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4 The Church in the City
1 Gathering – On the way
The gathering of the people of God brings judgment. It is a public and politicalevent. When the nation receives this judgment its long term is secured. TheChurch is the unchanging presence around which the city gathers and onwhich society is founded. And the Church constantly travels through the cityas pilgrims and missioners to it.
1. The people on the way
Whenever Christians walk through their society and their city they are led bytheir Lord. The procession in which the Lord leads his people is described bypsalm 68:
O God, when you went forth before your people, when you marched through the wilderness, The earth shook at the presence of God, theLord of Sinai. The chariots of God are twice ten thousand, even thousandsupon thousands; the Lord is among them, the Lord of Sinai in holy power.
Sothe Christian people go in procession, through the world and through the city.It sings:
Come Christians follow where the captain trod,the king victorious,Christ the Son of God...Lift high the cross,the love of Christ proclaim,till all the world adorehis sacred name.
And the Christian people stand in the middle of the city. They remain there,the one constant presence. The city swirls around them, and sometimesrages against them. Christians have been present in this city of London sincethe first century. Though the Church disappeared from our records as paganinvasions, but the faith returned under Augustine of Canterbury in the sixthcentury. Christians have stood their ground, sung in this city and prayed for itfor the fourteen hundred years since then. The Christians walk and they standand they sing.
2. The well-ordered people and their apostle
We walk and we stand in good company. Christians are given to us toaccompany us. In Christ we are now to be shaped and moulded by theChurch. Amongst the identifiable, institutional Church there are people withthe spiritual authority to lead us. They are the apostles of the contemporaryChurch. They have the authority to make Christians of us. Being under the
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right authority is good for us, and it is a fundamental part of the good news of Jesus Christ. Specific leaders are given to us by our Lord, to train, discipline,form and disciple us. He and his discipline is good news, central to the gospeland to our salvation. The whole Church, the whole historical tradition andworldwide catholicity that is the body of Christ is here for us. But the Body of Christ is not a merely theoretical or amorphous authority that we choose toreceive if we want to, that we may choose the acceptable and discard theunacceptable parts of. It is a specific sets of authorities, and indeed specificpersons with authority who are here for us.One person is the authority of the Church here and now for us. He waschosen, by Church, for us. He is this Church in one convenient package, thewhole congregation in miniature. Our pastor is given to us, by the Church. wedid not choose him, but the Church choose him for us. The Church providesus with many people with the authority to teach us. But it also provides us withthis authority represented by one person, whom you can talk to and presentyour complaints to. Let us call this figure the bishop.
3. The bishop and the cathedral
The bishop is a identifiable figure. But he is also never on his own. Aroundhim the people gathered and the eucharist is celebrated. He represents thepresence of the whole company of bishops, which is to say, the assembly of the whole Church. The bishop is the communion of saints and the catholicityof the Church in one person. He is our messenger from apostles past, and it ishis job to pour all the saints, offices and gifts and the Spirit into us. He fetchesfor us the resources that previous generations have provided for us. He ischief pastor who shows ‘the shepherd’s love…to minister discipline but withcompassion.’ He is responsible to God for us, and he will be held to accountfor us and for the condition of the whole Church of which we are part.A bishop is a member of the assembly of the whole church, drawn from everycorner of the world. The bishop represents the whole history of the Church, allits apostles and doctors, to his congregation. In him the worldwide churchmakes itself present to each local congregation. If the bishop is present, thewhole Church is present in each particular congregation, so that the wholegeographic and historic catholicity of the Church is present in that particular part of the world. The seat of the bishop is the cathedral. In London this is StPaul’s Cathedral, dedicated, obviously, to the apostle Paul. The bishop hasled the whole Church in its prayers for this city and, since London is thecapital, for the whole country. The Church, the bishop and the cathedral standfast. With the bishop, the Church stands in the city, and the city that looks tothe Church will stand fast and not be swept away.
Jerusalem is built as a city that is bound firmly together. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, ‘Peace be withinyou.’ For the sake of the house of the Lord our God, I will seek your good 
(Psalm 122).
4. The monks and the abbey
A mile upstream from the City of London there is a church dedicated to StPeter. It was built by Benedictine monks as their abbey church. An Abbey is
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the church of a monastery, which is a community of Christians withdrawn fromthe world in order to dedicate themselves solely to singing the praises of God.This worship has a long-term effect which is particularly easy to see in thecase of this church, which we now know as ‘Westminster Abbey’.The chief business of the Christians in a monastery is to sing the divine office,including all the psalms and Scripture. They do this around the clock, seventimes in every twenty four hours. They are thoroughly immersed in thepsalms, and so they familiar with every motivation and emotion experiencedand expressed there by the people of God. The psalms teach them how to beglad, and how to lament, how to yearn for justice and how to become the self-disciplined disciple who is content to wait for the Lord to provide that justice.From the psalms comes the self-discipline of the community that sings them.From the disciplined Christian life of the monastic community of the abbeycomes all the good practices of self-discipline and self-control. TheseChristians were considered trustworthy because, having conspicuously givenup their own individual interests, they had no material stake in the outcome of any issue. The entire way of life tells us that monks regard themselves aspilgrims here, and that theirs is a life on the way, and in this they make visiblewhat is true of the Church as a whole. These monks made good listeners andgave good advice. They were able to suggest solutions and provide arbitrationthat can help bring a conflict to a peaceful settlement. The forgiveness that isextended to us by God enables a new-start for communities previously lockedin conflict, and the community of the Church that points to this forgiveness of God, is good at enabling peace and reconciliation. The two sides to a disputeoften found that they could recognise that the mediation of these advice-givers, and that their advice represented a workable solution that alloweddisputes to be settled with dignity for both sides.Singing that liturgy, which involves singing and reading the Scriptures, and inparticular the psalms, gives this community of Christians their wisdom. Their wisdom is obvious enough that people come to this community for advice.The Abbey’s community of monks gave advice, and resolved disputes and sodispensed justice for whoever came to them. This public service of offeringarbitration and justice grew. The rulers of the people of this part of the countryso valued the advice of the monks, that they built themselves a palace by theAbbey. They considered themselves protected by the holiness of thatcommunity, and in time English kings learned to consider themselves servantsof God.The palace of these kings of England is still there. It is the Palace of Westminster, which we know as the Houses of Parliament, alongside whichthe neighbouring palace of Whitehall later appeared. Over the centuries thecourt of these kings grew into the organised government of their kingdom.Over this time, around the abbey and its worship grew all the apparatus of theunited government and so this united kingdom grew into a united society anda single nation.
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