When I arrived at college more than twenty years ago I found stuffed into my pigeon-hole (alongside summonses to see my tutor, invitations to join the Communist Party and flyers for the university Morris men) a publication called The Little Blue Book. This was full of biological and anatomical information designed to guide the innocent undergraduate through the perils and snares of the fleshpots of Cambridge in the mid-1980s (rather tame and unlikely fleshpots, it must be said). The Little Blue Book was received with derision. It treated its audience with contempt and told them nothing that they did not already know.
Today we launch our very own Little Blue Book. My hope is that it does not provoke among you the response that its similarly coloured but otherwise unrelated predecessor provoked among my contemporaries, even if the appearance of a new Vicar with a new Plan invites comparisons with (on the one hand) Stalin’s megalomaniac schemes and (on the other) the worst sort of modern management culture, all jargon and targets with nothing of merit or substance.
What our Little Blue Book, our Mission Action Plan, does is identify four priorities for the life of the Parish in the next five years, and make creative suggestions about what we might do to realize them. It is not my personal scheme. It has emerged through the combined efforts of PCC members (thanks to them) working together. It is not utterly comprehensive. There are of course areas of our life upon which it does not touch. It is not yet complete. It will need your input and approval. Finally, it is not a museum piece in waiting, to be agreed with rapture one week and then left to gather dust the next. It will be a living document, to which we return for strategic guidance, and which we will revisit and refresh whenever necessary.
It begins, of course, with worship, which is at the heart of our common life, and it sets us the challenge of offering all who come here the possibility of an encounter with almighty God. Worship can strike a spark in people’s souls; it can bring them to their knees, turn them around and send them out transformed. Different kinds of worship achieve that common end for different kinds of worshippers. We serve a diverse and eclectic community, and what this parish has learned is that one size does not fit all. Some encounter God through the fine music of this Eucharist, and some through the preaching (or they used to, at any rate). Some encounter God through the less-than-sedate welcome of the Family Eucharist and through the space that it makes for every individual, whatever their age. Both acts of worship are valid; neither is a junior partner; each plays its own part in our mission, and we must ensure continually that each is of the highest possible quality. Hence the trial change in timings of which you are already aware.
Our diversity is our strength, but so too is our unity. The Plan recommends that we should occasionally worship together as a parish family, in a new liturgy that attempts to reflect our breadth and strength, and that gives us all the new experience of belonging together. And because we believe that worship can have a profound effect upon the worshipper (and particularly worship offered in surroundings such as these) we want to look for new ways of allowing people to experience it, whether in seasonal Choral Evensong or a candle-lit jamboree for children at the beginning of Advent.
Growth in faith, the nurture of the spark that worship strikes, has a distinguished pedigree in the parish, and the Plan wants to develop it, placing a fresh emphasis on our learning instead of on your instruction. Growth in faith is not the ecclesiastical equivalent of taking up flower-arranging or acquiring a fourth classical language. It is not something done for our personal entertainment; and it is not something optional. It is an integral part of the pilgrim journey of every baptized person; it is part of our formation as the people of God, of our growing together into the full stature that our heavenly Father wishes and wills for us. An opportunity for growth is vital at every stage of faith’s journey, particularly so at its beginning, or before its beginning, in the realm of exploration and questioning. If we don’t provide those opportunities then someone else will and we will be missing a trick. This will sound familiar, but such opportunities must be different for different people: opportunities for reading and study, of course, but also for conversation and shared laughter, through our being together around a glass of wine as well as together receiving from the chalice.
If the spark is lit and if the flame is fed it will shed light all around. It will shed light on the miseries of injustice and exploitation that disfigure God’s world, and so it will pose a challenge. The third priority of the Plan is the role of our Church in the World. When Jesus returns to the synagogue in Nazareth he reads from the prophecy of Isaiah, and declares its promises fulfilled in him: release for captives, sight for the blind and liberty for the oppressed. That is our task too: the Church, I have always believed, exists to change the world, not just the condition of men’s souls. So perhaps we might become a more environmentally conscious Church, taking seriously our stewardship of creation corporately and severally. Perhaps we might better recollect our obligations to the worldwide Church through a genuine partnership with another congregation in a less affluent part of the Communion. Perhaps we might select a local project with the young or with the homeless and use our resources to make a real difference to it. Perhaps, surrounded as we are by embassies from every corner of the globe, we might play our part in the struggle for human rights and human dignity. Perhaps we might build the kingdom of heaven in Victoria and Belgravia; perhaps we might make a start, at the very least.
