HERESY? FIRST ORDER?

THERE’S NO GETTING ROUND IT: I’m spending more and more time in company with people who tell me that they’ve been called “heretic” by “Christian friends”. And I love being with them – the “heretics” I mean. They’re immensely attractive. They’re almost always lovely, open-hearted, self-deprecating, generous people. They’re often people whose hearts have been hollowed out by suffering of one kind or another so that they’ve become Real – with themselves and with others. They sniff out cant and hypocrisy in an instant. They’re suspicious of religious claims that we’re all called to lifetimes of uncomplaining suffering because they see and hear and smell and taste and touch joy in the air. They’re living, breathing, walking Jubilate!

The “heretics” I delight in spending time with are so often people who are filled with Life and are life-giving. There’s a light in their eyes. They’re almost always the people who have most patently taken to heart that great teaching, always on the lips of Jesus, to “LOVE”. They’re frequently the people most bemused by the agonising that goes on in religious institutions about “first order issues”. Their hearts and their houses might properly bear the name “Bethlehem – birthplace of the Christ” because out of them comes the bread of life and the new wine of the Kingdom. And instead of talking about mission, instead of breast-beating about the kaleidoscope of opinions that life brings to the fore in each of us, they just get on with it. They are the mission. They’re alive and changing. Twisting and turning. Looking at life this way and that. Never minding when there’s a new hymn-tune. Happy to sing-along anyway. These are the people who are always at the wicket. They never take their bat home. Jesus loved them. And they inspirit me.

Some of them are musicians … today I thank God for one who writes “With a Song in My Heart” about Order and Orders. Some who’ve been called “heretic” (and worse) are Cathedral deans, and there’s a decidedly prophetic one in Southwark … who’s also a great Bible teacher amongst other gifts: Colin Slee preached recently about

the revelation of the presence of God that we can discover and proclaim in the most ordinary experiences of life.

Others of my aquaintance who’ve been described as “heretic” are wonderful people who are getting on with the daily business of living “the most ordinary experiences of life” – blessing and changing the lives of those around them by their very willingness to think, to listen, to challenge prejudice, to translate and interpret, to “unfold the Word of God” for our times and our people and our place. So many of them could easily be mistaken for Jesus of Nazareth, men, women and children amongst them.

In his recent Charge to the General Synod of the Scottish Episcopal Church the Primus, Bishop David Chillingworth said:

“… the church is energised when we begin to explore what mission means. Even to talk about it brings to people a feeling that they are handling what faith is about. No longer is the discourse about the church – no longer is it for insiders alone. The church becomes a Pentecost place where everybody can speak in their own language the wonders and the richness of God in their lives”

I’ve just spent another morning in a café church of just three persons. (Don’t miss another “Song in the Heart” here). After we’d ordered the coffee the other “first order” issues involved shared recognition and passionate conviction that we’re all called to “consider the lilies of the field” … many lilies in many fields … none of them truly heretical … “See how your Heavenly Father cares for them” … and to celebrate the importance of each and every one of them. And if that kind of Christian discipleship is to be called “heresy” then we’ll just let it be so. For that kind of “heresy” isn’t a bad thing.