milton keynes: a farewell service
CHURCH OF CHRIST THE CORNERSTONE
15 february 2003
from
murdoch mackenzie
Bible Readings: Hebrews 11:8-16 Revelation 21:22 - 22:5
THE FAREWELL SERVICE
As he gazed out from the Island of Patmos towards Asia Minor St John the Theologian reveals what William Barclay describes as ' nothing but blazing hatred for Rome.' The so-called Pax Romana gave rise to just as much turbulence in the world of St John's day, as the Pax Americana is doing as we sit here this afternoon. But beyond all of this, St John was inspired to look for a new world order, a new Jerusalem in which the gates of the city would never be shut. And so we come to our text from Revelation 21:25:
'THE GATES OF THE CITY SHALL NEVER BE SHUT'
When I was a small boy living in the great industrial city of Glasgow, I used to long for the Summer holidays. As soon as school was over on the last day of June, I would be up very early the next morning and away down to Queen Street station in Glasgow to catch the early morning train up the West Highland line to the tiny fishing village of Mallaig. From Mallaig we went by boat through the islands of the Inner Hebrides to the town of Portree, the capital of the Island of Skye. From Portree by bus, along the narrow island roads until we stopped at the end of the road leading up to my uncle's croft. It was three miles up that road and this part of the journey had to be done on foot. That night as I crawled into bed, the smoke and the noise and the busyness of Glasgow seemed very far away.
In those days the work of ploughing and harvesting in the West Highlands was done by the use of horses and on the hills above the Glen thirty or forty horses were turned loose to graze. If you go there today you will not see a single horse, but instead you will hear the steady chug, chug, chugging of the tractor, which needs no hills on which to graze, but which reminds you that the smoke and the noise and the busyness of Glasgow are not so far away after all.
Years later my mind turned from the land of my birth, to another land, a land in the midst of what was called rapid social change, the great land of India, and I found myself working in another city, now that was a city - the city of Madras, or Chennai as it is now called once again. When I worked there the population was 3 million. Today it is 7 million and it is the 34th largest city in the world. A world population which was then 3 billion, is now over 6 billion and by 2025 will be 8.5 billion. In 1948, when we, as a family, left Glasgow and moved to England, only 28% of the world's population lived in cities and they only numbered 700 million people. Today 53% live in cities (80% in the so-called more developed regions) giving a figure for city dwellers of 3,300 million. Tokyo with 35 million, New York and Seoul each with 21 million, Mexico City with 20 million are the first 4. London is 19th with 11 million and that's it as far as British cities are concerned. Even Montreal with 3.5 million is away down at 87th on the world list. Birmingham, not to mention Glasgow, are nowhere to be seen and as for Milton Keynes - well our 210,000 is small beer by world standards. It was Mark Twain who said: ' The trouble with land is they've stopped making it.' - which seems to be the case if you want a new burial ground in Milton Keynes but not if you are like the speculative house builder, quoted in last week's report on Milton Keynes in the Guardian, who said: ' It all helps to keep the private jet running.'
But then our text reminds us that the gates of the city shall never be shut. These were the words used by Robert Runcie, in his opening address to the Lambeth Conference of 1988. In this fine book simply entitled 'Runcie' Christopher Hill recollects that the Archbishop's focus was on unity, and in this major address he moved from unity within the Anglican Communion, through unity among all the Christian churches towards the unity of all human communities and all creation: the unity of the Kingdom. 'Exclusiveness is not a characteristic of the City of God' said the Archbishop. So, is it any wonder that for him Milton Keynes was something of a delight ? When he returned to Lambeth after a visit here he said: ' I've seen the future and it works.' Likewise his successor George Carey when he came here concluded his address from this very pulpit by encouraging us to continue in our risk-taking ecumenical journey.
Perhaps Robert Runcie knew, as the hymn-writer Maria Matilda Penstone (1859 - 1910) knew that:
'God has given us a book full of stories,
which was made for his people of old.
It begins with the tale of a garden,
and ends with a city of gold.'
Milton Keynes, the garden city, somehow seems to combine the two; on the one hand the Garden of Eden and the fair green hills of Galilee - a kind of New Jerusalem, as well as the Old Jerusalem with its Garden of Gethemane, its Via Dolorosa and its green hill of a rubbish tip outside the city wall. Because even in Milton Keynes with its 22 million trees there are areas of deprivation, areas in need of regeneration, young people living on the streets or in temporary accommodation, travelling people and other people who live on the margins for whom credit unions may soon become a reality. Moreover according to recent government announcements there may be many more people as this map illustrates, with a figure of 70,000 new dwellings being bandied about. It certainly appears that the gates of the city shall never be shut.
