IV the Church in the City

8/14/2019 IV the Church in the City

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4 The Church in the City

1 Gathering On the wayThe gathering of the people of God brings judgment. It is a public and politicalevent. When the nation receives this judgment its long term is secured. TheChurch is the unchanging presence around which the city gathers and onwhich society is founded. And the Church constantly travels through the city

as pilgrims and missioners to it.

1. The people on the wayWhenever Christians walk through their society and their city they are led bytheir Lord. The procession in which the Lord leads his people is described bypsalm 68: O God, when you went forth before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, The earth shook at the presence of God, theLord of Sinai. The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, even thousandsupon thousands; the Lord is among them, the Lord of Sinai in holy power. Sothe Christian people go in procession, through the world and through the city.It sings:

Come Christians follow where the captain trod,the king victorious,Christ the Son of God...Lift high the cross,the love of Christ proclaim,till all the world adorehis sacred name.

And the Christian people stand in the middle of the city. They remain there,the one constant presence. The city swirls around them, and sometimesrages against them. Christians have been present in this city of London sincethe first century. Though the Church disappeared from our records as paganinvasions, but the faith returned under Augustine of Canterbury in the sixthcentury. Christians have stood their ground, sung in this city and prayed for itfor the fourteen hundred years since then. The Christians walk and they standand they sing.

2. The well-ordered people and their apostleWe walk and we stand in good company. Christians are given to us toaccompany us. In Christ we are now to be shaped and moulded by theChurch. Amongst the identifiable, institutional Church there are people withthe spiritual authority to lead us. They are the apostles of the contemporaryChurch. They have the authority to make Christians of us. Being under the

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the church of a monastery, which is a community of Christians withdrawn fromthe world in order to dedicate themselves solely to singing the praises of God.This worship has a long-term effect which is particularly easy to see in thecase of this church, which we now know as Westminster Abbey.

The chief business of the Christians in a monastery is to sing the divine office,including all the psalms and Scripture. They do this around the clock, seventimes in every twenty four hours. They are thoroughly immersed in thepsalms, and so they familiar with every motivation and emotion experiencedand expressed there by the people of God. The psalms teach them how to beglad, and how to lament, how to yearn for justice and how to become the self-disciplined disciple who is content to wait for the Lord to provide that justice.From the psalms comes the self-discipline of the community that sings them.

From the disciplined Christian life of the monastic community of the abbeycomes all the good practices of self-discipline and self-control. TheseChristians were considered trustworthy because, having conspicuously givenup their own individual interests, they had no material stake in the outcome of any issue. The entire way of life tells us that monks regard themselves aspilgrims here, and that theirs is a life on the way, and in this they make visiblewhat is true of the Church as a whole. These monks made good listeners andgave good advice. They were able to suggest solutions and provide arbitrationthat can help bring a conflict to a peaceful settlement. The forgiveness that isextended to us by God enables a new-start for communities previously lockedin conflict, and the community of the Church that points to this forgiveness of God, is good at enabling peace and reconciliation. The two sides to a disputeoften found that they could recognise that the mediation of these advice-givers, and that their advice represented a workable solution that alloweddisputes to be settled with dignity for both sides.

Singing that liturgy, which involves singing and reading the Scriptures, and inparticular the psalms, gives this community of Christians their wisdom. Their wisdom is obvious enough that people come to this community for advice.The Abbeys community of monks gave advice, and resolved disputes and sodispensed justice for whoever came to them. This public service of offeringarbitration and justice grew. The rulers of the people of this part of the countryso valued the advice of the monks, that they built themselves a palace by the

Abbey. They considered themselves protected by the holiness of thatcommunity, and in time English kings learned to consider themselves servantsof God.

The palace of these kings of England is still there. It is the Palace of Westminster, which we know as the Houses of Parliament, alongside whichthe neighbouring palace of Whitehall later appeared. Over the centuries thecourt of these kings grew into the organised government of their kingdom.Over this time, around the abbey and its worship grew all the apparatus of theunited government and so this united kingdom grew into a united society anda single nation.

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The king who first recognised this community of Christians, and re-built their Abbey, was Edward the Confessor. Edward was recognised by the churchand the kingdom to have exercised the Christian confession in a way that heldhis kingdom together; his faith had enabled him to act as a good ruler, able tooffer justice and resolution to the nation. His good rule, which prevented the

country from tearing itself apart, was evidence of holiness, so his sainthoodwas recognised. Those Christians sang, and still sing now: Give the king your

justice, O God May all kings fall down before him, all nations give him service.Long may he live! May prayer be made for him continually, and blessingsinvoked for him all day long (Psalm 72)

The fragile unity of the nationFrom the disciplined Christian life of the monastic community of the abbeycomes all the good practices of self-discipline and self-control that makes thegood judge who achieves reconciliation and sustains unity. The monks knewthat justice is fundamental, that justice must be tempered by mercy andforgiveness, and that this requires interpretation and public explanation.Subsequent kings looked to Edward the Confessor as an example, and evencame to his tomb in the hope that he would intercede for them for forgivenessfor such bloodshed. The kings who came after him wanted to be close to him,in life and in death, so they were buried near to him in the hope that hissaintliness would give them some protection. These kings who wereparticularly in awe of Edward and wanted to imitate him re-built the abbey inthe form we see now. There is the seat of judgment

The Church sings: Give the king your justice, O God May all kings fall downbefore him, all nations give him service. (Psalm 72) King is short-hand for any leader: that our leaders are democratically elected does not make themany the less kings. All kings have to provide their kingdoms with justice. In thecourse of providing justice they have to make some hard decisions. In thedays before we learned humane imprisonment, they put to death those whothreatened the peace and unity of the kingdom. Kings were well aware thatthey had blood on their hands. But they knew that the decision was either toexecute their opponents or, if they gave their opponents to create civil war,they would have the blood of the wider population on their hands. Justice wastough.

Since any king want to maintain his hold over every part of his kingdom and toraise revenue from it, he summons an assembly in which every part of thenation is represented: this is what parliament is. Any kingdom is always madeup of different sections; each of which may believe that they owe nothing toany other section. So any kingdom may be prepared to start tearing itself apart, and drift apart into rival fiefdoms. But every political leader knows thatthat the unity and survival of the nation is always at stake, and that theintegrity of our common life is always the basic issue, and civil conflict is our common enemy.

But conflict can be worsened as much as reduced by its expression in

parliament. Every political leader and parliamentary representative becomesaware of the possibility of polarising opinion, and creating division and civil

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strife. They realise that if they do not moderate the language of their discussions when they come together, existing tensions may be exacerbated.Each member of parliament learns that they have has to act as arepresentative, not just of the people or party or interest group who voted for them or sponsored them, but for the whole country. This is why that assembly

start its deliberations with public acknowledgement that they are all under anauthority higher than themselves. Parliament starts the day with prayers.

5. Government gathers around the AbbeyWhat is government? Government is public service . We have governmentbecause some people dedicate themselves to our service, and we recognisethem and honour them for it, and give them the authority to continue to serveus. The government of the nation is that particular form of public service thatcontinually clears away all the impediments to our own public generosityexercised in the many forms in which we serve one another. The governmentis not there to provide everything for us. Its job is just to reduce the obstaclesto our serving and providing for one another. All government is dedicated topreserving the wholeness and integrity of the kingdom and the conditions inwhich everyone of us can act in the public service and so be citizens .

All government starts as our own individual self-government. Those whogovern themselves well are able to help other people to do the same. Werecognise that what they do well for themselves they can also help otherslearn the rest Our personal self-government makes it possible for us to helpothers do so too, and self-govern flows over into public service, that is, theservice that we give to people outside our immediate family. We call this civilsociety. This consists of all businesses, enterprises, sports clubs, youthclubs, educational, welfare and campaigning charities, trade unions, rotaryclubs, the associations that promote education, art, nature, history andculture, sport and the whole range of amateur life. This public service createsa civil society of groups and grass-roots activism. All these are forms of public service.

The Church as the source of public serviceBut one form of public service is more fundamental than any of these. This ismarriage. Two consenting persons enter a public covenant to serve oneanother and those who can only be born through their coming together in this

way their own children. The public commitment of a man and a woman tothat mutual service that will bring into being a family that is the beginning of all society, and it is the one thing that ensures the continuation of society.Government only exists in order to serve to the continuation of society.

