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Riblah, according to Jeremiah 39.5-8, is the small town in the land of Hamath where Zedekiah, the defeated king of Israel, was put on trial before his all victorious conqueror, Nebuchadnezzar. That day, Zedekiah saw his sons executed before him, had his eyes put out, was chained with bronze fetters and was led off to exile in distant Babylon.

Meanwhile, Nebuchadnezzar's troops had burned down Solomon's Temple, looted the royal palace, blown up the city walls, rounded up the population and marched them too down the road to Babylon and an unknown future. It is doubtful if there was much time for reflection on that day, but if there had been, they might have reflected that God was conspicuous by his absence or that, if present, he was on the scene to hand out long deserved punishment or that, to all appearances, the story of God's people that had begun long ago with the call of Abraham from Ur of the Chaldees, had now arrived at its final chapter, conclusion and epilogue at Riblah in the land of Hamath. What else could follow?

These are just the facts of what happened at Riblah, but Bishop John Taylor liked to remind us that, if we wished to arrive at spiritual truth, we must pay attention to the facts and reflect on what happened, rather than on what we thought might happen or wished would happen. But there are also some facts about Riblah that are not immediately visible to the naked eye.

As that defeated people snaked down the dusty road to exile and apparent extinction, leaving behind them every visible institution of theirs, temple, palace, homes, ramparts all a heap of rubble and ashes behind them, and carrying only what could be loaded on a cart, they, even then on that day, carried within them, intact, imperishable treasures of the spirit. They carried the complete psalms of David in their hearts, including all the tunes and descants. They carried the burning messages of Amos, Hosea, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the others engraved indelibly on their minds. They carried the laws of Moses embedded in their daily customs and language. They carried the unforgettable stories of who they were and what they were within their memories. 

Such were the spiritual treasures of these ragged refugees, treasures which could never be taken from them by kings or cultures or the pressure of time.

Then, finally, there are the facts, hidden from them at the time, which can be seen only with hindsight; because, in fact, they were not heading for extinction but for new birth. Within the womb of an alien culture, they would be fashioned anew by the treasures they carried within them to become the fanatical worshippers of Jehovah only, the people of his Book, who would be transfigured yet again by faith in the Son of Man to become God's servant to the ends of the earth. Ruins, treasures and a hidden future; this is what Riblah brings to mind.

This article is written in response to the question "Where is Christ in all this?" - a question so much like one of those our founder Fr Kelly asked, that no SSM member could wimpishly refuse to grapple with it. I take "all this" to mean all that has happened to SSM in the fifty-plus years between 1953 and 2004, and maybe we might find some clues pointing towards an answer of sorts in what happened at Riblah. I think that, without undue hysteria or drama, we could find a few parallels between the story of Riblah and what has happened to us.

In 1953, the Society was still approaching its numerical peak. We ran theological colleges at Kelham in England and at Adelaide in Australia, training colleges and mission stations at Bloemfontein in South Africa, and schools and mission stations at Teyateyaneng in Lesotho. But far more important than the statistics is the mindset behind them. We were acclimatised in those days to an ever-expanding universe. 

I don't recollect that we ever actually sang it in chapel at Kelham, but the general tenor of all our prayers for the Society was certainly "God who made thee mighty, make thee mightier yet!", and as our novice master looked around on his turbulent band, he was prone to prophesy "wider still and wider shall thy bounds be set" - not because, be it understood, we were so brilliant or so holy, but because God was on our side, we were doing his will, we were the called and the chosen.

In fact, it has all turned out very differently from what we then expected. By 2004, our great chapel at Kelham, the site of so many of our victories, has long been a civic dance hall. Our colleges at Kelham and Adelaide, our schools and mission stations at Modderpoort and Teyateyaneng have all, with varying degrees of anger, frustration and heartbreak, been closed. Our numbers, at least in England and Australia, are still shrinking, and our members are becoming still more wrinkly. 

Also, in place of that blessed assurance of former years, there has grown up amongst us the seldom stated belief that we are the last generation of SSM, that we are entering the final chapter of that venture that began in 1893 at Vassall Road, Kennington.

All this would seem to be the inevitable conclusion to be drawn from a careful attention to the facts in 2004. However, as at Riblah, there are some important facts not always visible to the naked eye, and the survivors of SSM, as they trudge down the road to apparent extinction, already and now carry in their packs some inestimable valuables garnered from the experience of religious life over a hundred years, lived out amidst a wide variety of cultures and crises.

For example, they know and are agreed that the essence of our life, or any life, is the daily worship and praise of Almighty God. As our Principles say, "By this you were created, the will of God, and to this end, the praise of his glory". They have discovered, by many trials and many errors, that the meaning of our life, or anyone's life, is mission - mission to the neighbour, aid to the desperate. As our Constitution said, "This Society can have no good of its own, apart from the good of the Church", i.e. all the children of God. It has been made clear to our unwilling hearts that the means and the cost of any new life is sacrifice.

As Fr Kelly said, "The measure of our effectiveness is, and always will be, the measure of our sacrifice". But he could just as well have written, "the measure of our reality is, and always will be, the measure of our sacrifice". Worship, mission, sacrifice - these are the treasures that we carry with us after every institution of ours has disappeared over the horizon behind us, and these are the treasures that always have and always will give new life to those who are willing to embrace them.

So, my tentative answer to the question "Where is Christ in all this?" would be:

(a) Christ is at the centre of all this because he, the creating word of God, is the doer of all this;

(b) Christ, who came to be our companion in life, is present in the confusion, pain and gathered wisdom of all those who have been assigned a part in this particular chapter of the redemption story;

(c) Christ is present in that future generation, as yet unborn, in a land unknown to us, within the womb of a culture alien to our eyes, wherever and whenever there are persons who resonate to that clear note of worship, mission and sacrifice that has fixed the identity of SSM since day one.

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