THE “REGULARITY” of a person’s consecration as a bishop has long been a subject of discussion, debate and trial in the Church. Circumstances surrounding that of Chad as Bishop of York led to Theodore, Archbishop of Canterbury, having to advise him that his consecration had been irregular, as the validity of the indigenous consecrating bishops was doubted. Chad replied:
If you believe that my consecration as bishop was irregular, I willingly resign the office; for I have never thought myself worthy of it. Although unworthy I accepted it solely under obedience
Archbishop Theodore later rectified the irregularity and Chad established his seat as Bishop of Lichfield. Centuries later one muses that it was almost certainly Chad’s humility that so powerfully fuelled his abiding effectiveness.
The various parts of St Martin’s are good but the mix is electrifying, as at the first Pentecost when the nations gathered in Jerusalem received the gift of the Holy Spirit and experienced communion at the deepest level. Few communities are as varied in terms of rich and poor, all ages, ethnicity, straight and gay, gender balance (do you know another church with as many men?), all making a welcoming inclusive community.
I wondered then whether the writing was on the wall. Did we have here a bishop who’d advocate in Salisbury the kind of Church the Body of Christ is called to be – truly inclusive community? Well, today The Times reports Bishop Holtam’s taking a brave and lonely stand – in favour of gay marriage. Good news then not only for the Diocese of Salisbury but also for a vastly wider constituency. May it be that some glad day the whole Church of God is able to agree, joyfully, that “the mix is electrifying”. Then, I believe, we’ll all experience communion at the deepest level.
Petitioning
House of Bishops and General Synod
(Allow priests in the CofE the freedom to bless civil partnerships)
“Tina is that thunderstorm that drenches the earth, rattles the windows, and makes the world seem more alive afterward.”
SO I TURNED THE VOLUME UP and let her rip a couple of times today! I want to try to clear my head of the nasty sights and sounds that appear to have become an institutional necessity in some religious quarters. I’m ashamed of the cat calling and the hissing (from all sides) that is currently surrounding the news that “five bishops will cross the Tiber”. God help us. When will we learn to stop being so damnably rude to each other?
Whether River Deep in our “neighbourhood” is the Bhagirathi, the Ganges, the Indus, the Jordan, the Tiber or the Turag, whether Mountain High is Gerazim, Sinai or Zion – the crossing and the climbing – River Deep, Mountain High – should lead all of us to be able to say
“only now my love has grown – and it gets stronger, in every way, and it gets deeper, let me say, and it gets higher, day by day”
Why, O why does humankind wallow about in the swamps of subterfuge and self-righteous certainties? For God’s sake let’s stop firing our assertions at one another and make room for all of us to breathe. Jesus assured his own L-plate wearers, his own “disciples”, that they still had a great deal to learn. All great spiritual teachers encourage humankind still to aspire, still to reach out, still to hunger, still to grow towards a great vision of peace. So let’s do a bit less carping and name calling and a bit more growing. Can a woman be a bishop? Of course she can. Many already are in all but name. Do each of the many branches of the world’s faiths lead different people to proper and real experience of Almighty God? Of course they do … and Jesus recognised the fact. Have any of the said world faith traditions the right to insist that every man, woman and child must sign on their own specialised dotted line? Well, I seriously doubt it.
Does God stop loving us, does God withdraw the Divine Life from any of us when we behave like boors? Absolutely not. Because the Rivers are deep and the Mountains are high. We’re made to traverse and to climb, to grow and to keep on learning.
May something more of the Divine Love be seen in and amongst any and all who strive after the “things of God” – and may that love “rattle the windows, and make the world seem more alive afterward” … for God’s sake. And ours.
River Deep – Mountain High
When I was a little girl
I had a rag doll
Only doll I’ve ever owned
Now I love you just the way I loved that rag doll
But only now my love has grown
And it gets stronger, in every way
And it gets deeper, let me say
And it gets higher, day by day
And do I love you my oh my
Yeh river deep mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
When you were a young boy
Did you have a puppy
That always followed you around
Well I’m gonna be as faithful as that puppy
No I’ll never let you down
Cause it grows stronger, like a river flows
And it gets bigger baby, and heaven knows
And it gets sweeter baby, as it grows
And do I love you my oh my
Yeh river deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
I love you baby like a flower loves the spring
And I love you baby just like Tina loves to sing
And I love you baby like a school boy loves his pet
And I love you baby, river deep mountain high
Oh yeah you’ve gotta believe me
River Deep, Mountain High
Do I love you my oh my, oh baby
River deep, mountain high
If I lost you would I cry
Oh how I love you baby, baby, baby, baby
I’M STILL READING THE HOST OF MATERIAL, and the responses to it, that have come out of The Episcopal Church in the United States’ General Convention. Though understood, received and responded to in as many different ways as there are human beings it’s certainly true, as the song has it, that “All over the world the Spirit is moving!” I’ve read and re-read the Presiding Bishop’s closing address to Convention, some of the closing paragraphs of which are hereunder:
Jesus is prodding Simon Peter into that kind of tension when he asks him if he loves him more than these. Do you love me? Do you really love me? Can I trust that you love me? Then go out there and feed my sheep!
What are the lesser loves, what does Jesus mean when he asks if Peter loves him more than these? Does he mean the other disciples? The fish they’ve just had for breakfast? The vocation of fishing? Or maybe the whole package? Whatever it is, it has to move into the background if Peter is going to feed and tend the flock. Around here I think it has something to do with how right we think we are. What or who are we more in love with, than Jesus?
