Kew United Benefice are giving members of their congregations the opportunity to give a sermon on their own faith journey and the path that has led them to their church.
Read below, St Philip and All Saints congregation member, Paul Gregorowski talking about his faith journey:
I will never forget the day a close friend, a fellow student in Cape Town, woke me up by hammering on my door in the early hours to announce that he had found faith overnight in a sudden revelation, this after years of bitter debate with me (and, I suspect, himself) about Christianity, which he had always castigated as a wicked lie. He went on to become an inspiring and much-loved priest in South Africa. My own journey has been very different. The Church has always been home to me. When I was two my father was sent as a young priest to Namaqualand, a remote district near Namibia. My mother would have loved to be ordained (but, of course, such a thing could never, ever happen!) so she saw herself as part of his vocation, and they worked together as a team. They couldn’t afford child-care so that my earliest memories include playing happily with plasticine under a pew during services. I was christened Paul after the saint, but there was no blinding light on the road to Damascus for me. I emerged from under the pew, learned to be a server, did intercessions, read lessons, and took my turn to pump the bellows of the antediluvian organ; one day I fell asleep at the task and the music died out with a groan, leaving the choir stranded like gasping fish. What I remember most were my father’s stirring sermons.
In my teens in Cape Town the Church’s fight against apartheid gave an extra focus to my faith I will never forget my father’s roar of rage when a government official stormed into our house to order him to cease preaching against the racist regime. I watched the man scuttle down our path to the safety of his limousine. We waited in terror for a month, but the police never arrived. We realised that even that arrogant and brutal dictatorship was afraid to act against the Church, and when the time came Nelson Mandela was there to lead his people to freedom. When I told an Afrikaner friend who had supported the regime that the Church had helped to save his people from themselves, he grabbed my hand and said with tears in his eyes, “That is God’s own truth”.
When I came to England in 1961 (lacking the courage to risk imprisonment) I was never lonely because wherever I went the local church was home. to me. Eventually I married and came to Kew. David Frayne, the vicar of the Barn was a great tactician. Almost immediately I was put in “temporary” charge of the intercessions rota, a task I have just relinquished after fifty years. So here I am installed as sacristan in this wonderful benefice so inspiringly led by Melanie. When I am thanked for my efforts, I am always embarrassed because I gain so much more than I ever give. One of my greatest joys is to arrive early on Sunday mornings and spend time in silent prayer as I prepare the church for the service.
Prayer comes in many forms. The shortest are arrow prayers that we shoot straight to God when we or someone we love needs urgent help. There is the Jesus Prayer, beloved of Christians throughout the centuries: Lord Jesus Christ son of God be merciful to me a sinner. There are the formal prayers in our services when we join together as a community in praise, confession, thanks and intercession. Above all there is the Lord’s prayer, Jesus’s own inspiring lesson in how to pray, which contains everything we need.
Then there is private prayer in which we simply speak to God in our own words. Each of us is unique. In the whole history of the universe there has never been anyone to replace you, and your way of relating to God is unique, so that you can speak to him in your own way as you would to a friend, and he will listen with full attention and love. We have seen those amazing pictures of the billions of stars and galaxies in the ever-expanding universe. The Power who created and sustains all that loves you so much that it hurts, who loves you so much that he gave his own son to die on the cross for you. That God is longing for you to respond to him. Jesus spent his ministry showing us how to do this.
In the Gospel of St Matthew Chapter 13: 31-52, Our Lord speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven. It is easy to let those words slip past. The idea of the Kingdom seems so remote, something for after death, an impossible dream for this world, but Jesus puts it at the heart of his teaching, so it must mean something to us here and now. He was a spellbinding story-teller, one of the greatest ever, and a true poet. His parables and sayings contain infinite truth. Here he uses a series of similes for the Kingdom: a tiny mustard seed that grows into a luscious tree full of singing birds; a piece of yeast that causes a lump of dough to rise into nourishing food; a net to catch a rich harvest of fish; and twice he compares it to inexhaustible treasure worth sacrificing everything to obtain. This is a poem about prayer. When you sit in mindful silence the tiniest longing for God can expand into a deep spiritual experience; a rich harvest of peace; infinite inner treasure as you melt into God’s presence.
Anyone can do this, I love this reminiscence of a rural priest. Every evening when he went into church he encountered an old farm labourer sitting in the front pew. The man was very reserved, almost inarticulate. One day the priest, puzzled and slightly patronising, asked him what he was doing while he sat there. The old man nodded to the figure of Christ on the large cross above the altar and said, “Sometimes I looks at him, and sometimes he looks at me.” This reminded me of something that happened when my son John was young; he had spent an exhausting day at my father-in-law’s funeral. It had involved a long car journey and much overwhelming emotion. As I tucked him into bed hours later than usual his relief was palpable; in a weary murmur, thinking of his grandfather he asked, “Has Jesus got beds?” I reassured him that Granddad was safely at rest with Jesus. We always said his bedtime prayers together, but on this occasion, I said, “We won’t use words tonight, we will just be with Jesus”. Within seconds he was asleep. Some months later after an equally exhausting but happier day, including a football match, a river swim and a birthday party, as I was tucking him in at 11 o’clock he said, “Can we do the one when we just be with Jesus?” He is now 49, a regular church attender and meditator. TS Eliot,in “Four Quartets” that great poem about prayer says that this kind of prayer is like music, “Music that is heard so deeply it is not heard at all, but you are the music while the music lasts, and the rest is prayer, observation, discipline, thought and action”, the complete Christian life.
In this benefice we are fortunate to have a practical way to begin this great adventure. On Monday evenings Beni Woolmer leads silent meditation at the Barn, where everyone is welcome. Here on offer is the great treasure Jesus promised us. He is always there, reaching out to us to enfold us in his love. All we have to do is respond.
Lord Jesus Christ, son of the living God, fill us with your spirit and your love. Amen.
