Tag Archives: salvation

HOW SHALL I SING?

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Coe Fen from Salisbury

ONE OF OUR ORDINANDS has been longing to get up to Durham for Evensong in the Cathedral there for weeks. Rachael Elizabeth has described the experience (happily on St Cuthbert’s Day) as “cloaked in a golden embrace” – and was thrilled then, and will be again, by a hymn we’ll sing here on Sunday – John Mason’s How Shall I Sing That Majesty? sung to Ken Naylor’s Coe Fen. Huddersfield Choral Society have recorded the hymn and an mp3 is here. I play Winchester Cathedral’s version from Hymns and Psalms Volume 2 constantly. It’s available here.

It’s a question that’s on this parish priest’s heart every day. How shall we sing? How shall the Body of Christ in the 21st century be blessed with resources in hymnody that speak the Word of God for our day? Our theology is a living thing and God speaks “New every morning … our waking and uprising prove”. I’ve written before about some of the hackneyed old stuff – stuffed full of outdated theology – that I believe is positively dangerous in today’s searching and pluralistic society; I’ve written before too of the divisive repetition of carefully selected chunks of Scripture that are then misused to patronise, chastise and exclude. These things will only be replaced, though, when hearts are captured by something that better describes where the people of this contemporary world have got to in their journeying with God and with those many and diverse “others” who make up the one humankind.

The Church of God, like humanity herself, is in the hands of God and will therefore end only if and when God wills it. That’s wholly better news to my eyes and ears than the fulminating “evangelicalism” that bleats on and on about the certain destruction of a Church led by “non-Bible believing liberals”. Dear God help us! They’re not talking good news. There’s nothing truly evangelical  about their perpetually prophesying destruction – and wilfully abrogating the responsibility of all human beings for “salvation” by turns either to Jesus of Nazareth or Rowan of Canterbury. The Primate of All Nigeria, in a statement about Archbishop Rowan’s new appointment says

For us, the announcement does not present any opportunity for excitement. It is not good news here, until whoever comes as the next leader pulls back the Communion from the edge of total destruction. To this end, we commit our Church, the Church of Nigeria, (Anglican Communion) to serious fasting and prayers that God will do “a new thing”, in the Communion.

For 2000 years no single person has shown themselves capable of pulling back an entire communion from anything at all. For pity’s sake let’s not burden Rowan’s hapless-even-before-named successor with this pretence of an expectation – only to knock them down when they don’t meet the mark either. Can’t we stretch our imaginations a bit further? Could we stop looking for unique messiahs and archbishops “possessed of unique qualities”?  Could we stop insisting that our version of messiah – already come or still awaited – is the one and only – the unique possibility? Couldn’t we “apply our minds to Wisdom”? – recognising from henceforth that Divine Sophia is to be found in every atom and fibre of every created thing? “Consider the lilies of the field …”

Could we rewrite the myth (as it has been rewritten so many times before) so that instead of making scapegoats we shared responsibility, under God, every child, woman and man alive, for the “salvation” of our supremely beautiful but tired and aching world and her humankind?

Jesus has never given me the impression that he was or is chiefly interested in our recognising his personal “uniqueness” (apparently keener on being thought of as “son of man” – one of us – than as “Son of God”) ; never implied that (long after his lifetime) “Bible Believing Christians” and their myths and theologies should take precedence over the primacy of experience in the Life and Love of koinonia. The arms wide-open embrace of Jesus of Nazareth was surely an invitation to all humankind to offer similar self-emptying healing and hospitality – and especially, if an “especially” there was ever to be, for those hitherto consigned to the anguish of life’s margins.

So tonight’s music choosing meeting here in little Bramhall was heartening. 5 people engaged in some depth with a shedload of hymnbooks and tunes. We grappled with what the hymns were trying to say alongside what we believed needed to be said to elucidate the Lectionary and to inspire hearts and souls at worship in the next eight weeks. It’s a tough collaborative exercise. It takes time, effort and forbearance – even  choosing how to celebrate Resurrection relevantly, worshipfully and well – but there’s no avoiding the question – Christian people who are liberal and inclusive in heart, soul, mind, body and intention must continue to ask How Shall I Sing? For

Thou art a sea without a shore,
a sun without a sphere;
thy time is now and evermore,
thy place is everywhere.

CONSECRATION AND FULFILMENT

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GENERAL SYNOD has been on my mind! And my mind both wandered and trembled a little (a kind of mental palpitations!) whilst reading the Agenda from the safe distance – and relative peace and quiet – of my vicarage in Bramhall. I’m grateful for those who are possessed of a synodically-minded constitution and am mindful that they’ve got a lot on their plates this week. And that mindfulness has had me thinking some more about what it means when we speak of being “the beloved of God” – male or female, straight or gay, in the “prime of life”, or towards “its closing day”.

Does the synodical environment make it easier to remember our human beloved-ness, or harder? “Is it possible,” asked a beloved (and at the time fairly conservative) bishop friend of mine, “to legislate for love?” What does “salvation” mean for a Church struggling with internal divisions and apparently circular questions on the one hand and circular certainties on the other?