When I was first ordained Bishop Newbigin and the Diocesan Stationing Committee sent me to the VVK Unit, Vyasarpady, Venkatesapuram and Korukupet . It wasn't even a pastorate. It was just a unit and no Indian Presbyter wanted to go there. So as a junior presbyter I was sent to a place where both houses and churches were simply mud huts, built on the rubbish tips by urban pioneers (some people called them slum dwellers), people on the move, migrants from villages seeking employment in a city whose gates could never be shut, Christian people, some of them, who would save up for a year or two to buy a Bible, who discovered that Mark Twain was wrong and that land was still being manufactured by filling up the swampy areas around the city with bullock-cart loads of garbage, on top of which people built houses and churches.
And so it was that as I celebrated holy communion each Sunday morning, and as I broke the bread and poured out the wine, though the open door of that mud hut I could see poor people scavenging in the rubbish, and only yesterday from an Indian social worker who worked with me there, I received this card for my retirement. Since then I've worked in the splendour of St Andrew's Kirk in Chennai, in Madras, in three new towns in Britain and on the edge of the Bull Ring in Birmingham, not to mention the Church of Christ the Cornerstone, but I still think that of all these places the most Christ-like was there in Venkatesapuram on the rubbish tip.
Because that's where Jesus was crucified, at Golgotha, the place of the skull, on a green hill far away outside a city wall, outside the camp, that's where the dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all. That's where his arms were stretched out to embrace the 'oikumene', household of the world with its 6 billion people. A place where, though the gates of the city, as far as he was concerned at that moment, were firmly shut, he, in fact, opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. Because like Abraham before him he looked for a city which had foundations whose builder and maker was God. Is it any wonder that George MacLeod, Founder of the Iona Community, was continually reminding us that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral on an altar between two candlesticks but on a rubbish tip between two thieves ?
But for many in the two thirds world, in which most of the world's six billion people live, there is not the luxury of Milton Keynes, where we sometimes complain if we have to walk more than 100 yards from our car-park to the office. Rather there is the grinding poverty of a world in which, according to OXFAM, in the last decade, the world's poorest 5% lost almost a quarter of their real income whilst the top 5% gained 12% in real terms; a world in which unfair trade is costing the poor countries $800 billion dollars a year, a world in which more than 40% of the population live in low income countries, yet they currently account for just 3% of world trade, in which coffee prices have fallen by 70% since 1997, costing exporters in poor countries $8 billion whilst the profits made by NESTLE are currently running at 26%. No wonder we would like Milton Keynes to become a Fair Trade city.
At the same time, as we think of today's marches in London and elsewhere, is it any wonder if people try to reclaim the streets of the global village in the face of such inequalities, whereby the gates of the city seem firmly shut in their faces? The City, of course, is the City of God, the New Jerusalem which William Blake encouraged us to build not only in England's green and pleasant land but also among those dark satanic mills, in order to fulfil the longing of the God who sent his only-begotten Son who still teaches us to pray the prayer of the Kingdom - ' your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. '- so that the gates of the City shall never be shut.
Sometimes I'm asked, indeed I was asked the other night, as to where is the soul of Milton Keynes. It happened to be at a party of the Interfaith Group with people of various ethnic origins and from all the major faiths breaking bread together, and I simply pointed my companion, who asked the question, to the people who were there, and said: ' There is the soul of Milton Keynes.'
As Cardinal Mercier of Malines-Bruxelles said in 1926: ' When you meet people, you can know people. And when you know people, you can love people.' But if you don't meet them, then you can't know them and if you don't know them, then you can't love them. And that surely is the heart of the matter, the business which Jesus was all about as we read in the Gospels, publicans and sinners, Roman soldiers, Samaritans, 1st Nation people like the Syro-Phoenician woman, tax-collectors and fishermen. He said to them all: 'Will you come and follow me, if I but call your name ? ' - because the gates of the city shall never be shut - except, of course, as we read in Revelation to those things which are unclean, abominable, false and deceitful. And let's hope that we in Milton Keynes can steer clear of all of that, by which I don't simply mean sex shops, but racism, corruption and the greedy financial speculation which cuts corners far too easily.
And so we remember finally, the words of Sir Frank Markham at the very end of his two volume 'History of Milton Keynes and District' where he wrote: ' Certain it is that old loyalties will diminish and new loyalties will arise, and that the new loyalties will be to Milton Keynes, the greatest new city in England. It is our hope to see that the new city, by remembering and preserving the best of its exciting past, will help everyone to make the best of the future. We hope that future generations will be able to say, as St Paul said nearly 2000 years ago: ' I am a citizen of no mean city.' ( Acts 21:39)
And it is my hope that the gates of this City will never be shut, although as far as I' m concerned I'll soon be taking, once again, the early morning train up the West Highland line where I hope one day you might join me, to sample the delights of Highland hospitality and find that even there the gates are wide open.
And to God's Name be the praise and the glory.