And undergirding everything is our fourth priority: our resources, our building, our staff and our finances. Without attention to these then all our hopes and dreams will crumble: with appropriate attention then there will be nothing that we cannot achieve in God’s name. We want to budget for year-on-year increases in our income from giving, and for year-on-year increases in our giving away. Thus will we fund the realization of our hopes, demonstrate our commitment to the self-giving way of the cross, play a full part in the life of the Diocese, and secure our future.
So let me offer you a vision of the Church that we might be a few years from now:
- a Church with more than one substantial and growing congregation, out of which vocations to accredited ministry are grown regularly;
- a Church whose liturgy and worship are a beacon for the national Church, to which pilgrims come in search of the transcendent God;
- a Church which is a centre for the spiritual growth of those who are its regular members and those who are not;
- a Church that has profound links into its geographical setting and sponsors a midweek worshipping presence in Victoria Street;
- a Church acknowledged as an agent in its community’s transformation.
Together, through the grace of God, we can make the vision a reality. Amen to that. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia.
Sunday 16 September 2007,
Parish Vision Sunday
Monday, 17 September 2007
Tuesday, 11 September 2007
St Peter's Eaton Square Mission Action Plan 2007-20012 (proposed)
ST PETER’S EATON SQUARE
PROPOSED MISSION ACTION PLAN 2007-2012
OUR PARISH VALUES
St Peter’s Eaton Square strives to be an inclusive parish of the Church of England,
offering inspiring worship to Almighty God, deepening its discipleship
of Jesus Christ, working for his world’s transformation, and extending hospitality to all
THE PARISH MISSION PRIORITIES AGREED BY THE PCC
Ø Worship
Ø Discipleship and Evangelization
Ø Church in the World
Ø Resourcing our Mission
A: WORSHIP
1). The Eucharist on Sunday
We want the offering of worship of God to be at the heart of our common life as a parish, and we want it to offer to all who participate in it the possibility of a transforming encounter with God. We value the integrity of each of our three acts of worship on Sunday morning. We believe that each has the potential to appeal to a part of the diverse and eclectic community that we serve. We therefore propose to maintain the early morning Prayer Book Eucharist; the Family Eucharist; and the Sung Eucharist. We see these as partners, equal but different, in our offering of worship, and therefore in our mission.
Ø a). In response to the exponential growth that is occurring in the Family Eucharist, in order to create a less hurried space between the Family and Sung Eucharists, and in order to allow the clergy to spend valuable time with both congregations we propose that for a trial period the Family Eucharist should begin at 9.45 am and the Sung Eucharist at 11.15 am. The trial will begin on Sunday 28 October 2007, will run for three months and will then be assessed and evaluated, allowing the congregations the opportunity to comment.
Ø b). In response to the range of liturgical material now available we propose to review the liturgy of the Family Eucharist and the Sung Eucharist to determine how each might be enhanced and better serve the needs of its congregations.
Ø c). In response to the age (and quality) of the present Family Eucharist hymn books we will investigate the material that is now available and purchase replacements.
2). Children’s provision
Our children are part of today’s church, and we are determined to give them a good experience of church life, a proper introduction to worship, and to relate to them as full and equal partners in our common life.
Ø a). We propose the refurbishment of the Welcome Room so that it lives up to its name and provides a comfortable environment for parents and their children who need to spend a short time away from either the Family or the Sung Eucharist.
Ø b). We propose that a video link be considered so that those in the Welcome Room can follow the progress of the service in Church.
3). The Parish Eucharist
We believe in the integrity of our three acts of worship: we believe also that the people of God should learn to worship together on occasion.
Ø a). We therefore propose that three times a year the Family Eucharist and the Sung Eucharist be replaced by a Parish Eucharist at 10.30. This will be a new liturgy: with a congregational Mass setting; contributions from both our choirs; two Scripture readings; a mixed serving team, and a short homily.
Ø b). We propose that the Parish Eucharist might be celebrated at Candlemas, Petertide and Harvest Thanksgiving.
4). Additional acts of worship
We wish to provide other opportunities for worship outside the Sunday mornings with which we are familiar, to give our congregations different experiences of the church and to broaden our appeal to those who do not yet worship with us regularly.
Ø a). We are committed to the business carol service and the Good Friday workshop.
Ø b). We propose introducing a Christingle service in Advent; carol-singing in Cardinal Walk; and occasionally choral evensong. We propose introducing at least one ‘outdoor’ act of worship as an act of witness and mission, such as the beating of the parochial bounds at Rogationtide.
Ø c). We will continue to review this commitment and to introduce new opportunities for worship.
