Tag Archives: Archbishop of Canterbury

THE WIND BLOWETH …

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SIGNS THAT THE SPIRIT listeth where she wills fill me with a real sense of hope. I pray that history will look upon the Bishop of London and the Dean and Chapter of St Paul’s with a kindly eye. There can hardly be a priest, dean or bishop in the country that hasn’t privately sighed “there, but for the grace of God, go I”. We’ve all done a bit of volte face in our time. Truth to tell, and to pinch an oft used phrase of Bishop Michael Marshall’s: “the many are saved by the few and the few are saved by the one”. Wrong-footed wrath – or even just embarrassment – too quickly and too often demands a scapegoat … until we learn (and – thank God – some are learning) the ways of God a little more perfectly.

The Church in England has long been in need of a bit of a shake up.

I’m mortified every time I hear another weary “Christian” bleat about human sexuality – of whatever shade or hue; embarrassed by the continual twittering about women priests and bishops – there are thousands of women who, whilst waiting for consecration and call to a particular office have just got on and quietly exercised episcopal ministry anyway; irritated by the anonymous demands of “health and safety” – so often more to to do with giving someone a licence to pontificate than with actual health or actual safety;  too frequently angry about “personnel management” and “growth action plans” that give the impression that the only kind of growth that the Church is interested in is its bank balance and the number of seats filled in the nave (the expensive nave that “must” be preserved in every town and village whatever the cost – so the “growth” will preferably be made up of season ticket holders or pay monthly contracts). And God forbid that we should ever be asked to pray in a tent (or a local ecumenical project) … without a stained glass East window. It’s hard going firing slings and arrows at fat cats when you’re hoping against hope that no-one notices your own interest in preserving what you think is “rightfully mine”.

So where’s the sense of hope coming from? Let me name a few reasons:

1. St Paul’s changed its collective mind. You might say that St Paul’s repented. Turned around. Had a rethink. Looked at the situation from a changed perspective after Giles Fraser’s prophetic resignation. And the diocesan bishop Dr Chartres, writing for the Church Times has now said: “I believe that this is a moment in which St Paul’s, and the Church in general, has been shown how it can get away from an in-house ecclesiastical agenda, and its passion for elaborating defensive bureauocracy, in order to serve the agenda of the people of England at a critical moment in our history”. Amen. And hooray.

2. The Archbishop of Canterbury, having joined with 300+ other faith leaders at an interfaith –  :) – event in Assisi, organised by Pope Benedict XVI, said: “Lasting peace begins when we see the neighbour as another self, and so begin to to understand how and why we must love the neighbour as we love ourselves … human beings do not have to be strangers”. Here’s a man of God for our times. A man who can keep his head when all about him are either losing theirs, or becoming more entrenched in outdated religious conservatisms.

3. I visited the College of the Resurrection at Mirfield the other day. I quickly ordered up a core text I spotted on an ordinand’s bookshelf. How delighted I was to read in his introduction to Faith Seeking Understanding: An Introduction to Christian Theology, Daniel Migliore’s “Authentic faith is no sedative for world-weary souls, no satchel full of ready answers to the deepest questions of life. Instead, faith in God revealed in Jesus Christ sets an inquiry in motion, fights the inclination to accept things as they are, and continually calls in question unexamined assumptions about God, our world, and ourselves … When faith no longer frees people to ask hard questions, it becomes inhuman and dangerous. Unquestioning faith soon slips into ideology, superstition, fanaticism, self-indulgence, and idolatry …” So there’ll be some good people shaping up at Mirfield then. Future priests with their eyes and ears wide open.

And the Spirit of God hovers over the abyss today as yesterday. Blessed be God.

PATCHES GOES TO LAMBETH

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Patches 1834

Patches Chabala with Archbishop Rowan

PATCHES CHABALA wrote today:

I was invited as an international Student Representive at St John’s College to attend a gathering at Lambeth Palace. The theme of the gathering was The Communion We Share. It was great to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury and talk to him. He is a man of high learning but yet so humble and gracious. I have a lot to learn from him.

