Historic day - C of E's First female bishop

Today history was made in the Church of England.  The first woman to become a bishop in the Church of England was consecrated in York Minster.  It was a landmark in a long journey and more are sure to follow as the year progresses.  A bishop is a bishop, so while we have been referring to 'women bishops' really there are just bishops, some of whom are men and now some are women.  I rejoice in this and have campaigned for it for decades.  Ministry is enriched when it is shared, and that goes for ordained ministry too.

There was a sour note at the service in York as a protestor objected.  He has form but the response from the minster congregation spoke for the vast majority of the church.  When asked if it was their will that this ordination take place the building resounded with a very loud 'It is'.  Most of the bishops of the Church of England were there to be part of this.  The symbolism is clear, the Church rejoices.

There will be another bishop consecrated next week.  He is from the group that do not receive this development.  The Archbishop of York has said that he will exercise 'gracious restraint' and not lay hands on him - the technical term for making him a bishop.  Whatever he says about this not being a theology of taint, I cannot see any other reason for not joining in if it isn't about the Archbishop being seen as tainted by having ordained Libby Lane today.  If there is no need for it, don't do it.  This undermines the five principles on which we are supposed to be going forward together.  It also means that if this becomes the normal practice then that group will slip into a separate existence from the rest of the church.  That is not what General Synod voted for back in July.  So I think 'gracious restraint' is actually 'mistaken separation'.

That is for next week though.  Today I rejoice at the new normality that now pertains in the Church of England and look forward to hearing of further appointments as the year progresses.

"Je suis..." Identity, solidarity and free speech

Who are we?  We are you?  This simple question, familiar to fans of the pop group ‘The Who’ from the 1970s, with their song ‘Who are you', and those of us over a certain age, begs another fundamental question.  Is it ‘who am I’ or ‘who are we’?  We are persons in community and so there is no ‘I’ without ‘we’.  That has its foundation in God, in how we understand God as Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the Trinity, our doctrine of God, is foundational for any understanding of who we are, of who I am.

This question about who we are has been raised in the last few weeks rather dramatically and tragically.  And the week of prayer for Christian Unity asks it too.  Answers have abounded.  We have seen placards bearing the statement ‘Je suis Charlie’, ‘I am Charlie’.  It is an expression of solidarity with the murdered cartoonists in Paris.  It has echoes of John Donne’s famous poem, 

“No man is an island entire of itself…
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know
for whom the bell tolls;
it tolls for thee.” 

We are united at a basic level of humanity and ‘I’, ‘me’, only exists because there is ‘we’, humanity.  We are brothers and sisters.

Outside St John’s Church in Cathedral Square we have a poster which proclaims that “we are ‘N’”.  Underneath this is the Arabic letter ‘N’ and it stands for ‘Jesus, the Nazarene’.  This is a symbol that has been daubed on the doors and houses and churches of Christians in Syria and other places marking them out, identifying them for persecution by extremist groups.  There was encouragement over the summer and autumn to stand alongside our persecuted brothers and sisters by displaying this poster and it’s statement ‘we are N’.  The Archbishop of Canterbury has this as his profile picture on Facebook and Twitter.  I have it added to mine as a badge.  We are ‘N’ because we share the name of Jesus, and it is to him that our primary allegiance is due, above all others.  Christian Unity week reminds us that this is what unites us.  We share the name of Jesus, we share allegiance to him above all others, and it is a week to remember our unity in Christ, in Jesus the Nazarene, the name above all other names, at whose mention every knee is to bow in adoration, rather than to focus on our differences.

The Jesus we are identifying with is our crucified Lord and on the cross he shares our fallen humanity and shares in our suffering.  He takes it into himself.  So when people are persecuted, as in France, but more numerously in Nigeria under Boko Haram, in Syria and in so many other places which have not been given any where near the same publicity as the European atrocities, when these terrible things take place, Christ suffers too because we see him in the faces of those who suffer.  Whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, we do to him; whatever is done to the least of these, is done to him.  We are ‘N’ reminds us that Christ suffered, suffers with us and with the persecuted.  They share in his sufferings and are blessed by this.  The blessing comes because God doesn’t abandon them but identifies with them, holds them, redeems them.