5). Miscellaneous
We would also like to propose:
Ø a). A review of the present PA system in the church, to determine whether we might be better served by its replacement;
Ø b). The recruitment of more servers, and the possibility of mixed child/adult serving teams at each of the principal Sunday Eucharists;
Ø c). The recruitment and training of more lay readers, intercessors and Lay Eucharistic Ministers.
6). Implementation
We want to establish a forum for the continuing review of our worship, a forum which will also take responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the PCC’s decisions.
Ø We therefore propose the establishment of a PCC Worship sub-committee, to be convened by one of the parish clergy. Its membership should comprise the Director of Music, the Family Eucharist organist, two lay members of the PCC and two other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
B: DISCIPLESHIP & EVANGELIZATION
1). Learning for our wider community
We want to provide as many opportunities as we can for people to cross our threshold and feel welcome among us. We want them to have a sense of belonging with us. We want to offer every opportunity for them to enquire about the Christian faith and to explore it for themselves.
Ø a). We propose the introduction of two St Peter’s Lectures each year, with speakers and topics likely to attract a wide audience. We propose that such lecture evenings incorporate an act of worship for those who would value it, and that they include a follow-up opportunity for discussion.
Ø b). We propose the introduction at St Peter’s of an introductory course on the Christian faith, such as Emmaus. We recognize that such a course will need to be repeated if it is to gain momentum and attract a following, and acknowledge that maintaining this will be a substantial commitment.
Ø c). We propose to look for other opportunities to increase learning and participation in learning. We will be mindful of our multi-layered community and its different needs, and will attempt to respond to them by, for example, running a ‘Questions children ask us’ course for parents
Ø d). We propose the development of attractive and accessible materials describing our faith and our worship that can be handed out to all who enter our building (such as concert-goers, for example).
2). Learning for our congregation
We are committed to the development of the discipleship of those who already worship with us, at whatever stage of the journey of life and faith they may be.
Ø a). We propose the use of Sunday mornings after the Family Eucharist as a time to offer parallel learning and study for adults and children. This might begin as a trial on a few specified Sundays in the year, and then grow into something more regular. It might be combined with a social occasion: a lunch/barbeque for those attending. Again, we acknowledge that this will be a substantial commitment and require considerable investment of clergy (and volunteers’ time).
Ø b). We believe that experiences of pilgrimage and retreat are valuable and will look for ways to extend these. We will offer to send Year 6 at our school on a day pilgrimage to Canterbury in the summer term, and we will offer to provide chaplaincy on their week away at Sayer’s Croft. We will incorporate an element of pilgrimage into all candidates’ preparation for confirmation. We will offer one Quiet Day out of London in 2008, and will look for an opportunity to create a day’s Family Pilgrimage as well. We will repeat the PCC retreat in 2008.
Ø c). We will not overlook the need to develop the learning of those members of our congregations whose needs will not be met either by Emmaus or by the Sunday morning learning proposal.
Ø d). We will take seriously our congregations’ need for spiritual development, looking for ways to offer teaching on prayer and the different traditions of spirituality in our faith.
3). Communicating our common life and our common faith
While we need to communicate information and make data about our life and worship available to all we need also to communicate our faith in terms that will enable others to explore it more readily.
Ø a). We want to enhance our capacity to communicate electronically. This we believe to be more environmentally friendly and more in tune with the needs and habits of those we serve. We propose the creation of a comprehensive database of e-mail addresses from those on our mailing lists
Ø b). We will seek advice on the best software available to facilitate the re-launch of our website. We will identify a person to act as webmaster; and we will identify a person (or group) who will take responsibility for editing the site’s content.
Ø c). We will seek to identify a proactive Directing Editor for the Parish Magazine, who will take responsibility for the shape and content of each month’s edition.
Ø d). We will refresh Cross Keys and re-launch it as more professional-looking item for general distribution to our community.
4). Working with young people
We believe that through our involvement with St Peter’s CE Primary School we make good provision for the needs of our children. We are conscious that with the exceptions of the Family Eucharist voluntary choir and the serving team we offer little provision for young people, either those at the secondary school transition stage, or those in their mid-teens.
Ø We will consult with the young people in our congregations and ascertain how we might better serve their needs.
5). Proclaiming the Gospel
We need to take responsibility afresh for our geographical parish and for its diverse business community, looking for opportunities to give its members a sense of belonging in their parish church, and to share the Christian faith with them.
Ø a). We will seek to establish better and closer relations with the business community in Belgravia, building on contacts and relationships that already exist and actively seeking to create new ones.