The same public service becomes parish council and local and regionalgovernment. Government is that particular form of public service that holdsthe ring for all these others. The many associations that make up civil societydo not exist because government gives them permission to; governmentexists because their service extends nationally and brings nationalgovernment into being: they give it permission act in certain areas on their

behalf. Government exists because some of these public-spirited people

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received its teaching about justice and forgiveness, our history has been aslow and erratic movement from tribalism and violence to unity and peace.But this unity and peace will only last as long as the nation receives this

justice and forgiveness of God. If it is ready to take this discipline it willcontinue as a nation. If it does not receive this justice and forgiveness, it will

not have that justice or forgiveness to pass on, and the result will be that itsunity and peace will unravel and this nation will meander back towardsviolence and tribalism again.Give the king your justice, O God, and your righteousness to the king's son.May he judge your people with righteousness, and your poor with justice. May he defend the cause of the poor of the people, give deliverance to the needy,and crush the oppressor (Psalm 72).

6. The public witness of the ChurchThe community of Westminster Abbey sings the worship of God. It celebratesthe eucharist and says or sings the office publicly every morning and evening.The worshipping community that do so is no longer formally withdrawn fromthe world: they are not monks, but secular clergy that says morning prayer and sings evensong with a choir. These disciplines are still fundamentallymonastic. Each church in London says the office every day, singing thesesame psalms and pray morning and evening prayer, and so interceding for our nation and its leaders. Westminster Abbey is accompanied by all thecommunities of Christians in London. The Roman Catholic Westminster Cathedral down the street, and Methodist Central Hall across the street, allthe Christians in all churches in London and cross the nation pray that thegood government of God will be learned and brought to us by all these publicservants who make up our national government. The whole Church leads theprayers of the nation for justice and good government.

The Church is not on Parliament square by an accident of history. Where theChurch is, civil society springs up. A healthy civil society appears where all thepractices of self-government and public service that are practised within theChurch appear. Civil society the practices of counsel and access to justice clustered around the Church because they knew that they benefited fromlistening to the Church, and from the virtues that are developed by Christiandiscipleship. The institutions of government came because civil societywanted to widen access to this counsel and justice so that it was shared

throughout the nation. The Church is no vast political power: in every ageChristians have been, at most, the salt and the yeast, and have very oftenmade their contribution against great resistance.Through many a day of darkness,through many a scene of strifethe faithful few fought bravely to guard the nations life (NEH 485 Plumptre)

The Church is not simply the one-time, past source of central government. Itis the ongoing source of the innumerable the initiatives of which civil society isrenewed and sustained. Where Christians find those who are uncared for,

they care and start to serve. On my road there is St Josephs Hospice, whichnurses those who are terminally ill. There the Christians pray, I hear the

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chapel bell every midday, and stay to the end with those who are dying. Nextto the Hospice is the Salvation Army, next it is the Jobseekers training centre,also founded and run by Christians. As the service of these Christianinstitutions is recognised it increasingly receives state funding until their service becomes secularised or is even integrated into some department of

government. Meanwhile Christians find new ways to serve. For they arethemselves served, by the Lord.

7. The Church between Abbey and CathedralThe Church stands in the centre of the city. The world can gather around or rush past it. The bishop and his Cathedral reminds us that Church stands fast,and while the monks remind us that we are pilgrims on the way and that wehave no permanent place here. The City of London stands around St PaulsCathedral while Westminster Abbey, the church of St Peter, is outside the City.The church of St Paul looks across to the church of St Peter: the Church looksto these two apostles St Paul and St Peter to help us. The Church alternatesbetween this permanent commitment to this place and this pilgrimage throughit. The centre of the diocese of London is named Two Cities the City of London and the City of Westminster.

There are two cities here in another sense. When St Augustine made thiscontrast of two cities, he was contrasting two societies. The heavenly societyis embodied here in the community that we know as the Church. And there isthe other community that we refer to simply as society. The Church is distinctfrom society, and society is distinct from the Church. This is so even thoughmembers of the Church are as much members of society as anyone else,indeed more active members of it. Civil society and the secular sphere aredistinct from the Church, so the public square has its own independent dignity.The Church insists that the public square has this independence because itinsists that the judgment and conscience of each human being isfundamental. The Church points to this distinction and difference, and it doesso for societys sake. Thus the Churchs clear statement of its own distinct andholy calling is its fundamental service to society. So we pray:Govern and direct your holy ChurchFill it with love and truth

And grant it that unity which is your will

There are also two liturgies. There is the true worship that is directed to God,and all the other worships and adorations that are directed in every other direction. The Church is the progress of the divine liturgy through the worldand its many liturgies and entertainments. When we are on our way to or from Church, we are not going from a religious event to a non-religious one. Itis not that churches are religious places and the streets outside are not. TheChurch is one religion while the offices in the city are another religion; theChurch is one religious community that is always travelling through another,the Christian community on pilgrimage through the city. The whole Church inLondon journeys the streets of our city, on foot, bus and the train. Thisparticular body, gathered together in public worship or dispersed into every

other civil institution, and travelling between one and the other, is the primarypresence of Christ to this city and this society. The city does not always give

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these pilgrimage a smooth passage. May the Lord give us grace to follow himand make this pilgrimage.With thy living fire of judgment Purge this realm of bitter thingsSolace all its wide dominion

With the healing of thy wings (NEH Scott Holland)

2 Hearing DisciplesEach church listens to the whole Church throughout the world. The Church inour society is able to be a good and faithful witness to it to the extent that itreceives the discipline of the worldwide Church and its teaching through allgenerations.

1. Discipleship and Leadership

Each community of Christians receives its authority from the rest of theworldwide Church. Because the church in this city listens to the whole Church,it is the presence of the whole catholic Church to this city. When the Church isthis presence, its witness of the Church to the nation will continue. The nationthat has this well-disciplined Church and receives its witness will prosper.

Christ give ministers to his Church and himself ministers to us through them.They are responsible to him for passing on to us the whole ministry of Christ.they must mediating to us the whole Church, and so bring us into relationshipwith all the people of Christ, We therefore pray for all bishops, presbyters and deacons, that they may hunger for truth and thirst after righteousness , as theOrdination service puts it. They must be trained in the full deposit of faith: for this reason we need a trained, ordained clergy.

Our ministers pass on what they have received from Christ and enable us toreceive it in full and thankfully. They are the love and discipline of Christ for us. We have to help them to be good transmitters of the faith, and we do thisby encouraging them to instruct us, and by taking our complaints to them andto God when they fail to do so. According to the preamble given in theOrdination Service:

Priests are called to be servants and shepherds among the peopleto whom they are sentThey are to be messengers, watchmen,and stewards of the Lord they are to search for his children in thewilderness of this worlds temptations and to guide them through itsconfusions so that they may be saved through Christ forever.

The minister can only teach what he has learned and can only exerciseauthority when he himself has been well-discipled and remains properly under authority. The church he ministers to will grow only as his understanding of thegospel allows it to. If his knowledge of Christ and his saints is too small he willbe an obstacle to the growth of his congregation. Each minister therefore hasto submit himself to the faith of the whole Church and be formed by it; he has

continually to study and learn this faith so he can pass on the whole teachingof the Church to his people. The congregation must support him so he can

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submit himself to the whole rich resources of the church, and bring to themthe goods that he finds there. So we pray:Blessed Lord, who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:help us so to hear them, to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest themthat, through patience, and the comfort of your holy Word,

we may embrace and for ever hold fast the hope of everlasting life,which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

The minister can teach us that discipline and self-control and the cultivation of the virtues are good and wonderful things. He can lead us towards the priestlylife, and show us how to absorb the blows that the world inflicts on the Churchfrom time to time.

2. Body and soulThe discipline of Christ is essential to the good news of the gospel. Thegospel is freedom because it disciplines our passions, frees us from rage and

brings us under proper control. It teaches us to cultivate and restrain our desires so we gain self-control and are able to govern ourselves. It teaches usto find our freedom not in evading the constraints represented by other people, but by controlling ourselves. Our ordained ministers show us the wayto master our desires. They are themselves under a monastic discipline; theywear the dark clothes of the monk, and a collar that represents that discipline.When we learn to control ourselves, we are purified, lightened and relieved.Through the discipline of Christian discipleship we discover true joy.

