What has the Church ever done for us?

The scene is an old country church open to the public during the day time, outside it is raining and a hiker ( C ) has stepped inside the porch to shelter from the rain.

Next to him is a woman (V) who has a broom ready to sweep out the porch but seems in fact seems to be just watching the rain.

V. Hullo.

C. How do you do? V. Lovely weather for ducks. C. Yes. V. Have you come in to shelter from the rain? C. Yes, I have, is that all right? V. You are most welcome. Perhaps you would like to have a look around the church, we have some very fine finials and gargoyles, I could show you them if you like. C. Erm…no, I don’t think so. V. Wouldn’t be any trouble, wouldn’t be any trouble at all. I could finish sweeping out this porch later. C. Thank you very much but I am happy here, I don’t want to go in, I have not been over the threshold of a church since my Aunt Maude died, and before that it was when I was back in school. V. Oh! I’m sorry to hear about your Aunt, were you close? C. No. V. It is a pity that people get to associate churches with funerals; we do happy occasions too, weddings and Christenings. Then there is Christmas and the Carol services and the joy of Easter morning, but I guess if you have lost a loved one then going back to church can remind you of the funeral. C. Yes. No doubt. V. In fact every Sunday morning we celebrate our faith, we gather together to give thanks to God, to receive His forgiveness and to meet with each other and Him in celebration of life. C. That’s not how I remember church. V. What do you remember? C. I recall being bored out of my mind. I recall the vicar being an opinionated hypocrite. I recall everyone believed a lot of nonsense about miracles and Dooms Day. I recall the pews were hard and the sermons long. I recall old women gossiping and young men ranting on about how every other Christian denomination had got it completely wrong. So, to be honest I’m not interested in seeing inside your church or hearing about it, I just want to wait here till the rain passes then walk away thank you very much. (Silence) C. I’m sorry if that offends you but it is what I believe, I think church is a waste of time. Do you actually believe all those absurdities that the church spouts? V. Why would I believe in absurdities? Except to say that this life can seem absurd, and sometimes Church life seems a little absurd. But we all have our Monty Python moments; the absurd does not confine itself to the interior of churches, and occasionally common sense is actually found to be residing inside the walls of a Church – just occasionally mind. C. I suppose you think God created the world in six days and then had a snooze on the seventh? V. I believe God created the world. I don’t know how He did it, I wasn’t there, neither were you for that matter, but I believe He is still creating it – that I can see. The Creation account in the bible contains many beautiful and profound truths, as does the creation account given by modern science, but they are different and cannot really be compared. We are all learning, at least those of us who have an open mind. C. Do you get many in there on a Sunday? V. We get all the Saints. C. You mean you have to make up the numbers with dead people? V. Not all the Saints are dead. C. But most of them are old, am I right? The only people who go to church now days are the old or the needy. Church attendance is falling, it’s a fact, all across the country churches are closing. It’s us sinners that are in the ascendance, not you saints. V. Actually for every member of the Secularist Society in this country there are at least a hundred people in church. The fact is that the Church world-wide is growing. In places like China, South Korea and South America the growth is phenomenal. In America, a modern industrialised country like our own, regular church attendance is around about 40%, with around 75% of people identifying themselves as Christian. In our corner of Europe in the years since the Second World War, Church attendance has fallen, but we are not typical of the world-wide trend. Even here some parts of the Church are growing, Pentecostalism for instance, and some ancient forms of Christianity like Catholicism, Orthodoxy and Cathedrals. And actually, the decline in the traditional churches has slowed and may be bottoming out, we probably haven’t done enough to grow in recent years, we have been too reserved to speak up for our faith, but we are working on it now. You know, there are over two billion Christians worldwide. You have to have a lot of faith to imagine a world without the Church. It has been here for two thousand years, it was born in persecution, the Romans tried to destroy the Church, then the Vikings attacked Christendom, the Church has survived the plagues, the industrial revolution, the church in Eastern Europe survived Communism, the Church has significantly formed the world as we know it, the Church adapts and changes, but still to this day proclaims the truth of Christ’s teachings. C. Well alleluia sister! But if the Church is in such fine form why don’t you hear about it in the media? V. I didn’t say the Church was in fine form, we have a lot of work to do, but as for the media, since when