Ø b). We wish to see a visible Anglican presence in the former parish of Christ Church Westminster, and are committed to researching the demography and habits of the area and establishing a fresh expression of church there.
6). Implementation
We want to establish a body that oversees the implementation of the Discipleship & Evangelization recommendations that ultimately appear in the Mission Action Plan. This body will take on the work previously done by the Education Committee and the Information Group.
Ø We propose the creation of a Discipleship & Evangelization Committee, to be convened by one of the parish clergy. Its membership should comprise three lay members of the PCC and three other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
C: CHURCH IN THE WORLD
1). A socially conscious Church
We are mindful that when Jesus Christ addressed the synagogue in Nazareth he declared the fulfilment of Isaiah’s ancient prophecy: good news for the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind and freedom for the oppressed. We accept his imperatives as our imperatives and are determined to work for his world’s transformation and the building of the Kingdom.
Ø a). we reaffirm our target of spending 10% of total church expenditure on external causes, and will work towards this by setting intermediate targets (eg 5% by 2010, 7% by 2012, 8% by 2014)
Ø b). we will focus our giving more closely, picking one local (eg youth project) and one international cause (eg relationship with overseas community) to support over the long term; we will ensure proper communication with beneficiaries so we can respond to their bigger needs; in other giving, we will choose causes for which our level of finance will have a genuine impact
Ø c). we will attempt to integrate social action into the life of the church, eg adopting an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience or by linking with a St Peter’s in the Holy Land; we will take steps to provide petitions or action cards for people to sign at end of services and church meetings
Ø d). we will explore ways of expanding the immediate social mission of the church in the community, eg expanding our provision of vouchers as alms to the needy, volunteering at the Passage or other local charities, and by increasing support for older members of the community
Ø e). we will ensure the green audit (below) includes reference to social issues as well, eg use of fairly traded as well as green goods. We will consider a possible revival of the harvest festival Traidcraft stall
2). An environmentally responsible Church
We take seriously all threats to the health and well-being of God’s creation and wish to play our part in preserving and enhancing it for this and future generations
Ø a). we will conduct a green self-audit of the church, using one of the free kits available via the Church of England’s ‘Shrinking the Footprint’ campaign.
Ø b). we will designate one Sunday each year as Green Sunday, with appropriate teaching and resources
Ø c). we will include ‘green tips’ as a regular feature in all our communications
Ø d). we will encourage the young people of our congregations to take an active part in this work, eg by creating a 40-year time capsule to be planted in the church grounds, or by setting up a children’s/youth environmental group
Ø e). we will involve ourselves in national action on climate change, e.g. through the Operation Noah campaign or other suitable church-based action
Ø f). we will work towards a St Peter’s entry for the Green Church Awards in 2008
3). A thinking Church
We want to see these Church in the World mission priorities embedded and integral to the life of faith in our parish and not as optional extras to it
Ø a). we will communicate our social action ever more effectively, so as to engage the entire congregation and broader parish with these priorities, underlining the centrality of this action to the Christian message
Ø b). we will explore the possibility of an annual lecture/debate/dinner from (a) high-profile figure(s) on contemporary social issues
Ø c). we will ensure children’s involvement, particularly from older children, via a Junior PCC or via activities such as young persons’ debates on topical issues
Ø d). we will learn from others, actively seeking out examples of good practice in other churches and ask for input from external advisory groups where necessary
4). Implementation
We want to establish a body that oversees the implementation of the Church in the World recommendations that ultimately appear in the Mission Action Plan. This body will take on and expand the work previously done by the Mission Committee.
Ø We propose the creation of a Church in the World Committee, to be convened by a lay member of the PCC. Its membership should comprise three members of the PCC and three other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
D: RESOURCING OUR MISSION
We recognize that our parish has inherited valuable resources both material and financial. We will act as prudent stewards of these in order that God’s mission in this place may flourish and that we may achieve what we set out to achieve in his name.
1). Objectives for 2007-2012
We identify the following as key objectives for the next five years:
Ø a). we will continue to work for the long-term financial security and self-sufficiency of the Parish
Ø b). we will seek to maximize income from congregational giving; donations; investments, and; rentals
Ø c). we will fund the St Peter’s Mission Action Plan
Ø d). we will enable the Parish to contribute to the Church’s mission within and beyond the Parish and as a full participant in the Diocese of London
2). Policies and Procedures
Ø a). we will prepare, agree and implement comprehensive financial policies and procedures for the prudent management of the Parish’s assets. These policies will have as their aim maximising the Parish’s net income from all available sources; properly controlling and reviewing all costs and expenditure whilst being mindful of the Parish’s commitment to environmentally friendly and ethical policies; maintaining the value of the Parish’s capital and long-term investments and assets.
