On Sunday 6th November (at Oldham) after the morning service we’ll be watching that film: The Pilgrim’s Progress which in modern parlance is known as a CGI movie. CGI stands for Computer Generated Imagery. The Pilgrim’s Progress was first published as a book in 1678 and has never been out of print. Written by John Bunyan whilst he was in prison for preaching the Gospel, The Pilgrim’s Progress has sold more copies than any other Christian book except the Bible. What we can say about The Pilgrim’s Progress is that it is a Protestant spiritual classic, and that book, that story exists to serve as an inspiration to all of us as we embark on or continue with our journey of faith.
So, this CGI movie, The Pilgrim’s Progress is going to be our special event at Oldham Chapel, there will be an intermission for food and refreshments and the event will be open to anyone who wishes to attend. So, if you can attend, please pencil Sunday the 6th November into your diary and let us know you if wish to come. At this point, I think it’s worth hearing these words from the movie’s Executive Producer, Steve Cleary who said:
“More than any other story (outside the Bible), The Pilgrim's Progress has been used to inspire and challenge Christians to set their eyes on God,”
“We are thrilled to offer this tale to a new generation through CGI animation, and are confident that the timeless themes of faith - such as hope, persecution, persistence, doubt, hardships - will resonate in a whole new way.”
In these ever changing ever secular times of ours, where Christians today find themselves in a minority, it’s easy to forget the enormous influence and sway that Christian belief once held in this country. In my own copy of The Pilgrim’s Progress the introduction reads:
So widespread was the influence (of The Pilgrim’s Progress) in the nineteenth century that it has been described as one of the ‘foundation texts of the English working-class movement’. British soldiers in the First World War drew upon memories of reading The Pilgrim’s Progress in trying to understand and express what was happening to them. Images, names and phrases from it are part of the common currency of the English language.
A measure of the influence of this Christian book was certainly exemplified in the Queens first televised Christmas speech in 1957 when speaking to the nation she said:
In the old days, the monarch soldiers on the battlefield, and his leadership at all times was close and personal. Today, things are very different. I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else. I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations. I believe in qualities and in our strength. I believe that together, we can set an example to the world, which will encourage upright people everywhere.
I would like to read you a few lines from Pilgrim’s Progress because I’m sure we can say with Mr. Valiant-for-Truth these words. “Though with great difficulty, I am got hither. Yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him, which will succeed me in my pilgrimage and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who now will be my rewarder.”
I hope that 1958 may bring you God’s blessing and all the things you long for. And so I wish you all, young and old, wherever you may be all the fun and enjoyment and the peace of a very happy Christmas.
It's very interesting that the Queen should have referred particularly to that part of The Pilgrim’s Progress at that particular time. In 1958, the nation as some of you will recall was on the verge of the post war boom, the war time austerity and the tribulations of the Second World War were beginning to fade. A new generation was hungry for change, for consumer goods, the swinging sixties were beckoning, people were becoming better off. But our Queen young as she was then saw that there were dangers too. Dangers that were not quite so obvious, but dangers all the same. And what response did she get for her wise words? Well, a certain Lord Altrincham published his thoughts on Queen Elizabeth’s first televised Christmas speech in his magazine, the National and English Review. He said Her Majesty sounded like a “priggish schoolgirl” and called her style of speaking “a pain in the neck.”
Of course, the Establishment considered this to be a complete outrage, but I think the truth of the matter was that this was indeed a stinging rebuke that reflected the outlook of a generation that wanted change and they were not in any mood to compromise. Not in any mood to compromise.
I would like to suggest that we do find this uncompromising, thoughtless, self-seeking attitude in The Parable of the Prodigal Son, now more modernly called The Parable of the Lost Son, whatever, the story is just the same. Those brutal words from the younger son, to his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ And of course, he got his way and we know the rest of the story. A young man squandering his inheritance on loose living in a new country, with all his new friends, wasn’t he just the life and soul of the party till his adopted country found itself in famine, till all his money had run out, where were all his friends then when he was suffering hunger, starvation, and poverty? Thankfully for him humiliation brought him to his senses, through the depths of his suffering he saw the truth; the folly of his ways. We know that Jesus told this story to illustrate the mercy of God to those who repent, the story goes further because Jesus revealed the profound depths of God’s love, the Father’s love and compassion not just for the wayward son but for the elder son as well.
The power and the mystery of such love, the Father’s love, God’s love, in day-to-day language can be so in expressible that we have at times to use figurative speech, metaphor, allegory in order to make it accessible to those who will listen. Even then we hear Jesus’ words, ‘He who has ears, let him hear.’
And so, in that televised speech all those years ago the Queen employed allegory to get her message across to the nation:
Today, things are very different. I cannot lead you into battle. I do not give you laws or administer justice, but I can do something else. I can give you my heart and my devotion to these old islands and to all the peoples of our brotherhood of nations.
