ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at Solemn Evensong and Benediction on the Seventeenth Sunday of Trinity, 4th October 2009

Readings: Joshua 3. 7-end; Matthew 10. 1-22

During this autumn we're having a series of occasional sermons with the overall title Views of London. We began three weeks ago with Fr Peter McGeary giving an unflinching account of life in the East End at St Mary's Cable Street. Then we heard from Fr Stephen Coles, the Vicar of St Thomas' Finsbury Park. And last week, Fr Callan Slipper, a member of an ecumenical community; he gave us an almost mystical vision of London as a city that has a vocation. London has a vocation to enable not simply dialogue between different sorts of people but 'trialogue': the conversation that takes place between two people that is joined by a third - the unseen guest, God himself. We'll be hearing from another four clergy in the weeks to come.

So let's continue to pursue what it means to live in this city. I'm tempted to give you a few verses of Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner but I'll refrain. You've come to hear the best in the Anglican choral tradition not the clergy hamming it up but I do l love London Town. I was born here and although I've spent time away I always feel I've come home when I return. And if I've been away for a long time there's a place that I go on pilgrimage. I walk to the middle of Waterloo Bridge. From there you get one of the best views of London. It's especially wonderful in the evening and (showing my age) I sing to myself Waterloo Sunset by the Kinks. People so busy, makes me feel dizzy.

So what is it about this city that it makes me (and perhaps us), sing? What do we have to contribute as followers of Christ? I'd like to answer that by using three words that begin with 'p': 'power', 'personality' and 'people'.

Power. If we stand on Waterloo Bridge the symbols of power are all around us. Flowing beneath our feet is the River Thames, the primary source of London's wealth. London began as far as anyone can tell because it's the first place you come to as you go upstream where you can easily cross the river. So it became a place of trade and fortification. London's power came from its river.

Now, from its banks you can see buildings representing all forms of power: the Houses of Parliament and the skyscrapers of the City of London and Canary Wharf. And in their wake, churches and centres of the arts: St Paul's Cathedral, the Festival Hall, the National Theatre and the Hayward Gallery. The list is endless. London is the national centre of power and London is a world city.

But our tradition is ambivalent about cities and their power. On the one hand, the scriptures trace an arc that is city-friendly. The bible begins in a garden and ends in a city. Eden gives way to the New Jerusalem. Jerusalem became the centre of power for the people of Israel. Like London, it welded together throne and altar, learning and commerce and everything else besides. But Jerusalem suffered the fate shared by all centres of power: it became corrupt.

But there was life before the city. Before settlement, there was wandering. Before they built cities the Israelites were nomads. Moses led his people out of Egypt and Joshua (as we heard this evening) led them into the Promised Land. Once again the water parts and the people cross although this time it's not the sea but the River Jordan.

To use the image of water it's tempting for us to think that we're always on 'dry land': to think that life is always 'solid'. We live in solid houses. We like to build 'solid finances'. We think of ourselves as secure. But as we've all discovered recently, life is rarely as secure as all that. Rivers not only flow they can also dry up. Buildings like this church testify to the uncomfortable truth that life is fragile and we are mortal.

Take to heart the imagery: the child born in the stable, the saints holding their symbols (many of which attest to their martyrdom), the cross and passion. All these are far from a worldly understanding of power. And to come to this church and many like it is to have that message dinned into us again and again. Worldly power alone will easily lead us astray. The powers of this world lead by the power of the divine lead us into the only true security that there is.

And then there's 'personality'. I've thought a lot about this since Fr Slipper's sermon. Peter Ackroyd entitled his book on London London: the Biography (2000). On the face of it, it seems strange to write a 'biography' of a city. But early on Ackroyd makes the case for London being not just a place but a place possessed of 'character'.

The character is two-faced. On the one hand it's like the Roman bronze of a young man discovered on an archaeological site in London. The figure has arms outstretched. It embodies the energy and exultation of a city continually expanding in great waves of progress and confidence, he writes. But Ackroyd also quotes Daniel Defoe who said that London circulates all, exports all, and at last pays for all. For Defoe, London is a monstrous form, a swollen and dropsical giant which kills more than it breeds.

For Ackroyd, London has a human shape with its own laws of life and growth. London is a Janus-Jerusalem, swinging between altruism and greed. London will by its nature always lack stability. London, unlike Paris or other European capitals will never take to the grand scheme. So the church's role cannot be to advance 'one view of London' but to speak from its multi-faceted views 'from below'.

There's a tendency to think that we're in a situation like that of the 5C when the Goths sacked the city of Rome. Civilization, we're told is teetering on the brink. This group or that group are hammering on the city gates and what we have to do is, like St Augustine to write a new version of the City of God and realise the vision here on earth. But the 'one size fits all' approach will never work. What will work are authentic voices speaking truth to power and the more voices the better. The catholic tradition in the Church of England has always been at its best when it has stayed on the margins where its larger-than-life personalities can flourish and raise the sort of hullabaloo that makes others stand up and take notice.

Power', 'personality', 'people'. It's no accident that the gospels tell us the names of the disciples as we heard this evening. Names are precious. We like to be known by our names. The church is a place where we are named. When we were baptized the priest used our name; likewise when we were confirmed. Churches, especially churches in the centre of cities need to be places where we use names. When we sing the Litany of the Saints at All Saints-tide we rehearse the names of many who have trod the path of faith before us. During the week and on Sundays we name those who are sick or who have died. The monthly requiem mass remembers those who have departed this life; likewise the mass on All Souls Day when we read out the list of past benefactors.

We name because we refuse to forget. In the endless whirl that is city life, where people are easily lost churches and especially churches like ours focus on the human, the incarnation, people who are named because central to our life is a Holy Name: At the name of Jesus every knee shall bow. And key to the preservation of our lives, the safeguarding of our names is to be streetwise. Jesus knew that towns and cities were tricky places. "See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; (he says) so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves." It's a saying, almost a proverb that's unique in the gospels to Matthew but one that many a Londoner follows to his or her benefit. London has power in abundance but it will only be a city and not a monster if personalities and people flourish. And we'll know that they're flourishing when we hear them singing.