The Bus Stop

Before I started my appointment here at Streatham I met with your then minister, the Rev’d Jenni, for lunch. She told me lots of things about you but one thing in particular struck me at the time. She called our church the Bus Stop. That image has stuck in my mind through all the years since and whilst I can’t speak for Jenni I think for me it means a number of things.

Primarily the Bus Stop is where you wait. It is somewhere between home and a hoped for destination. It is a temporary staging post. I think our church is like that. There are very few people here for whom Streatham Methodist Church is what they might call their home church. Most of us have come here from somewhere else. And many folk, whilst not having definite plans, have in mind that their journey might take them on to somewhere else. People often have to “go home” for funerals, or to sort out family business, or even to retire.

That means that our church has a kind of temporary feel to it. You are never quite sure who is going to turn up on Sunday. People often say they leaving perhaps for months on end.

Now this is not a judgement on the church. It is rather just how it is. We do not need to apologise for it or make excuses for one another. But we do need to recognise the challenges and the opportunities that this brings us.

The challenges are probably obvious and they are made manifest here today at our meeting. We set the date for this months ago as Carl, our treasurer, wanted to be sure that our accounts would be ready and that they were back from the independent examiner. But as most of us know Carl’s mother died suddenly in Ghana. As her only son he has had to go home and sort everything out as well as deal with his own shock and grief and that of his sisters. So he is not here. The accounts are not here. We have lots of questions about the financial state of affairs of our church. We are frustrated that we cannot make important decisions. But that is how things are. It is no one’s fault. That is the reality of Bus Stop theology!

And I could give lots of other examples, like with the nursery. We make decisions but then there is always something to frustrate us. We seem to spend all our time taking one step forward and then one step back again! And it is frustrating. We seem to be perpetually waiting.

But then I read the words of Paul to the church in Galatia. “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfil the law of Christ. For if those who are nothing think they are something they deceive  themselves…. All must carry their own loads.”

Paul was writing to a church that was torn apart by arguments. They had been arguing about circumcision. They had been arguing about how Gentiles should behave in a Jewish dominated church. They were not working together but pulling apart.

I don’t know about you but standing at a bus stop can be one of two things. If you have the misfortune of getting on a bus in the centre of Brixton it is hell. It is everyone for themselves. Pushing and shoving to see who can get on first. I think the church in Galatia was a bit like this.

But often waiting at a bus stop near your house can be refreshingly different. Sometimes you bump into people you know or neighbours you know by sight. You might chat, ask each other how they are, and when the bus comes you make sure the frailest gets on first.

Now I believe this second example is how we are being called to model church. We must all take responsibility for each other. Try and carry your own burdens. We are to fulfil our responsibilities with joyfulness but also sincerity. If you are on duty as a steward turn up on time. Pull your weight, make your rightful contribution.

At 10 am this morning there were only two people here. William and myself. By 10.15 we were still the only ones here. There were no stewards, no communion stewards. So together we got everything ready for today's service. Today, and this is not unusual, people were not carrying their own loads - they were expecting others to carry them for them. We cannot go on like this. 

But being a Bus Stop church also brings great opportunities. As many of you have said to me, one of things you have discovered over the time since Jenni came is that you learnt how to speak to each other. You started chatting at the bus stop. You have deepened relationships, made friendships. You have discovered the joy of carrying each other’s burdens when that is needed. You have helped each other through illness, and grief and uncertainty.

And that is a gift that we should treasure. But it is also a gift we need to go on giving. For we often have new people coming to wait for the bus with us. And we need to make every effort to make them feel welcome, to help them feel  

wanted and to help them know the love of God in Christ Jesus. For however long they might be with us.

This week I managed to get to an exhibition of work by the Guyanese artist, Frank Bowling, who is now in his eighties is celebrated for his use of colour and texture in his paintings. He likes mostly to work with large canvases, often laying them on the floor. He has, over the years, also experimented with differing colour and techniques – pouring paint, sprinkling it, splattering it, embedding objects or other materials in his paint to give it texture and depth.

He once said that he loves not knowing the outcome of his painting. He doesn’t know even when he has nearly finished a piece, how it will turn out. But somehow through this creative and sometimes painful process he is able to give expression to his innermost thoughts and feelings and produce something truly beautiful or sometimes disturbing and often astonishingly colourful.

I think our task as church is to do something like that. We are a community of people who just happen to be here in this place at this time. Some will be here for a long time, others will be on the way to somewhere else. We are from all over the world and we all have different experiences, different ways of thinking. But God somehow takes us and mixes us up and uses our gifts and our talents and our personalities and our passions and creates with us an often beautiful, sometimes disturbing, but always astonishingly colourful picture. Amen.