This time last week I was in Belfast, N Ireland for a congress called "Jesus in the City". It takes place every 3 years, each time in a different city and it gives Christians living and working in big cities an opportunity to get together, to worship, network and learn together.
At the beginning of the event we were taken on a tour of Belfast. It's a very divided city, the big fault line being between Protestants and Catholics. You will know that there was fighting on the streets of Belfast between Protestants and Catholics for over 30 years - a time referred to locally as the "troubles" - and its only recently that a hard won peace agreement has been worked out, the most recent milestone being that responsibility for policing N Ireland will now rest there rather than with the British government in Westminster.
There is a real desire among many people to build something new in N Ireland and the church where our Congress took place is part of that. It's a Presbyterian church in a Protestant area. Belfast must be one of the most churchy cities in Europe. There is a church on every other street, many of them now closed, though. The church where we were no longer holds Sunday worship. Instead it's a community centre involved in cross border work. Its called 174 because it's at 174 Antrim Rd. Cross border work is one of the ways in which people who long for peace are trying to build something new. The border in this case is an invisible line along a street separating a Protestant district from a Catholic one. One of the workers at 174 was saying when they run youth club they have to collect the Catholic youth in the minibus even though they live only 5 mins away because they don't feel safe crossing that invisible border. The first time they took them swimming it was to the nearest pool, again in a Protestant area, but the Catholic youngsters felt so uneasy there that now they drive 5 miles to a pool in a less divided neighbourhood. There is a high fence called, ironically, I thought, the peace wall, separating Protestant and Catholic neighbourhoods. Eventually this will come down, but at present residents both side of the wall say they feel safer with the fence there. 174 take young people to view each others territory - something most of them have never done before. One of the first things they notice, with surprise, is that the houses are exactly the same each side of the wall. The people look the same for that matter. Each side, though, has its territory marked out - there are Irish flags flying on the Catholic side (Orange, green and white) and union jacks on the Protestant side, the majority of protestants seeing themselves as British, whilst the Catholics align themselves with southern Ireland and see themselves as Irish. There are murals painted at the ends of terraces on both sides illustrating events in history and during the troubles seen from a Catholic or Protestant perspective, many of them deliberately aimed at stirring up hostility towards the opposite side. Each side sings a different song if you like, but now there is a movement to enable them to learn a new song that they can sing together.
The roots of the division lie in over 300 years of history and its more to do with the troubled relationship between Britain and Ireland than with religious differences. Doing something new will require much time and patience.
Newness is usually seen in a positive light in our culture. There is often the assumption that if something is new then it will be better than what went before. This year's mobile is better than last year's. This year's colour is somehow more attractive than last year's. This morning we had a new song. Just think back to how that felt. Once we've learnt it we might enjoy it, but meanwhile how we long for a familiar song that we can sing confidently! We will need to hear it lots of times; we'll need to practise it. Newness can be hard. Isaiah tells the people of Israel that God is going to do a new thing. They have been in exile in Babylon for 60 years. Now God says through Isaiah that he is going to lead them back to Jerusalem. Most of them will be too young to remember Jerusalem. Their whole lives will have been lived in Babylon. Babylon is now their comfort zone even though it is a place of captivity and exile. It what they are used to. The new thing that God is proposing to undertake will sound daunting, if not dangerous and much too risky to many of them. Isaiah faces a big challenge, and he was only up against 60 years of history whereas for peacemakers in N Ireland it's more like 300!
As we now look together at how Isaiah rose to the challenge and at how churches in N Ireland are tackling it I hope we might be able to draw some comparisons with our situation here.
Isaiah takes his people back in history to... well, you tell me. Listen to verse 16-17 [read aloud]. What is he getting them to remember here? Yes, the exodus from Egypt. So, this new thing he is saying that God is proposing to do is not some random event, but consistent with his activity in the past. This particular event from the past was also the thing that gave the people their unique sense of identity as those "whom God had formed for himself" (v21). Recalling it in the way Isaiah does here would renew that sense of identity. In order to even consider undertaking the hazardous journey of 100s of miles to Israel from Iraq (Babylon) they needed to be sure both of who they were and of the nature of the God who was apparently calling them. Secure in these they might be ready to move out of their comfort zone and risk something new. Isaiah reinforces their shared identity and reminds them of where God has been active in their history.