We may control ourselves ; in more traditional language, the soul may controlthe body. Christian theology has a very high view of body and soul: it does notexalt one and downgrade the other. We are embodied and therefore we arepresent and available to one another, and thus we are embodied for oneanothers sake. We may learn to be more than simply our own bodies andneeds. We learn to hear the demands of others and so we learn self-control.To exercise self-restraint is not to act against ourselves, but simply to act for one another. Our bodies make us available to one another, but we are alwayswhole persons. Our bodies are therefore essentially social. Love is never merely bodily , and no act of ours is solely physical. All meaningful humanaction involves learning of disciplines that allow us to be properly present toone another and so to use our bodies well in service of one another. ByChristian discipleship we may discover how to be free for one another, and sowe pray:From the sins of body and mind;from the deceits of the world, the flesh and the devil Good Lord deliver us

We may recover the disciplines of self-control. We may reserve our bodies for one another in marriage, and we may and encourage one another to marryand be self-controlled. We may assure one another that marriage is a gift of God in creation through which husband and wife may know the grace of God,and that in marriage a man and a woman may we may be united with oneanother as Christ is united with his bride, the Church . The clergy musthonour marriage and tell us that it is the way that a society that createschildren and brings them up, and grows in confidence thereby. We may not

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break the link between sex and children, or between children and their owntwo parents, or between this generation and the next. Children have the rightto be brought up by their own biological parents in the arrangement whichgives public recognition to the honour of that arrangement. It is the privilege of the Church to be able to say, the words of the Thanksgiving for the birth of a

child: Do you receive these children as a gift from God? We do. Do you wish to givethanks to God and seek his blessing? We do .

The clergy must tells us that marriage is entirely different from any other formof partnership, that marriage is for good of all society, even those who arenot married themselves, and tell us that it takes Christian discipleship and afaithful Church to sustain a marriage.

We must praise our clergy as champions of self-control and tell them that wemodel ourselves on them. Only those who are able reign in their desires,remain celibate and self-controlled can help us. They must show us how tofast in order to recover the joy of the feast. The Church that can say no to itsown appetites and desires and demonstrate a proper self-mastery is in aposition to help the world. It can fast for the sake of the society to which it issent. The society that cannot rejoice at the Churchs gift of self-control andemulate it will be in constant and miserable struggle with itself.

3. Overlooking the ChurchMinisters of the Church must regard the Church as the Body of Christ, and notneglect but adore the Church. The cup that our ministers offer us issometimes a bitter one. It is bitter when the church is served by a clergy whodo not greet it as the body of Christ. When Christ is not primarily identifiedwith the gathered community, that community is disempowered and its identitywithheld from it. Yet according to his promise Christ is primarily identified withthe community that calls on his name. Christ is not be identified solely with themarginalised and unchurched: identification of new groups on the peripherymust not take our gaze away from the Church, for if it does, and it is neglectedby its own pastors, the Church becomes the most marginalised body of all.

Disdain for the Church is simply a failure to love those who are not likeourselves. We must receive the Church in all its marred and ambiguous stateand not distance ourselves from it. Our conviction that it is corrupt, hypocriticalor distorted by structures or power, hollows out the Church and leaves all itsmembers vulnerable. The belief that the hierarchy of the Church is anunnecessary imposition prevails across the church and even up its hierarchy.But this belief is a refusal to love the Church as Christs body for us. Ministersof the Church who do not receive the Church as the presence of Christ betraynot only the Church, but the society to which the Church is sent. The pain of our society is caused by our failure to witness to the forgiveness of God. Wemust learn to identify our society as the people for whom Christ has died, andas the body that belongs to him. Let us pray that we are not the cause of anysuch offence.Who brought this on thee?

Alas, my treason, Jesu hath undone thee.It was I, Lord Jesu, I it was denied thee

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I crucified thee (100)

The world that receives no word from the ChurchThe world is in anguish. The Church has been given the words by which it candescribe the trouble that the world is caught up in, and identify how the

troubles felt by its different generations are related. Without the Church, theworld is unable to recognise the pressures that are at work within it and thereis no relief for that anguish.

The Church falsifies the gospel and betrays the society to which it is sentwhen it tells people only that they have been unjustly treated and are victims.It is the particular sin of the contemporary Church to hand on just that half of the gospel that tells us that we are victims and withholds that half that tells usthat we are also perpetrators and sinners. The Church is faithful to God and toman when it tell us that we are not held back primarily by other people, but byourselves, that is, by our own sin.From all evil and mischief;From pride, vanity and hypocrisy;From envy, hatred and malice,

And from all evil intent Good Lord deliver us

Our society is divided by age-group. Our age-cohort divisions are magnifiedby the aesthetic and cultural distinctions that are created by the popular culture presented to us by the entertainment industries. We are encouragedto remain in an extended adolescence that continues into our thirties andforties. Our children are encouraged into an early sexuality in which each

individual has to prove herself by treating her own body as a disposableinstrument. When we put off marriage, or understand marriage in terms of lifestyle choice rather than as understood primarily as a covenant of service,our own maturity is delayed and so is the emotional and political developmentof society as a whole. Responsibility begins when we enter the covenant of marriage, become parents and, motivated by concern for our own offspring,and so become engaged citizens.

Here the Church has to bring its gospel of hope. It can tell the young that theyowe the debt of life to the old. It can tell them that the Love industries are anidolisation of youth and disobedience to the commandment to honour our parents, and that they have made a generation entrenched in their ownresentments and unprepared to serve. The Church must say that theseindustries feed on a Gnostic and even Manichean fear of our own givenembodiedness. Reconciliation of these age-groups and generations, andrecovery of an age-mixed community is the hope that the gospel holds out. Aslong as the possibility and even the promise of this reconciliation is not set outby the Church, we identify those at other stages of life the selfishness of oldor of young people as the problem. Then the age cohorts of this societywithdraw from one another and shift the burden of blame backward or theburden of debt forward for a future generation.

The Church can also bring the gospel of hope to us by telling us that the givendifference between men and women is good. It must tell us not to denigrate

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our differences and that the equivalence agenda is a false idol if reduces our differences. We sin when we do not allow ourselves to desire those who aretruly, by the fundamental biological difference of sex, different from ourselves.We sin when we indulge the prevailing disdain of the difference of men andwomen. And we sin when we do not say that marriage is distinct from any

other form of relationship, and that the family and domestic economy has itsown dignity that must not be denigrated by ideological, economic or fiscalpressures. No imperative to equality qualifies anyone from however marginalised a section of society for the ordained ministry of the Church. Onthese issues the Church in London has entered a spiral of silence. This is our sin; it conceal the true witness of the Church and stall our societysrepentance and reconciliation. It holds whole generations and populations invast falsehoods. As long as the Church does not offer judgment and theprospect of responsibility to this generation it is complicit in the disintegrationthat our society is beginning to experience. The Church must confess thatbecause it has offered a merely therapeutic gospel and withheld the truth of our responsibility, our society has hardened itself against judgment. TheChurch that holds silence here is an accomplice in the pain and suffering asour society rends and divides itself, and is watching a new and terriblepassion unfolding.

But even all this, the sin of the faithless Church, is weak in the face of the loveof God. God has determined that we should not rob ourselves of this love, butthat, however long the route to it is, we should come to this love for ourselves,and therefore that we should ask for this forgiveness for ourselves, andreceive this forgiveness. We should seek the approval of God, and let theapproval of men come in its own time. Let us pray:We are afraid of being known to belong to you. Lord forgive usChrist have mercy.

4. Two liturgiesThere are two liturgies and two worships. There is Christian worship, andthere are all other forms of worship that make up the liturgy of this world. Wecan see the liturgy of the world most easily in the media and entertainmentindustries. The images of man it presents us with are innumberable, but alltogether they show us that each of us is ultimately on our own. And worsethan that, they tell us that we are not even a unitary individual being, for they

break us up into a number of disconnected selves that inhabit theunconnected realms of work, money, entertainment and sex. The liturgy of theworld divides man from man, and then breaks up man in something less thanman. It is for the liturgy of the Church to point out that man is being dividedhere, and to insist that man is of unique and indissoluble dignity, and that manis with man, an indissolubly social being.

