Thought for the Month February 2025

Sun, sea, and Santa

Like most church organists, from time to time I crave a break from the rigours of Christmas services and umpteen performances of the same old carols. Previously this has been impossible to find – Israel and sundry Muslim countries all seem to cater for tourists who might be missing their first Nowell; I haven’t tried the Far East in December, but could quite imagine President Xi rocking around the Christmas tree with his Politburo, and Kim Jong- Un encouraging his generals to pull Christmas crackers (with real dynamite) together.  But last year, I think I found a better answer: New Zealand. The shops there certainly had plenty of the usual tat, but I didn’t see many of the usual Christian symbols and hardly any religious cards. The music played in stores derived largely from the Blessed Bing and the Angel Noddy – not a note of St. John Rutter did I hear. I discovered while I was there that any religious observance in schools has become “opt-in” rather than opt-out, so I imagine Nativity plays are now reduced to one Wise Man doubling as The Shepherd. The expected excitement of Christmas was certainly there in the country – the thrilling Advent of Coldplay followed by the Slaughter of the England cricket team in the final Test. But reference to events of bleak midwinter seemed more than ever either absent or irrelevant. And I found myself asking if this really mattered. To try to answer this question, here are three verbal “snapshots” of places I went.

Firstly, the Cathedral at Napier. Napier is a delightful city and its cathedral is beautifully light and airy, with wonderful polished pews, a great acoustic and a fine organ. Plus easy parking! At the back, pinned to the notice board, was a letter from the Bishop informing worshippers that the cathedral was to be redeveloped as offices, with a small space being left for communal worship, as the congregation numbers could no longer justify the size nor maintain the costs of the building. Napier is a city of 67,000 souls: could not at least a fraction of them support their central church?

Secondly, walking beside the river through Kaiapoi, a pleasant town close to Christchurch, I was taken aback to see a notice banning anyone sporting gang insignia from entering a particular pub.  It was like spotting a sign banning Hell’s Angels in Cooksmill Green. Gangs are a major problem in New Zealand; quite obviously, this is not confined to inner-city areas, might involve drugs but is not caused by them, and cannot be blamed on an influx of foreign immigrants. So what are the causes behind this wave of violent crime? Is it a weakening of social cohesion with so many marriages ending in divorce and children brought up in broken families? Is it that young men feel they have to look beyond consumer capitalism, beyond a culture they reject because they feel it rejects them, for somewhere where they feel they can be someone, have identity and value? Do motorbikes and knives speak louder than words, than the Word?

Finally, Nelson Cemetery. This is a huge, lovely site, covering many acres, so you need transport and guidance to search out any particular grave. Isolated from the bustle of the city, in rolling grass and woodland, it was so tranquil – it was possible to believe that all these people really were resting in peace. Yet equally, it was impossible, looking at graves in all directions as far as the eye could see, not to reflect on the fragility and transience of life, the futility of worldly ambition, the universality of death, and to ask, what is it all for?

So I returned from walking in a summer wonderland to a miserable UK, to face the dauntingly imminent prospect of ten carol services, with those questions. To which I offer my own answers, for what they’re worth.

• We are the Church – not the Archbishop that has just gone, nor the one to come, nor their bureaucratic back-up teams, but us. No church has a guarantee of survival. We can worship alone, but it is natural and right to want to come together to do so – the Lord’s Prayer, of course, talks about ”us”, not “me”. If we want to continue to commune with fellow-believers, we have to ensure that it happens.
• The Church is a voice for values that matter – for kindness and generosity; for bringing up children in a stable loving relationship; for living together as neighbours in supportive communities; for guiding the young and upholding values of justice and right. Something irretrievable is lost if this voice is attenuated or silenced.
• In worldly terms, the best most of us can hope for is to be remembered with affection and regret and gratitude, until those doing the remembering are themselves forgotten. But only through the life of the spirit and through faith in a reality beyond this world, as was tantalisingly glimpsed in the Christmas story, can that true meaning and significance for our lives that we all yearn for be found. I believe.

David. 

Much Gesture, from the Pulpit –

Strong Hallelujahs roll – 

Narcotics cannot still the Tooth

That nibbles at the soul –

Emily Dickinson (from “This World is not Conclusion”)