Tears as our church opened its doors again

I thought I had a stiff upper lip, but standing in front of my people once again on the first Sunday back after lockdown, I couldn’t even make it through the greeting without crying.

In front of me I could see the faces of my Christian family. Some of them were people I had been able to phone during lockdown, some of them were people I hadn’t been able to speak to in three months and, to my surprise, there were new people. They were people who hadn’t been to church before but who were considering the Christian faith after the shock of a worldwide pandemic.

We had been planning for a while, we wanted everything to be safe, we wanted everyone to feel safe, and we wanted it to feel like church. I had expected a slow start, 30 or 40 people perhaps; just the stalwart members, the ones who wouldn’t let anything stop them coming.

In my pessimism I only had 50 notice sheets printed, and I thought they would do for our midweek service as well. But God had other ideas, and in front of me sat almost 100 people. Young and old, lifelong members and those coming for the first time. I couldn’t quite believe it, and I couldn’t get past my first ‘Welcome’ without tearing up.

St George’s Church, Chorley, is blessed to have a church building that we can fit our pre- Covid congregation in and still meet the safety requirements. As a result, we were able to safely open for the first time. Not every church can do this, but St George’s has been able to, and there was great joy in finally being able to gather together.

We know that our church building isn’t akin to the Jewish temple; that we can meet God anywhere, for He is the God of the whole world who lives in the hearts of His faithful people. We can meet God in the park, and we do. We can meet God in the quietness of our favourite armchair, and we do.

And we can meet God as we open the pages of our bibles, and we do. We know all that, and yet we smiled and cried last Sunday as we joyfully joined in the liturgy and received Christ in word and sacrament once again. Why? Because the Christian faith is a physical faith.

We are called to gather together, to sing together, to share the peace together, to pray together, to take care of one another together, to study the Scriptures together and to celebrate the sacraments together.

This worship is to happen together and out of this gathered worship springs our service to one another, and to our world. As we are called to be together physically the buildings we meet in, and which are set aside - literally ‘consecrated’ - for this purpose - rightly play an important part in our faith.

Because the Christian faith is a physical, sacramental, faith we recognise that being separated from one another is not a good state of affairs. We have tried to make the best of it. Individually we have watched the same filmed services, prayed the same prayers, listened to the same hymns and marked the same days, such as Easter and Pentecost.

We have made the best of a bad situation but as our faith is a physical, sacramental, faith, there is only one place we want to be on a Sunday, and that is gathered together in the buildings the Church has consecrated for our worship.

These are the places many of us were baptised in, many of us were confirmed in, many of us were married in, and many of us have served in, week in week out. These physical expressions (baptism, confirmation, marriage, and service) are a sign of our faith, and have rightly taken place within the walls of our church buildings.

And as a result, one of the hardest things to bear in the past few months has been losing longtime members of our church family - those who have spent their life in our church building - and yet when it came to their final journey they couldn’t come into their church, and many of their family and friends couldn’t say a proper goodbye. This has been one of the cruellest parts of lockdown for us, as for so many across our nation, and no doubt around the world.

The Christian faith is a physical faith and, while our church buildings may not be the temples of God, they are the places where the temple of God - that is the people of God - worship. And so as I looked up on that first Sunday morning back, and saw the people of God back in their rightful place after such a long and difficult break, I couldn’t help but feel emotional, and I wasn’t the only one, there were many emotional people that day.

Certainly Christians must not rush back before we are ready, before their church leaders can make their buildings safe, but back together is where we are meant to be. So do not be surprised or ashamed if, on your return to church, you find yourself crying as you to meet together physically once again.

For this is where we are meant to be as Christians, as members of God’s family. For, as Jesus reminds us in the Scriptures ‘where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them’.