There are two loves. There is the love of God who is for all men, and isdetermined that all men should be brought into that peace and contentmentthat he has established for them in his company. And there is the love of theman turned in on himself and determined to exert himself against all others in the industries that comprise the pagan liturgy and pagan eucharist in whichour society engaged. If we do not receive the love of God and hear the

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judgment of God we will certainly be possessed and dismembered by theseother loves and the economic powers that retail them to us. The ministers of the Church must feed their people on the Word of God if the Church is to befaithful to this society and save it from being consumed by these other forces.We have lived for this world alone and doubted our home in heaven.

In your mercy forgive us. Lord, hear and help us.

Another clergyThe Church that is faithful to its mission will declare that the image-makersare the clergy of a different religion. The designers and brand-managers arethe clergy of a rival church that adores other gods. Each cult tells us whateach of us wants to hear, that we are an individual, who may be free byfreeing ourselves of the demands of other people. This single untruth unitesall cults. I desire to distinguish myself and to put myself ahead of other people, and so I take the cultic token, and as soon as I take it I am madedependent, and the appetite for more of it starts to grow within me. The clergyof each cult tell me that I will become free as long as I keep buying the servicethat that cult claims to provide. The entertainment industries and policy-makers, who represent another clergy, present us with images of femininityand masculinity; when the Church does not demythologise them these growcultic figures grow to become the idols and society consumes itself in thecourse of their worship.

Evasion of the love of God and failure to hear the Word spoken to us resultsin this whole vast engine of delusion and hopelessness. We are running andhiding from the only one who is able to establish and affirm us and takingshelter with those who cannot do so. The pagans live in world which theyidentity as alien and threatening, and they identify other people and their uncontrolled demands as the danger from which we must be saved. Thesalvation they offer is a salvation from communion and into isolation. Then weare caught up in a grim reverse-salvation, a shadow-Passover. The culticservice of the entertainment industries have their power only as long as weare in flight from the love of God. So it is for the Church to say that thesemany secular liturgies are only brief parodies of the divine liturgy and that theymust all give way to that true liturgy, which comes from the true love of Godfor man. So the Church prays:For letting ourselves be drawn away from you

By temptations in the world about usFather forgive us: save and help us

5. The patience of ChristGod is patient. He allows himself to be tested and offers himself to be tested.So we test God. And why not? We test everything else, checking to see that itwill do what we hope. Will God do what he has promised? If we do not reply tohim will he still speak to us? Who knows whether all our hesitancy andreluctance is not just a test to see whether God really loves us, enough tocontinue to call and even to come after us and deliver on all these promises?Scripture helps us to ask these questions: What is man, that you should be

mindful of him, the son of man, that you should seek him out? (Psalm 8).

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What is man, that you make so much of him, that you set your mind on him,visit him every morning, test him every moment? (Job 7)

Christ is faithful, to God and to us who are the project of God. Indeed Christ isthe determination of God that man should enjoy this love. He is the Word of

God that establishes and secures all things. It is this security whichestablishes even our own freedom to doubt. We can doubt, because therelationship between man and God is secure, in Christ. Christs action, andhis constancy in it, makes it possible for us to ask questions and expressuncertainty and wonder. It is the beginning of curiosity and of confidence. Wecan doubt, but only because the Son is faithful . All saints doubt. We live byfaith, and faith is tested by doubt, which we experience as diversion intovarious forms of busyness, and into dryness, depression or despair.

We may indeed wonder whether we can accept this offer of communicationthat God offers? The question is not only whether God is up to it but whether we are up to it? Surely we would blow it in some way? Can God do it, and canwe let God do it? Our own poor opinion of ourselves is our obstacle. We fear that if things can go wrong, they will. And if there is any possibility of themgoing wrong, let us not expose ourselves to the risk of disappointment. Let useven put our hope in such an outcome. Let us rule against such a vast andscary undertaking as entering communication with God. The hope might bevain so let us give this project. Let up dismiss this hope as too ambitious.

The hope of man is that man could hear God and speak back to him and soenter a life and conversation that would delight us forever. In the face of thisprospect and hope, all human culture is in convulsions of doubt and self-doubt. We lurch between premature celebration of this prospect and denialthat it cannot be so. For fear that it might be delusory we forbid one another from expressing such a hope. We declare that it is an absurd hope that mancould ever be anything but a ravaged creature. Better never to hope, we maythink, than to be crushed or tortured by not knowing either way. When the eliteof a society decides that it wants to end this hope and forbid anyone fromtalking about it, it reviles that community, the Church, that stands for the hopeof man. So Christ waits and endures this reviling.

6. The individual alone in doubt and despair

Perhaps we think that before others can inflict any damage ourselves wewould rather inflict it on ourselves. Better that we destroy ourselves sooner rather than be destroyed by others touting this impossible claim that there ishope and life. How appalling to have this hope and then to have it dashed.How much better never to have had our hopes raised in the first place. Thecosts of failure are so devastating. This is why those who speak about Godare ridiculed and vilified. Our society makes despair its safeguard againsthope. We can describe this as nihilism and irrationality, but this is the way thathas been trod by a whole intellectual tradition and decides to find inconsolation in the resulting despair. We no longer wish to be confronted byour condition. We want to turn our faces to the wall, and not care about

anything any longer. Lord, take my life from me, for it is better for me to diethan to live, as Jonah put it, Yes I am angry enough to die. (Jonah) We want

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to pull the blanket down over our head and find oblivion. We do not care if weachieve this oblivion by pulling down the whole edifice of human society, sothat no one comes after us. We are sure that we are not loved, and aredetermined to make ourselves unlovable that even God withdraws from usfinally in horror.

There are two liturgies: there is the Christian liturgy and there is liturgy of thisworld. Without the Christian faith two things happen. One is that confusionabout our identity and doubt about the goodness of human life descend. Weare so convinced that others will damage us that we do this damage toourselves in order to prevent others from doing it to us. The other is that toomuch certainty about our identity descends and we seek to grasp a moreabsolute power over our destiny by assuming power over others. We regardourselves as the only real thing, and are determined not to be interrupted andinconvenienced by anything or anyone. The twin temptations to take power or to become resigned and let ourselves by carried towards despair.

The secular tradition assumes that each of us is alone. We are each of usessentially a mind, and that it is only incidental I am attached to this bodywhich you see, and forced by it into interaction with the world. We are temptedto believe that we are trapped in our body and in this world. Such gnosticismviews embodiedness as entanglement and misfortune and tempts us toescape our present situatedness, to resent the demands of other people andall the plurality and ambiguity of life. But we are prisoners of any suchentangling, disgusting materiality. We are not the victims of an alien creation.

But God does not give up on us and withdraw. His covenant is irrevocable.Even if we attempted to destroy all creation, we cannot destroy the love thatsustains all creation and every created thing and relationship in it. We can dogreat harm to creation, to one another and for subsequent generations, butthere is no place into which we can creep to end our relationship with God, for every corner has been prepared for us by God to do us good, and not evil.There is no place where evil will prevail and have the last word.In my distress I called upon the Lord and cried out to my God for help (Psalm 18)

7. Waiting witness

All mankind yearns. Let us not attempt to repress that yearning or to satiateourselves in any other way. Let us wait.It is good that we should wait quietly for the salvation of the Lord.It is good to bear the yoke in our youth; to sit alone in silence when it is laid upon us (Canticle 19 A Song of Lamentation)My heart is not lifted up, my eyes are not raised too high; I have calmed and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother (Psalm 131)

The Christian congregation also keeps silence. At the beginning of theservice, and in particular perhaps when we have received communion whilstothers are still waiting, we keep silence.

Let all mortal flesh keep silence And in fear trembling stand

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We sing:The yearning strong with which the soul will long shall far surpass the power of human telling (NEH 137).