Patches, an ordinand from Zambia we grew to love quickly, will be preaching in Bramhall on the 2nd August at 10am. Godspeed for him in continuing preparation for ordination, and for his forthcoming marriage. Humility and graciousness are qualities many of us have seen in Patches. And I’m imagining a world, and imagining a Church where, humble and gracious, we were able to say of all we encounter – “I have a lot to learn from … “

FR RADCLIFFE WINS THE MICHAEL RAMSEY PRIZE

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THREE CHEERS FOR FR TIMOTHY RADCLIFFE’S “What’s the point of being a Christian?” … which, it was announced yesterday, has won the 2007 Michael Ramsey Prize for Theological Writing. The five authors I most wish to see in the hands of my fellow Christians today are Rowan Williams’ “Tokens of Trust”, Timothy Radcliffe’s “What’s the Point of Being a Christian?”, Maggi Dawn’s essay “Whose Text is it Anyway?” in “An Acceptable Sacrifice”, Alan Jones’ “Re-imagining Christianity” and Elizabeth Liddle’s “Pip and the Edge of Heaven”. Amongst the most inspirational Christian thinking I’ve read in the past 25 years, I’d hazard that readers of all five will believe they’ve just been to a banquet … and might look forward to attending The Banquet come Sunday.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS

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PEACE AND JOY to you and yours this Christmas night. I’m happy to be at home. I read somewhere that Nigella Lawson “revels in the warmth and light of the house” on Christmas afternoons. Me too. And in bacon sandwiches – always my first reward after the late night and the morning’s Eucharistic worship. But I’m revelling, too, in calling to mind the good natured people I’ve met, in their hundreds, at church services, in the past month; revelling in the truth that in this part of the world there are hundreds of young people who are wonderfully proficient in the art of making music; hundreds who, in one way or another, whether in drama, story-telling, film or friendship, work or worship set out to share Christ’s call to build a peace-filled world.

And it’s a source of particular joy to me that Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas Broadcast makes similar appeal … for “peace, tolerance and goodwill”. Pope Benedict asks “Let us love God and, starting from him, let us also love man, so that, starting from man, we can then rediscover God in a new way!”. Archbishop Rowan of Canterbury told today’s gathering at Canterbury Cathedral that “as he (Jesus) gives, he makes us grow, and sends us to make the same promise in his name to all, whatever the conflicts, whatever the guilt. To all he offers the authority to be children of God; from his fullness we may all receive, grace upon grace.”

Bishop Riah, the Anglican Bishop in Jerusalem writes:

Astronaut Neil Armstrong, first human to step on the moon said: “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” I have always believed in small beginnings. I have a great dream which requires a small step to mushroom in the land. I called it “Integratsia”. I see children of the three Abrahamic faiths: Arab Christians, Moslems, and Jews gathered in the warmth of harmony in one educational center co-living and integrating as one. The iceberg that has been separating people on basis of race, color and religion, has got to melt down. Extend a hand. Make this dream come true.

I’ve met so many people this Christmas who share these dreams that tonight I, too, feel able to “revel in the warmth and light of the house”. May the vision pervade every day, every people and every nation in the coming year, the vision – God’s vision – of light and warmth and peace.

FOREVER FULL

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I’VE GROWN USED, here in Bramhall, to the nearby sound of trains rattling through the night. The sound of life trundling on is comforting and homely somehow. (Yes! – that would be it – 6 years old: Christmas morning: train track around the sofa …) And I’ve come to be able to recognise – by the sound of it, and the degree to which the house shakes – the length of a train, and whether it’s laden or empty. Empty goods trains rattle and grumble. Long after they’ve passed there’s a whispered memory. In my sleep I can still hear them muttering when they’re pulling into the yard up in Manchester. Whereas a fully laden goods train is very much quieter in the night. Much more purposeful. A quick swoooosh. Less invasive. On the way somewhere. A train to be waved to, with a smile. A train that someone might welcome or respond to. Purposeful trains don’t grumble on the line. They don’t rattle.

