Sabbatical blog 15: Sacred space as permanent gift

Where have the last three months gone? As I return to my churches, my head is all over the place! I tried to use the last week of sabbatical to explore what being in sacred space leads us to be after being in them. The encounter with God has to change us. One of the post communion prayers we use thanks God for feeding us, uniting us with Christ and giving us a foretaste of a heavenly banquet for everyone. Then we are sent out in the power of the Spirit to live and work to God’s praise and glory. 

I’ve been sad to see closed or redundant churches on my travels. Some have been taken over by the Churches Conservation Trust for people to visit, others have been left to rot, and others turned into something else. We were in Upleatham, near Marske on Thursday. I wanted to find one of the smallest churches in England. We drove through the village. I found what I thought was the church. It was now a very plush private house. The Methodist chapel had long since shut and when we found the right Anglican one it was not in a good state. You couldn’t get in it and the grass round the graves was very overgrown. It was incredibly sad.

On Friday, I found the old St Stephen’s Church at Fylingdales, near Robin Hood’s Bay. It stands overlooking the sea and has a very large graveyard and inside a three decker pulpit. I found the whole place cold and as if God had long since left… the view from it was nice though.

On Friday night, we ate out in Whitby in what was the old Methodist Church hall built in 1901. The church used to be next door to the hall but was disused in the 1950’s and the very large hall converted to be a worship space. It closed in the 1970’s. 

Wesley Hall is now the jet museum and also a rather nice restaurant. Some of the features of the church have been kept. The names on the 1901 foundation stones might well not approve of bottles of wine and cocktails being where I think the pulpit might have been! We will see more churches close over the next few years. I will spend a lot of time I guess trying to keep them open but as numbers dwindle and age and costs rise it will be hard. Maybe we just need to be open to other forms of sacred space if the ones we have been used to just can’t be sustained. 

We had two final visits out to mention in our last week. We have discovered Malton. It’s the food capital of Yorkshire. A vegan outlet called the Purple Carrot is quite superb. It was good to call into the church in the middle of the market square. It was interesting to note it has a minister for the twenties to forties. 

We also went to visit Bridlington Priory. The Priory Church of St Mary, in Bridlington’s Old Town, was founded as an Augustinian monastery in 1113 and was from the start a rich and important religious house. 

At the Reformation the Priory, along with many other foundations, was ‘dissolved’, most of its buildings destroyed and its property seized. What can be seen now is the original nave. I’d never heard of St. John of Bridlington. 

We were greeted by a guide in the nave. Lis told him I’m a Methodist minister. He told me he was a Methodist local preacher. He told me he worshiped at the Priory now but had been brought up in primitive Devon Methodism and “the peace is a definite no no”! He asked me what my theology is (I’m not sure he liked my answer) and then what I was going to preach about on Sunday. I wasn’t expecting a grilling! Bless him. The Priory was interesting, but I’m not sure about corbels of Charles and Camilla outside! 

How do I sum up the last three months? Three encounters in the last week of sabbatical I think have reminded me what being in sacred space means. We need to take far more time to just be in God’s presence. 

We need to be reminded every day that God is here and the encounter with him can lead to life being changed. We are too busy being church I think these days. We need to stop and refocus urgently. 

On Saturday evening, we ended sabbatical where we began it the first Sunday in Ripon Cathedral. This last weekend was the launch of the 1350th anniversary of Christianity on the site of the Cathedral. St. Wilfrid established a church on the site of the present Cathedral in 672. It’s astounding Christian worship has been offered there for 1350 years. I’ve really been moved by standing where saints who bought and encouraged Christianity in the North East and Yorkshire stood. To see their sacred spaces has brought their stories alive. Maybe it was right to end this journey with our local saint. 

As I’ve written before, I find sitting in his crypt powerful. I overheard the Dean tell someone on Saturday Wilfrid was a “naughty boy” - he caused havoc at the Synod of Whitby by rejecting Celtic ways, and he isn’t liked by some, but he has a place in the story of the church and I enjoy just popping into his cathedral a lot. 

As part of the telling of the seven miracles of Wilfrid, a Psalm was read. Entering sacred space is an awesome privilege, a comfort and a challenge. We should want more times in it. 

“How lovely is your dwelling place, O Lord of hosts! My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my flesh sing for to to the living God.  

Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O Lord of hosts, my King and my God. Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise.”

Then, finally, entering sacred space should equip us to get on with sharing what we have found in it in a world that badly needs the love of God. 

A lady at church yesterday asked me what have been my highlights. 

To have time to discover the beauty of a part of the world we now live in but haven’t had chance to get out and see.

Standing in the shadows of the saints like Aidan and Cuthbert and Hilda and Oswald and Wilfrid, reminding  me I’m part of a very long story.

