Tomorrow, at our online May Assembly, I will have the pleasure of inaugurating the Rev’d Suzanne Nockels as President of the Congregational Federation. Last year, the May Assembly was cancelled because of the pandemic, so we agreed not to inaugurate a new President, but that Suzanne and I would work together for this year (always a pleasure!), so that she could start her year this May. In the meantime, we did as much as we could online, to support the churches of the Federation in these extraordinary times.
Because most of us have access to various online communities, the last year has created amazing new ways of being together even in physical isolation. At Bunyan Meeting, a WhatsApp group designed for other purposes unexpectedly started to flourish as a forum for pastoral care and – crucially – prayer, at time when prayer was often urgently and desperately needed. More widely, we have been directly in contact with people in some of the most troubled areas of the world, through online communities and social media.
The book of Revelation describes the prayers of the saints ‘rising up to God’ in ‘great quantities’, like incense (5.8, 8.3-4). And who are these saints? They are the ones who are ransomed through the blood of the Lamb, ‘from every tribe and language, people and nation’ (5.9). That’s why there are such great quantities of prayer rising to heaven; because they come from the countless and wonderfully diverse people of God.
During my own presidential year, I had an inspiring time travelling round the churches and Areas of the Federation, and further afield. The picture is from an all age, breakfast church, where we explored how God shapes the people, like a potter (Is 64:8) shaping clay vessels to hold treasure (2 Cor 4:7). It was such a joy to travel to be with God’s people!
But during this last year, distance has become no object. Now we can be fully part of these gloriously multifarious communities online. Above all, we can pray for each other, and for our shattered world. The prayer that rises like incense really does emerge from people of every tribe (tribal identities are very important in many parts of the world), language (so are languages!), people and nation.
From the Bunyan WhatsApp group, through the Congregational Federation’s Friday lunch time prayers (where hearts float up around us as we pray), to the global communities through which the cry of need reaches us, and we can add our incense to the great quantity rising before the throne of God.
Tomorrow, we will join in prayer for Suzanne, as she takes up her role as President. May she bring all the joy, energy, creativity and wisdom which we know God has given her, to our people and churches, as we enter the strange new world that lies before us.
As we open our Assembly, we will sing Fred Kaan’s hymn: ‘For the healing of the nations’. Fred Kaan writes from his experience as a member of the Dutch Resistance in the Second World War, and from his ministry, which developed a truly global perspective. In the hymn, we are invited to pray for justice, and pledge ourselves to action. Let us pray together, in the second verse of the hymn:
Lead us, Father, into freedom,
from despair your world release,
that, redeemed from war and hatred,
all may come and go in peace.
Show us how through care and goodness
fear will die and hope increase.
Fred Kaan (1929-2009)
© Stainer & Bell Ltd.
Janet Wootton