We withdraw

At certain times of year, in particular in the preparation time of Lent, theChurch withdraws from the world. It keeps silence. We let the clamour of theworld fade into the distance, and we wait to see what will fill the silence. Andwhat comes is the vastness of what God has for us, mediated to us by thevastness of the patience of God, and the long-suffering of the body of Christfor us.The Lord is good to those who wait for him,to the soul that seeks him (Canticle 19 A Song of Lamentation)

The whole Christian people keep in training and so keep themselves inreadiness. This readiness is maintained by all the disciplines of the Christianlife, which are something particularly related to asceticism and monasticism.We withdraw in order to get distance between us and its demands. When wehave withdrawn we can see better how the world inflicts all sorts of unnecessary requirements on us, and the Christian can then return withsomething prophetic and compassionate to tell his or her society. The point of withdrawal is to return better able to serve your society by telling it what it ismissing.

Christians listen, compassionately but critically, to the world. When the worldis making exaggerated extreme claims about itself about its authority to dothings, to over-determine the lives of its people in ways that are long-termdetrimental to them we point this out. The Church that lives from the gospelis able to query our public claims, and to point out when the atmospherebecomes poisoned by unsustainable claims, and truth is not heard. Thewhole church is witness, and as a witness, the whole Church also a martyr.

3 Singing The Church in the StreetThe Church witnesses to the unchanging faithfulness of God. That thiscommunity can worship God is evidence that Christ has joined us to himself so that we can know and love the true God and live in reality.

1. BlessingThanksgiving is the mode in which Christians address one another. We do notaccuse or denigrate. We thank God for one another, and we thank each other.Christ is entirely able to give us the recognition we desire. He has enoughlove for us. As a result the Church is able to sing and tell the world that it isloved. The Church blesses, and encourages and commends, passing on theblessing it has received. It says:Blessed are you the Lord and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ For you have blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing

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Christians send their praise to God. As long as we praise God we serve thesociety to which we are sent. The Church is the people called here to sing,fast, feast, mourn, celebrate. If we speak the truths of the gospel publicly our society can remain healthy. If we do not dispel falsehood they accumulate tochoke the public sphere. We thank one another for each reprimand, each

accusation, each lesson and reminder. We are able to name what is not rightand to repent, for ourselves and for others. We are able to give thanks to God,to receive what we have as blessings. We are the people who are able to singand be glad. We celebrate the possibility of fasting, self-control and freedom.We celebrate the possibility of control over our expenditure, over our lifestyleand consumption, and of discipleship lived without fanfare or economicreward. We celebrate self-control and discipleship; we celebrate celibacy andsingleness. We celebrate marriage, and every other form of covenant andpublic service. On our definition, growth means growth in maturity not growthin material goods or services. Our gross domestic product is thanks, joy,truth, kindness. Our GDP is a confident society, that is able to bless and saythat it has been blessed.

2. From Abbey to Cathedral the Way of the Resurrection and CrossThe Christian community sings to all other communities and each Christiansings as they go through the city. Every church congregation goes out to meettogether with other churches, and to pray and worship together with them.The Church in this city must do what it does for every city and every society. Itmust say:We proclaim not ourselves but Christ Jesus as Lord and ourselves as your servants for Jesus sake

We walk from our church to others. We may walk for instance from the Abbeyto the Cathedral, from Westminster to St Pauls in the City. Let us imagine thatyou and I walk the city together. We could start at Westminster Abbey wherewe will say Morning Prayer, and then walk through the West End to St Pauls,there to celebrate the eucharist. As we go we pray and sing, and every sooften we stop, and pray again. We could take the most direct route, up theStrand, or we could meander past every church in the West End. As we walkwe can give thanks and celebrate whatever is good and greet them all aspromises of the resurrection. We could call our walk the way of theresurrection. We could stop before each church on the route and give thanks,

celebrating that God has come to us in Christ, and opened to us all thepossibility of communion and society. But when it is right to pray and mournthis would be a way of the cross, a via crucis . And on any walk we couldalternately mark stations of the cross as we notice whatever is destructive,and stations of the resurrection, alternating stations of grief with stations of rejoicing. We could sing on the pavement, on the steps of each Church or outside, or on the site of, any Christian or charitable foundation, celebratingwhatever is good and pointing to whatever every way that institution points tothe communion of God with man. We can greet all London as the dwellingplace of the Lord and regard London as Zion-in-the-making. We can sing:Behold now, praise the Lord all ye servants of the Lord, Ye that by night

stand in the house of the Lord even in the courts of the house of our God. Lifeup your hands in the sanctuary and praise the Lord. We could stop outside

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any institution that represents despair and the disintegration of thatcommunion, and there we could pray and lament what is destructive there.We also regard London as a place of exile where we sing: We sat down and wept when we remembered thee O Sion (Psalm 137). So we could walk fromAbbey to cathedral and back again, singing and praying the songs of the

Church, which are the love songs of Christ for this city. We could do this, youand I, and it would be a day well spent.

3. The mission and pilgrimage of the Church in LondonThe Church moves from church to church. Let us follow as it travels fromwithdrawn to visible, from pilgrimage people to settled and established people,from Abbey to Cathedral. This is just right for us to walk, praying andprocessing. You bring your people and I will bring mine, and together we wingsing the praises of God and pray for the city of London. Let us go together singing and praying, from Westminster to St Pauls. We could ask thecommunity of the Abbey to lead us, singing the psalms of ascent and wecould invite every church in London to come with us, so that make visible alittle of the evangelical and charismatic catholicity of the people of God.Together we would be the Body of Christ made briefly visible to the city asthese Pentecostal, Black and Independent churches, Vineyard and JesusHouse , along with the Chinese, Vietnamese, Polish and Latin Americanchurches, along with the Greek, Romanian and Russian Orthodox churches,along with the Baptists and Methodists, even the well-heeled West Endchurch of England churches, along with and anyone who knows how to singthe praises of God, or wants to know. In these many guises the Body of Christcould sing and pray its way from Westminster Abbey, around ParliamentSquare, the Houses of Parliament, up Whitehall, across Trafalgar Square, upthe Strand, past the love industries of the West End, past the lawyers,universities and media of the Strand, and past the finance houses of LudgateHill.

The Church can do this together on public feast days, and can it do so everyday. It can sing over the course of this most pilgrimage way, from Abbey toCathedral, twice daily. This is our way of the cross and of the resurrectioncombined. It is the Passover passage through which the Church travelsthrough the ire of the world. This will be the way of the cross for the Church.When the Church takes this way and is constant in it, the same route will also

be the passage way for the world by which the world can pass through intothe communion of God. The Church will be this passageway for the world,and so for the world this will be the way of resurrection to salvation and life.

4. Other mediators, other songsBut it is not only the Christian community that sings its songs. London is thickwith adoration, all of it religious. Many other songs make up the marketplaceof our public interaction. There is prayer and singing in every business inevery office in every street. It is not the Christian worship of course, butworship and singing prayer is most certainly going on there. Each floor of each office sings a different part, from low to high. For every office is nothing

but choirs singing the song that will woo and transport the customers. Eachstreet is full of shrines, each of which represents some part of our good

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humanity. Sound and light pour out of each shop, each of which identifies butthen magnifies out of all proportion some aspect of the promise of our redemption. Each shrine will let you join the band of those who have theauthority promised to those who enter and hand themselves over to this cult.Each of these shop windows promises to acknowledge that you belong to the

great company of the attractive and promises to raise you out of the melee of the unattractive. We said that the Church is the gathering of all, of theattractive and non-attractive together, so it alone is the inclusive or as we say,the catholic, community. The fact that each shop promises to raise you outand away from others makes it an anti-church.

So when you walk through these streets from Westminster Abbey to St PaulsCathedral you pass shops and offices, and the offices are the headquarters of the retail chains that have a shop in every high street. In every shop windowyou see images: they are religious images, for they are images of humanityand of humanitys redemption corrupted and perverted. Outside each of them, on the pavement, the Church prays:You know the secrets of our heartsForgive us our sinsHoly God Holy and strong, holy and immortalHave mercy on us.

5. The disembodiment industriesThe images in the shops show us man and woman in their perfection. Thetravel agents window has images of perfectly formed and tanned bodies,

draped by the pool, on impossibly blue skies in the land of our fantasy.Happiness is not here on this street, but there, on that perfect beach, theseimages tell us, so fly, from your drab normality here to that perfection there.The passing column of the Church says, do not fly but be reconciled to us.

