The Triumphant Entry .....

The Escort was called Dave.

He had an enormous Triumph Motorcycle and he was parked at the gate of the cottage where I was staying.

He had been delegated to escort me the against the flow of traffic, which was exclusively cyclists engaged in a fund raising cycle race in Scotland, to the Church where I was Locum Minister for the week.

Dave was from South Shields and as the cyclists raced past we had an interesting conversation, 'good crack' as they say, about religion.

Dave thought, having started out as a Methodist, that, having he said studied a number of religions, that in the end it all comes down to Loving Your Neighbour.

I had to agree. 

There is of course the bit about loving God which assumes that whatever religion or faith or nationality or cultural imperative formed you, and assuming that you weren't part of an atheistic society, that  you can agree that God is God and that Hinduism. Islam and Judaism point us towards the same God, whom we worship in common, without ever trespassing onto the heretical possibility that in a hierarchy of Gods your God occupies a lesser place than mine.

So Dave and I agreed.

It's all about loving your neighbour and in his case he chose to express that by being involved in acting as a mentor to young motorcyclists, carrying urgently needed blood products to Great Ormond Street Hospital and escorting vicars to their Churches, not for their safety but for the safety of the cyclists travelling in the other direction.

He had never escorted a Vicar to Church before and I had never been escorted in such Triumph by Motorcycle, but it was great fun as with flashing lights, off we set in a glorious procession behind his motorcycle bearing as it did the legend:

Triumph!

A glorious procession of, as Richard Thompson has it in his song about a Vincent Black Lightening:

I see angels on Ariels in leather and chrome

Swooping down from heaven to carry me home

Except I was being escorted to the Church Door.

Processions are of course the meat and drink of Cathedrals and I have walked in procession and been told my place in procession before the one and ahead of the other and the Vergers with solemn tread have led me from Altar to Pulpit and solemnly bowed as I ascended the steps to break word or bread.

After the service, Dave having departed not only in Triumph at a job well done but on his Triumph I had to drive myself back to the cottage where I was staying.

Nevertheless despite the glitziness and the power and the triumph the service was an oddly deflated affair.

The Church in the Scottish Highlands maintains its weekly communion by means of offering clergy, both currently serving and retired, the opportunity for a Holiday at a reduced rate in exchange for taking the service.

Having arrived with flashers flashing escorted by Dave the Motorcycle Verger on his Triumph I discovered that the the congregation at that point consisted of one person with another expected, so I found myself wondering aloud whether, as Tubby Clayton the founder of Toc H and Vicar of All Hallows, Tower Hill, apparently asked a soldier about the go up into battle and who had asked for communion from the Chaplain, 'Do you want the full service or the short'?

Apparently the full service was requested and rehearsed.

But as I gently suggested, its no use pretending that we're a Cathedral if there are only three of us, why don't we sit around the coffee table and break bread as though we were holding a family meal or a Seder?

Just then the door opened and two people arrived who were visiting locally so I donned my Alb and approached the Altar and the full service it was.

The sermon was a gentle business, I sense that didactic no longer does and so in the week after an election in which England had chosen to elect a Conservative Administration and Scotland had disagreed I chose to reflect on 'the common good' linking it with VE Day and the post war settlement and wondering whether the post election settlement of 2015 would have any element of the common good? Linking as it does to Dave the escorts view that Love of Neighbour lies at the heart of it.

So the six of us managed to break bread without breaking into a fight.

Then we sat round the coffee table and discussed the state of the Church, the visitors had no priest in their church, I was sounded out as to whether I was free next week, the conversation focused on the concern that not only were there no congregations but there were no clergy to serve them.

The practicalities of making it work, booking the retirees week by week, the economy of the bread and wine, choosing the music and playing the accompanying CD fell to one individual who had enough to do in a pretty full life anyway.

So can the Church survive without a miracle? 

The Church as we know it? If it can it will be a triumph of a different kind!

I found over my two weeks, during which I celebrated three Eucharists including Ascension Day that simply rehearsing the words reinforces the belief, the Liturgy has some great words that sum up the theology, that human love of God is a simple response to God's Love expressed toward us in Christ, but fewer and fewer people hear those words rehearsed regularly.

The Church has no mechanism for enabling the folk who are holding things together against the centrifugal forces of the times we live in to understand that the economy of bread and wine is in its essence what the ministry of the people of God comes down to and hiring someone to come in and read those words, whether escorted Triumphantly or not is no longer feasible or sensible.

The times are clearly changing but if the answer is blowing in the wind the Church is finding it hard to hear it.