St John's, Plastic Cattle and the Cloth Tabernacle

Naz and I have just started going to St. John the Baptist church in Hillingdon. It's an intimate, old, yet refreshingly innovative Anglican church in Hillingdon. Sunday was amazing. This won't be a chronological account (I'm too excited about the place to be chronological, get over it), but this is the gist of what went on.

The reading was Ephesians 2:19-22:

'So then you are no longer strangers and sojourners, but you are fellow citizens with the holy ones and members of the household of God, built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the capstone. Through him the whole structure is held together and grows into a temple sacred in the Lord; in him you also are being built together into a dwelling place of God in the Spirit.'

I'm pretty wary of this sort of language nowadays, I think, but I don't say this lightly: God began speaking to me when this was read. My wife and I have been searching for so long for a church community where we can really belong, really belong, and everything about this service was saying that at last, we did belong at St John's: we had 'arrived'. Our 'temple' was made up of the people standing (and sitting) around us, gathered around God's foundations.

We were led through an imaginative meditation (!!!): what do we call home? We were asked to go, in our imaginations, to the most familiar place in our home, to which we retreat whenever we are stressed or upset. God wants to be that for us: the familiar place, the 'welcome' sign on your doormat when you get in from the cold.

And then we were told to think of the places in our homes that need a bit of work - in the case of our house, pretty much all the skirting; sanding the kitchen floor; fixing a floorboard in the dining room. We were asked to invite God into the uncomfortable places in our hearts and lives, perhaps in repentance, or perhaps we just need God's comfort because of hurts in our lives.

This led on to a time of confession where each person was invited to the altar at the front of the church, to light a candle (a simple, unfamiliar, but profoundly spiritual thing for me: more of it, please), and offer a prayer to God, confessing either something personal, or corporate. We were acknowledging that the Church - God's house - is a pretty messy place, and also needs a spring clean. A couple apologised for the mistakes that the Church makes in not welcoming everyone the way we should, and another apologised for the way we 'put up with the status quo' and sometimes get too 'comfortable' with the way the Church does things. Nice.

Rev. Rob Harrison spoke about the Old Testament tabernacle, and God's instructions for worship: among other things, that it is supposed to be corporate. Interesting point that he made: 'Church cannot be done on one's own. God instructed the Isrealites to eat a whole lamb for the passover, not a single leg, and try to do that on your own.' That's one heck of a carvery. For the Israelites, God's worship instructions were never individualistic. You just can't be 'church' on your own.

And then Rob made a 'tabernacle' out of meccano, and covered it in a yellow cloth. (It would have been a crimson colour. "Oh well," he said, "you get the idea.") "This," he said, "is the tabernacle." Don't ask me why, but this excited me. He had a bag of toy animals. He asked us to get into 'families', and then passed around sets of 'livestock' to each 'family', which meant we were each holding a handful of plastic cows, sheep, chickens (I insisted I had the Lego Darth Vader, [maybe because there's a 'dark side' in my faith, I thought afterwards]). Rob said that God would, every now and then, tell the Isrealites to pitch tent somewhere else, but that each time they should wait for God's instruction. So the church (there were about 20 of us) followed Rob round with his 'tent' and our plastic livestock. It was fun, but also moving. (Pun unintended, really.)

Finally, Rob found it particularly interesting that God instructed "be joyful." Rob was absolutely correct when he said that "even enjoyment is a command of God. We are supposed to enjoy God, and if we don't enjoy worship at church, something is wrong."

Things I learned (No three-point sermons here. Instead, we were trusted to learn things for ourselves):

We cannot do church on our own.

God is the one who decides who settles where at church. It's not about our preference (although, as a loving God, apparently he knows exactly what we need).

God commanded that we are passionate about worship, that we have fun, and enjoy it.

To cap it off, we had Communion together. As we held the bread in the air, and then the wine, Rob said "Look around you. These are your family. God has given them to you to love, support and comfort you." I think that Naz and I were metaphorically nodding our heads in agreement.

And they gave us a good lunch and good conversation too. God bless St. John's.