How is it ever possible for anyone to jump down from the merry-go-round in order to have a bit of a rethink? Where is grace to be found in the Church of England this week? Where is grace to be found in what Robert Davis Hughes calls Beloved Dust …

In short, what we call the entire “economy of salvation” from creation through the covenant with Israel, through the Christ event, through the whole subsequent history of the church and the world to the moment we begin to notice is already filled with “grace” in two senses: the entire story is a story of God’s graciousness in and toward creation, and indeed begins in the self-expression of God, the Fount of all Being in an Other, the Word/Wisdom, by the power of the Holy Spirit; second, it is a story, from start to finish, of the mission of the Holy Spirit, from her first mysterious involvement in the generation of God’s triadic unity to her own proper mission in the consecration and fulfilment of all things.

Beloved Dust: Tides of the Spirit in the Christian Life, Robert Davis Hughes III, page 72, Continuum, 2008

Consecration and fulfilment of all things … the mission of the Holy Spirit … my palpitations are quietening, and I turn to my silent night prayer. Consecration and fulfilment of ALL things …

May it be so. Holy Spirit is at work. We must trust her.

THE LIFE OF THE FREE

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13th century icon of St John Climacus, (known as St John of the Ladder) 7th century Christian monk at the monastery on Mount Sinai

God is the life of all free beings. He is the salvation of all: of believers and unbelievers; of the just and the unjust; of the pious or the impious; of those freed from the passions or of those caught in them; of monks or those living in the world; of the educated or the illiterate; of the healthy or the sick; of the young or the very old. He is like the outpouring of the light, the glimpse of the sun, or the changes in the weather, which are the same for everyone without exception.

John Climacus

VULNERABILITY

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(thanks to Graham Turner who drew my attention to this presentation)

JESUS WEPT. Three people, each of whom had lost a precious relative in the past week, homed in on those two words in today’s Gospel account of the raising of Lazarus: Jesus wept. One lady said: “It’s like God knows exactly where I’m at this morning”.

And isn’t that exactly what’s so deeply healing about our deepest and most truthful encounters with God? Isn’t that just exactly what Jesus personifies for us? Isn’t that just exactly what Jesus appears most to love in those around him? A ready and willing vulnerability – to life in general – with all its attendant joys and risks – and to those who live that life, those joys and those risks, alongside and with us. Like God knows exactly where we’re at?

And isn’t that exactly what’s so deeply healing about our deepest and most truthful encounters with one another? Isn’t that just exactly the gift we can personify for others? Isn’t that just exactly what we most love in those around us? A ready and willing vulnerability – to life in general – with all its attendant joys and risks - and to others who live that life, those joys and those risks, alongside and with us. Like we know exactly where God’s at?

Life and love are indeed about risking openness, in God’s case to us, in our case to God – to Life itself – and to one another. Joy and pain, and losing and finding, are all to be found in both kinds of encounter.

Sometimes too quick to grasp at joy, and sometimes too quick to run from pain, it seems that we human persons must learn how to hold the two in proper tension – drawing always and deeply upon Love’s “wells of salvation” that it may, some day be said of us: “she/he is forgiven much because she/he has loved much”. Or, yet more gloriously, “she/he is Risen!”

COME FORTH!

(and thanks to David Herbert for drawing my attention to this “Lazarus Blessing“)

THE ONLY THING I DON’T RUN

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JUSTIN LEWIS-ANTHONY’S “If you see George Herbert …” has been a great read. A breath of fresh air. A challenge to rethink the living out of priestly ministry: everyone’s priestly ministry. The book tackles some of the dangers inherent in “mythos” – the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves – head on. A parish priest goes every evening to watch the passing-by of a regular train just for the joy of it – “because it’s the only thing I don’t run” … (now, if it’s true, whose fault is that!). This is a challenge to the notion of salvation by incessant striving and I’m recommending it to any and all, clergy and laity alike. 3 Minute Theologian contributes a great deal to clarity of thought and purpose. What’s salvation about, for anyone, anyway?

Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts-Schori hit the news headlines at this year’s General Convention as it was understood that she denounced the idea of personal salvation as heresy. “Apparently I wasn’t clear”, writes the bishop in an OPINION column yesterday, the last three paragraphs of which are in my view most helpfully clear … and written at the end of August after several week’s further pondering. Neither knee-jerk reaction nor “incessant striving.”

Salvation depends on love of God and our relationship with Jesus, and we give evidence of our relationship with God in how we treat our neighbors, nearby and far away. Salvation is a gift from God, not something we can earn by our works, but neither is salvation assured by words alone.

Salvation cannot be complete, in an eternal and eschatological sense, until the whole of creation is restored to right relationship. That is what we mean when we proclaim in the catechism that “the mission of the church is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ” and that Christian hope is to “live with confidence in newness and fullness of life and to await the coming of Christ in glory and the completion of God’s purpose for the world.” We anticipate the restoration of all creation to right relationship, and we proclaim that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection made that possible in a new way.

At the same time, salvation in the sense of cosmic reconciliation is a mystery. It’s hard to pin down or talk about. It is ultimately the gift of a good and gracious God, not the product of our incessant striving. It is about healing and wholeness and holiness, the fruit of being more than doing. Just like another image we use to speak about restored relationship, the reign of God, salvation is happening all the time, all around us. Where do you see evidence?

via Episcopal Life Online – OPINION.

The train spotting priest is uncomfortable with the notion that he runs everything. Others are uncomfortable because they feel they don’t run enough. This morning I thank God that there’s one thing I know that we humans absolutely DON’T run. And that’s salvation. Thanks for the reminder Bishop Katharine.