Holy Ground

On Sunday night, I preached
at a united service. It was held at All
Saints Church, Ulting. The building has quite a history, and my friend Jim
Page gave me the leaflet he had written about it. There has been a place of
Christian worship on the site since about 1150 AD. There may even have been a
Christian meeting place there in Saxon times.

Not only that, some crop marks had recently become visible,
and I knew Jim was excited about these. I asked him to show me where they were
in the churchyard. As he took me to the spot (to the right of the building, if
you click on the hyperlink for the church above), he explained that a
geophysical survey that had been taken since their appearance suggested a
further building somewhere under the centuries’ accumulation of graves. Given the
particular location in relation to the River Chelmer, some are speculating that
this might even have been a Christian worship centre dating back to St Cedd, one of the Celtic
Lindisfarne missionaries who were tutored by Aidan, and whose exploits in this
region are – ahem – legendary. Chelmsford
Cathedral is dedicated to him, as well as Mary and Peter.

It is awesome (and I think I use that word rightly here) to
stand on a spot where our ancestors in the faith have worshipped for centuries.
The last time I felt anything like this was an occasion about twenty years ago
when I stood in the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey and felt cleansed by being at a
place of prayer, after having felt so dirty from walking Glastonbury High
Street, which was so filled with occult shops. However much I believe that God
is to be met anywhere and everywhere, and that church buildings are not ‘the
house of God’ (because the people of God earn that description), I am
nevertheless aware of the need to acknowledge the sense of ‘holy place’.
Locations seem to be hallowed by worship and prayer. I am not sure that this
necessarily follows automatically from a bishop performing a rite of
consecration – although if that is done in faithful obedience, why not? I am surer
it is a consequence of the faithful worship and witness of the saints over a
period of time. I have similarly known people buy houses previously occupied by
Christians and experience a sense of peace there. Perhaps the house was
hallowed, too.

Exactly how we account for this theologically is difficult.
However, perhaps if we see God’s mission as the redemption of all creation,
then that includes the land, too. If Christians are in any way to ‘occupy the
land’ as Joshua was told to do with the Promised Land, it will not be with the
shedding of enemy blood, but with sustained prayer. And this is rather more
than the bizarre techniques for ‘city-taking’ found in some charismatic
circles, which depend on esoteric interpretations of spiritual warfare and
short-term prayer campaigns. No, I deliberately used the word ‘sustained’. This
is a spiritual and physical occupation. Dare I say it’s incarnational ministry,
rooted in prayer?

However, Jim had one more thing to show me. He took me to
the gravestones. He said there was one particular stone he wanted me to see. Although
some of the carved writing was fading, enough was clear to make out the
following: it marked the grave of a six-year-old girl who had burned to death
in the 1820s. She had an unusual surname. Regularly, even today, flowers are
placed by the gravestone. No one of the surname in question is known in the
area, although that of itself doesn’t prove this isn’t being done by a distant
relative. But perhaps a more likely explanation is that someone has been deeply
touched by the story. Maybe it resonates with a tragedy in his or her life. If so,
then the flower donor no more has a personal connection with the poor little
girl than most of those who mourned Diana ten years ago. I wonder whether you
could say that the little girl’s death becomes in some sense representative of
a later tragedy, but that may be putting it too strongly. It may well have
touched a raw, unhealed part of someone’s life in our day, though. The flowers
may indicate present-day pain. Where better than a place of prayer, a place of
worship where the Psalms, which so frequently cry out to God in anguish, are
read systematically? Where better? And what could be more fitting than for those
of us who gathered there to offer prayer for whoever leaves the flowers? It only
occurred to me tonight that maybe there was a case for leaving something for
the flower donor to find. It would have to be chosen carefully and sensitively –
after all, everything I have posited so far about him or her is only
speculation. They might not want to respond, for any one of many reasons. Yet my
guess is that here, today, on holy ground, the past has touched someone deeply
and Christ can meet that person.

Technorati Tags: Ulting, Cedd, Aidan, Lindisfarne, ChelmsfordCathedral, Glastonbury, incarnation, healing