Genesis 12.1-9, Matthew 9.9-13,18-26
The First Sunday after Trinity, 11 June 2023, Austwick
and at the start of a joint 150th anniversary walk between Keasden Church and Newby Chapel
He built an altar to the Lord. Wherever he travelled, whenever he stopped, Abram built an altar to the Lord.
God’s people have often been builders; builders of altars and temples and churches wherever they stopped.
So today let us give thanks for those people of God who heard the call, ‘Follow me’, and who got up and followed him. And let us give thanks that these people then built altars to the Lord.
Today we especially celebrate those villagers and farmers of this area who first built altars to the Lord in their own homes; meeting with neighbours for worship around their kitchen tables, and then, when their congregations became too large to meet in houses, found other spaces to gather in, such as the bobbin mill at Keasden. We celebrate the people who had the vision to build dedicated places of worship here: James Farrer, Lord of the Manor of Clapham, who 150 years ago built the church on the moor at Keasden and called it St Matthew; and the Methodist congregation who built the chapel on the green at Newby, also in 1873.
We give thanks for the Eldroth folk who around 1627 created a combined chapel and school where prayers could be read and children taught, and for Charles Ingleby who built in Austwick a chapel-of-ease, consecrated in 1841, which in 1879 became the parish church. Each of these: farmers, labourers, landed families, lords: each in their own way, and often working together, right here in this place: they built their altars to the Lord. [1]
Their stories remind us that God’s people have always been a missionary people, taking the gospel to places where it had previously been unheard… preaching there, teaching there, establishing worshipping communities in these little places, and building altars to the Lord.
One of the oldest texts recorded in the Bible is Deuteronomy 26, verse 5: "My father was a wandering Aramean”. It was likely composed by the semi-nomadic ancestors of the Hebrews, ‘which makes it one of the oldest phrases that human beings have breathed. It is a relic of pre-history, a fossil from our past.’ [2] For us, it carries resonance with the stories of Abram, of the itinerant teacher Jesus, and of all those who followed in his Way.
More recent histories make us aware of those who were missionaries to the Yorkshire Dales: in the Anglican tradition I’m thinking of St. Alkelda, reputedly an Anglo-Saxon princess, possibly the abbess of a monastery at Middleham; in the Methodist tradition I’m thinking of Benjamin Ingham, an associate of John Wesley who travelled through our area in 1743, preaching at Austwick, Newby and Settle. The people they reached, the locals they converted: they built altars to the Lord. [3]
So, here in this place, we walk on the paths which the missionaries first trod; we worship at the altars our forebears built. And we are inheritors of the work of mission, we are the successors of the work of building and rebuilding.
And if we are painfully aware that we are so few in number, then let us remember that those who gathered in farmhouse kitchens were also few; yet together, in faith, they built altars to the Lord which have lasted into our day and time; they created these lovely, special places of worship which villagers cherish and which visitors love.
And if we are shy of this task of sharing the gospel with the people around, then let us be encouraged that every small act of love, every tiny word of grace, coming from the heart of one who loves and worships God, carries power - by the Holy Spirit - greater than we can ever gauge.
And if we worry that our institutions are fading, and will not be able to sustain our present houses of worship for many generations more, then let us ceaselessly pray for those coming generations: pray, in hope, that God will raise the missionaries and the builders of the sorts of altars which will be needed to suit these places in the coming times. And in our praying, may God give us eyes to see who those missionaries and altar-builders might be; and by our love for them and for God, let us find words and ways to encourage them.
This week the church celebrates Saint Columba, a great 6th-century missionary, founder of the Abbey on Iona, from where other influential teachers and evangelists emerged to carry the gospel across these islands, notably throughout the North.
And this gives occasion to also recall the great 20th-century re-builder of the ruined Iona Abbey, the Revd George Macleod. Against massive odds, practical and financial, and opposition from many in the churches who considered his task impossible, during the 1930s depression Macleod garnered a community of labourers and craftsmen from Glasgow’s docklands, and men in training for Church of Scotland ministry, transported them together to Iona and set them on a task in which every day prayer and hard graft combined, in equal measure, until, some years later, the Abbey was restored to a life which Columba would have recognised, and the Iona Community, a massive, continuing, influence on the renewal of the church in our lifetimes, was born.
Macleod was known as a great orator, of earthy, gritty, inspirational prayers, and one of them, called A Temple Not Made with Hands, appears to be composed for an early occasion in the rebuilt Iona Abbey, but which makes it clear that, although these places where we build our altars are special to us, it is the people of God - missionaries each, and builders all, however modest - who are God’s ‘temple not made with hands’, it is the people of God who are ‘God’s body’. In this warring, broken, world, for as long as people gather to worship God, in whatever kind of place, then God will meet us there, to empower us for our life outside.
A Temple Not Made with Hands [4]
Lord Jesus, You are above us - reigning.
We believe it.
That is what gives us serenity to achieve.
Years ago there were Doubting Thomases.
But this place has been renewed.
And we thank you.
Lord Jesus, You are before us - directing.
We believe it.
That is what gives us courage to go on.
New challenges already beckon and again we sometimes dither.
But it is You that directs.
It is You that beckons.
So we dedicate ourselves.
And we bless You.
Lord Jesus, You are beneath us.
We believe it.
When we slip, You catch us.
When we kick You in the face, You just serve us.
And when we pack in and fall right down,
You come further down just to be beside us.
In awe we thank You.
Lord Jesus, You are within each of us.
Our hope of glory, of being complete.
We believe it.
It is not just the interior of these walls:
it's our own inner beings You have renewed.
We are Your temple not made with hands.
We are Your body.
If every wall should crumble, and every church decay,
we are Your habitation.
Nearer are You than breathing, closer than hands and feet.
Ours are the eyes with which You, in the mystery,
look out in compassion on the world.
So we bless You for this place.
For Your directing of us, Your redeeming of us,
and Your indwelling.
Take us ‘outside the camp’, Lord.
Outside holiness.
Out to where soldiers gamble,
and thieves curse,
and nations clash
at the cross-roads of the world.
Maul us up, as You were mauled.
So shall this building continue to be justified.
Notes
[1] Consecration of a Church Near Clapham on 22 September 1873 [pdf]; Settle Methodist Circuit: Newby; About Us: Eldroth, A Church Near You; About Us: Austwick, The Epiphany, A Church Near You.
[2] Mark Vernon, Deuteronomy 26:5, The Guardian, 23 December 2008.
[3] St Alkelda's Church, Giggleswick, Church History: St Alkelda; Judith Allinson, The Rainforest Project, Settle's Historic Churches Walk, 8 March 2018.
[4] George F. Macleod, The Whole Earth Shall Cry Glory.
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