A Space in Aldersgate Street

An illustrated sermon preached by Ray Anglesea
at Sedgefield Methodist Church and St Andrew’s Dawson Street, Crook
Aldersgate Sunday 20^th May 2012

In a career spanning nearly 40 years, Antony Gormley has made sculptures that explore the relationship of the human body to space. His work attempts to treat the body not as an object but as a place; almost all his work takes the human body as its subject, with his own body used in many works as the basis for metal casts.  His large-scale installations are well know to us, the Angel of the North made from 200 tonnes of steel rises 20 meters from a former Gateshead colliery pithead baths, it dominates the skyline, dwarfing all those who come to see it. Another Place, consists of 100 cast-iron, life-size figures spread out along three kilometers of the foreshore at Crosby Beach, Liverpool, Tranport is another work of art  suspended above the site of the most venerated shrine in all Anglicanism, the first tomb of Archbishop Thomas Becket, murdered at Canterbury cathedral in 1170. It is made up of old iron nails taken from the repaired roof of the Kent Cathedral.

It was in 2009 that Gormley conceived another space for body sculptures. “One and Other” was the title for a design installation for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Every hour, 24 hours a day, for 100 days, different people would make the fourth plinth their own - what Gormely called a living, breathing art experience. Instead of the 4^th plinth being reserved for sculptures of generals and kings or contemporary works of art, people themselves would become the living image on the plinth........ the performer, the funny, the sad, the mad and simply bemused, bored or bizarre,… and true to form a retired girl guide leader and friend of the family, Gwyneth, had her turn. 3am on a very wet morning Gwyneth was hoisted up onto the plinth in her wheelchair and when secured, performed, with flags, semaphore signs;  a semaphore being a nineteenth century system for conveying information at a distance by means of visual signals with hand-held flags. As I said Gwyneth, 83 from Oxford and a retired school teacher, a guiding colleague of my twin sister is a one -off, lovable but quite bizarre, eccentric and well – whacky, not quite as whacky as my loveable twin sister who is to pay me and St Andrew’s a visit 1^st weekend in June!  As well as Gwyneth some 2,400 people took part in this living art experience, they were witnesses to who and what they are in that space, they celebrated their uniqueness as well as exposing their vulnerability. As Gormely said, they collectively were a ‘portrait’ of Britain.

Over the course of time, Methodists, which number some 75 million worldwide, have erected in their own countries statues of their founder, John Wesley, often on plinths, or on horseback, or a museum like that of High House, the Weardale Museum. Statues erected in thankfulness for his ministry. His ministry was to transform the lives of millions of people. Wesley remained orthodox in his theology*, but during the political turmoil and changes of the 18^th century his life had been changed by knowing the reality of the living God in his life, his love and grace, his forgiveness and peace. And because of his experience Wesley was determined to bring the gospel to the unchurched and the poor.  Wesley in all his weakness and vulnerability was to be a semaphore, a sign, a witness to the love and grace of God, a living image of Christ.

As we come to the last few days of the Easter season we find ourselves with the disciples as they prepare to stand as witnesses, living signs – in those pregnant days following the Ascension – waiting to be equipped by God’s Spirit and called forward into that place that Jesus has created - in all their vulnerability - to speak and act and live in their own unique way – the message of the Gospel – witnessing to the life, ministry, death and resurrection of Jesus. They were in Gormley’s words to become the living portrait not of themselves but of Jesus Christ. Through the specific calling of Matthias that we hear of today, we hear again the call upon each individual to be a witness to his resurrection in our own way. Familiar words form John Wesley’s hymn which we sang earlier in our service

Jesus, confirm my heart's desire,

To work, and speak, and think for thee

Still let me guard the holy fire,

And still stir up thy gift in me –

To work and speak and live for thee in my own space whether that be my home, my place of work, the factory floor, the council chamber, nursing home, my community, in my own space, whatever plinth space we find ourselves on.

