St Michael’s Church, Dalston

St Michael’s Church at Dalston, Cumbria, struck me as unusual on two grounds. The first is its excellent website, which gentle readers may locate and explore for themselves. The second was its altar, or 'communion table', as my inner puritan will insist on calling it. In any other church, I might have dismissed it as fanciful, or even vulgar and garish. Its vividly painted panels and carved figures would normally repel me, but the coloured light from the stained-glass windows was shining upon it, adding additional lustre to the hues and shades. I am not so vain as to think it a religious experience, but I did reflect on the additional life and motion which that light gently lent the scene, as some clouds outside caused a brief dappling.

Last month, many of us particularly marked the day of the Lord Jesus’ death and resurrection. It was no stilted scene or set piece, but a powerful invasion of fallen human history by heaven’s gracious God. For the unbeliever, the death and rising of Christ is a shruggable historical fact, or, worse, a foolish fantasy. For we who believe, it is history’s defining moment, by which all actions, lives and people will be judged and determined.

Then let us sit beneath the cross,

and gladly catch the healing stream,

all things for him account but loss,

and give up all our hearts to him;

of nothing think or speak beside:

my Lord, my Love is crucified.

-Charles Wesley, 1742