The Fourth Dimension

A sermon preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields on November 3, 2024 by Revd Dr Sam Wells

St Martin’s Day

St Martin-in-the-Fields is never less than a parish church; but very often much more. On this our patronal festival I want to explore what that means and how we can even more fully live into that vocation in body, mind and spirit.

The word church, which originally means assembly, is used in a host of different senses, of which we may focus down on three. Church is, first of all, the best thing there is. By that I mean if you believe the whole purpose of the universe, of creation, and of existence is for God to be in relationship with us in Jesus, then church is the focal way we and God embody that purpose. Imagine an hourglass with eternal essence at the top and earthly existence at the bottom. The aperture between the two is Jesus. Jesus calls his followers to be that aperture from the time of his ascension to the day of his return. The name for his followers is church. The way his followers fulfil that vocation is to be utterly at one with God, wholly reconciled with their neighbours, truly at peace with themselves and in complete harmony with the rest of creation. That’s why I call church the best thing there is: because those four things represent heaven on earth; which is what the church is called to be. A living, dynamic, interactive pattern of love; on a vast scale. Nothing could be more beautiful, or more wonderful.

We’re all aware church is seldom like that. Church can be mean-spirited, hypocritical, inhibited, ignorant, cruel, judgemental, fearful, selfish, boring, exploitative and merciless. Everyone some of the time and some people all the time think church is so far from the best thing there is it’s too painful even to recall that’s what it’s called to be. Which is why it’s wise to begin with a second dimension of church, which we might call as good as we can be. In this sense church means a group of people striving to live in reconciled relationships with one another, being built up by word and sacrament, and bearing humble witness to their community and wider world in practices of nurture and truth-telling. This is a commitment shorn of superlatives, committed to the real not just the ideal: it’s about accepting one another’s humanity, dwelling with the ups and downs of life and community, while finding joy in mutual solidarity and gestures of compassion. It’s about moving beyond idealism and fantasy into rhythms and routines of concrete kindness and reliable faithfulness. Being as good as we can be. But it’s not without vision. In the words of Margaret Mead, ‘Never underestimate the power of a small group of committed people to change the world. In fact, it is the only thing that ever has.’

It would be rather agreeable if we could adopt a strategy of pursuing this second kind of church for as long as it took until it came to resemble the first kind – and leaving it at that. But however much we’d love to keep it simple, the church is also an institution. That means buildings, committees, synods, finance, pensions, structures and systems. These are all important things. But it’s possible to get so lost in this third dimension you lose sight of the first two. It’s also true that the secular media finds the first dimension too mystical and the second dimension too mundane but finds the third dimension relatable because you can see it and measure it. So the world and sometimes the church often speaks as if the third dimension is the only important one, which is a huge distortion. Right now this third dimension is more fragile than it’s been in centuries, which generates a sense of creeping panic that the church is somehow doomed to disappear. But remember this: the church is fundamentally about the first dimension, practically about the second dimension, and only about the third to the extent it facilitates the first two. The third dimension is about being the best support for the other two. In heaven there’ll be utter fulfilment of the first, and still some version of the second, but the third will fall away like the launch burners from a rocket. So the church isn’t any less good or right or true if the third is fractious or failing. And we need to recall that in all likelihood we are the early church. Two thousand years isn’t a long time. It’s not surprising we’re still working out how to organise our life and live with difference. It’s still early days. There could be several million more years of this, or longer.

St Martin’s maps onto this threefold pattern fairly easily. Our congregation has pretty much one hundred per cent signed up to dimension two, being a group of people rubbing along together finding the heart of God in doing so. Everyone here wants to do their best to live in reconciled relationships, built up by word and sacrament, and bear witness in practices of nurture and truth-telling. Often people confide in me that they find the community element easier than the faith element. But here’s a thing. If you reflect on the three dimensions of church, when people say they sometimes struggle with the faith element, I don’t think they usually mean what it sounds like they mean. It sounds like they mean they’re sceptical about be utterly at one with God, wholly reconciled with their neighbours, truly at peace with themselves and in complete harmony with the rest of creation. Which I don’t believe they are. They may be saying they distrust their own ability to embody all those things. But that’s called humility, not doubt. What I think they’re really saying is they sometimes wonder how all the buildings, committees, synods and so on actually measure up to the dream of the first dimension. To which my answer is, if you don’t spend half your time wondering that, you’ve probably mistaken the third dimension for the first two. I’m glad you do wonder that. So do I.

