Sermon on the Nave Altar
Holy Trinity 9 September 2007

1. It doesn’t need saying from the pulpit that this is an important day for our church. After a long period of careful and prayerful consideration, our church council accepted, passing the required 2/3 majority, the proposal that we should spend six months entering into a pattern of worship where the focus of the Eucharistic action is moved from the East end of the church into the nave as we see before us.

2. This morning I offer you some reflections on what this might mean for us and reflections on how we might best use the six months before us.

3. As I offer you my thinking this morning I am aware that we have a range of different views on this innovation. When they are ready, we will be circulating a summary of the comments and reflections offered in the questionnaires which were present in church over summer. What a casual read of the questionnaires does reveal is that there are some deeply supportive of the proposals, there are some who have concerns and questions but are prepared to see how it goes and there are some who believe it has been a wrong decision to enter into this experimental period. And so as I offer some of my understandings and vision I do so deeply mindful of and respectful towards the range of different understandings which exist in the congregation.

4. Perhaps it is useful to first reflect on what it means to be a people who gather together, who together enter into a place of prayer and worship, who together remember the life and death and resurrection of Christ, who together receive the life of God into our lives in our receiving of bread and wine.

5. At the heart of our faith is a belief and trust in a God of love who wants to know us and wants us to know God. At the heart of our faith is the conviction that in Jesus we see the way in which God chooses to engage with us - reaching out to us in love, coming to be with us, to share in our life and to let us share in his life. Now, if we lived in a far flung small Roman colony two millennium ago, we may have encountered the presence of God in our midst in the real tangible physical presence of Jesus. We don’t live in that far flung colony, we don’t live in the 1st century we live in the 21st. But of course what the gospel records of Jesus’ life tell us, as well as the preserved correspondence between early church leaders, is that before Jesus was led to die on the cross he had a meal with his closest friends. A meal captures intimacy and fellowship and togetherness and sharing. And at that particular meal, Jesus gives his disciples a promise, he gives us a promise. ‘Gather together’ Jesus says, ‘take bread, take wine and remember me, and as you do so I am with you, together you are my body (or as we say today, ‘we are the body of Christ’).’ As we remember and receive and consume the bread which speaks of Christ’s body broken for us and his blood which speaks of his blood poured out for us, so too do we receive the fullness of God’s loving life into our life. That is the promise of Jesus. That is the experience of people of Christian faith over two thousand years. That is the mystery we celebrate and humbly receive today.

6. The position of our altar is important. The position emphasizes different elements of our Eucharistic life in different ways. But perhaps the truth we all hold to, is that wherever and however communion is celebrated and received: whether in the grandeur of a splendid cathedral, or in a prisoners cell, whether in the tranquility of this church or the informal setting of a living room or even in the dangerous place of a battlefield, the back of a Landrover becoming the temporary holy place as an army chaplain offers ministry, whether celebrated in the chancel resonating with centuries of history or in the nave emphasizing today’s society’s lack of and yet yearning for real community and communion with one another; however and wherever communion is celebrated it offers a focus to our meeting with God, our receiving from God and our living out God’s life and love.

7. However and wherever we receive, from the profound place of our inner being, we thank God for the mystery and gift of communion and for the unity we have as we receive together.

8. We have thought about communion and it felt deeply right to start these reflections there. Perhaps now I should share some of my hopes and vision for this change in location where communion is to be celebrated over the next six months.

9. Our church of Holy Trinity is not facing a crisis today. Our church won’t be facing a crisis next week or next month or next year. But unless something changes about the fact we are broadly missing two generations amongst those who receive the grace of God through the gift of communion, in twenty years time that gift will not be being celebrated here in the regular way it is today. I have celebrated communion at the 9:45 service in this church, the parish church of Barrow upon Soar, a village of 6000 souls, and I have been the only person under the age of 50 to receive communion. I’ll repeat that, I have celebrated communion here at 9:45 and been the only person under 50 to receive communion, that gift central to our understanding of our meeting with and receiving from God.

10. And then there’s Junior Church. Our Junior Church today is of a modest size. I am told that it used to be very sizable. It is delightful to meet some of these former members of our Junior Church at baptisms and at weddings, but by and large we do not meet them within our Eucharistic life. Sadly, we are failing them; they are not receiving the gift and life of communion we view as so vital to us. Tragically, those former Junior Church children, with literally one or two exceptions, do not exist within our central life of receiving God’s grace through communion at this church. If the next three decades simply repeats the last three decades there will no longer be a pool of people from whom church wardens, choir members, flower arrangers, secretaries, servers, DCC members, treasurers and so on can be drawn. The life of our church will end.

