In today’s reading, Job’s worship is an expression of faith so forged by bitter experience that it seeks to chisel the protest of its existence into stone as a testimony for all time. Against the ephemera of what we value in today’s society, there is no doubt in my mind that such faith, chiselled into the stones of our church buildings, can still prompt the search for God.
The 19th-century artist and critic John Ruskin understood something of this when he wrote: “The greatest glory of a building is . . . in that deep sense of voicefulness, of stern watching, of mysterious sympathy . . . which we feel in walls that have long been washed by the passing waves of humanity.”
As we stumble across church buildings that persistently present themselves to us, we might ask: “Why are these Christian buildings here, what is their meaning, and how do we access it?” The remote churches that I visit on the North York Moors present such questions eloquently.
The small and steadfast congregations that worship in them keep alive the light of faith that prompts further enquiry, and challenges the assumption that we live in a post-Christian, secular age. But the same is true of other areas where I work, such as housing estates that are also “remote”, in the sense that they are a long way from access to the benefits of a share in prosperity and of protection against hard times.
This is the witness that challenges the limitations of an age that longs for value, but is obsessed with questions about price.
http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=103062
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