The job is to feed the sheep. Nothing else matters a whole lot. And Jesus is clear that it’s not just the flock right in front of us. There are other hungry sheep that we don’t see every day, which is one reason for many shepherds. We may all be sheep, but we all also share in the work of shepherds.
It’s of immeasurable assurance to me that one of our Anglican Primates is the present grace-filled and rock-steady Archbishop of Canterbury, and that another is the prophetic and pioneering Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori. The two don’t always agree with each other, and I don’t always pretend to understand the nuanced giftedness in either, but the Spirit illuminates Word and Sacrament through each of them. And I believe that spells hope and more encouraging tomorrows for us all. God grant us grace to pray daily for the shepherds.
A GREAT DAY. Bishop Frank Sargeant preached at the Chester ordinations today, taking the Benedictus as his text. If John the Baptist was the forerunner of Christ his successors today are the post-runners. Congratulations Ann – and to all the newly ordained. Photos at Flickr.
I’M TRYING TO BE FAITHFUL to the faith ‘once delivered’. But this being faithful knows no call for exclusion; no teaching or practice that tears humans apart; no devotion to Scripture without inspiration.
The title for the launch of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans in Westminster Central Hall at 10.30 on July 6th says it all: Be faithful. That is our calling as Anglican Christians today. The Scriptures exhort us to remain faithful to the faith ‘once for all delivered to the saints’, to the Lordship of Christ and hence to Apostolic teaching and practice.
Powerful cultural forces, exerted through social pressure, the media and legislation are forcing Christians to conform to the way of the world in matters of marriage and sexuality. The Episcopal Church in North America, the Anglican Church of Canada and others have embraced these forces and, often without due process and against natural justice, are forcing out those Anglicans who seek to remain faithful to Biblical teaching and practice. In the church in the West generally there is a gradual slide in the same dangerous direction.
The gathering on July 6th will express the unity of Anglican Christians in their loyalty to the teachings and commands of Jesus.
I DROVE MY NEW COLLEAGUE over to Bishop’s House this morning, and drove home with a full heart, praying a bit, and hoping a lot, for Ann and for all who are preparing to be ordained this weekend. I pray they’ll have a good retreat, one and all. Whatever they hear there will live on in their hearts for the rest of their lives; along with Sunday’s episcopal bidding, already well rehearsed:
In the name of our Lord, we bid you remember the greatness of the trust in which you are now to share: the ministry of Christ himself, who for our sake took the form of a servant. Remember always with thanksgiving that the people among whom you will minister are made in God’s image and likeness. In serving them you are serving Christ himself, before whom you will be called to account. You cannot bear the weight of this calling in your own strength, but only by the grace and power of God. Pray therefore that your heart may daily be enlarged and your understanding of the Scriptures enlightened. Pray earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Elation, I remember, at my Deacon’s Retreat in 1982, alongside a gnawing terror that came upon me suddenly. Neither the years of training, nor the cathedral rehearsal, prepare you for the day: “we bid you remember the greatness of the trust”. Glory be! This is serious, serious stuff. About as serious as serious gets. And seriousness has remained. But so too elation.
Amongst the joys and the sorrows, trials and tribulations, great faith and lost faith, hectic round and R S Thomas’ absence of clamour, a theological twinkle has remained a constant companion: Geoffrey Paul, on the occasion of his Enthronement as sixth Bishop of Bradford, in 1981, said
I don’t find faith any easier than any of you, and must echo the words of the epileptic boy’s father in a modern translation: ‘Lord, I believe but not enough.’ I shall want to do everything I can to help you to believe in practice what you say you believe, and I shall rely greatly on your faith and love and prayers to help me in my unbelief, so that by enlarging the area of believing, we may give God room to demonstrate his strange Christalmightiness in our midst.
And then, being a Christian is a matter of belonging to Christ with those who are his, and of course there is no way of belonging to Christ except by belonging, gladly and irrevocably, to all that marvellous and extraordinary ragbag of saints and fatheads who make up the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.
The Enthronement Sermon, in The Pattern of Faith, an exposition of Christian doctrine by Geoffrey Paul, Churchman Publishing, 1986, page 135
And all who heard him knew that he was a holy bishop, and serious, and humane, and Christ-like and absolutely-hit-the-nail-on-the-head-dead-right. Encouragement there for retreatants tonight. Elated and serious, “remember the greatness” … gladly and irrevocably you’re to be marvellous and extraordinary, in company with all God’s people, both a saint and a fathead. Thank God, and sing alleluia!
A THOROUGHLY ENJOYABLE AWAY FIXTURE tonight for deanery Confirmation at St Mary, Stockport. Bishop Robert Atwell preached encouragingly and affirmingly, I don’t think I’ve heard a better intro to a Confirmation sermon – a brief reading from the Introduction to Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything …
Welcome … I am delighted that you could make it … In fact I suspect it was a little tougher than you realise … (page17)
A man in his seventies and teenagers baptised alongside each other, 24 confirmed, great music, rousing hymn-singing, a coming together of old friends and new ones across parish and deanery boundaries … an affirming and a confirming of the faith of the Church and not just of our parish church. I think I’ll be looking out for deanery Confirmations in the future.
