Sunday mornings of late have often found me sitting on the sofa with my laptop wondering where to go to church that morning. This morning though, my laptop brings me news that the great lockout may finally be ending and that churches will be able to open their doors in a week or so. It’s a small step though. Social distancing means full services are still a long way off. Each church will have to decide when it opens, what it offers and what it continues to make off-limits. There’s talk of private prayers only - a bit of a blow to those of us whose wish is to join others to see what they do and be inspired by what they say. But to a world in which the various faiths have has to experience Easter, Ramadan, Passover and Vaisakhi without traditional gatherings, it’s a significant and welcome step.
But for this morning I’m still in the realm of the virtual. I find myself casting my mind further back into my past to choose somewhere I haven’t been for a while and then hoping they’ve managed to embrace the digital age. No such worries with St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. This fabulous church even has its own branded channel - SMR TV.
And a top quality channel it is too. Into the third month of this online experience and it’s clear that the steep learning curve many churches have had to ride has produced some fast learners. No fuzzy faces or shaky changeovers here. The BBC’s temporary return to religious broadcasting may genuinely have no future if churches can produce perfectly adequate output like this.
There are a few places around which can claim more than one cathedral. London, of course, and Liverpool. Bristol could make a claim, although only in architectural terms, to have three. This stunning gothic masterpiece is grander, more imposing and simply lovelier than many a city’s sole cathedral. I’ve enjoyed coming here since my school days when I was as impressed by the kaleidoscopic colours of the stained glass interior as I was by the presence in the churchyard of a huge black iron bar impaled into the ground as a result of a huge wartime bomb. The embodiment of power comes in all shapes and sizes, blessed and malign.
And the nature of power is at the heart of this service for Trinity Sunday. The trinity itself represents the power at the core of the Christian church and to have that power on your side is what has made the church and its leaders powerful for centuries. This week’s stunt by Donald Trump in which he used a wholly secular power to clear his path of gainsayers so he could pose with a bible, is not one which has gone down well with the church itself. To have secular power is one thing (and one thing which this particular leader has used immorally before) but to attempt to claim some sort of divine endorsement is just plain wrong.
Under fire too is any claim that God is somehow more aligned with one set of people for having been formed in their image. God’s only a man because it suited men to portray him thus, says the sermon. And what is true of gender is equally true of colour. In a week when we’re really having to remind ourselves that black lives matter, it’s hard to imagine a clearer, more urgent message.
In a clear, well-argued and impassioned sermon we’re set right on matters of power, false gods, colour and bigotry in a way that makes me realise how the church still has a part to play in shaping our lives. Politics is everywhere, but to have our moral responsibilities so plainly outlined and explained is refreshing indeed.
As our experience and community response to the virus pandemic begins to slide unstoppably into political bickering, it’s probably better news than many people will ever realise to have the churches and other places of worship begin their slow and safe return to the picture.