Returning to Belfast... One of the speakers at the congress was a young man from Chile who has been commissioned by the Presbyterian church to plant a church in one of the very segregated neighbourhoods we visited - a church for both sides of the divide. Chileans have migrated all over the world and he was telling us how he visited some family in Canada and was invited to preach at their church. He said that worshipping there was just like being back in Chile. The service was in Spanish, the music was Chilean, all the church members were Chilean, the notices were all about Chilean matters etc. He protested to his cousin. How can you worship as though you are in Chile when all around you is Canada?! Have any of you experienced this in the UK - worshipping in a church where you feel you are back in the country you came from? Dario, the Chilean church planter, believes in something he calls reverse mission, explaining that many years before missionaries from Spain had brought the gospel to his country and now he and others like him were bringing the gospel back to Europe. His family in Canada, however, understood their journey differently. They were in a strange country and they needed to establish something that was familiar to them, a place of security from which they could bravely launch out into the unknown. Their church provided this. It strengthened their sense of identity in the face of an alien culture. The Welsh church next door to us probably served a similar purpose years ago when Welsh speaking Christians found themselves working in London. Dario, thinks that churches in the most divided neighbourhoods in Belfast had also been mainly about reinforcing the cultural identity of their members, whether Catholic or Protestant (in N Ireland this is not about different expressions of faith but about your origins. Protestants are mainly descended from Scottish settlers deliberately encouraged to take over land in Ireland by the British government in the 17th and 18th centuries and later given preference in housing and employment over Catholics. Catholics are descendants of those people who were already living in the land. A worker told us a story of which I suspect there may be a number of versions about a Hindu woman whose son was travelling on a bus and was asked by some other boys whether he was protestant or Catholic. "Neither", he replied. "I'm Hindu". Yes, but are you a Catholic Hindu or a Protestant Hindu? They persisted!). In sustaining cultural identity in this way the churches were also fostering the divide. They are only outward looking in relation to people who are like themselves.
Dario would say, with Isaiah, "Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old". God is wanting to grow a new church not bound by the cultural shackles of either Catholics or Protestants. Like Isaiah he majors on identity. For Christians our primary identity is not whether we are Catholic or Protestant, or English or Nigerian, or Japanese or Polish, or, with St Paul, male, female, Jew, Gentile, but as a son or daughter of God. This is an indestructible identity, "hidden with Christ in God", as Paul puts it. It may not, however, be as strong as the sense of identity we have in other areas. It needs strengthening, developing and building up until it is at the core of our being. It's like the new song we have to learn and practise. One of the things about travelling as I have been over the last 10 weeks is the number of times I have had to define myself as I have moved around. What's my occupation, my nationality, my home country, my marital status etc? My relationship with God is hidden in these encounters and yet it's that relationship that determines my most enduring identity - one that has already been given to me and yet at the same time one into which I am growing and which will continue after death. Jesus said It's like having your house built on a really solid foundation (Matthew 7.24-27). With this kind of secure identity we are more willing to move out beyond the familiar, to reach out as Dario is doing to those who are not Chileans, or as those Catholic and Protestant young people are doing, with help, as they mix with one another in their youth club.
Receiving this new identity is the work of the Holy Spirit. Living from it, though, is rather like learning the new song I mentioned earlier. It requires practice and you can't do it on your own. It requires friendship with other Christians - those whom you can trust and talk to about things that really matter. Those, too, who will challenge you to take risks as you learn this new life style. We need others with whom we find secure base from which to launch out and "press on towards the goal" (Philippians 3.14), as Paul puts it in that second reading. That's what the church is for.
On my sabbatical I encountered all kinds of Christian groups with names like huddles, clusters, pastorates, missional communities, cells. Whatever the name they were about offering spaces where friendships develop and members grow as Christians. They were not, however, about preserving a kind of cultural identity like the old style Protestant and Catholic churches in Belfast. Instead they foster an alternative identity (the sons and daughters of God identity) that releases people to engage in imaginative ways in sharing the gospel in words and action in the places where they live or work or study. I am hoping that in the months ahead we might look at ways in which our churches here can develop smaller units where this kind of friendship and mutual challenge is easier than after church on a Sunday morning.
It's tempting if your church offers you more or less what you enjoy on a Sunday to just settle back rather like a passenger on a bus and stay for the ride. Every now and then, though, look around at the other passengers and consider whether the variety of people who live in your street are here, or those you see at work or the shopping mall. It's very easy to grow a church that is mainly people like us, a bit like that Chilean church in Canada. To stop there, though, is to miss the new thing that God is doing, to be like sons and daughters who are not secure enough in our inheritance to move beyond the familiar, to be a people only half formed for God's praise, to miss out on the great adventure that is living out Christ's life in the world.
Our mission statement is "Together in Christ for Others" - together, in real friendships with those who are different from us as well as those who are similar, within our Christian community; in Christ because of the new shared identity with have through him; for others for those who are not part of our faith community.
Christine Bainbridge