It is rather appropriate that our readings today contain references to some of John Wesley’s biblical principles, namely the life of holiness and unity of the spirit.   In Psalm 1 the righteous person is praised and revealed to be one who bears fruit and who is truly blessed. In John’s letter, the holy person is shown to be one who receives God’s testimony about Jesus and who receives life from Jesus. In Jesus’ prayer in John’s gospel, Jesus asks that God would keep his disciples safe and would make them holy through God’s truth in God’s word. The second major theme of John Wesley’s life, that of unity with God and with one another, flows out of the call to love which we have read in our lectionary readings at the end of these last couple of Sundays of Easter. In Acts, the unity of the apostles is extended to include the new appointment of Matthias. In Psalm 1, the righteous person is one who rejects the company of the wicked but who, unlike the wicked, finds a place among the company of the righteous. In Jesus’ prayer in John 17, Jesus prays for the unity of the disciples with one another even as he is one with God. In the end, these two themes merge and become one, because it is in our union with God and one another that true holiness is expressed and lived. Holiness, which John Wesley defined as perfect love, unites and joins and creates community.

The English poet, Roman Catholic convert and Jesuit priest, Gerard Manley Hopkins poem As Kingfishers catch fire, reminds us of the full potential of each person, uniquely called, as we come to know ourselves through our lifetime as loved by God; each…

“Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is—

Christ—for Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
To the Father, through the features of men’s faces.”

 That full potential in each person is what St Paul refers to when he says “It is not I but Christ who lives in me,” Christ reflected in each flawed human being, the Christ who is reflected and “plays in ten thousand places, through the features of men’s faces,” and which John Wesley saw in the poor and destitute of the 18^th century, the living portraits of the men and women who stood and occupied a space on an empty plinth perhaps? Timothy Radcliffe writing in The Times Credo column last week tells the story of a young Aids sufferer he met during a mass and who came to him for the kiss of peace. “When I hugged him,” writes Father Timothy, “I thought this is the body of Christ. And Christ in him hugged me. In Christ God came and touched us.” One of the things that constantly overwhelms me and is so easy to forget in the sea of faces I see daily whether working in the bookshop, the former planning office, Market day in Crook, the folk I visit in West Lodge, the mourners by a graveside is the love of Christ reflected in these people, some of whom are the most unlikely of people, like those on the plinth, the bored, the bemused and the bizarre.

 But what is this place that we are called to inhabit? The Welsh priest poet R S Thomas sums up the present state of his own church which was often "full only of the silent congregation of shadows" and that "the bell fetches no people to the brittle miracle of bread."To be more upbeat I have just finished reading a book entitled Praying for England, which tries to re-imagine the place of the Church, our church, in today’s ‘secularized’ and global culture, and what a church’s presence in that place, that culture might mean.

We have discussed some of these issues at our Church council meetings, how we welcome and cope with baptismal families, the stranger, children and their parents who come to mum’s and toddler groups, those who are not like us, not one of us, and how the church might offer support and help to families in places of economic hardship. Messy Church and Fresh Expressions (of worship) are just some of the initiatives we have taken on board, as well as regular all age worship services which are programmed to start in the Autumn. We are trying in our own way to seek to inhabit and hold open to others the place where Jesus is.

John Wesley travelled far and wide to bear witness to God’s forgiving presence. He ignored distance, tiredness and frustration because he rejected any thought that human institutions could domesticate the love of God. John Wesley met the needs of his generation with compassion and courtesy and personal concern which stemmed from his deep awareness of God’s gracious presence with him, with all people and with all creation. Pray God that we to may emulate our founder to welcome people into that place where Jesus is, remembering that we are there at God’s initiative and invitation. Occupying that place, witnessing to the truth of Jesus Christ, exposes us and makes us vulnerable. It means witnessing to Christ’s truth in difficult places and ordinary life and so finding them holy.

Ten years ago Mark Wallinger's Ecce Homo:Behold the Man, was the first sculpture to occupy the Fourth Plinth. It portrayed Christ at the moment he was handed over to the crowds by Pontius Pilate. Vulnerable, truthful… because he came and stood in that place. We too are called there; vulnerable and exposed but at the same time (like the disciples) surrounded by the love and protection of God.

As the Easter season draws to a close, it may well be time for us to reconsider the space we occupy as we try to engage with issues of ministry and evangelism in these challenging times, so that following Jesus Christ as John Wesley did, we may bring healing and hope, God’s’ amazing love to the vulnerable, exposed, waiting and wounded in our community and the world at large.

*Methodist Theology; Kenneth Wilson, Continuum Press 2011

Acts 1.15-17; 21-end; John 17.6-19

Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working in St Andrew’s Dawson Street LEP, Crook and in the wider West Durham Methodist Circuit