Amen.
Murdoch MacKenzie
THE FAREWELL SERVICE
As he gazed out from the Island of Patmos towards Asia Minor St John the Theologian reveals what William Barclay describes as ' nothing but blazing hatred for Rome.' The so-called Pax Romana gave rise to just as much turbulence in the world of St John's day, as the Pax Americana is doing as we sit here this afternoon. But beyond all of this, St John was inspired to look for a new world order, a new Jerusalem in which the gates of the city would never be shut. And so we come to our text from Revelation 21:25:
'THE GATES OF THE CITY SHALL NEVER BE SHUT'
When I was a small boy living in the great industrial city of Glasgow, I used to long for the Summer holidays. As soon as school was over on the last day of June, I would be up very early the next morning and away down to Queen Street station in Glasgow to catch the early morning train up the West Highland line to the tiny fishing village of Mallaig. From Mallaig we went by boat through the islands of the Inner Hebrides to the town of Portree, the capital of the Island of Skye. From Portree by bus, along the narrow island roads until we stopped at the end of the road leading up to my uncle's croft. It was three miles up that road and this part of the journey had to be done on foot. That night as I crawled into bed, the smoke and the noise and the busyness of Glasgow seemed very far away.
In those days the work of ploughing and harvesting in the West Highlands was done by the use of horses and on the hills above the Glen thirty or forty horses were turned loose to graze. If you go there today you will not see a single horse, but instead you will hear the steady chug, chug, chugging of the tractor, which needs no hills on which to graze, but which reminds you that the smoke and the noise and the busyness of Glasgow are not so far away after all.
Years later my mind turned from the land of my birth, to another land, a land in the midst of what was called rapid social change, the great land of India, and I found myself working in another city, now that was a city - the city of Madras, or Chennai as it is now called once again. When I worked there the population was 3 million. Today it is 7 million and it is the 34th largest city in the world. A world population which was then 3 billion, is now over 6 billion and by 2025 will be 8.5 billion. In 1948, when we, as a family, left Glasgow and moved to England, only 28% of the world's population lived in cities and they only numbered 700 million people. Today 53% live in cities (80% in the so-called more developed regions) giving a figure for city dwellers of 3,300 million. Tokyo with 35 million, New York and Seoul each with 21 million, Mexico City with 20 million are the first 4. London is 19th with 11 million and that's it as far as British cities are concerned. Even Montreal with 3.5 million is away down at 87th on the world list. Birmingham, not to mention Glasgow, are nowhere to be seen and as for Milton Keynes - well our 210,000 is small beer by world standards. It was Mark Twain who said: ' The trouble with land is they've stopped making it.' - which seems to be the case if you want a new burial ground in Milton Keynes but not if you are like the speculative house builder, quoted in last week's report on Milton Keynes in the Guardian, who said: ' It all helps to keep the private jet running.'
But then our text reminds us that the gates of the city shall never be shut. These were the words used by Robert Runcie, in his opening address to the Lambeth Conference of 1988. In this fine book simply entitled 'Runcie' Christopher Hill recollects that the Archbishop's focus was on unity, and in this major address he moved from unity within the Anglican Communion, through unity among all the Christian churches towards the unity of all human communities and all creation: the unity of the Kingdom. 'Exclusiveness is not a characteristic of the City of God' said the Archbishop. So, is it any wonder that for him Milton Keynes was something of a delight ? When he returned to Lambeth after a visit here he said: ' I've seen the future and it works.' Likewise his successor George Carey when he came here concluded his address from this very pulpit by encouraging us to continue in our risk-taking ecumenical journey.
Perhaps Robert Runcie knew, as the hymn-writer Maria Matilda Penstone (1859 - 1910) knew that:
'God has given us a book full of stories,
which was made for his people of old.
It begins with the tale of a garden,
and ends with a city of gold.'
Milton Keynes, the garden city, somehow seems to combine the two; on the one hand the Garden of Eden and the fair green hills of Galilee - a kind of New Jerusalem, as well as the Old Jerusalem with its Garden of Gethemane, its Via Dolorosa and its green hill of a rubbish tip outside the city wall. Because even in Milton Keynes with its 22 million trees there are areas of deprivation, areas in need of regeneration, young people living on the streets or in temporary accommodation, travelling people and other people who live on the margins for whom credit unions may soon become a reality. Moreover according to recent government announcements there may be many more people as this map illustrates, with a figure of 70,000 new dwellings being bandied about. It certainly appears that the gates of the city shall never be shut.