Our readings this morning talked about God calling us to follow him.  Samuel heard the call as a young boy in the Temple (1 Samuel 3:3-19).  The story gives us Samuel hearing God in the night and not understanding what was going on.  Just before where we picked it up, the Old Testament writer tells us that the word of the Lord was rare and visions were not widespread.  The old priest guardian, Eli, to whom Samuel goes, eventually catches on and realizes that God is speaking to the boy.  The message is not pleasant for Eli.  His sons don’t do what they should do and Eli is blamed for not guiding them.  The consequences will be terrible.  And here we are taken back to the ‘I’ and ‘we’ discussion with which I began.  Samuel does not receive a private message but one for the community, for Eli and his sons.  This message was not pleasant and could be taken as being offensive.  It would have been easy for Samuel to avoid saying the hard things that Eli needed to hear.  But Eli realizes that Samuel must speak and he must hear.

When we speak, when speech is freely allowed, as it should be, there is also a responsibility to be aware of the consequences of what we say.  Free speech exists in the context of the ‘I’ and the ‘we’.  No one exists as an island, but we belong together so whatever we say is for a common purpose.  It is communication after all, so there is a message to be heard, even if it is muddled and mixed up – the muddle is part of the message, and speaker and hearer need to realize that they share this connection in the exchange.  When the ‘I’ tries to exist and express in a vacuum, things become distorted and disconnected.  That disconnect leads to tension and conflict, which has at its root a lack of humility and grace to be shaped as disciples of a higher purpose.  At least Eli recognized this.  This was colourfully expressed by PopeFrancis this week when he said that if you say a curse word against his mother you can expect a punch.  There are consequences, there will be a reaction, our free speech is in a context and it should be used for a purpose that is wholesome and uplifting, not destructive, though of course challenge is acceptable, is to be expected, just as Samuel challenged Eli.

This is taken on by St Paul in the Epistle reading (1Corinthians 6:13-20), where he reminds us that what we do is for a moral purpose.  Again the passage begins just before where we began to read.  All things may be lawful but not all things are beneficial.  Our bodies are to glorify God; the freedom that we have is for the purposes of God.  There are consequences and therefore there are boundaries because we want what we do to be blessing, to be wholesome and to build us as children of God.

The Gospel reading gave us the call of Jesus’ followers (John1:35-42).  Andrew finds his brother Simon Peter and tells him about Jesus.  That call comes to all of us to follow Jesus.  All of us are ‘N’, named after the Nazarene and therefore all of us have to ask what following him means. For the Gospel writer it means finding others and encouraging them to follow too.

So this past week has asked us who we are, who you are.  The question was posed by crowds identifying with those who were murdered and affirming the importance of free speech.  Freedom is set in a context, not a vacuum, and that context is our common humanity, derived from God.  We are persons in community, as God is three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Our primary allegiance is to Jesus the Nazarene and the call to follow him.  ‘Je suis Jesu’; ‘We are N’.  That is the source of our unity for this week of prayer.  After all it comes from his prayer on the night before he died that we would all be one as he and the Father are one.

Sermon preached at St Peter & All Souls Roman Catholic Church, Peterborough for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity, Sunday 18th January 2015

New Year Resolution: positive force for good online

New Year is a time to look back, assess what has been and then to look forward in hope and new resolve.  January 1st is an ancient Roman feast of Janus, the two headed god who looked back and forward.  Since 1750 it has been the New Year change point.  Resolutions abound and founder.  In a brave moment I resolved to aim to be a positive force for good in the cyber-world of social media.  The spur for this was that I see, and am also on the receiving end of, so much destructive energy through Tweets and Facebook posts, through the assumptions behind so many websites.  It starts to become corrosive of the noble virtues of 'whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, commendable, worthy of praise' appealed to by St Paul in his letter to the Philippians (4:8).  There is much on the internet that corrodes and stirs up all sorts of visceral drives that are uncontrolled and there is a need for a counter to help show a different way.

So what does being a 'positive force for good' in the cyber-world mean?  Here are a few of the ideas that were in my mind as I made the resolution.

Does it build up?

Does it encourage?

Does it bless and is it life giving?

