St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate is being taken over in what
can only be described as an act of spoliation, which the dictionary defines as ‘the
action of taking goods or property from somewhere by violent means’. The
eviction of its classical musicians, for whom it has become church in the
fullest sense, reflects the kind of iconoclastic violence witnessed at the time
of the English Reformation when monasteries were sacked, statues decapitated,
frescoes and wall paintings obliterated. Now, it is orchestrated music that
must be expunged. The musicians who for years have made St. Sepulchre a space
for prayer and reflection, are being removed to make room for ‘worship and
ministry’. One can only presume that what the musicians offer is no longer
deemed to be worship or, for that matter, ministry. The whole unhappy business
raises two things which ought to be of concern to all Anglicans, whatever their
churchmanship.
Anglicans in this country have for too long ignored or
condoned the kind of quick fix which certain manifestations of charismatic, and
largely conservative, evangelicalism has thrust upon them. Church ‘plants’, and
St. Sepulchre is to be one of them, are in fact a form of colonisation, a
process which has already been described as the McDonaldization of the Church
of England. McDonald’s and the goods it serves is not only extremely bad for
our health, it is also bad for a nation or community’s self respect. The French
who only a decade ago were the envy of us all when it came to body image, are
now getting fat. Could the same thing be happening to the Church? I think the
spoliation of St. Sepulchre’s indicates a very real danger that it might. The
Church is getting fat as a result of the McDonaldization of its worship and the
commodification of its inner life in God to suit the tastes of the market.
What this danger entails pertains specifically to what the
present incumbent, who has instigated the eviction, is about to do to St.
Sepulchre’s when it comes to worship and ministry. It implies, among other
things, a very narrow understanding of worship itself and, possibly, a very
shallow interpretation of both worship and ministry in respect to how Jesus spoke
and behaved in regard to these vital areas of Christian life.
In one of the
most profound theological conversations in the whole of the New Testament, we
are told that worship is authentic when it is done in ‘spirit and in truth’
(John 4:24). Beautiful music, especially classical music and liturgy, and some
traditional hymns, releases the mind and raises the spirit to God. It is a
truth language. It is truthful because
it is received into the listener’s ‘God shaped space’, to borrow from St.
Augustine, Blaise Pascal and scripture itself. It is received in such a way as
to allow for an encounter with God. It does not tell the listener anything, or
issue terms and conditions for this encounter to take place. It simply opens up
a space. Beautiful music is not pure aesthetics, as some may think. It is
worship.
Music is therefore a unique and infinitely precious gift,
because in freeing the mind and momentarily opening the heart it allows both
listener and player to encounter one another within the love of God. It is also
essential to ministry, and ministry, rightly understood, is essential to the
ongoing life of the Church. Bands, trendy songs and shallow sensationalist
preaching do not minister to anyone except the performers themselves. They do
not serve. They simply perform. Classical musicians serve.
The proof lies in
the extent to which trendy songs and endlessly repeated cliché choruses do or
do not transform those who imbibe them. Do people come away from these events
less selfish, less needy, more able to love those they find hard to love or
even respect? Are they more lovable themselves? Are they Christ-like in every
sense? Are they the body of Christ? None of the methods which purport to make a
church successful bear any relationship to what it means to be the body of
Christ. They are not evangelism. They are part of a commercial enterprise. They
deal in the commerce of spurious success, and they are entrepreneurial in
following a set recipe for achieving that success. Beautiful music, especially
when it is performed in a church, does not purport to do either of these things
and for this Anglicans should be grateful.
What then can liberal thinking Christians, as well as
people who are ‘not religious’ do to prevent the Anglican Church from sleep
walking into a place where God in his ineffability is rarely to be found?
Perhaps the future lies with the ‘nones’. People who
describe themselves as ‘nones’, when it comes to religion, are extremely
valuable to the Church. For one thing, they are capable of being prophetic, because
they are, by their own definition, outsiders. Jesus loved outsiders. He did not
require them to prove that they had a faith. He knew them and loved them for
who they were. He loved them because their faith, and the truth to which it witnessed,
consisted in the extent to which they were capable of love, and on this alone
did he rate people.
The Church must be a place which draws people to itself because
it touches them where they need to both give and receive the love of God. This
is its ministry, and it is the ministry of every local church. Worship will
only happen when a church has been ministered to with Christ like love and in a
spirit of service. It will happen when people encounter something of the
sacred, of the enduring nature of the mystery of God in the beauty of their
surroundings, and in music. Let there be music at St. Sepulchre’s.
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