On Pentecost Sunday evening, the doors of St Paul's & St Barnabas opened to welcome The Church Flute Band, an outreach ministry of The Gathering Belfast, based on the Newtownards Road. They came along with hymns and worship music, with testimony and laughter, and with a heart for the gospel that has taken root in some of the toughest streets in our city.
And then, before the night was out, Rev Ross Munro stood up and opened the Bible at Nehemiah chapter one. What followed was not a long sermon. But it was a needed one.
A cupbearer, seven hundred and sixty five miles from a city in ruins.
Nehemiah was no king. No prophet. No general. He was a cupbearer in the Persian citadel of Susa, four hundred and forty five years before Christ, when news arrived from Judah. The Jewish remnant who had survived the exile and returned to the land was in great trouble and shame. The walls of Jerusalem lay broken down. Its gates had been destroyed by fire.
A city without walls is a city without protection, open to attack, open to those who do not know its God and its ways. And though Nehemiah was hundreds of miles away in the comfort of a palace, when he heard these words he sat down and wept. He mourned. He fasted. He prayed.
God has put a holy dissatisfaction on his heart for the plight of those who have returned to the city.
Ross Munro
From Jerusalem to Belfast.
Ross has a way of making an ancient text feel as close as the next street over. He brought the message home, quite literally, to the city of Belfast. To skyscrapers and church spires pointing in the direction of heaven, marking out where our help comes from. To a city where the gas supply, in his striking phrase, seems like it has been switched off.
"Our churches are little more than candlestick holders
with the gas supply switched off."
Across our city, ordinary people are carrying extraordinary weight. Ross spoke of a passer-by he had asked to help him lift a donated chair into the church on the Newtownards Road. The man worked for the Housing Executive and was in and out of homes all over Belfast.
He said one thing held those homes together. They had lost hope.
It does not take much to look around the world and conclude that something has gone drastically wrong. Refugees on the Channel. Political arguments on the news. Divided communities. Yesterday's assurances becoming today's unpredictabilities. Ross put it plainly. It is not just that the world is broken. It is sad.
But God is stirring something unexpected.
On the Newtownards Road, just twelve months ago, six men turned up to a meeting with no name and no plan. They thought they were a blood-and-thunder band. They turned out to be a melody band. They did not know what they were. They only knew that the Lord, in the words of Ross, was all over this like a rash.
Now hymns and Irish airs drift up the Newtownards Road on a Tuesday and Thursday night, half a mile from the door of St Martin's. Bandsmen are coming to faith in Christ. Wives and families and nieces and nephews are gathering with them. Where there was once suspicion, there is now conversation. Where there were divides, there are now shared songs.
The heart of the sermon
"The Lord wants us to be more than just heard. He wants us to be noticed."
Build the wall where you are resident.
Nehemiah did not have to rebuild Jerusalem on his own. Chapter three of his book reads like the credits at the end of a film, name after name, ordinary people building the section of the wall closest to their own home.
Ross drew the same line to us. The Church Flute Band is rebuilding the wall around the bottom of the Newtownards Road. The Gathering is rebuilding the wall in East Belfast. St Paul's & St Barnabas is called to rebuild the wall here in the Titanic parish, on York Street, in North Belfast. None of us is asked to build the whole wall. Each of us is asked to build the wall where we live.
A Question for the Week
One hundred and seventy five years into the building, what does the next one hundred and seventy five look like? What wall is the Lord asking you to build?
Ross closed by praying for two things. For a fresh vision among those of us who follow Jesus, that we might pick up the work of the kingdom afresh. And for a holy dissatisfaction, the kind Nehemiah felt, that breaks our hearts for the people God has placed before us, and gives us the power to do something about it.
Join us this Sunday
Worship at SPB,
Trinity Sunday, 31 May.
Whether you are well known to us or you have never set foot in a church before, we would love to see you next Sunday at St Paul's & St Barnabas. Come along, and bring a friend.
St Paul's & St Barnabas, 210 York Street, Belfast
spbbelfast.church
Listen back
Hear the full sermon.
Rev Ross Munro on Nehemiah 1, recorded live at St Paul's & St Barnabas.
For Christ, and His City.
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