Does it reflect a deeper purpose?

Does it challenge in the light of that deeper purpose and its values?

Does it respect and honour?

These are the questions I will try to keep before me to help me in trying to be true, honourable, just, pure, pleasing and commendable and worthy of praise.

I might falter at times.  I get frustrated and fed up like everyone else - the corrosion wears holes - but I am going to aim to be called back to these noble virtues.  If I can't find a way of balancing them, then that is not the moment to post my thoughts!  Social media is not a good place to vent frustration.  It is a good place to share ideas, challenge with penetrating questions, but with respect and honour, even if I disagree profoundly with another, especially when I disagree.  It may catch on.

Idea on a mission: Word connecting and inspiring

A number of people have been talking over the last few weeks about a football match a hundred years ago.  The location was the trenches of the First World War.  The match is supposed to have involved British and German troops who came out of their trenches as part of a Christmas Day cease-fire to kick a ball about.  It is a wonderful story of hope in the darkness of war, but unfortunately there is some dispute about whether it actually happened, or on what scale.  There is little evidence, just a few references in some letters home to England and nothing from the German side, and what there is is not as clear as it is often assumed to be. 

One historian has suggested that what is likely is that there was a desire to bury the dead whose bodies lay where they fell in no-man’s land and it did not seem right to leave them like that at Christmas.  So this desire to put it right gave courage and impetus to reach out to common humanity and risk being shot.  From that one or two started to meet in the middle, in no-man’s land, and exchanged some form of greeting.  A Christmas truce broke out with a ceasefire, though not everywhere and some were still killed.  It’s a bit like the scene in the film War Horse, where the opposing armies come together to free a horse trapped in the barbed wire and the common effort makes a connection not possible when firing from trenches across a wasteland.

The tragedy here is that the next day the hostilities started again and as we know lasted for another three years.  Jon Snow, the veteran journalist and broadcaster, said on Saturday that if there had been news cameras present at the time, he thinks the pictures would have led to such a public outcry that war would have been impossible afterwards.  Peace would have been given such a powerful portrayal that no one would have been able to ignore it or carry on as before.  I’m not so sure it’s that straightforward.

When people do meet, though. as people, find a common humanity through which to engage, differences start to reduce in size.  They don’t disappear, but it becomes harder to demonise when you know the other’s interests and have shared a meal or a pint or a joke; when you’ve seen the picture they carry with them of their special person or cat.  These kinds of meeting matter enormously but they don’t remove all differences entirely.  They don’t suddenly make oppression disappear, challenge systemic injustice or structural inequalities, whatever the causes of the conflict might be.  They don’t resolve competing visions or understandings which affect how we behave and act.  These things require the meeting to deepen and conversations to emerge, negotiations and discussions to be rooted in the reality, to become relational at a much deeper level.  For that we need words and understanding, we need listening and speaking through a common language and imagery, particularly if interpretation is also needed.  But becoming conscious of our common humanity makes these conversations more likely and eases their way.

There was an interesting discussion on In our Time on Radio 4 a few weeks ago.  An evolutionary biologist described language and communication as being about persuasion, and even manipulation.  The aim of communication is to try to get the other to do something we want or to behave in a certain way.  If it is to see something from a different point of view then the ultimate aim is to change behaviour in some way.  It is no mere passing of the time of day but serves a purpose for survival and flourishing.  Human beings are social beings, and words matter; they make a difference to social interaction.  If that interaction is affectionate, then the words are part of bonding and nurturing affection.  If the relationship is one where something is wanted from the other, then the words are an attempt, a way, of trying to entice that, to persuade or even force it out of them.

This is where the Christmas gospel, of ‘the Word becoming flesh’ (John 1:1-14), becomes profound and earthed at the same time.  The concept that we translate as ‘Word’ is a deeply philosophical one from Greek and Hebrew thought.  It is the very purpose and essence, the thoughts and understanding, the wisdom of the one who expresses it.  Words convey profound meaning.  The ‘Word’ at the beginning is the purpose and idea of God in creating.  So to talk of ‘the Word being among us’ is to say that all of this was present in the mystery of the Christ-child.  As ‘Word’ this is not just an idea, but an idea on a mission to persuade and affect behaviour, attitudes and allegiances.  The Word among us aims to change us and inspire us, just as the Word at the beginning of creation caused change by bringing all into being, by bringing the plan and purpose to fruition.

