Ely Cathedral

On this, my final Sunday in Cambridge, I visited St. Andrews Street Baptist Church with my friend Barry, who attends the church. There are two matters of interest in the church. One is a cane-bottom chair used by William Carey in Serampore, India. The other is the stained glass window in the front of the sanctuary. It features three characters from John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress: Valiant-for-Truth, Christian, and Faithful.

Following the worship service, Barry and I drove to Ely to tour Ely Cathedral and grounds. What a massive and majestic cathedral it it! We took the Octagon Lantern tour. We climbed narrow, I mean extremely narrow, spiral staircases up two different towers. The first tower is situated on the northwest corner of the main transept. It brought us up to a catwalk overlooking the main transept where we saw the huge base organ pipes. Above us, in the center of the transept, was the octagon lantern designed by Alan of Walsingham following the collapse of the original square tower in 1322 that had stood for two centuries. That same tower brought us up to the interior where we could observe the massive oak beams that support the octagon lantern tower structure and open the panels to view the up close. The beam structure shown was put in place in 1322-1328 when the lantern tower was rebuilt as an octagon to replace the former square structure that had collapsed.

Ely Cathedral is immense and impressive. Its length is 537 feet. For other dimensions, click here. The present cathedral dates from the 11th century.

After touring the cathedral we took a tour of Oliver Cromwell's house which is just west of the cathedral.

Below is a floor plan of the cathedral and a view from the west. Observe that there is no north (on the left) transept and tower off the west tower. It separated from the main structure, due to shifting soil, and had to be dismantled during medieval times.

White or Wong? That is the Question.

In church today, I witnessed something quite amazing, something that I sincerely doubt would be allowed to pass in any church in the States. Nevertheless, it was accepted at Eden Chapel and with considerable amounts of laughter.

During the morning worship services at Eden a segment is devoted to addressing the children. Some churches in the States do similar things. The last church I pastored reserved a portion of the morning worship for "Kids' Korner." Many adults often commented to me that they received as much profit from my messages to the children as they did from my regular sermons. (Maybe I should have taken that as a clue about my sermons.)

Today, a college-age young man tailored his message, as is regularly done, to dovetail with the sermon. Given that the sermon was on Mark 6:31-44, the narrative of the feeding of the multitude from five loaves and two fish, the children's message focused on bread. The young man had put together a quiz about bread. He called for two contestants. Two boys stepped forward. Then he called for Stewart White to stand to the right and Marvin Wong, assistant pastor and the gentleman who would preach the sermon, to stand to the left. Then he instructed the two boys, "If you think that the statements that I make about bread are right, stand by Stewart White. If you think that they are wrong, go stand by Marvin Wong." Of course, at that point the entire congregation erupted with laughter, sustained laughter. Neither Stewart nor Marvin exhibited the slightest embarrassment or disgust.

As an American, I may have exhibited surprise, though no one surely took notice. All were enjoying the hilarity of the moment. There are numerous aspects of political correctness in Britain that go well beyond its depths in America. State-sponsored politically correct programs run deep and broad in the UK. Yet, what I witnessed today in church, I sincerely doubt I would ever witness in any church in the USA. If the young man who presented the children's message in Eden Chapel were to do the same in a church in the US, I sincerely expect that he would be severely reprimanded if not banned from any leadership role in the church again.

I may be right or wrong in my above assessment, but one thing is surely right, "White or Wong" was hilarious. It was rather refreshing, actually, to witness people laughing at language-based humor (not ethnic-based humor) without shame, without embarrassment, without outrage, and without the humor stormtroopers descending upon the place with their sanctimonious righteous indignation. Pastor Wong laughed as much as everyone else. (His English is excellent. He has no difficulty pronouncing the "r.") Let's all lighten up, Americans. It was funny.

Pastor Marvin Wong's sermon on Mark 6:31-44 was superb. He showed how Jesus dramatized his "New Moses" role by feeding the multitude in the wilderness. As such, Moses foreshadowed the Messiah, and Jesus fulfilled Scripture's prophetic foreshadowing. Pastor Wong rightly showed that details of the biblical story in Mark, such as, "he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd," deliberately echo Moses' prayer, recorded in Numbers 27:16-17, "May the LORD, the God of the spirits of all mankind, appoint a man over this community to go out and come in before them, one who will lead them out and bring them in, so the LORD's people will not be like sheep without a shepherd." Pastor Wong demonstrated other Old Testament echoes also. All in all, it was a superb sermon, the best biblically-theologically integrated sermon I have heard for a long time. For anyone who plans to visit Cambridge, I commend Eden Baptist Church. It may take a few days for Pastor Wong's sermon to be uploaded, but if interested in hearing it, you may download it here.