This Sunday we start something unusual. Over the coming weeks, together, we are going to write a letter. To ourselves. The Letter to the Church in Box Hill.
We take our cue from the book of Revelation, where the risen Christ writes to seven real churches in seven real cities. Every letter opens the same way: “To the church in…” and then a place. A name, and an address. He does not send a group email to “the church <everywhere>.” He writes to particular people in a particular place, and he tells each of them, “I know.” He knows this church, because he has been to this address. We are addressed by name. Christ knows where we live.
Which makes us ask what our address says about us. Say it slowly. The church in Box Hill. What does that stir in you? It is a place, not a preference. We are named after a suburb on a map, not after the people who happen to think like us. And a place comes with whoever else lives there.
That is where it gets interesting, because our name and our address may not always match. We know who we are. But do we know where we are? And what happens when the two rub against each other?
Over these weeks we will sit with some questions:
- Who has Christ addressed us to be, here, at this particular address?
- What did we once love about this place, and has some of that love gone cold?
- Are we ever tempted to pick up our lamp and find somewhere more “like us,” and whose choice is that to make anyway?
- How do we hold on to what we believe without letting our certainty outgrow our love?
We are not going to answer all of those this Sunday. But we are going to begin listening.
Because every one of those ancient letters ends the same way: “let anyone who has an ear hear what the Spirit is saying to the churches.” A word spoken to one church, at one address, is meant to be overheard by all of them. And by us.
So this week, just sit with the name. The church in Box Hill. Ask what it might mean that Christ has addressed us here, on purpose.
Listen to what the Spirit is saying.
Box Hill Baptist Church 