When enfleshed this Word as idea on a mission is humanized, the language of social beings is adopted.  The idea on a mission is present in a form we can relate to and to which we can respond.  Like the meeting in no-man’s land it makes hearing the message more likely because it comes with human warmth and empathy.  It calls, it shares, it empathises and it embraces.  Blessing comes through touch, the mystery of the touch of heaven on earth.  This is what John was conveying in his wonderful opening prologue to his gospel.  The Word, the idea and purpose of God is present in a form that we can relate to in the person of Jesus Christ.

The last few days have been touched by tragedy.  There was the murder, slaughter of children in Peshawar, leaving the world shocked and repulsed.  There was the tragic accident in Glasgow with the deaths of 6 people when a rubbish lorry went out of control.  And here, our cathedral community is in deep shock following the death of one of the young lay clerks yesterday morning in a cycling accident.  This follows closely on the deaths of a number of others which have touched the community.  These events sober the headiness of partying and take the shine off the celebrations, but they don’t cancel Christmas.  The Word among us comes precisely to these situations.  It brings a sense of purpose behind life and holding life in the thick of life.  Even in the darkest moments the birth of the Christ-child comes holding and keeping hold of our life.  When we lose our way or we are touched by evil or tragedy, we are called back by the word that speaks justice, freedom and life.  When we cry we find we are not alone because the eternal is alongside.

The Word becoming flesh makes a difference.  It is not remote and detached, but comes on a mission to connect and inspire, to hold and to keep hold of the life it gives.  By being present it is able to communicate its message in a way it could not if it remained remote and distant, like the meetings in no-man’s land 100 years ago.  As the origin of life it is also the goal and that is why the darkness cannot overcome it.  Christmas brings a triumphant shout which has the last word, as it had the first.

Sermon preached at Peterborough Parish Church, Christmas Midnight 24th December 2014

God's confidence in creation

History has been made this week with the announcement of the first woman bishop in the Church of England.  The candidate is someone that has not been on any of the media shortlists and was not one of the bookies favourites but has been one of the eight women observers at the House of Bishops’ meetings.  She is an ordinary priest, Vicar of Hale in Manchester, though no doubt with some extra ordinary gifts, as so many have.  She is one of the batch of women who have been ordained in the natural order of things – she was among the first to be deaconed and priested according to the same timescale that her male colleagues have been through.  She was not ordained in any of the catch up ordinations.  She is, as I termed it at the diocesan celebration of 20 years of women priests in the Church of England, held here in June, part of the ‘new normality’.  All of this is an occasion for great rejoicing.  “My soul magnifies the Lord.” (Luke 1:46)  “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes.” (Psalm 118:23)

Libby Lane will be consecrated in the New Year, on 26^th January in York Minster.  She will need our prayers for what lies ahead, even without the added pressure of being the first woman to hold such an office.  There will be a media whirl around her and I pray that she will not have to bear this weight on her own for long, that there will be a flurry of similar appointments over the coming months – there are certainly plenty of vacancies and women with the gifts and skills required to match them.  I expect at least one of the diocesan bishop vacancies will be a woman in the coming months too.  It would be bizarre if that were not the case.  Clearly there is a determination for it to happen.

An ordinary woman changing history, bearing Christ to the world, bringing to birth God’s grace among us!  Well, where have we heard that before?  We have heard it in our gospel reading as the angel announced the startling news to Mary that she was to bear and give birth to the Christ, God among us and this would be possible because the Holy Spirit would make it happen (Luke 1:26-38).  God brings life to spring up where there was previously none.  He makes those who think new birth is no longer possible to conceive as in the case of Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist.  She is already expecting.  God has worked wonders already.  Just because it hasn’t happened before is no straight jacket for the Christian Church founded on this gospel.  Astounding things are part of the new normality which Christ brings in through being brought to birth by Mary.  The Christian faith has radical transformation, change and disruption written into its title deeds.