Some awesome encounters and God moments in especially Ushaw College and Rievaulx Abbey.

Two acts of worship in which the Spirit really moved for me - an honest and relevant preacher at Elvet in Durham on the Ukraine situation, and the beginning of Holy Week under a rood of Christ crucified in Newport Cathedral, moved almost to tears about my call again as the choir sang a beautiful setting of There is a green hill far away. 

And of course doing Holy Week and Easter again on our beloved Holy Island, the most moving part being stations of the cross for Ukraine on Good Friday which just left us stunned in silence that the suffering Christ meets 2022 so powerfully. The words “help us not to look away” will stay with me for a long time. 

I admit to having a major wobble on my last sabbatical Sunday about returning to Ripon and to Circuit ministry. I’ve been in ministry, lay and ordained, for nearly 31 years now. How often in the discipline of just turning up in sacred space and giving what you feel to God, can that just being there point you to see it might all be alright… 

We sat in two services in St Mary’s Church on Holy Island. The sermon in the morning was preached by the amazing Canon Kate Tristram. 

Kate shared the Acts of Thomas with us:

The (first) act of Judas Thomas the Apostle, when He sold him to the merchant Habbān, that he might go down (and) convert India.

And when all the Apostles had been for a time in Jerusalem, — Simon Cephas and Andrew, and Jacob (James) and John, and  Philip and Bartholomew, and Thomas and Matthew the publican, and Jacob (James) the son of Alphæus, and Simon the Kananite, and Judas the son of Jacob (James),—they divided the countries among them, in order that each one of them might preach in the region which fell to him and in the place to which his Lord sent him. And India fell by lot and division to Judas Thomas (or the Twin) the Apostle. 

And he was not willing to go, saying: "I have not strength enough for this, because I am weak. And I am a Hebrew: how can I teach the Indians?" And whilst Judas was reasoning thus, our Lord appeared to him in a vision of the night, and said to him: " Fear not, Thomas, because my grace is with thee." But he would not be persuaded at all, saying:  "Whithersoever Thou wilt, our Lord, send me; only to India I will not go." 

And as Judas was reasoning thus, a certain merchant, an Indian, happened (to come) into the south country from——,whose name was Habbān; and he was sent by the king Gūdnaphar, that he might bring to him a skilful carpenter.   And our Lord saw him walking in the street, and said to him: " Thou wishest to buy a carpenter?" He saith to him, "Yes." Our Lord saith to him: "I have a slave, a carpenter, whom I will sell to thee." And he showed him Thomas at a distance, and bargained with him for twenty (pieces) of silver (as) his price, and wrote a bill of sale thus:  "I, Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, from the village of Bethlehem, which is in Judæa, acknowledge, that I have sold my slave Judas Thomas to Habbān, the merchant of king Gudnaphar." And when they had completed his bill of sale, Jesus took Judas, and went to Habbān the merchant.   And Habbān saw him, and said to him: "Is this thy master?" Judas saith to him: "Yes, he is my master." Habbān the merchant saith to, him: "He has sold thee to me outright." And Judas was silent.

We know Thomas founded a church in India and converted many to Christianity. I needed to hear that when we are reluctant or refuse to go where we are called to, we are equipped and there is no choice when Christ calls other than to go. 

Returning after three months away is hard but if I keep trying to be grounded in God all will be well. It will! 

In the evening at evening prayer, which was just us and Sam Quilty, the curate at the church, we were commissioned to return after a brilliant and timely journey, back to whatever faces us, with the sending prayer used with pilgrims leaving Holy Island, after being there for a while to rest and be renewed:

“To the prayers of our island saints we commend you. May God’s angels watch around you to protect you. May the Holy Spirit guide and strengthen you for all that lies ahead.

May Christ Jesus befriend you with his compassion and peace.” 

“Lord, 

Be a bright flame before us. 

Be a guiding star above us.

Be a smooth path beneath us.

Be a kindly shepherd behind us.

And the blessing of God

Father, Son and Holy Spirit,

Be with you always.”

Entering sacred space is to renew us and then lead us with new energy where we are needed to be. I thank the church and God for the gift of a precious three months. I pray I may keep seeking space in order to find God’s peace, call and word every day. If I don’t, I’ll just collapse in exhaustion. If today’s church doesn’t, it will die. We are created even if we have no faith as human beings not human doings. 

Maybe this quote from Joseph Campbell is why sabbaticals are there for ministers and what sacred space is meant to do: 

“To live in a sacred space is to live in a symbolic environment where spiritual life is possible, where everything around you speaks of the exaltation of the Spirit.

This is a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be. This is the place of creative incubation. At first you might find that nothing happens there. But if you have a sacred place and use it, something eventually will happen.

Your sacred space is where you find yourself again and again.”