In the windows of the health club tanned and glossed bodies are on display,while the bodies inside sculpt and tone that perfect body. There is thecosmetician who will book you in for the surgery that will give you the bodythat you hope will take away a weight of frustration and disappointment of failed relationships. They will enlarge this part of your body and reduce thatpart, cutting and re-shaping your body so that, you hope, it will be acceptable

to the rest of us.

The passing procession of all God's people replies that Christs body consistsin all shapes and sizes and all are to be received from him with thanks. Whodo you think that we are, what sort of hard judges do we have to be, for you toput yourself through this ordeal? We the Church, love you and your body theway you are. The Church says that every image shows a human being, andevery human being is an icon of Christ, and Christ is the icon of all of usreconciled and redeemed.

When a few beers have lowered our defences, we will find the nightclub. Theclub is our slave market where, no pretence now, we all line up, we eye oneanother, all hunters and all game. We are selling our wares and we are all in

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the market to buy. All we want is that instantly gratifying collision of bodies.We dont want a whole body we only want the experience of getting hold,but we must be able to let go, to detach ourselves and to leave again withoutcomplications. All we want is that first minute of encounter, but we want to re-experience this moment continually, so that we are always just taking hold of

this other body, and we will give away all other hopes in order to prolong andto repeat this moment. Outside on the pavement, the Church prays:For letting ourselves be drawn away from youBy temptations in the world about usFather forgive us: save and help us

There is the pregnancy advice centre, and here is the pharmacy that will helpyou with the emergency contraception. It will take your baby away from youand terminate this societys hopes of a new generation; it will flush away allyour emotional integrity out of reach, and have your metabolism see-sawingso madly that years will pass before your body returns to normality again. Getback to your place at the bar, and show us how just how cool and hard,detached and untouchable you are. You will keep your secret, and society willpretend not to know. Outside the abortion clinic the Church cries:Shut not your ears to our prayersBut spare us, O Lord Holy God Holy and strong, holy and immortalHave mercy on us.

In the images of the advertisements and the music pumped through each

outlet each is working to beguile and enchant you, so that you fall in love withthe image an image of yourself that they display. They play the song bywhich they hope that you will fall in love, for they hope to mediate in this loveaffair, but the only love that they can mediate is love of yourself, their wholecalling is to assist you with your own narcissism.

The Church goes through the streets singing to the city and telling everyindividual in the city that they are loved, by God. In our songs, we tell them,You are loved, you are loved, you are loved. We love you. You may not wantour love, you may despise it, but here it is nonetheless, unchanging. Andwhen you have gone round in circles for another twenty years, only to find that

you have gone backwards and are less able to sustain any relationship, stillwe are here, and you are loved, by us, as we are loved, you and us together,by God. This is what the Church tells city as it sings in its streets. We hear theWord and the promise of God, and we repeat it back to whoever is ready tohear it. The shops give us the faces of the liturgy of this world; the banks andfinance houses behind provide the blood supply. To all that the Churchobserves it raises that the question-mark of the cross.

6. London as global mediator Our prayer walk from Abbey to Cathedral takes us up the Strand, away fromthe West End entertainment industries, towards the City. But here London is

just as thick of adoration, just as religious and just as narcissistic . You want toknow what is going on in the offices above and behind the shops? Each office

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is full of people calculating which image and set of properties to invest their product and what price and image and marketing package to give it. theycalculate how to draw the lines over the recumbent body of our society. Theyconsider how to woo us in. Each offers to set us apart, each professes to wanta relationship with us. Each financial department decides how much bait they

can afford to put on each hook, and tells the marketing people. The marketingpeople ask themselves what profile and which set of characteristics to attachto each product. They decide on the icon, the glossy face, before which theyhope that each segment of the population will do obeisance. They calculatewho to include in the firms household and who to exclude. They have to pullin those with charisma and push out those whose charisma is exhausted andwho can give them nothing more. They have to churn. Each office ismarketing

All these choirs are singing their devotion to us. They want to dedicatethemselves to our service. Only one thing they cannot truthfully say thattheir love is disinterested, for they want something, and need something fromus, and that something is everything. They cannot have enough of us, for without us, they have no life. What these services and liturgies cannot tellyou is that the customers that bring in the charisma which is the product thatis ostensibly being sold. Each shop is receiving charisma from its top-endcustomers and lending it to its bottom-end customers. The Church prays:We have seen the ill-treatment of othersand not gone to their aid;Lord be merciful: forgive us our sin.

In these offices their are people offering their mediatorial services for everysignificant transaction all around the world. They are all trying to bring thatbusiness to London, so that no one in Asia can do business without accessingthe necessary approval from London, and cutting London in. only Londonprovides the final, most formal and definitive affirmation of your ability to meetand exchange together. London has to sell itself as offering the most rigorous,the most up-to-the-minute protocols, so that any transaction that has not beenperformed according to the standards established and policed in London isnot yet the last word. That is all that is going on in each of these offices, in theCity and the West End. This is the marketplace. In this market we buy in order to build ourselves up and we sell in order to have the means to do so. We sell

shares in ourselves and we buy shares in one another. We are on sale here.Most of those bought and sold will never see the marketplace of Londonthemselves.

Every shop and business in London is a shrine. Each offers us an image of man. But no business is able to point to truthfully to the whole vast mystery of man unless, however indirectly, it receives the discipline and shaping of Christ. If it cannot take the questions of the Church represented by the cross,it cannot truthfully be a shrine to man. It can only reflect back to us, distortedaspects of our own present existence. Each tempts us to isolate ourselvesfrom others; each bank or building society promises to keep you just ahead of

the crowd, and just a little more comfortable than everyone else. Each istherefore a pretend church, because it claims that all sorts are welcome, and

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that real inclusiveness and universality is found there. But the Church on thispavement puts to the city the question How shall all this be judged? Whenthe whole market is up for appraisal, what value will be put on it? How canLondon truly perform this mediation and priestly office unless it acknowledgesthe true priesthood? Were have to confess:

We have not loved you with our whole heart Nor our neighbours as ourselvesLord be merciful: forgive us our sin.

Christ sings for LondonThe origin of our worship is that God speaks in our praise. He gives us wordsof love and acknowledgement, and so he takes pride in us. The body of Christre-directs this the traffic of human recognition to its source, and so it receivesits proper distribution and renewal. It prays:It is indeed right,it is our duty and our joy,at all times and in all placesto give you thanks and praise,holy Father, heavenly King

4 Praying The Church leads our repentanceThe Church is that part of the world that prays truly. The Church prays andspeaks for the world, expressing its misery and helplessness to God. And indoing so the Church also addresses the world, and appeals to it to receive theforgiveness held out to it by God.

1. Under the crossThe Church carries the cross through the streets of the city. It carries it asthough it were a large exclamation mark or question-mark raised over everything that it passes over. It invites people to judge themselves, and tohelp one another to come to a better judgment. One day they will examinedby the whole assembly of not and earth and that assembly will be led by God,the true and just judge. It prays: The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: abroken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise .

When we carry the cross through London, the City is able to see that thisquestion can be raised of it. The economy of London is simply the sum of our action, and what that sum is, is the question we must ask ourselves. We mayexamine ourselves. We may ask the London business community to give itsreply. We may ask the question on behalf of the vast numbers who work inservice industries of London and Britain, and on behalf of the much greater number worldwide whose labour has supported and increased the economyof London and supported the United Kingdom in this lifestyle. Across the worldpopulations of workers have invested a lifetime of labour without seeing areturn. The Church may put their question to this nation and to this city of

London. We may put these questions now so that when judgment comes

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finally, all the businesses and people of this city are ready to give an accountof their stewardship.

The Church puts its questions to the market. It asks them whether bypromoting these people that it has not made these other groups of people

invisible. The Church not only asks this question; the Church is this question.We cannot be surprised that the Church is not universally popular, or that itsown members look for ways to reduce the burden of odium they must carry.Christians are on public display. Says, St Paul, God has exhibited us apostlesas last of all, as though sentenced to death, because we have become aspectacle to the world (1 Corinthians 4.9). So we pray:We confess we have failed youwe fail to share the pain of your suffering,we have run away from those who abuse you We are afraid of being known to belong to you Christ have mercy (CW p. 125 Confessions).