Ø b). we will prepare, agree and implement comprehensive financial procedures, which will include: regular financial reporting to the PCC; routine preparation of appropriate budgets and cash flows and, when appropriate, zero-base reviews of expenditure; regular review of all management systems and risk assessments; responsibility for staffing matters, including reviewing annual performance reviews and remuneration; following best practice in accounting and financial management
3). Giving
Ø a). we will raise congregational awareness of the Church’s finances through greater transparency and communication
Ø b). we will continue to build and encourage an effective targeted stewardship campaign, aimed at increasing congregational giving and general support for the work of the Parish
Ø c). we will agree annual targets for both congregational giving to the Parish and the Parish’s donations
4). Budgeting
Ø a). we will plan and budget for the ongoing and periodic maintenance of the Church buildings and budget to ensure that the Repair Fund is maintained at a sufficient level
Ø b). we will review rental and other income generating activities to achieve maximum net returns
5). Implementation
We want to establish a body that oversees the implementation of the Resourcing our Mission recommendations that ultimately appear in the Mission Action Plan. This body will take on and expand the work previously done by the Finance Committee. It will not act as the Standing Committee of the PCC
Ø We propose the creation of a Resources Committee, to be convened by a lay member of the PCC. Its membership should comprise three members of the PCC and three other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
PROPOSED MISSION ACTION PLAN 2007-2012
OUR PARISH VALUES
St Peter’s Eaton Square strives to be an inclusive parish of the Church of England,
offering inspiring worship to Almighty God, deepening its discipleship
of Jesus Christ, working for his world’s transformation, and extending hospitality to all
THE PARISH MISSION PRIORITIES AGREED BY THE PCC
Ø Worship
Ø Discipleship and Evangelization
Ø Church in the World
Ø Resourcing our Mission
A: WORSHIP
1). The Eucharist on Sunday
We want the offering of worship of God to be at the heart of our common life as a parish, and we want it to offer to all who participate in it the possibility of a transforming encounter with God. We value the integrity of each of our three acts of worship on Sunday morning. We believe that each has the potential to appeal to a part of the diverse and eclectic community that we serve. We therefore propose to maintain the early morning Prayer Book Eucharist; the Family Eucharist; and the Sung Eucharist. We see these as partners, equal but different, in our offering of worship, and therefore in our mission.
Ø a). In response to the exponential growth that is occurring in the Family Eucharist, in order to create a less hurried space between the Family and Sung Eucharists, and in order to allow the clergy to spend valuable time with both congregations we propose that for a trial period the Family Eucharist should begin at 9.45 am and the Sung Eucharist at 11.15 am. The trial will begin on Sunday 28 October 2007, will run for three months and will then be assessed and evaluated, allowing the congregations the opportunity to comment.
Ø b). In response to the range of liturgical material now available we propose to review the liturgy of the Family Eucharist and the Sung Eucharist to determine how each might be enhanced and better serve the needs of its congregations.
Ø c). In response to the age (and quality) of the present Family Eucharist hymn books we will investigate the material that is now available and purchase replacements.
2). Children’s provision
Our children are part of today’s church, and we are determined to give them a good experience of church life, a proper introduction to worship, and to relate to them as full and equal partners in our common life.
Ø a). We propose the refurbishment of the Welcome Room so that it lives up to its name and provides a comfortable environment for parents and their children who need to spend a short time away from either the Family or the Sung Eucharist.
Ø b). We propose that a video link be considered so that those in the Welcome Room can follow the progress of the service in Church.
3). The Parish Eucharist
We believe in the integrity of our three acts of worship: we believe also that the people of God should learn to worship together on occasion.
Ø a). We therefore propose that three times a year the Family Eucharist and the Sung Eucharist be replaced by a Parish Eucharist at 10.30. This will be a new liturgy: with a congregational Mass setting; contributions from both our choirs; two Scripture readings; a mixed serving team, and a short homily.
Ø b). We propose that the Parish Eucharist might be celebrated at Candlemas, Petertide and Harvest Thanksgiving.
4). Additional acts of worship
We wish to provide other opportunities for worship outside the Sunday mornings with which we are familiar, to give our congregations different experiences of the church and to broaden our appeal to those who do not yet worship with us regularly.
Ø a). We are committed to the business carol service and the Good Friday workshop.
