Music
1992 (Year C) 21 June / Pentecost 2
St Peter de Beauvoir Town
The Hackney clergy have been away this week on their yearly conference – at least those who are still talking to one another. We’ve really had the most stunning week, the people who’ve come to talk to us have been pure magic, absolute gold.
One part, of one of the contributions was an analysis of social change in the East End of London over the last thirty years. In a sense it was nothing new – anybody who’s lived here for even the smallest part of that time knows that the years have been a period of incredibly rapid change.
And the change is evident in this congregation. One of the many joys at St Peter’s is the richness of the traditions and cultures we all come from. If we had to describe the tradition of this church what would it be? Traditional, High Church, East End. Doubtful, there only a very few people here who go back over forty years. West Indian? That’s a bit difficult as well. We’ve got ‘Big Islanders’ and ‘Little Islanders’ and even if some of us don’t know the difference there are many that do and nearly each Island has its own religious traditions. Black British? Well there are a number of those but they are certainly not the majority.
African? Nigerian perhaps? Significant people in this church, but not the majority. Other African? I stood outside church a couple of weeks ago as somebody I’d not meet before came in. ‘Where are you from?’ I asked, ‘Sierra Leone’, she said, just as Monique came in. There were cries of joy and embraces but as far as I know those are the only two.
In this building there are an incredible number of different people. Very very few of us, apart from the young, were born here, that’s strangely one of the things that unites us. More important is that we live a common faith, a shared belief and all of us recognise that we need to come to acknowledge our debt to God.
Clearly there are things which divide us and it’s important that we acknowledge those things too. We can learn from them, we can be enriched by them just as much as we can from what we hold in common … We share a common faith but that faith was expressed, at least when we started our in very different ways. There are those who started life at Baptists, Methodists, Low Church Anglicans, Anglo-Catholics, Roman Catholics. Pentecostalists. Muslims, Jews. No faith at all. Each comes from a tradition that shaped us. I guess most of us feel warmth for it even now, as we remember. Each has got insights and knowledge of God which is vital to the rest.
Traditions need space to grow and change. Otherwise they die. One of the reasons why this church has grown over the years is that people have had an opportunity to add their little bits! We’ve all learnt a little more of God in the process. What we have to do now is ensure that it can continue.
One of the most fundamental ways in which our traditions are expressed is in music. What you should all have in front of you is a very basic set of questions. We’re all going to have an opportunity to fill in these questions now and to hand them in – if you take them away we’ll never see them again. We want you to say what you’ve found helpful when worshipping in other churches, music during the intercessions for example – other settings of the Eucharist. We want you to say what helps you worship. What we can’t cope with is if you write down ‘We want more traditional hymns’, because none of us will know exactly what tradition that means – you’ll have to give examples.
We also want to draw out our gifts so if you would like to have a go at singing and have always been too shy, for goodness sake put it down. You’ll be amazed what might happen. And if you play an instrument which you’ve never told anybody about now’s the time to tell the world. PLEASE put your names on the top of the papers – I promise you won’t find yourself in the Newsheet next week but it will help us follow things up. The questions won’t take very long but please do it as thoughtfully as you can and when the offertory comes round pop the answers on the basket. That way we stand even more chance of getting them. You’ve got a few minutes now to fill in the answers and talk about it with each other. AMEN