Christ sings the songs of the poor, despised and neglected to us, and hesings them against us. We must hear them, and must sing these songs too,and be transformed from the proud and autonomous man, too far away tohear, too busy to reply, into the poor and righteous man of the psalmsdescription. We have the privilege of singing the songs of lament, as we groanwith so who groan. So we have to mention in our prayers all those parts of theworld which have withered as London has grown, and we must ask whether London has consumed them.

2. The Church weepsThe Church repents. It has not asked the questions that would have preparedour society to live will or give good account of itself. It has not clearly set thetruth out before the world and told it about the generosity and justice of God. Ithas not laid out the possibility and inevitably of repentance, and our absoluteneed to seek forgiveness, from one another and from God. It has not taughtthe world how to examine itself and to weep.

We repent of being the Church that has not passed on the whole Christ andso that has not interceded for those who it has made invisible, voiceless,defenceless. We have not interceded for those whose lives have beenblighted by the same processes that have made us wealthy. We plead:In the midst of life we are in death; where can we turn for help? Only to you Lord Who are justly angered by our sinsHoly God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy on us.Shut not your ears to our prayersBut spare us, O Lord Holy God, holy and strong, holy and immortal, have mercy on us (CW p.131)

Every Christian is a intrinsically a representative, who speaks for others,rather than simply for himself. The world may ask us whether we have notspoken merely for ourselves and not for others, and the Christian community

must hear this charge and examine itself. Sometimes this charge is correct,and the Christian community has acted simply as another sectional interest.

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Then the Church has to hear this charge as prophecy and as the word and judgment of God. God may speak against the Church that has not spoken for the world. So we sing:We who set at nought and sold himPierced and nailed him to the tree

Deeply wailing, deeply wailing, deeply wailing Shall the true Messiah see (Source 324 Wesley)

The world is bleeding. We say that it is the world that is the bleeding body of Christ, unknown, unrecognised. The world has no means of self-control andso it gives itself away. The Church is given to world to be its head and its self-control. The world that does not receive the Church is bleeding. The Churchthat refuses to serve the world and to be its head and to pass on what it hasreceived, is responsible to God for the world that bleeds. So we sing:O Sacred Head surrounded by crown of bleeding thorn! O Bleeding head, so wounded So shamed and put to scorn! (Gerhardt NEH 90)

We repent of being an untaught Church. We repent of being afraid of theworld to which we have been sent, of being too afraid to tell it what it needs tohear, and so of having betrayed it. We repent of having withheld judgment andthe message of the cross. We repent of having substituted activism for worship, for having assumed that we are more inclusive, less judgmental,more tolerant than previous generations of Christians. We repent of havingthought that they were wrong in their judgments and that we were morerighteous than those who came before us. This cup we drink is bitter, becausethere is confession, repentance, even penance in the mix. We must dump atthe altar our belief that we know better than the historic Church.

3. Procession and litanyThe Church travels through London. It does so daily as Christians criss-crossthe city, working and serving in every part of it. And the Church does soformally and so publicly in its services and processions. As the Churchprocesses it sings and prays. As we see the city in turmoil around us we prayand compose our litany for our city. We pray a litany of repentance for theChurchs failure to pass on the good things of God:

We have seen the ill-treatment of others and not gone to their aid; Lord bemerciful; forgive us our sin.

The truth and dignity of man are held up by the Church. Freedom is the giftthat God gives to man, which makes him the image of God and which cannotbe surrendered. So our processions are led by the cross, by the MysticalBody of Christ, by the saints and by Mary. Each of these gives us a differenttheological account of our identity on this procession, and they are allrequired. Each procession sings and prays in terms of the division of the bodyand gathering of the body. Together the worshipping and lamenting Churchasks whether the body of this country, Britain, is being broken and divided or

renewed and restored.

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On its journey through our city the Church must stop outside each businessand pray for those who are serving there, and for those who are being servedthere, and for those who are being carved up and sold there. We lament whenwe see that any section of London or of this nation of ours being ostracisedand derided. We lament when we see that London is consuming or crucifying

any other part, however distant, of the world, and however hard that violenceis to identify. Whichever way the violence is going, we lament, for from self-inflicted wounds our country is bleeding and giving up hope. We pray:Lord Jesus you heal the wounds of sin and division, jealousy and bitternessOn us: Christ, have mercy (CW. p134)

In front of the betting shop the passing Church prays for the men whosehopes are being drawn out through their pockets. It will tell them not to giveup; it will tell them that they may become the image of God, and that beingmen is part of this image. It will say that they can recover control over their lives and restore their relationships with their partners and children. We tellthem that they can re-gain the self-possession to be husbands and fatherswho have the love and respect of their wives and children.

We stop outside each clothing shop. We cannot wear the clothes made inChina and India without thanking those who sowed them for us, and askingGod to release us from, that is to forgive us, our debts to them. In our intercessions we must pray for the good order of their societies andgovernments, and must name the churches in China and India that aresuffering the lack of that order. The taint of the lack of that good order will clingto the goods we receive from them. So the Church hears the psalm:Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness: according unto themultitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly frommine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions:and my sin is ever before me (Psalm 51)

Every commercial service we offer one another is good, as long as it truly is aservice. We ask whether it serves to divide each generation from its parents,or to reconcile them. The Church is not saying that there should be no gyms,pharmacists, clubs, banks: it merely asks each enterprise and institutionexamine itself and ask whether it brings the British new hope and enough self-respect enough to want to bring up a new generation. We celebrate eachchurch we pass as the place in which the body is healed and made whole byChrist.

4. The society on the crossWe are led by the cross. Jesus is on the cross: he was crucified, for us. Thecross shows us man in the throes of death. So we sing:Glory be to JesusWho in bitter painsPoured for me the life-blood From his sacred veins (NEH 83)

The cross reflects the violence around us, and which we have inflicted on oneanother. The cross is a mirror, but the figure we see there is not just him, butus. For it is our society that has put itself on the rack. It wants to love and to

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be loved, but it also fears, and it wants to remain in control, so be ready towithdraw from love. It does not want receive the love of God, to whom all lovebelongs and to whom all love returns. It bunches itself together into a blackhole of love rejected and turned into anger and misery. So the figure on thecross is us. That is our generation and our society. We are the ones

squirming, passing on our rage and resentment and slowly engulfed by them.Each of us is a battleground on which our passions fight for possession of us.The body on the cross is the body of Britain. But the cross is not just inflictedon us; we are also the perpetrators of this misery. We inflict it on each other and we inflict it on ourselves. By denying this love, and bunching ourselves upinto a refusal of love we have constructed this rack and this prison cell and byour denial that there is any wider more spacious place beyond it, we confineourselves here.

But we, the British, are not on the cross without Christ. Even our utter determination to barricade ourselves against Christ, cannot reduce or distance that love. So despite ourselves, we are not in our misery withouthim. Though we are on this cross, and in this misery, and heading for thisdeath and hell, he does not leave us here alone. He does not go. He remainswith us and stands among us. When we look into that cross we may realisethat he is here with us. And where he is, is the Church.

Man is being crucified. We see his slow disintegration and dissolutionhappening all around us. All our vast world-building confidence is the attemptto pretend that this is not happening, to distract us from this dissolution, togive us some brief compensation and allow us to believe for a while that it willnot touch us. But as others see its marks appear on us they turn away from usand each of us is abandoned and left alone.

But man is not left there alone. But Christ is with him. And Christ takes on thefull force and weight of the process of dissolution and lifts it from man. Mancannot suffer it and withstand. So Christ is the only one who will finally suffer this crucifixion to the end. He will lift this appalling fate from every man. Noman need take this fate because Christ has taken it on in its entirety. Christhas suffered our crucifixion, and it has not touched us. The forces that weunleashed have not been allowed to make an end of us. He has taken our strife and death, and lifted it from us and taken it away from us. So we sing:

See from his head, his hands, his feet sorrow and love flow mingled downdid eer such love and sorrow meet,or thorns compose so rich a crown? (NEH 95 Watts)

When we look at London we see the crucifixion of man. And we see thecrucifixion of man lifted and removed and replaced by the crucifixion of Christ.Christ suffers here, and through his suffering, wrestles, overcomes andsubdues all the forces that we unleashed. In taking on the powers that wereleased, he is crucified and he continues to undergo this death and until it isutterly extinguished. By this long crucifixion, we ourselves may survive what

we unleashed.