11. I didn’t go home and cry when I celebrated communion and was the only person under 50 to receive, but I went home with a heavy heart. I have an immense sense, an overwhelming sense of love for this church, of love for you the people with whom I share in the journey of faith and for the men and women and children of this village. Every fibre of my body yearns and longs for this church to thrive into the future. I have spent long times in prayer placing that love I have for you next to the missing two generations and I have become convicted that I will be failing in my responsibilities to you, to those who are not here and to God if I did nothing and allowed life to continue into the next ten years as it has been over the last ten. Each year that our life continues with no change from how it has been, from how it has been with first one generation and now two missing from our Eucharistic life, is another year lost for ever. I would be failing myself, I would be failing you, I would be failing God if I do not invite you on a more focused journey where together we work to reach out and embrace those missing two generations within the Eucharistic life of the church, a life which feeds and strengthens and inspires us in all that we are and all that we do.

12. Now, so far I guess we are all on the same track. All of us are overwhelmed at the magnitude of God’s gift of life and love encountered in communion. All of us are torn apart by the lack of sacramental ministry amongst two generations of our brothers and sister’s lives. And now we arrive at our debate. I, and some within this congregation, are convinced that celebrating communion from the nave altar will be one element in a journey towards a style and way of being church which might prove to be more accessible and engaging to our young people as they come to adult hood, which might prove to be more accessible and engaging to the generation of 20, 30 and 40 something year olds who we believe will be more drawn to a service with dignity but with a lighter touch, who will be drawn to a service where there is a greater emphasis on the relationship between priest and people, a service where there is a greater sense of God’s presence being close to us a greater sense that it is in being together that we are, mysteriously and humblingly, the body of Christ.

13. On the other hand there are some in this congregation who do not accept the possibility that the use of a nave altar might bring new life amongst us. And for those of you who fall in this camp the change we have before us today brings distress and sadness.

14. So where do we go from here? Perhaps the answer lies within this use of a nave altar being an experimental six month trial and not a permanent change. Six months should be sufficient time to relax into this different place and different posture in receiving. Six months should give us time to work through some of the hiccups which will inevitably happen. Six months should be sufficient to allow us to openly and prayerfully immerse ourselves in the different experience and different emphases of communion being celebrated in and received in the nave.

15. Whilst within six months, we should not necessarily expect to start seeing new people engaging in our communion services. However, if those who are supportive of the nave altar are wrong and that we find that the six month trial makes no positive difference to our services and absolutely no sense that we are moving towards a place better positioned to be accessed by our missing generations then I have no doubt we will return to the use of the chancel altar. If that happens, then we will together need to consider what we should do to ensure the gospel is faithfully proclaimed and Eucharistic life lived out in this and future generations. If, on the other hand, we find a newness of life within our worship, an affirmation of our fellowship and community and we sense we are journeying in a life giving direction for this and future generations, then I have no doubt that we will want to move towards a permanent arrangement. That would need careful consideration as to the best model for us; it would need your church council to consider costs and amongst all the different calls on our financial resources what priority would need to be given to this.


16. What would be a deep deep tragedy is if we do not use this trial well. It would be tragic if we fail to openly and prayerfully enter into the new experience. It would be tragic if we miss the opportunity to perhaps discover a change which brings us life. My prayer for myself and my prayer for all of you and the prayer I ask you to make your own is that this six months might be a valuable and rich time of spiritual discernment, that we might come to the end with a sense of conviction that the journey we are to take at the end of the trial resonates with God’s will and vision for us and best places us to work for the advancement of the kingdom. Our prayer is that whatever the outcome of our six month trial, that we are renewed in our desire and in our working towards the sacramental ministry we so value, being offered and received by all generations in a meaningful and life giving way.

17. So let us pray:

18. Loving, living God
This church of Holy Trinity has served your people for 700 years, for this we praise and thank you.
This chancel and the altar within it is a place of beauty, of awe, of mystery, of pilgrimage; while you are everywhere we thank you for our particular sense of your loving and life giving presence in this place.
You are the good shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to seek out and save the lost one. Challenge us within our hearts to be a community of faith who above all else seek to reflect this pattern in our living and in our worship.
We pray that this next half year will help each one of us to better see how the life giving gift of communion might be received and entered into by the missing generations.
All that we have been, all that we are, all that we do, all that, by your grace, we will become, we entrust into your care.
In Christ’s name and for his sake.
Amen.