A sunshine funeral
Dear Friends,
‘A sunshine funeral’ – that was how Chris Sugden described the recent funeral of John Stott. The funeral itself took place in the sunshine of central London in mid-August, an apt visualisation of how the light of the gospel had shone through this great man.
Chris Wright preached on John Stott’s two favourite verses: ‘May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world’ (Galatians 6:14) and ‘Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me’ (John 14:21). They would be brilliant verses for any of us to live by. They expressed his convictions that he was never more than a sinner saved by grace, through Christ dying for his sins, and that the essence of living as a Christian is to love Jesus by doing what he asks of us. He modelled both to an extraordinary degree. If we shared those convictions, who knows how the Lord might use us?
In an interview in 2007, John Stott was asked how he would most like to be remembered. His response says a lot about the humility, priorities and single-mindedness of the man. He said, “As an ordinary Christian who has struggled to understand, expound, relate and apply the Word of God.” No-one could reasonably dispute that was the shape of his life as a Christian. But ‘ordinary’? Perhaps not! If only there were more like him…
Chris Hobbs,
Vicar.