Placed pilgrims
“The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.” (Paul in Athens, Acts 17:24-27)
When I was 14 years old, I went on a school history trip to Berlin and Krakow. We were learning about the rise of Nazi Germany for our GCSEs and so as part of it our teachers took us to Auschwitz. It’s a very strange place. There was no birdsong, and though we went on a beautifully sunny October day, the atmosphere was eerie.
Have you ever had that feeling in a place? There’s just something about it that doesn’t feel right?
I don’t want to build a theology out of experience as our ‘I feel therefore I am’ culture so often tends towards. However, experiences can lead us to look back at Scripture and tradition to rationally process such things.
We acknowledge that there are – as the celts called them – ‘thin places’, places where heaven and earth are less divided, where God’s presence is so easily felt. When we hear ‘Thin places’ we might think of Iona or Lindisfarne, but we see them in the Bible too, such as Bethel, when Jacob fell asleep and saw the angels ascending and descending.
And by such reasoning, what might be called ‘thick places’ where God is palpably distant could be discerned, such as Auschwitz. Even in these spiritually dark places, we know that God can meet His people. In the Babylonian exile, Ezekiel had visions from God. In the concentration camp, Corrie ten Boom experienced God’s hand of protection. And yet the legacy of Babylon as spiritually opposed to God continues to this day as a symbolically ‘thick place’.
So there are, in other words, what might be called holy places, and desecrated places, but as we see in the letters to the 7 churches in Revelation, often places are a mix of both. The thing I find so fascinating about these letters is that the same gospel was preached to each of the churches and they received the same Lord, the same baptism, the same Spirit, yet the characters of the churches are so different. We see that people aren’t the same even within the same empire. So what was the difference?
The place itself.
Theologian John Inge highlights the fundamental connection between God, people and place in this way: ‘The fact is that if God has to do with Israel in a special way, then he also has to do with this historical place in a special way. This insight might be expressed by positing a 3-way relationship between God, his people and place.’[1]
Too often we focus on the relationship between God and people, and we forget that there is always this third side of place in the relationship. We are embodied people, therefore we can have no experience apart from place. And so in our ongoing relationship with God, by virtue of the bodies we have been given by Him, we must take place seriously.
Today, we in the church have bought into the modern devaluation of place. We can see the devaluation of place as the unique faces of our places are slowly morphing into generic lookalikes, where not only from Newcastle to Bristol can you find the exact same formula of Greggs, Boots, McDonalds and Starbucks on every high street, but even from England to China. The uniqueness of places has been devalued in an increasingly globalised world.
And the church has come up with her own franchise to add to the medley we see on the high street – just as you can go to any city and be assured that you’ll find yourself a Costa, so too can you be assured you’ll find a church like yours at home.
What happens when we abstract people from the place that they are in? Well, we see church leaders staying maybe five years in one place, just to move onto the next job offer, which is the same programme just in a different location. There is no depth, no roots, no long-term community.
Yes, Paul travelled to share the gospel, but in each place he set up local people who had been and would remain in that place for the building up of that local expression of the body. Did we forget that Peter and Paul preached the gospel sensitive to the differences in the people of the places they visited? What has happened to the model whereby Paul found local men of good reputation to lead the local body?
We cannot treat place as a commodity like so many people do today, moving as their fancy takes them, their job, their studies, their family. Place is an integral part of our relationship with God. We therefore ought to stay close to Him, so that we know whether we are in the right place for the ministry He is calling us to or not.
And once we are in the right place, we then need to understand the place we are in. What story of God at work in this place are we entering into? As Anglican pastor Will Foulger says, ‘Place humbles us because it situates us within a set of relationships and a story that is not part of our own making (‘This place existed long before I came to be, and will continue after I go’).’[2]
This is so vital to understand, as we do not invite God to partner with us as we decide we are going to take a city for God by running our curated series of programmes and events, but we submit ourselves to see what has God been doing in this place, and how He is calling us to be part of that for the short time we are on this earth.
We need to see ourselves as part of God’s great story, not God as part of ours.
So what does it look like to be ‘placed pilgrims’? This idea acknowledges two things. Firstly, this world is not our destination. We are not seeking an over-realised eschatology where we are trying to bring heaven to earth. We are not trying to create paradise here and now, but we are on our way to the New Jerusalem that God is going to establish in eternity. We are pilgrims in this world, in the world but not of the world.
But as we have already established, we are placed during our time on this earth. And where we are is not accidental to the ministry and calling God has for us. So we need to gain an understanding of what it is about the place I am in that is unique, that is different, that allows for the gospel to spread easily, or that hinders the acceptance of the gospel?
I believe that the more we root ourselves in our place, the more local our expression of the body is, and the more true meaning and community people will find in what the church has to offer as she speaks their language, understands their motivations and desires and ministers to their deep cries.
[1] John Inge, A Christian Theology of Place, Routledge: Abingdon, 2016, 36.
[2] Will Foulger, Present in Every Place? The Church of England’s New Churches, and the Future of the Parish, SCM Press: London, 2023, 30.