I want to know Christ

St Martin-in-the-Fields Annual Parochial Church Meeting, October 22, 2020

read by Revd Dr Sam Wells

I am among a generation whose parents knew the horrors of war, but that never seriously thought we would experience anything of that kind. We’d decided death was for the old, poverty was for the few, disruption and perpetual uncertainty were for the unlucky. Now we find ourselves in the middle of a calamity from which there seems no escape – we can’t travel beyond it, we can’t insulate ourselves from it, we can’t see the end of it.

For St Martin’s this has meant three things. It has been a catastrophe for our business. That’s been on a financial scale, with unimaginable losses this year following healthy profits last year. And it’s been on a human scale, with a majority of our staff having to leave because we can’t trade profitably in our usual way. This has been a devastating experience, and I want to say how grieved we all are for those who’ve left with no other work to go to and no prospect of a change in fortunes. Thank you for your faithful service. We are so sorry all this has happened. We wish we could make it better for you. To Ally Hargreaves and Chris Franklin, who have held the ship together, at significant personal sacrifice, to Nadine Swaffield and Ryan Tyler, who’ve picked up so much of the most demanding aspects of this, to the whole SMITFL team, working, furloughed, and redundant, and to the board, especially Chris Burford, outgoing chair, Cathy Reid Jones, chair, and Mark Bromley, acting chair, I want to say the whole St Martin’s community stands in your debt. Thank you for your dignity, integrity, selflessness and endurance.

The second thing it’s meant is we’ve rapidly had to find alternative sources of income to plug the massive hole in our finances, in the short and medium term. Immediately we went into lockdown, Katy Shaw and Tim Bissett and their teams from the Trust and the Charity swung into action and created an Emergency Appeal that brought in vital funds for homeless people and St Martin’s as a whole. The Trust has successfully applied for two National Lottery Heritage Fund Cultural Recovery grants, which have also been hugely helpful. People at St Martin’s and elsewhere have been personally generous. Without these sums and efforts we’d be in deep trouble. I cannot fully express how significant this work and generosity has been for the survival of St Martin’s. One day people may forget how we survived and how close we came to not doing so; but today we remember. We’re so grateful.

The third thing that’s happened is an extraordinary outpouring of initiative, creativity and dynamism. Richard Carter and volunteers found a way to feed 150 people each Sunday from March to August. Pam and the Connection team housed dozens of homeless people and found permanent accommodation for them when their time in hotels came to an end. Andrew Earis and the Choral Scholars created music for around a third of Church of England parishes, and our Choir and Voices have each found ways to lift our souls. Sally Hitchiner and colleagues created a whole online congregation and community, and a great many people have led compline, delivered meals, hosted conferences, or in some other way picked up the baton. Sally has also created the Being With course, and I think we’ll be hearing a lot more about that in years to come. Richard’s prayer walks have become legendary. Jonathan Evens and his team took HeartEdge online with astonishing results. A concerted effort by a huge number of people has made Sunday and Wednesday worship and the autumn lectures possible in the face of innumerable challenges. The Nazareth Community continues to grow deeper and wider. I’ve heard so many stories of churches that have been paralysed by the challenges of the pandemic; I’m so proud of the improvisations made here.

I’ve had personal exposure to the quantity of work our various boards have put in – at the Trust, the Connection, the Charity, the company and the PCC. I want to thank David Bradley whose last annual meeting this is as treasurer and who has served us with insight, wisdom and generosity of heart. I’m hugely appreciative of the PCC, and especially the wonderful members not continuing – Katie Hilton, Susanne Wood, Jim Sikorski and Adrian Harris. I’m so grateful for our outstanding clergy and ministry team. Finally I want to pay tribute to two truly outstanding churchwardens. Catherine and Chris, you’ve been with me in rain and shine, you’ve listened to the cross, encouraged the shy, persuaded the stubborn, and read balance sheet and complaint and vision statement and minutes of a thousand meetings. You’ve made time and given from your soul and I can’t express how grateful I am.

As I look back on the last 18 months and especially the last seven months, I’m struck by one thing about this community above all. I see no ego. I can scarcely point to a single person who’s put their own needs above the needs of the community as a whole. They say there’s no limit to what you can achieve so long as you don’t mind who gets the credit. The last seven months have been a remarkable experience of everyone tucking their own needs and anxieties into the bottom drawer and seeking the common good. Of course we’ve had disagreements and misunderstandings, but surprisingly few given the strains of this year, and only because we all love and care for this community and what it stands for, and we sometimes have different perceptions of how best to advance those purposes. I’m so proud and thankful for the way everyone has been so selfless and generous and bighearted.

In his sermon a few Sundays ago, Richard encouraged us to read the whole of the letter to the Philippians as a guiding light in these tough times. And so it was that I read the words, ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.’ And I realised those were the words on which I presented to the interview panel here at St Martin’s nine years ago almost to the day. Be careful what you wish for. I talked then about how faith always had a tentative element – even Paul is saying not ‘I know Christ,’ but ‘I want to know Christ.’ We’ve all felt that tentativeness these last seven months, when so much that we’ve taken for granted has been snatched from under us. I then talked about knowing the power of Christ’s resurrection. Again the same tentativeness. Paul says, ‘I want to know.’ We’ve all wanted to know that power this last summer, as we’ve walked in the valley of the shadow of death and felt the fragility of life and livelihood.

But see what comes next. ‘I want to know the sharing of his sufferings.’ Paul actually says he wants to know this. In my presentation I said, ‘I try as hard as I can to be a person who communicates to all in my care that I’ll not be frightened by the depth of their agony or fear or dismay – that I won’t change the subject, or hasten to provide a superficial solution, or make a joke, or say something worse happened to me, but will instead give them permission go down to the very bottom of the pond, and encourage them that, like Israel in Egypt and Babylon, whether the suffering is of their own or of others’ making, they can expect to meet God there.’ Well it turns out I’ve had plenty of opportunity for that this last seven months. So have we all.

But there’s more. Paul concludes, ‘I want to become like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead.’ This is what I said in October 2011: ‘I believe my central call as a priest is to prepare people for death; and my most significant witness is the way I prepare for my own. And I relish seasons of testing or hostility, not because they’re fun, but because at such moments the veil between us and God is very thin, and all our hope on God is founded, and we have nothing besides God and one another and that, however fragile, is more than enough.’

When I was called to be your vicar, I saw the extraordinary heritage and amazing potential of this community. But I never believed faithfulness would simply mean building on that heritage and fulfilling that potential. Christianity is about glory; but not the glory of winning or conquering or vanquishing or dwelling in perpetual comfort. Glory is about seeing the beauty through the pain, glimpsing the joy beyond the setbacks, finding Christ beside us in the fire. We were never promised a rose garden. Paul makes it clear that the road to resurrection runs through suffering and death.

A fair weather friend is no real friend at all. In this time of adversity we’re being tested in a way we never wanted or expected. We thought St Martin’s would always be there, and here we are, struggling for our very survival. But I believe we’ll look back on this time in our lives and in the life of St Martin’s, and we’ll recall the truths we found, the strength that came from one another, and the love that never let us go. And my prayer is that we’ll reflect on this time, and we’ll say, ‘Then we knew Christ, and the power of his resurrection. Then we shared his sufferings. Then we did become like him in his death. And then we believed like never before in the resurrection from the dead.’