Trinity 21
Convenience is king
In the middle of August ‘temporary’ traffic lights were installed and the A232 Croydon Road, Beddington, was reduced to two single lane bad tempered queues. A day later the workforce scarpered; occasionally a tanker appeared to – quite literally- take the… sewage accumulated in the interim away- and then once again silence descended. Until September 26th when the entire road was closed.
And quite soon the Rector of St Mary the Virgin Beddington, Rectory just a half minute stroll away, found himself mildly depressed with it all. It wasn’t the noise, the dirt, the disruption- to be honest I could turn onto Croydon Road whenever I wanted rather than wait 5 minutes for a gap in the traffic which is a novelty. It wasn’t the colourful and ever-inventive language used by the construction workers that occasionally drifted past the flats- to be honest I needed to go and have a word with the lads and got them to up their game a bit. None of these really affect my mood.
Nope, what was so down-heartening was this. With wearying regularity- every minute or so- blithely ignoring a half dozen or so signs saying ‘Road Closed’, a car or HGV would roar past the park- at speed of course as the driver is doing something naughty and thus hoping not to be caught- only to come to a screeching halt just past the entrance to Bloxworth Close as they discovered that Croydon Road was indeed, as the sign says, closed— by a large and impassible hole. And so the motorists of South London reacquainted themselves with that joyful manoeuvre learned so long ago of the three-point turn, in the process turning the grass verge at the end of the road into a little piece of Beddington that will forever be a Flanders field circa 1916.
I should not really have been so surprised or indeed affected by the observation of human nature afforded me by the closure to traffic of Croydon Road. First, I’ve seen it all before when something similar happened in Leigh on Sea. And second, I know from experience that road signs that do not always tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and more often than not ‘Road Closed’ refers not the road you’re on but to a tiny side road you had no intention of gracing with your tyre tracks.
Still, the replacement of a sewer and a closed road is all it takes, so it seems, to illustrate some of the more wayward sides of human nature. The desire to not be too bothered what we are doing as long as we are not to be caught- the glittering Christmas tree show of synchronised brake lights as one approaches a speed camera also illustrates the same.
Also, the tendency to put up opaque road signs that just sort of hint at reality but could in most events mean virtually anything.
And our desire for convenience at all costs.
From short-hop driving to convenience stores to ready meals in our contemporary society everything is too much to ask, everything is too much of an effort to make. Convenience is king. Yes, in mitigation, we can say that we live ever-more hectic, filled-to-the-brim lives that lead us to seek easy instant answers to even the simplest of our needs. But it’s more than that. There is something much deeper in our love of convenience. The path of least resistance is the broadest of human highways, a road worn deep by the tread of countless feet of countless ages. The narrow door has few attractions and fewer callers.
We, so it seems, are born lazy: hard-wired to prefer lounging on the beach to clambering in the mountains. After all how much more attractive is sand than rock. Sand is soft, it runs through your fingers, it doesn’t hurt your feet unless it’s been superheated by the summer sun; nobody can successfully pick it up and throw it at you, always a good thing when there are other humans around. It’s not even the end of the world if sand gets into your sandwiches. Crunchy but not the end of the world. How much nicer to live in the convenience of the beach house, to feel the sand dancing under our toes every time we step out of the house rather than be stepping onto the hard unyielding coldness of rock. The sand is warm and soft, the rock chill and hard; the beach is for relaxation and fun, the rocks for labour and toil; the sands are packed with revellers, the rocks spotted here and there with eccentrics building boats and gathering animals, two by two.
To build on rock is not easy: it is hard work, hard, hand-calloused, back-breaking, work with no guarantees of success and no immediate reward in sight. More often than not, the sight of those toiling on the rocks, rather like those building their arks, excites unwelcome responses from the sand-dwellers: pity if you’re lucky , more usually derision.
And how those siren voices call. Why are you wasting your time on those rocks? Why work yourself into the ground for nothing? You don’t really believe all that do you? Do yourself a favour! You need to relax more! The days are long, the night is young, summer is here, the living is easy. The rain will never come. The road is not really closed…
According to government statistics, a quite astonishing number of people in our country self-identify themselves as Christian. Even if it’s decreasing, it’s still a lot. And even more astonishing, only a tiny fraction of these nominal Christians are to ever be found in Church on any day: Sunday, weekday, feast day, any other day. How much more comfortable the sandy assumptions that trickle giggling through our fingers: you don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian; I try to do my bit; I was baptised as a child; the Church has corrupted the true message of Jesus, which was, erm, be yourself and do what you like; I haven’t got the time but God will understand, which ever so surely he will. Lukewarm as the Laodiceans we laugh in the sun while slowly, ever so slowly, the tide creeps in, the sandcastles we build crumble and, inexorably, the sands of time run out. The rains come, we are knocking on that door, desperate for shelter from the storms and it is too late, the door is locked.
We could bemoan the fact that churchgoing is now a minority pursuit and look back with rose-tinted rheumy nostalgia for the days when every pew was packed. It’s a favourite Anglican pastime, even here. But that is the past viewed through the distorting lens of time, Brexitvision baloney, false sentimentality like all nostalgia. There never was a golden age in the past, though of course that doesn’t stop us yearning for it or even deludedly thinking we’re voting for it.
When churches were full they were mainly full of people who didn’t really want to be there. They were there because there was nothing else to do. Nothing. And now there is- if you like spending hours in the IKEA traffic jam or snuffling round car boot sales: now there is something other than church to do on Sunday and now the people who don’t want to be in church, aren’t in church. Without coming over all puritanical, that might not wholly be a bad thing.
It is the task of those who are in church- hello!- it is our task to change those who are not here, into people who do want to be in church, and first and foremost, to transform ourselves into people who want to be in church here and now. We cannot congratulate ourselves that we, at least, have found the right door. And it was open. And we could work out which way to twist the handle to get in. We cannot congratulate ourselves if that means we are happy to ignore those who are still out playing in the sun unaware of the approaching storm clouds. We cannot clamber into our Ark, close the doors and batten down the hatches knowing full well that when the waters rise and the flood comes, those who are now contentedly outside will perish. That is the ‘gathered’ church fallacy, the perverse puritan notion of the ‘elect’, the ark that puts more and more conditions on using your ticket, more and more restrictions on who can be the passengers, more and more burdens on the backs of others to prove they deserve their berth. Not two of every kind, but few of the same kind.
We must jam those doors open, trusting that God will not let the water in. He won’t. We must be there, charming, pleading, begging, cajoling. It is not always an easy or pleasant task; there is seldom thanks or gratitude attached– try persuading any child that it is time to come in. But it is the task we have been given. That is the task the apostles have handed to us. God has called us into his Church so we can go out and call others in. That, is what this building is for.
Once, except for one tiny floating zoo, God destroyed all life on earth in the flood; that he will never repeat. Every human soul is incomparably precious in his sight; bought at the cost of Calvary. And now it is no longer sufficient for the Ark to be an eight-hammock boat with menagerie attached. Every adult, every child, every babe in arms; must be on that Ark, every soul must be gathered safely in, and only then should that narrow door be shut.
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