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4. Division and separationOutside each shop we may ask whether the body of Christ is being brokenand so crucified again. We ask whether we have passed on the good things of God or withheld them. We may ask whether our failure has resulted innational self-harming family break-up, abortion, fatherless young people

turning tribal, disassociation from our own bodies, the sexualising of our children and taking of childhood away so our children dont grow inimagination and character. The Church laments all evidence of love rejectedand substituted for.

We lament our lost marriages. We lament our failure to grow up and takeresponsibility for one woman or one man. We lament for those people in thetheir thirties who have no wish to remain single and for which all mediapromises of the instantaneity of love seem only to mock them.

We lament the cruelty of delusion promoted by the Love Industries. Welament that we have not cultivated our own public memory, but insteadimported our icons of the good life from global media industries. We lament of those taken in by the claims of the love industries that love meansgratification in a moment, that needs no work at it, and never need stick at arelationship of which one side can say that love has gone out. Their successdepends on their substituting a rolling series of partners or partner-experiences, encounters, in which each side briefly tries the other and findsthem wanting. The Church prays:You know the secrets of our heartsForgive us our sinsHoly God Holy and strong, holy and immortalHave mercy on us.

We lament the disassociation and disengagement of generations. We lamentour discouraged parents, the fathers who do not see children, and thefatherless teenagers. We lament our disengagement from our parentsgeneration, and the way we render them powerless and invisible in carehomes and hospitals. We pray:May the Father of all merciesCleanse us from our sins

And restore us in his imageTo the praise and glory of his name (CW p. 135 Absolution)

We lament the partners not found, and we pray for those who have no wish toremain single. The Church calls out for those men without women, womenwithout men, and prays for the marriages that have not taken place. It lamentsthe missing husbands and missing wives, and the children who have not beenborn, and the population that has not grown, and which will now grow oldalone before its television. The Church sings:But this I know he heals the broken-hearted

And stays our sin and calms our lurking fear And lifts the burden from the heavy-ladenFor yet the saviour, saviour of the world is here (199)

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We may also stop outside the Pregnancy Advice Centre, and there we maypray for our lost children, our Holy Innocents: Heavenly Father, whose childrensuffered at the hands of Herod, though they had done no wrong; may the suffering innocence of your Son frustrate all our despairing and evil designs. In your humility you have stooped to share our human life with the most defenceless of your children:

may we who have received the gifts of your passion rejoice in the witness of your holy innocents (CW p.445 Holy Innocents).

5. Resurrection and separations overcomeAt intervals on our procession we arrive at a church or Christian foundation.These are the wells along our route, from which we must draw water. Wecelebrate those places in which Christians in previous generations havereconciled their society and been instrumental in its healing. We celebratesigns of the arrival of new reconciliation and wholeness in our society. Wepray:Come, let us return to the Lord

who has torn us and will heal us.God has stricken usand will bind up our wounds.

After two days, he will revive us,and on the third day will raise us up (Canticle)

We celebrate the chance for a new generation to learn the discipleship andcharacter by which we can love one person truly and exclusively. Wecelebrate Christian marriages. We celebrate because each marriage is acovenant of mutual service that, since it is open to the arrival of children, thispartnership brings a new generation into being, and with it, new hope and

purpose. Every marriage is therefore also for the sake of society as a whole.

We celebrate the healing of denominational divisions in the Church in London.We celebrate the joining of Christians from Ghana, Nigeria, Poland,Philippines. We look forward to each church being received and honoured byevery other. We greet the Church as the leaven of society, the love and self-possession that sustains civilisation. And we say that the glory, invincible andindivisible body of the Lord is drawing all men to himself. He is holding our society together in one society. He is the salvation and redemption of our society, he is our unity and the guarantor of the covenant by which we maylive together in peace in one society.

6. Saints, witnesses and martyrsThe Church travels through London daily on its unbroken procession. Thesaints are here, but London may hardly notice. They are at work everywhere,yet they are seeds into the ground, not visible. But on our festivals PalmSunday, Good Friday, Easter Morning, Pentecost, Corpus Christi, and Advent

we gather together, and sing and pray. When we process we carry thebanners of our churches with their images of Christians from this city and theworldwide Church. The world in its own agony will be pleased to see us onsome occasions, and on others it will be enraged by us and do what it can tosilence us. So we must pray:

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In the midst of life we are in deathO holy and most merciful Saviour,deliver us from the bitter pain of eternal death.And sing:Though still we march by ambushed arms

Of death and hell surrounded (NEH 479)This pilgrimage and mission will be a way of the cross for us. As we bear itand suffer it, we will realise that many Christians in other generations haveborne the cross through these streets before us. The saints and witnesseshave been given, and often also worn out and broken for us. We must be ableto name them. They have given themselves for us, as so received martyrdomfor our sake. So we sing:For all thy saints Lord who strove in thee to livewho followed thee obeyed adored Our grateful hymn receive (215 Mant)

We can address all our Christian contemporaries as our fellow pilgrims. Wecarry banners of churches, and images of our bishops, our saints and theleaders of the contemporary church with a prayer from each. Every churchhas to have banners of our recent leaders from every part of the church andevery churchmanship. We may carry these banners in pain of contradictionand with tears in our eyes. That is why the Church is able to sing:Deaths mightiest powers have done their worst and Jesus hath his foes dispersed;Let shouts of praise and joy outburst

Alleluia (159)

5 Eucharist Redeemed Creation

1. Christ crucifiedThe Church is sent to the city to lament the absence of Christ and to wait for him to appear. The Church points to Christs absence and looks for to hiscoming again in great glory in its celebration of the eucharist. The Churchdeclares that Christ has died for us, and risen again to bring us his eternal life.And it points out that we see his passion continue here around us. It is thepassion of man, yet the passion which Christ refuses to abandon man to, but

which he takes on for himself and then accompanies him through. Where isthe glory of Christ? We sing:O sacred head, sore wounded,defiled and put to scorn;O kingly head surrounded with mocking crown of thorn:What sorrow mars thy grandeur?

The world suffers and groans as it waits for its redemption. On the crossChrist suffers the world, and the Church is the form in which his body suffers,takes and absorbs the violence of the world for us. In his person on the crossthe whole world travails, as it waits for its redemption, in which all the lost arerestored.

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We say that this glory is hidden for us:Sweet Sacrament divine! Hid in Thy earthly home,In thy far depths doth shine thy Godhead's majesty (Stanfield)The body of Jesus is what this hymn calls the lowly shrine. And this corpse in

placed in this tomb is our salvation. The hiding place of God, is right herebefore us and in our very hands.

2. The materiality of the bodyWe receive the bread and wine as the gifts of Christ, which will become thebody and blood of Christ. We live as material creatures, who must always benourished and sustained by taking and consuming other material things, andabove all animal creatures in order to sustain ourselves. As psalm 104 puts it,He makes grass grow for the cattle and plants for man to cultivate, bringing forth food from the earth: wine that gladdens the heart of man, oil to make hisface shine and bread that sustains his heart . Even in London, or especially inLondon, we need to know where we come from, and it is for the Church to tellus. We need to know in order to be thankful so that we can celebrate hiseucharist.

Every one of us is a material being, a creature of flesh, who requires inputsthat he is unable to source for himself. This whole city is dependent on thosewho feed it, however little we know who they are. Far away from London,imagine a peasant farmer. He regards his animals as the meat that will feedhis family. When these animals are eaten their bodies will become part of hisown body and the bodies of his children. Each shepherd regards his flock notonly as the future nourishment. They are animal bodies now, but they will turninto human bodies by next year. As he looks at this flock or herd he knows heis looking at the future of the bodies of his own people. And what is so for himis true for us too.

In order that your body remains fit and healthy, something like the followingevents have to occur. A farmer takes his flock to market where they arebought by the wholesaler; the slaughterman turns them into carcasses; thebutcher who turns these into packets of meat taken on by the distributorsfreight transport people. The transportation people are supported by theinsurers (and all so who attempt to take some of the risk out of this process,,

whether it be insurers, vets and food hygiene people). The transporters aresupported by all those who pilot the ships and planes, and all those whoservice those craft and maintain that network, and all those who train them,and police and protect them. The meat of this sheep

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IV the Church in the City