Ø b). We propose introducing a Christingle service in Advent; carol-singing in Cardinal Walk; and occasionally choral evensong. We propose introducing at least one ‘outdoor’ act of worship as an act of witness and mission, such as the beating of the parochial bounds at Rogationtide.
Ø c). We will continue to review this commitment and to introduce new opportunities for worship.
5). Miscellaneous
We would also like to propose:
Ø a). A review of the present PA system in the church, to determine whether we might be better served by its replacement;
Ø b). The recruitment of more servers, and the possibility of mixed child/adult serving teams at each of the principal Sunday Eucharists;
Ø c). The recruitment and training of more lay readers, intercessors and Lay Eucharistic Ministers.
6). Implementation
We want to establish a forum for the continuing review of our worship, a forum which will also take responsibility for overseeing the implementation of the PCC’s decisions.
Ø We therefore propose the establishment of a PCC Worship sub-committee, to be convened by one of the parish clergy. Its membership should comprise the Director of Music, the Family Eucharist organist, two lay members of the PCC and two other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
B: DISCIPLESHIP & EVANGELIZATION
1). Learning for our wider community
We want to provide as many opportunities as we can for people to cross our threshold and feel welcome among us. We want them to have a sense of belonging with us. We want to offer every opportunity for them to enquire about the Christian faith and to explore it for themselves.
Ø a). We propose the introduction of two St Peter’s Lectures each year, with speakers and topics likely to attract a wide audience. We propose that such lecture evenings incorporate an act of worship for those who would value it, and that they include a follow-up opportunity for discussion.
Ø b). We propose the introduction at St Peter’s of an introductory course on the Christian faith, such as Emmaus. We recognize that such a course will need to be repeated if it is to gain momentum and attract a following, and acknowledge that maintaining this will be a substantial commitment.
Ø c). We propose to look for other opportunities to increase learning and participation in learning. We will be mindful of our multi-layered community and its different needs, and will attempt to respond to them by, for example, running a ‘Questions children ask us’ course for parents
Ø d). We propose the development of attractive and accessible materials describing our faith and our worship that can be handed out to all who enter our building (such as concert-goers, for example).
2). Learning for our congregation
We are committed to the development of the discipleship of those who already worship with us, at whatever stage of the journey of life and faith they may be.
Ø a). We propose the use of Sunday mornings after the Family Eucharist as a time to offer parallel learning and study for adults and children. This might begin as a trial on a few specified Sundays in the year, and then grow into something more regular. It might be combined with a social occasion: a lunch/barbeque for those attending. Again, we acknowledge that this will be a substantial commitment and require considerable investment of clergy (and volunteers’ time).
Ø b). We believe that experiences of pilgrimage and retreat are valuable and will look for ways to extend these. We will offer to send Year 6 at our school on a day pilgrimage to Canterbury in the summer term, and we will offer to provide chaplaincy on their week away at Sayer’s Croft. We will incorporate an element of pilgrimage into all candidates’ preparation for confirmation. We will offer one Quiet Day out of London in 2008, and will look for an opportunity to create a day’s Family Pilgrimage as well. We will repeat the PCC retreat in 2008.
Ø c). We will not overlook the need to develop the learning of those members of our congregations whose needs will not be met either by Emmaus or by the Sunday morning learning proposal.
Ø d). We will take seriously our congregations’ need for spiritual development, looking for ways to offer teaching on prayer and the different traditions of spirituality in our faith.
3). Communicating our common life and our common faith
While we need to communicate information and make data about our life and worship available to all we need also to communicate our faith in terms that will enable others to explore it more readily.
Ø a). We want to enhance our capacity to communicate electronically. This we believe to be more environmentally friendly and more in tune with the needs and habits of those we serve. We propose the creation of a comprehensive database of e-mail addresses from those on our mailing lists
Ø b). We will seek advice on the best software available to facilitate the re-launch of our website. We will identify a person to act as webmaster; and we will identify a person (or group) who will take responsibility for editing the site’s content.
Ø c). We will seek to identify a proactive Directing Editor for the Parish Magazine, who will take responsibility for the shape and content of each month’s edition.
Ø d). We will refresh Cross Keys and re-launch it as more professional-looking item for general distribution to our community.
4). Working with young people
We believe that through our involvement with St Peter’s CE Primary School we make good provision for the needs of our children. We are conscious that with the exceptions of the Family Eucharist voluntary choir and the serving team we offer little provision for young people, either those at the secondary school transition stage, or those in their mid-teens.
Ø We will consult with the young people in our congregations and ascertain how we might better serve their needs.
