I’m not sure whether it was colonialism that brought Christianity to India. Tradition says that St Thomas the Apostle travelled to Kerala in the first century, compelled to tell the world of the encounter with his Lord and his God. What is clear is that the Church of South India has very ancient liturgy and practice, and probably existed there at least a hundred years before St Augustine set foot in Kent. On the other hand, the Portuguese Jesuits of the 16th century who would have converted my forebears seemed convinced that God was on the side of their monarch’s colonising urge. As a result, mission is a funny word, bound up with superiority, historical wrongs, and an uncomfortable relationship to multiculturalism.
In evensong, launch and lecture this Sunday evening, St Martin’s is celebrating the latest version of the Being With books. Being With might be described as a seekers course, developed by Sam Wells and Sally Hitchiner before and during lockdown, led now by James Fawcett, and staffed by many fantastic volunteers here at St Martin’s and around the globe.
But it’s rather more than that. Perhaps its essence is that it’s not mission, if by mission we mean we excellent folk have knowledge and ability and if only everyone else would just listen to us then all would be well. Rather the heart of the time together is to encourage participants to share and name the pain, tenderness and joy that has been with them throughout their lives in profundity and mundanity. The course then gently unboxes the idea that the Holy Spirit has been present at all these moments, if they only had eyes to see and ears to hear.
And perhaps the most important realisation I’ve had over the past five years of running and participating in these sessions is understanding with my heart as well as my head how that idea applies to me as well. It’s been my deep experience that it’s others who are doing the preaching by showing how God has been at work in their lives; and so they’ve modelled how I should seek him in my own. In other words, far from leading, it is I who am hearing the Gospel, as if for the first time, nineteen centuries ago on the shores of the Arabian Sea.
Chris Braganza
