030 - Chapter 30

(Illustration: Speakers’ Corner, Hyde Park. London)

I’m not quite sure how many months later it was, after this ‘charismatic’ experience, that Bob and I were walking through Hyde Park in London, one Sunday morning. As we approached Speakers’ Corner, a well-known part of the park where public speeches and debates are regularly held, I noticed an extremely tall Jamaican, with dreadlocks, preaching at the top of his voice. He stood all alone, on a soapbox, and no-one was paying any attention to him. I heard him say:

“How can Christians say there is one God when they speak of Three Gods!” he yelled. “One is not three and three is not one! I can’t find this word Trinity in the Bible?”

“Who will explain it all to me? How can THREE be ONE?”

He was really worked up.

He was calling into question the Christian belief in the Trinity, that One God exists in three persons:- Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And he was right in saying that the word Trinity is not in the Bible, BUT the concept of three in one, is very much implied.

Hardly anyone else was around at the time, except for Bob and myself, and I just couldn’t help but respond to this man’s questions, and so Bob waited for me further along the path, while I stopped to explain to this man what I knew about the concept.

“Christians don’t believe in three gods, they believe in One God”, I said to him, “who is made up of three persons; and three can be one; for example”:- (I quoted familiar examples that Christians used)

One wicket: three stumps.

Volume is length x breadth x height

Water is vapour, liquid and ice.

A human can be child, a parent and a grandparent at the same time.

So ‘one’ indeed could be ‘three’. . . Not 1+1+1=3, but 1x1x1=1”

A crowd began to gather round us as we discussed this with each other, but he was becoming more and more agitated, each time I responded. He came down from his soapbox and  began shouting his objections, with flecks of spittle going everywhere, as more and more people stopped to listen to us.

He now had the audience he was after, and I’m sure he wanted to win this debate.

I remember feeling quite calm, as I quoted various scriptures to him.

It was so good then, to live in the UK, in the seventies, when anyone at all, had the freedom to voice their opinions or preach openly out of doors. I find it so sad that people today have become much more restricted in what they can say, where they say it, and also where they are allowed to pray.

I recall one famous preacher who spoke regularly at Speaker’s Corner from the mid war years well into his nineties, the Revd Lord Donald Soper, one of the most influential Methodist leaders of the 20th Century, who was quick with his wit, very fluent and who charmed crowds out of doors with his teaching and preaching. He encouraged those who listened, to engage with him in debate. He was known by the crowds affectionately as ‘Soapie’, and he was passionate about social reform and nuclear disarmament, as well as matters of faith.The Independent newspaper wrote this about him.

‘He was an unapologetic evangelical whose Gospel could be summarised as a faith in Jesus which leads by way of personal conversion to political radicalism. But he had no time for any evangelism based on the uncritical use of the Bible. He found all forms of fundamentalism abhorrent because he believed in loving God with the whole of his mind. It was, he affirmed, the Christian's duty to bring not just fervour but also hard thinking to bear on the life of our time.’

Compare such preaching, with July 2021 when one lady, Hatun Tash, a former Muslim, had her face slashed with a knife at this very place, for preaching about Jesus!

Now I was no expert in theology, I wouldn’t even say I am now, even as a priest, but I had begun reading my Bible every day, and was quite familiar with it. And from the beginning of the Bible to its end, I just knew these three persons were linked together inextricably, and in harmony with one another!

The debate went on like this for a good half hour. I shared my faith with him too, and the crowd listened. Then I got the nod to hurry myself up, Bob had been waiting very patiently for me, so I took my leave to catch up and join him.

I didn’t get very far though.

An elderly man with a longish beard, who’d been in that crowd listening, had followed me, and he began pressing his views upon me, even though I had left the scene, and had almost caught up to Bob by then.

So once again, I stopped, and listened to him. He began what sounded like a lecture:

“Jesus was not the Messiah” he informed me. “Cyrus was!”

Now I didn’t have a clue who he was talking about at the time, I had only vaguely heard the name! He went on to say: “Cyrus was the was the real Saviour of his people!” And so his lecture continued.

From all this, I assumed this man was a Jewish believer, and so, I found myself caught up in yet another debate.

Now I was totally out of my depth on such Jewish history, but I spoke to him too about the many Messianic prophecies, for example Psalm 22, and Isaiah 53, which certainly came to be fulfilled in Jesus, and could only be attributed to him alone: and there were many others.

I named a few.

That the Messiah would be born in Bethlehem

He would be born of a virgin.

He would be called a Nazarene.

He would suffer and die.

He would become a lamb for the slaughter.

That the Lord would lay our sin upon him.

By his wounds we would be healed.

They would pierce his hands and feet.

He would be betrayed for silver.

They would cast lots for his clothes. etc and so on.

But still he continued to press his case, and Bob was waiting!

So, while he continued preaching, I prayed inwardly to God, that I could speak a word that would touch this man’s heart, and straight away I found myself asking him one very simple question,

“Let me just ask you this,” I said. “Do you LOVE God, because I do? I love him!”

He snapped back, “I don’t have to love him! I worship him!” he retorted.

“Well,” I replied, “that goes against all you say in your ‘Shema’ prayer, which was God’s command to Moses:

“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God is One, and you shall LOVE the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength!”

(Deuteronomy 6: and Mark 12:28–34)

This word from scripture silenced him. He looked at me shocked, that I was quoting from the Old Testament.

He turned and shuffled away with a big scowl on his face.

What was it Jesus said in Mark’s gospel chapter 13?

‘Do not worry beforehand about what to say. Just say whatever is given you at the time, for it is not you speaking, but the Holy Spirit.’ (Mark 13.11)

From being filled with the Holy Spirit, there was a new boldness in me, that had definitely not been there before. I think back now to that college debate where I expressed an opinion, and had been shaking like a leaf! But now I was beginning to see that God will always provide us with the right words to say, at the right time, and that he speaks to us often, through one another.

The big question is, how do we distinguish whether the voice we hear is the voice of ‘Reason’, or the still small voice of God.

I believe God speaks to everyone; each person can have a hotline to God; but not everyone is listening, not everyone is still enough, to hear him. But if we were to draw closer to God in prayer and study the scriptures, we would come to recognise the essence, and the nature of our Creator God, and the wisdom that is his alone.

What was it G K Chesterton, once said? “The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting. It has been found difficult and left untried.'

St Patrick’s Breastplate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qaZbTzqgsqY&list=PLnUh_ZGnZNfUlV8HEyppRIv8FLBtyEY65&index=17