5). Proclaiming the Gospel
We need to take responsibility afresh for our geographical parish and for its diverse business community, looking for opportunities to give its members a sense of belonging in their parish church, and to share the Christian faith with them.
Ø a). We will seek to establish better and closer relations with the business community in Belgravia, building on contacts and relationships that already exist and actively seeking to create new ones.
Ø b). We wish to see a visible Anglican presence in the former parish of Christ Church Westminster, and are committed to researching the demography and habits of the area and establishing a fresh expression of church there.
6). Implementation
We want to establish a body that oversees the implementation of the Discipleship & Evangelization recommendations that ultimately appear in the Mission Action Plan. This body will take on the work previously done by the Education Committee and the Information Group.
Ø We propose the creation of a Discipleship & Evangelization Committee, to be convened by one of the parish clergy. Its membership should comprise three lay members of the PCC and three other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
C: CHURCH IN THE WORLD
1). A socially conscious Church
We are mindful that when Jesus Christ addressed the synagogue in Nazareth he declared the fulfilment of Isaiah’s ancient prophecy: good news for the poor, release for captives, sight for the blind and freedom for the oppressed. We accept his imperatives as our imperatives and are determined to work for his world’s transformation and the building of the Kingdom.
Ø a). we reaffirm our target of spending 10% of total church expenditure on external causes, and will work towards this by setting intermediate targets (eg 5% by 2010, 7% by 2012, 8% by 2014)
Ø b). we will focus our giving more closely, picking one local (eg youth project) and one international cause (eg relationship with overseas community) to support over the long term; we will ensure proper communication with beneficiaries so we can respond to their bigger needs; in other giving, we will choose causes for which our level of finance will have a genuine impact
Ø c). we will attempt to integrate social action into the life of the church, eg adopting an Amnesty International prisoner of conscience or by linking with a St Peter’s in the Holy Land; we will take steps to provide petitions or action cards for people to sign at end of services and church meetings
Ø d). we will explore ways of expanding the immediate social mission of the church in the community, eg expanding our provision of vouchers as alms to the needy, volunteering at the Passage or other local charities, and by increasing support for older members of the community
Ø e). we will ensure the green audit (below) includes reference to social issues as well, eg use of fairly traded as well as green goods. We will consider a possible revival of the harvest festival Traidcraft stall
2). An environmentally responsible Church
We take seriously all threats to the health and well-being of God’s creation and wish to play our part in preserving and enhancing it for this and future generations
Ø a). we will conduct a green self-audit of the church, using one of the free kits available via the Church of England’s ‘Shrinking the Footprint’ campaign.
Ø b). we will designate one Sunday each year as Green Sunday, with appropriate teaching and resources
Ø c). we will include ‘green tips’ as a regular feature in all our communications
Ø d). we will encourage the young people of our congregations to take an active part in this work, eg by creating a 40-year time capsule to be planted in the church grounds, or by setting up a children’s/youth environmental group
Ø e). we will involve ourselves in national action on climate change, e.g. through the Operation Noah campaign or other suitable church-based action
Ø f). we will work towards a St Peter’s entry for the Green Church Awards in 2008
3). A thinking Church
We want to see these Church in the World mission priorities embedded and integral to the life of faith in our parish and not as optional extras to it
Ø a). we will communicate our social action ever more effectively, so as to engage the entire congregation and broader parish with these priorities, underlining the centrality of this action to the Christian message
Ø b). we will explore the possibility of an annual lecture/debate/dinner from (a) high-profile figure(s) on contemporary social issues
Ø c). we will ensure children’s involvement, particularly from older children, via a Junior PCC or via activities such as young persons’ debates on topical issues
Ø d). we will learn from others, actively seeking out examples of good practice in other churches and ask for input from external advisory groups where necessary
4). Implementation
We want to establish a body that oversees the implementation of the Church in the World recommendations that ultimately appear in the Mission Action Plan. This body will take on and expand the work previously done by the Mission Committee.
Ø We propose the creation of a Church in the World Committee, to be convened by a lay member of the PCC. Its membership should comprise three members of the PCC and three other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
D: RESOURCING OUR MISSION
We recognize that our parish has inherited valuable resources both material and financial. We will act as prudent stewards of these in order that God’s mission in this place may flourish and that we may achieve what we set out to achieve in his name.
