, and where did they come from?’
I answered, ‘Sir, you know.’
And he said, ‘These are they who have come out of the great tribulation; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore,
‘they are before the throne of God
and serve him day and night in his temple;
and he who sits on the throne
will shelter them with his presence.
“Never again will they hunger;
never again will they thirst.
The sun will not beat down on them,”
nor any scorching heat.
For the Lamb at the centre of the throne
will be their shepherd;
“he will lead them to springs of living water.”
“And God will wipe away every tear from
their eyes.”’
