Temple of The Spirit

Saturday, 16 November 2019
5:50 PM

Temple of the Spirit

"In him we move and have our being" - Acts 17.2

If you prefer 'Maccas' to KFC, you might pick up a Big Mac at Gladesville McDonalds on Victoria Road. Use the drive-thru facility and you will be roughly on the site of the former Gladesville Baptist Church (relocated to Ryde 1958). This was where I attended Sunday School and Christian Endeavour and worshipped with my mother, and where her life was celebrated prior to interment.

Just in front of the pulpit a Baptistry - i.e., a tank - was located under the floor, and this was where I was baptised by immersion at an evening service "in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit", as the congregation sang "Fo-ollow, fo-ollow, I will follow Jesus". Later, my brother sang (solo), "I need Jesus", and opportunity for individual testimonies given. A joyful occasion, but solemn as well.

This simple chapel, purpose built pre-war but destined to become a commercial enterprise, was for us a Temple, a holy place, sacred space where the faithful assembled Sunday by Sunday in response to the invitation inscribed high above the pulpit: "Worship the Lord In The Beauty of Holiness" (Psalm 96. 9-11).

Was not this the house of God?  Saint Augustine's 'City of God', the earthly Jerusalem - symbol of the 'Jerusalem' which is 'above'?  Not just a repository of remembrances such as Jeremiah's prophetic "word of the Lord" (ratifying a new covenant with the house of Israel: "by putting my laws in their hearts and minds.  . . I shall be their God and they shall be my people"), but a sacred space that gave God's people their unique identity ("It is he who has made us and not we ourselves, we are his people . . . " - Psalm 100).

This new covenant was, symbolically, to be kept within the Temple; secure, but only so long as secure within the heart of the nation, that temple not made with hands representing both the Divine transcendance and immanence: almighty in power, great, yet unsearchable, for "we know him not"  (Job 36.26).

Jeremiah had a difficult time getting his message across to the rebellious Israelites, his anguish palpable: "I will not make mention of him nor speak any more in his name. But his word was in my heart like a burning fire shut up in my bones; I was weary of holding it back and I could not". (Jeremiah 20.9)

For the Rev. J C Campbell, Pastor of the Church at Gladesville in those days, his Congregation was no less difficult (although they didn't attack him or put him in the stocks), but like Jeremiah, the word was always in his heart "like a burning fire", and he persisted, even as he agonised.

Relating this little bit of my early history relies on the subjective, but it's also about relationship, how the 'I' becomes an 'us'. It raises the question of identity and religion; how identities are fluid, subject to adaptation (consider the sociologist's theory, 'Identity and the Sacred'; vide the late Prof. Hans Mol's landmark opus).

In time I would drastically, if not radically, adapt my own religious associations to changing circumstances (after all, "the way of a man is not in himself" - Jeremiah 10.23).  Regardless of what we think we know "of things too wonderful", we also have the promise "that all things work together for good to those who love God . . ." (Romans 8.28).

Pastor Campbell was a gifted man who encouraged wider reading (not a common trait amongst older generations of Baptists) as well as Bible study. At least the second part of a Franciscan saying held true: "In books we seek God, in prayer we find him . . . prayer being the door that opens God's heart."

Geoff Wellings

Artarmon

November 2019

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