Christopher Idle reflects on two memorable Christmas Carol Services where two bishops shared their story of coming to Christ.
When David Sheppard came to live just across the road from us in Peckham, it seemed providential.
Bishop one – David Sheppard
The tall, dark and handsome clergyman had carved a name for himself in two quite different worlds. As a stylish right-hand batsman for Cambridge University, Sussex and England, he had rewritten some of the record books with the help of contemporaries like Peter May and Colin Cowdrey. As Warden of the Mayflower Family Centre in East London’s Canning Town, he had explored new patterns of evangelical urban mission which challenged much traditional thinking, not only among Anglicans.
And then in 1969, aged 40, he became our neighbour as the new Bishop of Woolwich, and as a leading opponent of any sporting compromise with the apartheid regime in South Africa. This had come to a head with the ‘D’Oliveira Affair’ in 1968, which brought him many new admirers, but also lost him some personal friends.
It seemed natural to ask David to preach at our main Christmas service. Yet this too was a learning curve; the cricketing bishop who could fill a cathedral or two while touring Australia did not cut much ice along the Old Kent Road. We prayed, advertised, leafleted and visited a bit more hopefully than usual, and certainly attracted a few more from the fringes of faith or doubt. But we gained nothing like our dream of a house-full service.
Those who did show up, regulars or otherwise, were treated as we had hoped to a rare gospel sermon. Not rare for David or for us, but in the testimony which he used to illustrate its central message.
First Christmas as a Christian
He described, briefly but unmistakably, his own first Christmas as a believing Christian.
This went back to his student days, and he spoke of a very clear ‘before and after’. The factors which made the difference included prayer, the Bible and a genuine one-to-one friendship. Anyone for whom Christmas meant a vague annual reconnection with folk-religion, or ‘church’ lasting 60 minutes a year maximum, was confronted with the question: ‘Which side am I on? Or whose?’
According to Sheppard there were, and still are, only two possibilities. And for the very first time, for him, Christmas had become real because Christ was real.
Bishop two – Jim Thompson
Fast forward about ten years; we now have a new home, a new church, and another new bishop. Across the Thames to the north lies the rapidly-changing parish of Limehouse, and another Christmas comes round. This time our fledgling bishop is ‘Big Jim’ Thompson; as it happens, a good friend of David’s but unlike him, with no national or international reputation. Not yet. But he too had some pioneering work under his belt, and some creative thinking in the new sprawl that was Thamesmead.
And yes, apart from his scheduled prison visits, Jim was free at Christmas that year. So we snapped him up as our guest preacher. Without any consultation with Bishop No.1, he too combined his biblical message with a personal testimony. Was I the only person to have heard both and to spot the unplanned connection? For after David’s ‘First Christmas as a Christian’ came Jim’s ‘Last Christmas as a non-Christian’!
Last Christmas as a non-Christian
As a young man, Jim had been out drinking with the lads one Christmas Eve; with no fixed plans they somehow found themselves lurching along beside an old church ablaze with light and apparently full of people. What a laugh! Someone suggested they should gatecrash the service and send up anything they might find going on there, to see how far they could get before they were thrown out. That would round off the night nicely with some seasonal alcohol-fuelled mickey-taking. So the little gang advanced through the church’s welcoming door…
All, that is, except Jim. He wasn’t quite sure why, but for some reason this didn’t seem right. So he sat unhappily on the cold stone churchyard wall in the dark, wrestling with doubts and dilemmas, while his mates had their candlelit fun in the warmth. But before another 12 months had passed, Jim found himself on the inside – not just of a church building but of a faith in Christ, his Lord and Saviour. Suddenly, or not so suddenly, it had all begun to make sense. I sometimes wonder what happened to the others.
I don’t think I ever told him about David’s sermon, or David about Jim’s. Our paths diverged since those two memorable Christmases which gave us a re-run of the two earlier ones. But I sometimes tell people, as I am doing now, about that pair of sermons – accidental or providential? – where two men were unconsciously united across the years.
They each showed how Christmas challenges us with a ‘before’ and an ‘after’, a personal ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to Christ the Lord. By the grace and patience of God, it still does.