When I was first ordained Bishop Newbigin and the Diocesan Stationing Committee sent me to the VVK Unit, Vyasarpady, Venkatesapuram and Korukupet . It wasn't even a pastorate. It was just a unit and no Indian Presbyter wanted to go there. So as a junior presbyter I was sent to a place where both houses and churches were simply mud huts, built on the rubbish tips by urban pioneers (some people called them slum dwellers), people on the move, migrants from villages seeking employment in a city whose gates could never be shut, Christian people, some of them, who would save up for a year or two to buy a Bible, who discovered that Mark Twain was wrong and that land was still being manufactured by filling up the swampy areas around the city with bullock-cart loads of garbage, on top of which people built houses and churches.
And so it was that as I celebrated holy communion each Sunday morning, and as I broke the bread and poured out the wine, though the open door of that mud hut I could see poor people scavenging in the rubbish, and only yesterday from an Indian social worker who worked with me there, I received this card for my retirement. Since then I've worked in the splendour of St Andrew's Kirk in Chennai, in Madras, in three new towns in Britain and on the edge of the Bull Ring in Birmingham, not to mention the Church of Christ the Cornerstone, but I still think that of all these places the most Christ-like was there in Venkatesapuram on the rubbish tip.
Because that's where Jesus was crucified, at Golgotha, the place of the skull, on a green hill far away outside a city wall, outside the camp, that's where the dear Lord was crucified who died to save us all. That's where his arms were stretched out to embrace the 'oikumene', household of the world with its 6 billion people. A place where, though the gates of the city, as far as he was concerned at that moment, were firmly shut, he, in fact, opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers. Because like Abraham before him he looked for a city which had foundations whose builder and maker was God. Is it any wonder that George MacLeod, Founder of the Iona Community, was continually reminding us that Jesus was not crucified in a cathedral on an altar between two candlesticks but on a rubbish tip between two thieves ?
But for many in the two thirds world, in which most of the world's six billion people live, there is not the luxury of Milton Keynes, where we sometimes complain if we have to walk more than 100 yards from our car-park to the office. Rather there is the grinding poverty of a world in which, according to OXFAM, in the last decade, the world's poorest 5% lost almost a quarter of their real income whilst the top 5% gained 12% in real terms; a world in which unfair trade is costing the poor countries $800 billion dollars a year, a world in which more than 40% of the population live in low income countries, yet they currently account for just 3% of world trade, in which coffee prices have fallen by 70% since 1997, costing exporters in poor countries $8 billion whilst the profits made by NESTLE are currently running at 26%. No wonder we would like Milton Keynes to become a Fair Trade city.
At the same time, as we think of today's marches in London and elsewhere, is it any wonder if people try to reclaim the streets of the global village in the face of such inequalities, whereby the gates of the city seem firmly shut in their faces? The City, of course, is the City of God, the New Jerusalem which William Blake encouraged us to build not only in England's green and pleasant land but also among those dark satanic mills, in order to fulfil the longing of the God who sent his only-begotten Son who still teaches us to pray the prayer of the Kingdom - ' your will be done, on earth, as it is in heaven. '- so that the gates of the City shall never be shut.
Sometimes I'm asked, indeed I was asked the other night, as to where is the soul of Milton Keynes. It happened to be at a party of the Interfaith Group with people of various ethnic origins and from all the major faiths breaking bread together, and I simply pointed my companion, who asked the question, to the people who were there, and said: ' There is the soul of Milton Keynes.'
As Cardinal Mercier of Malines-Bruxelles said in 1926: ' When you meet people, you can know people. And when you know people, you can love people.' But if you don't meet them, then you can't know them and if you don't know them, then you can't love them. And that surely is the heart of the matter, the business which Jesus was all about as we read in the Gospels, publicans and sinners, Roman soldiers, Samaritans, 1st Nation people like the Syro-Phoenician woman, tax-collectors and fishermen. He said to them all: 'Will you come and follow me, if I but call your name ? ' - because the gates of the city shall never be shut - except, of course, as we read in Revelation to those things which are unclean, abominable, false and deceitful. And let's hope that we in Milton Keynes can steer clear of all of that, by which I don't simply mean sex shops, but racism, corruption and the greedy financial speculation which cuts corners far too easily.
And so we remember finally, the words of Sir Frank Markham at the very end of his two volume 'History of Milton Keynes and District' where he wrote: ' Certain it is that old loyalties will diminish and new loyalties will arise, and that the new loyalties will be to Milton Keynes, the greatest new city in England. It is our hope to see that the new city, by remembering and preserving the best of its exciting past, will help everyone to make the best of the future. We hope that future generations will be able to say, as St Paul said nearly 2000 years ago: ' I am a citizen of no mean city.' ( Acts 21:39)
And it is my hope that the gates of this City will never be shut, although as far as I' m concerned I'll soon be taking, once again, the early morning train up the West Highland line where I hope one day you might join me, to sample the delights of Highland hospitality and find that even there the gates are wide open.
And to God's Name be the praise and the glory.
Amen.
Murdoch MacKenzie
