Video for Pentecost 2025, 8th June, 2025
Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s video. This is the last of my postcards from my travels earlier this year. I’m in the Religious Complex in Doha in Qatar. Qatar is a strongly Islamic country, although only about 10% of the locals are indigenous. The remaining 90% are migrant workers from around the world. All the churches serving this vast population have to be here in this zone. Thousands of Christians will come to their various churches on a Friday: the Muslim sabbath. There are orthodox of various flavours, Roman Catholic, Assyrian, Coptic and in the Epiphany Anglican Centre on a Friday, 93 different congregations of every imaginable flavour worshipping in a spectacularly well-choreographed dance between the various spaces and halls! They are going from 6:30 in the morning to 9:00 at night. Everyone has to come in and leave this complex through a narrow gateway. This really is a foretaste of heaven where people of every tribe and tongue and culture will be represented, their distinctives not conflated, but harmonised. We have worshipped here twice on our trips in and out from New Zealand and Uganda. Both times the hospitality has been wonderful. The South African vicar, Mark Derry, manages the whole operation with aplomb and significant cultural sensitivity. We worshipped in English at the main morning communion service with 62 other nations. White faces were in a tiny minority.
What strikes you about Christianity in non-western settings like here and Uganda, is faith’s integration into everyday life. When we were in Uganda it was normal and not in the slightest contrived to begin every gathering with prayer. We learned the rhythm that in the morning we pray and in the evening we give thanks. Prayers for angelic protection while we travelled were answered for us, and much needed in the utterly chaotic Ugandan road system. Here, you just take your life in your hands crossing the road. The city is bisected by numerous 8 to 10 lane highways. In the midst of this believers seem to have a much keener sense than we do of the presence and active work of the Holy Spirit. Its not that Christian faith in the UK is somehow inferior – although we could learn a lot from such enthusiasm, its just that the dominant secular narrative has silenced us, not just in public discourse but even in our conversations in the church. We’ve been so influenced by the cultural demand that faith is a private type of hobby for those who like that sort of thing that we find it hard to articulate the reality of our own experience of God, even to each other.
But the whole Bible is a story, interspersed with didactic and poetic elements for sure, but a story of human beings’ interaction with God over many centuries. Some of the churches in this complex have been telling that story since almost as far back as the time of Christ. My prayer for us is that we could regain our confidence in the transforming power of this story in our own time in our own culture. I note that while I have been away the Times columnist Giles Coren has joined the small, but growing number of cultural commentators who have come to the end of the secular narrative. They have realised that it is impossible to derive meaning from a purely Darwinian, materialist world view. A society where morality is a matter of personal taste constructed on a very limited awareness of what causes harm to others – if it feels good, do it, is a recipe for chaos not happiness. The sexual revolution has not been kind to the poor.
Even if the door to a more confident faith is open a little, its understandable that the prospect is frightening. Here, we take comfort from the promises of Jesus. The Holy Spirit who resides in the hearts of those who trust in Christ is the Spirit who will give us the words as we step beyond our comfort zone into a different future. As Jesus says in Luke 21: 15, as the disciples faced their own fears as Jesus’ death approached, “Make up your mind not to worry beforehand how you will defend yourselves. For I will give you words and wisdom that none of your adversaries will be able to resist or contradict”. Amen to that!
+Richard