do you believe all you read in the papers? You must be a man of great faith if you accept all the media teaches without question. C. But the Church is basically pointless…I mean you don’t even have to go to Church to be a Christian. V. True enough, you don’t have to go to Church to be a Christian, but you do have to go to Church to practice Christianity. For instance, I can say I am a footballer, I can wear the kit, own a football, but if I just sit on my sofa at home at watch matches on the tele then in what sense am I a footballer? Christianity like football is a team activity, it is about communion, you can’t do communion by yourself. You can be a Christian without going to Church, but you can’t do Christianity without going to Church. Unlike other religious leaders and teachers Christ left to us no written record of his teaching, instead he left behind for us a group of people, the disciples whom he commissioned to continue his work. The teaching of Christ was written not into a book but into the lives of the disciples he loved and then expressed in the life of the Church. The gospels and epistles, the books of the New Testament are the responses of ordinary people to encountering the man Jesus whom they took to be God incarnate. So the Church isn’t just a take it or leave it part of Christianity, it is central to Christ’s plan for his disciples. Christ died and rose again to unite us with God and with each other through forgiveness and reconciliation, if we then bog off and do our own thing we have missed the point entirely. C. Well the Church has done a pretty poor job in carrying on the work of Christ, what has the Church ever done for us? Bank holidays I suppose, we get Bank holidays because of Christmas and Easter, but apart from that, what has the Church ever done for me? All the Church has ever done is bring conflict and division. Catholics burning Protestants and Protestants burning Catholics, it should all be consigned to the past, religion is just primitive tribalism dressed up in fancy hats. V. What has the Church done for us? Where do I begin? Firstly, bad things have been done in the name of Christ, terrible, terrible things, but Christ taught love for neighbour and for enemy, so these things done in Christ’s name and in the name of his Church are condemned by Christ himself. Any opportunist can stand up and say ‘in the name of Jesus’, it is up to the rest of us to ask if his actions are consistent with the teachings of Christ. Peddling hate and violence in the name of the Church, which stands for love and peace, is like sounding a claxon for quietness, or running naked through the streets for decency. It has been said, ‘God uses good men - but bad men use God.’ As for Bank holidays…most of what is best about our society comes from the Christian tradition. The idea of a society governed by law rather than force can be traced to Moses who set in stone the idea that no one is above the law. C. Ok – so the idea of law, maybe that, but… V. Not just that, the idea of equality and the value of all human life are expressed in the very first chapters of Genesis, there it tells us that all humans are made in the image of God and are created as unique individuals infinitely loved by God. Jesus was born into a society were life was cheap and the rich and powerful exploited ruthlessly the week and powerless, he stood up for the poor and publicly challenged the authorities, and down the centuries Christians inspired by his example have continued to do so. William Wilberforce opposing slavery, Florence Nightingale speaking up for the ordinary soldier, Martin Luther King campaigning for Civil Rights in the Southern states of America, Desmond Tutu condemning Apartheid in South Africa… C . Ok, so there have been some good Christians, but…. V. So much of what we count as civilised has grown out of the teaching of the Church and the work of Christians. The creation of the Welfare State was heavily influenced by Christian Socialism; the Church was the first institution to provide hospital care and education for those who could not afford it. Literacy and Classical learning were both preserved through the Dark Ages by the work of Monasteries across Europe. If you have ever read a book or watched a film with a plot about redemption, or the battle between good and evil, or about the power of love, then you are in conversation with Christian culture. Johann Sebastian Bach, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, Bob Dylan, they were all influenced by Christianity. C. All right, all right, so apart from the idea of valuing all human life, equality before the law, social progress and reform, the welfare state, education. Health care, art and literature, and Christ’s message of peace and love, what has the Church ever done for us? V. Would you like a cup of tea? C. Ok. Yes I would. Thank you. V. I may be able to find a biscuit as well somewhere in the kitchen. C. This church has a kitchen? V. We don’t want for nothing we’ve not got. Come in and see. Mind the step. C. You’re not going to show me your finials and gargoyles are you? V. Well, we shall have to see how it goes.

The sound is heard of footsteps progressing through the church and in the distance a kettle is filled and switched on.