But what we’re doing together at St Martin’s isn’t restricted to the three dimensions I’ve outlined. For sure, we want church to be the best thing there is, we want to be as good as we can be, and we recognise we need to put in place and foster the best support for these two. But here we’re working on a fourth dimension. We’re working on turning church from a noun into a verb. If you think about the three dimensions we’ve explored – being in the aperture between essence and existence, being a group of people following Jesus as best we can, and having all the structures and processes to be a national denomination and international communion – they’re all nouns. What we’re doing together is turning all those into a verb.

The best definition of whether something is church or not is whether it looks like Jesus. Is it embracing the stranger? Is it bringing reconciliation? Is it speaking the truth in the face of hostility? Is it connecting us with forever? Is it shaping its life to be in constant conversation with God? Is it laying down its life to be with its enemies? Is it being raised from death? Is it speaking with authority? Is it embodying a love that never lets you go? These are verbs, because they’re all things a community is actually doing and encountering and practising. The term for what empowers people to do things that look like Jesus is Holy Spirit. The way the Holy Spirit has been at work at St Martin’s has been taking us to a fourth dimension of church.

If there’s a single word that sums up what the Holy Spirit has been leading us into, I think it would be ‘beyond.’ We’ve gone beyond the regular dimensions of congregation and denomination by having a social enterprise that immerses us in the economy and in tourism and in hospitality and the arts, in public debate and the London Living Wage and a host of ways to earth the gospel in the life of our city. We’ve gone beyond the regular definitions of church by broadcasting to millions and livestreaming around the world and sharing our choral music with many hundreds of churches around the country. We’ve gone beyond the constraints of church by creating an intentional community that takes hundreds of disciples deeper into silence, sabbath and sharing, and by conceiving an enquirers’ course that’s awakening faith in people around the country and across the Atlantic and Down Under. We’ve gone beyond London by forming an international training and resourcing network to foster these kinds of commitments on four continents around the world. We’ve gone beyond our own congregational life by developing a music programme that’s resourcing choral ensembles around the C of E. And we’ve gone beyond simple compassion by developing a national ministry to offer dignity, support and solidarity to those experiencing homelessness.

What all these initiatives have in common is the insight that we grow, and we follow the Holy Spirit’s lead, when we go beyond. We’re always going to be wary of hubris. We’re wary lest we lose our humility and neglect the second dimension of simply being a group of people trying to follow Jesus. But humility cuts both ways: it means not thinking too highly of yourself – but also too lowly of yourself. Remember the third slave in the talents parable thought he was going to be praised for keeping it simple but ended up being condemned for neglecting his opportunity. Simply following Jesus is of course our foundational vocation; but the outworking of that vocation has come to mean for us going beyond, finding where the Holy Spirit is working in the workplace, in the arts, in the wider church, in intentional discipleship, in international renewal. And here’s the miracle: that going beyond hasn’t resulted in a depletion of our second dimension but on the contrary has deepened and broadened and enriched it, bringing us strangers and pilgrims and countless embodiments of Jesus in disguise.

Last Easter I was asked to gather a half-dozen members of our community to meet with Sir Keir Starmer for him to make a video to celebrate new life. One beloved member of our community spoke about how he came to St Martin’s six or seven years ago, homeless and destitute, with no recourse to public funds, terrified of being sent back to his country of birth, teetering towards despair and thinking he could no longer bear to live. He met some people here, got involved with the community, turned from being a participant to a leader, found sanctuary during covid, joined the worshiping congregation and the Nazareth Community, now has a home and is actively enhancing his neglected formal education. When he’d told his story, he looked straight at the soon-to-be-Prime Minister, and said, ‘Sir Keir, I want you to do for this country what St Martin’s has done for me.’

That’s what I call going beyond. That’s what I call the fourth dimension of church. That’s what happens when a community opens the doors of its imagination to perceive what new energy, new hope and new life the Holy Spirit is bringing. That’s what St Martin’s is about. I’m looking forward to discovering what new things the Spirit will do among us in the year to come.