"There are female bishops in heaven, where God's
really in charge. It's slower than it should be, but it'll come". A
Facebook post by Frances, a Roman Catholic teenager whose mother is training to
be an Anglican priest, offers us a richly textured reflection for the last week
of the church's year.
According to the infamous atheist bus that can still be
seen on our streets it's all much simpler than Frances would allow. 'There's
probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life'. In his recent book Unapologetic (of which I'm an
unapologetic fan) another Francis, Spufford, reserves some of his very
considerable appetite for scorn for that bus and for its message. Paraphrasing
him, to suggest that human life is something to be enjoyed is to turn human life
into a tub of Ben & Jerry's or an episode of The Archers. Those are things
to be enjoyed. But life has rather more flavours than a scoop of Caramel
Choo Choo and rather more depth than
thirteen minutes of the nation's favourite radio soap.
For example, I spent last week in a Benedictine monastery.
The chief work of monks and nuns is the worship of God. The divine Offices are
sung with beauty and reverence from before the sun has risen until after it has
set. It is a place of profound peace. But not just of peace. New doors have
been fitted to the buildings, and the storms of last week revealed that they
have not been fitted terribly well. So no sooner is the divine Office finished
than members of the community roll up the sleeves of their habits, climb stepladders,
and wield Stanley knives in an attempt to ease the hinges. I hope they enjoy
their work and I hope they enjoy their prayer, but the one verb scarcely does
justice to both. More is asked of them, and more is asked of us.
Various verbs are likewise needed to describe our
membership of the Church of England. We know that, locally, church works. Here
at St Peter's prayers are said, worship is offered and on the portico and in
the playground community is built in a fashion that we are proud to call
inclusive. Yet we also know that, nationally, church looks a bit different. At
the end of a week like this week, it looks absurd. Even if we rejoice that our
ecclesiology allows a handful of lay people to thwart the avowed wishes of
their bishops (and I do rejoice in that - there are other ecclesiologies and
other churches in which it could not even begin to be possible); even if we
rejoice that the Church of England still manages to form Christians who are
capable of thinking and voting counter-culturally (and I rejoice in that too -
on the whole we're not brilliant at it, particularly when it comes to issues of
wealth creation and redistribution); even if we rejoice in these things we are
left with a episcopate which is theologically incoherent and a public profile
which is utterly discredited. We still belong to St Peter's Eaton Square, and
we still belong to the national Church. Yet our belonging to each is of a
different order. It requires different things of us and makes different claims
upon us.
And today's feast reinforces what Frances identifies, our
need to live at different speeds and to face in different directions. Our year
ends with the proclamation that Christ is King. He is risen from the dead; he
has ascended into heaven; he reigns supreme over all things and in him will all
things be made new. Yet we who proclaim his kingship know at the same time that
evidence in support of our proclamation is often hard to find. The planet is
disfigured by war, poverty and injustice. The king appears sadly negligent of
his kingdom. Enjoy your life? We need a better formula.
It is provided by our understanding of who we are. We are
dust, made of the same elements that make the world we inhabit. We share with
our fellow creatures a capacity for enjoyment and for its opposite. Yet we are
more than dust, too. We bear within us a spark of divine life that is
heaven-sent; it is this that we will kindle in Thomas and in Sofia today.
Christ's kingdom is not of this world. So we are made to fix the door hinges - and
we are made to sing God's praises. We are made to share the common life of St
Peter's - and we are made to pray for, live alongside and love our brothers and
sisters who conceive of God's church rather differently. We are made to be
citizens of Westminster - and we are made to be citizens of Christ's kingdom.
We are called to tend the spark within us until it burns so brightly that when
our neighbours see us they see heaven's fire.
So I want Thomas and Sofia to enjoy their lives; I want all
of us to enjoy the year before us; and I want to see women bishops as soon as
possible. But I want more than that. I want God's will to be done on earth as
it is in heaven; I want us to attend to the truth that comes from Christ; I
want us to allow it to shape us, mould us and ultimately engulf us. "The
Son of God became the son of man"
writes Irenaeus "that man might become the son of
God". It's a rather more ambitious proposal than the atheist bus allows.
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment