IT was 188 years ago that the foundation stone of this church was laid and 186 years ago, almost to the day, when it was consecrated...and some of us feel we have been here ever since.
Apart from this building, not a lot of the old Poplar from those days remains - and we can almost say the same about the changes which have taken place within our own lifetimes.
The docks, which were the lifeblood of East London, have given way to the towering monuments of the financial world; but the changes go much deeper than that...in fact, right to the very heart of community life.
Poplar Hospital disappeared 27 years ago; the police station opposite this church went along with it; and the present Chrisp Street Market is just an apology for the thriving, bustling, exciting place it once was.
If we take only those three examples from the past we can see the loss of a place of care, a place of safety, and a place where people engaged with one another on a daily basis...all essential elements of a caring, secure and supportive society.
Instead of the old back-to-back housing we have the tower blocks; and instead of the milkman bringing our daily pinta we have the impersonal supermarkets.
Now it’s easy to romanticise about the past and to forget all the things that were wrong then, but progress - and there has been real progress - does come at a price and in many ways we have paid a heavy one in terms of radical changes in the social character of East London.
Through all this, however, All Saints has survived. The flame of Christian faith is still alive in this corner of Poplar.
At home I have a picture, taken about 22, 23 years ago, of the congregation as it was then and I went cockeyed this week trying to count the faces in it. The closest I could get was 111 and then I went through them again to count how many were still here...which was about half. Some of the remainder had moved away, but the majority, sadly, had died.
Our electoral roll wasn’t as great then as it is now - partly because in those days you paid a tax on every name on it; so we weren’t so keen to recruit then...but, given odd moments in its history when the church did experience an excessive number of empty pews, the doors of All Saints have remained open to anyone and everyone.
Each year, as some faces inevitably disappear, others emerge and we saw that again a few weeks ago when 17 new members of our family were confirmed by the Bishop. The day before that the candidates met here to prepare for what some would say was the most important time of their lives. At one point we broke up into small groups and one of the exercises set for us was to discuss who we thought had been inspirational in our lives; and to help us there were pen pictures of two saintly figures from the past.
Later it was thought that next time it might be better to have a more recent example and someone we all know; but I haven’t gone yet, so we’ll have to hang fire on that one.
On second thoughts, it’s probably not a good idea anyway because, as we see in today’s gospel reading, even Jesus found it hard to be accepted in his birthplace.
‘Prophets are not without honour, except in their own house...’
The son of a carpenter had returned to Nazareth as a rabbi, astounding those who heard him with the words he spoke. His teaching was greeted with wonder, but also with a kind of contempt. They were scandalised that a man who came from a background like that of Jesus should say and do such things; and it’s not putting it too strongly to say the people of Nazareth at that time despised Jesus simply because he was a working man.
Sometimes we can be too close to people to value their true strengths; and how do we value that anyway?
It was interesting that the small group I was in during the Confirmation quiet day held views starkly different to the common idea of what constitutes greatness today. We spoke about people, both in the past and the present, who had influenced us and, in particular, how they affected our own way of thinking...just ordinary people, if that is what they deserve to be called.
In spite of the signs of wealth which we see only a few hundred yards from this church, Poplar remains one of the most deprived areas in the country and, in that sense, the challenges faced by people like Will Crooks in the past are still with us today. An estate down the road from here is named after him, but just how privileged was his early lifestyle?
The answer is, not a lot!
Will Crooks was born in Poplar in 1852, the son of a ship’s stoker and a seamstress, and they, like most other families, experienced the extreme privations of poverty. He was just nine when his father was disabled in an industrial accident and Will ended up in the workhouse along with other members of his family; and it was there that he saw men fight each other over a few scraps of bread. In later life, like so many others in this area, he found work as a casual labourer in the docks and by then he was active in the trade union movement.
He became the first working class member of Poplar’s Board of Guardians and then, in 1901, the first Labour mayor of Poplar. He was also only the fourth Labour candidate to be elected to the House of Commons. By the time he died in Poplar Hospital at the age of 69 he had fought tirelessly for social justice and was described as a ‘great evangelist’. Yet he, like Jesus, experienced rejection among his own people.
When he was elected Mayor of Poplar a woman was heard to say: “They’ve made that common fellow, Crooks, mayor, and he’s no better than a working man.” She obviously didn’t realise Will Crooks was in the crowd and he turned round, raised his hat, and said: “Quite right, madam. I am no better than any working man.”
The boy, whose earliest memory of life was the sight of his mother crying because she could not feed her family, had become the man who could say something so profound. In spite of all the hardship he experienced and witnessed in his life, Will Crooks was described as someone with that native East London gift of combining pathos with humour; an ability to use words to turn tears of sympathy into tears of laughter.
It was a gift he shared with a personal favourite of mine, Bud Flanagan. The more mature ones among us will remember the most famous song he ever sang, ‘Underneath the Arches’. Those a bit younger will know him for the signature tune of Dad’s Army...‘Who do you think you are kidding Mr Hitler?’ (In the sermon Tom, of course, played for us the original recordings – some of us had real difficulty at this point in fighting back the tears).
As a trainee reporter on the East London Advertiser I interviewed Bud in his dressing room at the Palace Theatre, where the lovable Crazy Gang played to packed houses. And he made an immense impression on me as he spoke about his early life as Reuben Weintrop, the son of Polish Jewish immigrants living in Whitechapel.
If we look closely at the words, which Bud himself wrote of Underneath the Arches, we can see how they speak very clearly of enduring friendships which flourished and survived in even the harshest times like the Great Depression of the 1930s.
There is no virtue in poverty just for the sake of poverty itself, but in adversity there can be hidden depths of spiritual strength which rise above the hardship and which bind people closer to each other. All Saints has a proud history of inspiring those who come here and by no means has that been confined to high profile personalities.
I remember people like Lil and Bert Higgs, the parents of a schooldays friend of mine, who came to the faith late in life. It was a chance meeting with a member of staff at the time that brought them here. They would never have accepted they were special in any way and, in fact, they would have have described themselves as very ordinary indeed.
And yet, in that simplicity and in the faith to which they became so committed, they radiated what I believe this church is all about.
Primarily, of course, it is about knowing God and, as St Paul discovers in a process of intense self-examination in today’s epistle, knowing that He gives us the strength to bear the inevitable pains of life. It is also about the family of Christ to which we are all privileged to belong...and the bond of love which says no matter how much things around us change that will always be constant in our lives.
We know progress, if that is what it should be called, has changed radically the nature of life in Poplar and that communities have become fragmented. Far more people live alone these days and even the extended families, which once underpinned the fabric of community life in East London, have largely ceased to exist.
In a rapidly changing world, where it is so easy for people to become isolated, we still need those roots in our lives.
The one thing we can be certain of is that the love of Christ will never change.
And as long as this church stands, there will always be a welcome - a place of care, safety and enduring love - for anyone and everyone who walks through its doors.
