Desecration

Two not-good things have happened very recently. A nearby church has been desecrated: this was not just the usual vandalism, but a deliberate attempt by somebody who would describe themselves as a satanist. A statue of St Michael in one of the chapels was smashed. The cross above the altar there was broken and the top half fixed back on the base, upside down. The paschal candle, which gets lit on Easter night, was thrown on the floor and also broke. A bible had pages torn out of it and scattered around. It was then written on, with an invocation to satan.

Enormously upsetting: when things like this happen to an Anglican church, there’s a ‘process’ which goes all the way to Lambeth Palace where the Archbishop’s staff get involved, as well as visits by the local archdeacon and assistant bishop.

It depends what you think about this sort of thing, as to what value you give it. For some, it’s profoundly distressing: the church is the house of God, with beautiful things in it full of history. God of course does not live in any church, but it’s the place where people come to find him or meet him, and the desecrated chapel a place where anyone passing the building could pop in, light a candle, say a prayer and have a few minutes of quiet.

Then there’s the opposite view, which says ‘it’s only a building: these are only things: God is not found in them.’ Don’t worry so much.

A few days later, a priest visited the little church on the estate where we’ve been helping for the past few years. As he arrived, outside the building (which is not posh – it’s really a hall with an altar tucked behind a glass screen at one end) he met a guy in a wheelchair outside, who is an alcoholic with mental health issues. This guy has refused point-blank to come inside the building for, quite literally, years. Then recently, he wheeled himself inside, and stayed right at the very back. And this week, I was astonished to find him in the front row, with his partner (who has OCD) and her son (who is under the watchful eye of social services and frequently gets excluded from school), of our little mid-week communion.

Why? They’ve been working with our gardener, who is full of vision and enthusiasm for developing the space outside the church. He’s created a peace garden so that anyone from the estate has somewhere to sit quietly and think – lots of people don’t have such a place. Our gardener is the sort of Christian who chats completely naturally about God all the time, and this has been sinking in, as they have planted vegetable gardens together and learned from his expertise, and he has respected them and included them in everything, including our very relaxed church services.

But as the priest passed our guy in the wheelchair, he said ‘pity about him being there. It gives the church a bad image.’

So: it’s ok to really care about a desecrated building, but not an alcoholic who is, after all, made in the image of God?