I have no doubt about the sincerity of her words, her words of warning to a prodigal nation anxious to go to that distant land and to wantonly squander its inheritance, to do exactly just what she was warning us not to do and what in my opinion we have done ever since. And what exactly was that? Well, this is what she said and we should mark it well and remember it. She said:
But it’s not the new inventions which are the difficulty. The trouble is caused by unthinking people who carelessly throw away ageless ideals as if they were old and outworn machinery. They would have religion thrown aside, morality and personal and public life made meaningless, honesty counted as foolishness and self-interest set up in place of self-restraint.
Then she said:
At this critical moment in our history, we will certainly lose the trust and respect to the world if we just abandon those fundamental principles which guided the men and women who built the greatness of this country and Commonwealth.
Who now in hindsight, who may I ask with any smattering of common sense, some sixty-four years later could deny such prophetic words; I wonder? Thus she brought this, her first televised speech to a close and that like her fellow Englishmen, inspired by the words of John Bunyan’s spiritual analogy, The Pilgrim’s Progress, from her own copy of that same book she read this excerpt to the nation:
I would like to read you a few lines from Pilgrim’s Progress because I’m sure we can say with Mr. Valiant-for-Truth these words. “Though with great difficulty, I am got hither. Yet now I do not repent me of all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him, which will succeed me in my pilgrimage and my courage and skill to him that can get it. My marks and scars I carry with me to be a witness for me that I have fought his battles who now will be my rewarder.”
If there’s only one message that I can give you today, it’s simply this, that there are no political solutions to the world’s problems, all our problems are in fact spiritual problems that’s why Queen Elizabeth II conveyed that particular spiritual message to a bored and restless people. That’s why she warned the nation against throwing religion aside. The analogy and the meaning is this, don’t give up on your Christian faith, but be like Mr Valiant-for-truth who with his sword, his wounds and his scars Valiant-for-truth who had fought and defeated three other swordsmen who all attacked him at once. Wild-head, Inconsiderate, and Pragmatic were their names. Wild-head, who came in for the attack first holding all kinds of ideas in his head vacillating between atheism and idolatry, then we have the second attacker, Inconsiderate, inconsiderate not inconsiderate in the normal rude way but inconsiderate in the thoughtless fluffy way that some people promote religion, you can hear them say, ‘I’m spiritual but not religious or I’m not comfortable with the ‘God word’ and their friends and followers all mindlessly agreeing with them. And finally, the third assailant, Pragmatic. Pragmatic. Pragmatically arguing that there is no objective, out there, only the pragmatic assertion that ‘there is nothing right or wrong that only thinking that makes it so’ no God no final authority, no eternity, just as John Lennon wrote:
No hell below us,
Above us, only sky
Oh, how easily those swordsmen can persuade us, can slay us, and rob us of our faith! But of Valiant-for-Truth, bloodied yet unbowed, the valiant fighter for truth, the pilgrim bound for the Celestial city, he dares to be a pilgrim, and will not to be swayed by the blandishments of the opposition and the admonishments of the enemies of faith no matter how cunning or well argued.
This brings me to mention an opinion piece that I’ve just read that brings Mr Valiant-for-Truth’s struggle alive once more. The author of this opinion piece reflects on the Queen’s death but goes on to assert that the Churches have ‘become remote from most people because they’ve clung onto teachings that are as he says, impossible to believe, and attitudes as he says, that we find unacceptable.’ The writer observing the Queen’s funeral desires ritual and ceremony, ‘If only,’ he says ‘it was possible to give people this without unbelievable dogmas and intolerant attitudes.’
But these religious values which the writer so evidently abhors and describes as ‘unbelievable dogmas and intolerant attitudes’, are the same values that the Queen was exhorting the nation to hold on to all those years ago, that Christmas in 1957. The same Christian values that the pilgrim Valiant-for-Truth fought for against Wild-head, Inconsiderate and Pragmatic. These three characters, amongst others, are the same demonic forces we must all face, in order to meet God, to enter that Celestial city, that’s why the book is called The Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s a book written for each one of us, its’s a book written for your journey of faith, and it’s written for mine
You know, I too have stood in that high central pulpit at Dukinfield Old Chapel, and I recall particularly the times when the sun has shone through its enormous stained-glass window, that window depicting the crucifixion of Christ our Lord and I have gazed at its beauty and sensed something of the uniqueness of the Christian faith of a God, of a man who can come to earth and die for us. The power of that depiction of love divine, so deep and so profound, it is impossible to plumb its depths, the glory of the God of the Christian faith gives lie to the vanity of such foolish objections to the truth, and that is why St Paul in his First Letter to the Corinthians could say, ‘We preach Christ crucified.