And the wonder is that this comes through an ordinary woman.  We know next to nothing of her background, though traditions have been built up over the centuries.  Sadly some of them serve to make her exceptional and something separate from the rest of us and to my mind these miss the startling point.  The idea that Mary’s conception was itself out of the ordinary, the belief held by some known as the ‘Immaculate Conception’, is to the my mind a distortion of what we are presented with in Mary.  She is ordinary.  She is just a young woman.  And the rest of us are just ordinary too.  But we also know that we can do remarkable things and be agents of change in the world.  So it should not surprise us that she can too.  We are all called to bring Christ to birth in our hearts and lives and to be midwives of his kingdom.  That is remarkable too.  Mary being chosen is exceptional, but also not.  It is God’s incredible, profligate love at work and it touches us too.

All of this is because God has confidence in his creation.  If he didn’t, he wouldn’t bother with it.  He made it, brought it all into being through the mysterious and wonderful processes that are creation and evolution, and this was not accidental but planned and thought through, if we can use that language.  Mary stands as an incredible symbol of that confidence.  God is not distant but literally among us and inside us bringing his purposes to fruition and completion.  The world is pregnant with the grace of God and so are we.  This is startling news.  We don’t need to be born through some out of the ordinary way for God to find us worthy of his attention and overshadowing.  We just have to say ‘let it be with me according to your word’.

But there is a desire to keep God at a distance – God is so much safer that way.  If we could find a microscope surely we could find God in the shadows or tucked away in some distant corner of the universe.  But this is not what the God of Christ brought to birth through Mary reveals about himself.  We will not find him like that because he is not separate in that way.  The world is alive because of God and without God would not be.  It is not separate from but exists within.  So God breaking in, or breaking out, however you want to see this, is not actually that unusual.  And when we have got our heads round the observation that there is sentient, conscious and intelligent life at all, then God’s presence concentrating or popping up is not that fanciful after all.

Some of what we talk about when thinking of Mary is heavily laden with metaphor as are all our religious musings.  Some of those metaphors work better than others for me.  I find myself bristling when the metaphor being used serves to distance us from God, rather than affirm God’s confidence in his creation as it should do.  So when the choir sings anthems from a past age to Mary as ‘Queen of Heaven’, wonderful pieces from the choral heritage that they are, at best I find them unhelpful – sometimes audibly so, as my colleagues will testify!  Everything we say about Mary is actually about God’s grace among us and for us in Christ.  She is one of us, not separate from us, and so if we affirm her to be in a state of grace it is because that is the hope we have been given in Christ, the one she bore, for ourselves.  It is metaphor as are the crowns of glory that await God’s saints, the holy ones, those who are brought into the inheritance of Christ as sons and daughters of God.  But it comes through Christ, through God’s redeeming confidence in his creation.  That message gets confused and lost at times, and when I feel that is happening, that is when I bristle!  As a son of the Reformation and unashamedly so, I want to restore a balance I think has been lost, which is what the Reformation was about – recalibrating the balance.

Some of what we say about Mary carries misogynistic overtones.  We refer to her sexual status.  On one level this points to the wonder of God’s activity, bringing life and his grace to fruition, whether that is as a metaphor or literal, but it is set in the context of a world that made women ritually unclean and required purification after childbirth.  This now seems strange at best to our ears.  So we need to watch out that what we say doesn’t slip into assumptions which are now seen as sexist and misogynistic.  Mary is an unattainable ideal as a virgin and a mother.  This can form a wedge where we want to affirm her unity with us.  Mary can be made into a stick a patriarchal church uses to beat women and in turn that ends up beating men too because of what is lost of our self-understanding under God through this distortion.

So any celebration of Mary always comes with a health warning.  What we say about her should enrich and enhance our understanding of God in Christ, and our place in his love and purpose.  She is not the fourth member of the Trinity, which is mathematically not possible, and we should be careful not to imply she is.  If we do we damage the radical message and revelation which God brings about through her.  God has confidence in his creation and loves it so much that he bothers with it.  Special as she is in the story of our salvation it is in her ordinariness that we find our hope.  God calls us all to bring Christ to birth in our hearts and lives and to be midwives of his Kingdom.

Sermon preached in Peterborough Cathedral, Sunday 21st December 2014