I like people who are carrying something, with a sense of purpose and a good intent. Last evening I had supper here with 30+ pastoral visitors. An exceptionally nice and gifted bunch of people, not a rattle or a grumble or a whisper amongst them. Synods and Conventions and empty words and journeys don’t feature much in their itineraries. Care of the housebound, care of their families, care in their community is very much more their thing. Here’s a goods train that’s carrying something, with a sense of purpose. Going somewhere. These are the Kingdom people. These are the people who spend less time dissecting the Word and more time living in Him. These are the people who pick ears of corn, on the Sabbath, with which to feed the hungry. Here’s … Immortal love, forever full, forever flowing free. Forever shared, forever whole, a never ebbing sea. For … Our outward lips confess the name all other names above: love only knoweth whence it came and comprehendeth love. (John Greenleaf Whittier). But it was a very substantial supper: so I’m off to the gym.

PS: Please see Fr Tony Clavier’s thoughtful article after Archbishop Rowan’s published Reflection this week …

LOOKING UPWARDS

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WHAT WOULD JESUS SAY? – my friend Bill would almost always interject … sometimes to the considerable chagrin of one or two of us … who were very probably articulating our current flight of fancy at the time. What would Jesus say?

And the painful answer often was, and is, that we’re not entirely sure! And this is sometimes the more acutely painful because our human conditioning makes of us a people who want to be sure what we’re about, what we’re doing, what we’re believing. And – to complicate matters further – there are some folk who, in addition, want to be sure what others are about, or are doing, or are believing. This is real human commerce! This is the stuff of what it means to be community … to live together.

Archbishop Rowan speaks words of counsel in his The Challenge and Hope of Being an Anglican Today: A Reflection for the Bishops, Clergy and Faithful of the Anglican Communion. (see Ruth Gledhill)

Meanwhile in parishes around the globe we chatter about “Fresh Expressions”, of “Looking Outwards”, of “Justice” and of “Peace”; of mission and of schism, of unity and of disunity; of straight and of gay. And in all of this, and more, I’m endlessly interrupted by Bill’s “What would Jesus say?”

And difficult though it be I know that I ought to have a better idea of what Jesus might say to the Church in our day. I ought to have a clearer idea of what Jesus is saying to me. And so, deep down, I know that I must spend less time looking backwards, forwards, outwards, inwards or sideways, and learn to look upwards.

I’ll come to a clearer understanding of Jesus’ view of things when I study the Scriptures and share in the Sacraments with that openness of mind and heart that is invoked by true “worship in Spirit and in truth” … and when I remember, amidst the clamour and the clatter of life in the Church and in the world that whatever Jesus would say, whatever Jesus is saying, HIS tone is a “still, small voice of calm”.

Let me then pay more attention to “looking upwards”: more to worship, and to prayerful listening, than to soapbox flights of fancy … or good old (bad old) religiosity …

What would, what does, JESUS say?

A FAITH-FULL MONARCH

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ALL THE CHRISTMAS DAY CELEBRATIONS I can remember in my life have known one constant feature – Her Majesty the Queen’s Christmas broadcast. I can’t remember missing one – or ever wanting to miss one. In recent years (2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005) I have been moved to tears by these broadcasts. Tears of joy and gratitude for a wise and gracious Monarch, full of Christian faith, who speaks of that faith with touching simplicity and depth, and whose unashamedly Christian faith so very naturally and generously embraces, after the manner of Christ Himself, people of all faiths and none. Anointed, long ago, when crowned, Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth has ever since ‘anointed’ this nation with gifts of Christ-like service, wisdom and compassion. God save the Queen.

On Thursday last Archbishop Rowan of Canterbury preached what has become famously described, by the Times correspondent Ruth Gledhill, as a ‘stonking’ good sermon in honour of Her Majesty’s 80th birthday. All who read it will find further cause to give thanks for a wise and gracious Archbishop. Again: God save the Queen. And may God sustain our Archbishop.