1). Objectives for 2007-2012
We identify the following as key objectives for the next five years:
Ø a). we will continue to work for the long-term financial security and self-sufficiency of the Parish
Ø b). we will seek to maximize income from congregational giving; donations; investments, and; rentals
Ø c). we will fund the St Peter’s Mission Action Plan
Ø d). we will enable the Parish to contribute to the Church’s mission within and beyond the Parish and as a full participant in the Diocese of London
2). Policies and Procedures
Ø a). we will prepare, agree and implement comprehensive financial policies and procedures for the prudent management of the Parish’s assets. These policies will have as their aim maximising the Parish’s net income from all available sources; properly controlling and reviewing all costs and expenditure whilst being mindful of the Parish’s commitment to environmentally friendly and ethical policies; maintaining the value of the Parish’s capital and long-term investments and assets.
Ø b). we will prepare, agree and implement comprehensive financial procedures, which will include: regular financial reporting to the PCC; routine preparation of appropriate budgets and cash flows and, when appropriate, zero-base reviews of expenditure; regular review of all management systems and risk assessments; responsibility for staffing matters, including reviewing annual performance reviews and remuneration; following best practice in accounting and financial management
3). Giving
Ø a). we will raise congregational awareness of the Church’s finances through greater transparency and communication
Ø b). we will continue to build and encourage an effective targeted stewardship campaign, aimed at increasing congregational giving and general support for the work of the Parish
Ø c). we will agree annual targets for both congregational giving to the Parish and the Parish’s donations
4). Budgeting
Ø a). we will plan and budget for the ongoing and periodic maintenance of the Church buildings and budget to ensure that the Repair Fund is maintained at a sufficient level
Ø b). we will review rental and other income generating activities to achieve maximum net returns
5). Implementation
We want to establish a body that oversees the implementation of the Resourcing our Mission recommendations that ultimately appear in the Mission Action Plan. This body will take on and expand the work previously done by the Finance Committee. It will not act as the Standing Committee of the PCC
Ø We propose the creation of a Resources Committee, to be convened by a lay member of the PCC. Its membership should comprise three members of the PCC and three other lay members. Its membership, remit and terms of reference should be established by the PCC and reviewed by them.
Monday, 10 September 2007
Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity
‘And Hogwarts…but he knew that his Horcrux there was safe, it would be impossible for Potter to enter Hogsmeade without detection, let alone the school. Nevertheless, it would be prudent to alert Snape to the fact that the boy might try to re-enter the castle…to tell Snape why the boy might return would be foolish, of course; it had been a great mistake to trust Bellatrix and Malfoy: didn’t their stupidity and carelessness prove how unwise it was, ever, to trust?’
Yes, the Vicar’s summer reading was, as this congregation would expect, irretrievably high-brow. I take comfort in the knowledge that I was not the first among you to devour Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I am looking in the direction of two senior members of the PCC. They know who they are). In reading that particular passage to you I give nothing away, so if the book’s six hundred pages are a peak as yet unscaled you have nothing to fear. The seventh novel in the series reads as a three-cornered struggle between the hero, Harry, the arch-villain Lord Voldemort and the saintly but departed Albus Dumbledore. Yet in those few lines JK Rowling bares Voldemort’s very soul, uncovering both the originating root and the inexorable consequence of his malevolence. For Voldemort is utterly alone, consumed with a hideous vanity, and incapable of confidence in or reliance on any other living being.
Saint Paul’s letter to Philemon, one of the shortest books in the New Testament, also reads as a triangular human drama, although at that point the preacher ought to stop looking for similarities between it and the realm of Rubeus Hagrid and Luna Lovegood. The first player is Paul himself: at the time of writing an old man and a prisoner. The second is Philemon, Paul’s friend, to whom the letter is addressed; and the third is the subject of the letter and its probable bearer too, the slave Onesimus, whose Greek name means ‘useful’. Philemon has despatched his slave to care for Paul while he languishes in prison; the letter accompanies Onesimus as he returns to his master, his service of the apostle complete.
A momentous change has occurred during the time that Onesimus has spent with Paul. The slave, writes Paul, has become his child. He has become the slave’s father. Now, as Onesimus returns to Philemon, Paul urges his friend to receive him as a slave no longer, but instead as a beloved brother. Something radical has happened, something that has burst the ties of convention and habit and rendered them redundant. It is something that compels the elderly Paul to accept the pagan slave as his own child, and that compels him to ask his friend to treat Onesimus, hitherto his property, as his equal.
What has happened is spelt out by Paul in clever wordplay that no English translation can ever adequately explain. Before the change, he writes, the supposedly useful Onesimus had in fact been useless. Since the change he has begun to live up to his name by becoming truly useful. The Greek word for ‘useless’ is achristos. What is concealed from our ears is that achristos, useless, is also, a-christos, ‘without Christ’. When he was without Christ Onesimus was useless: now, writes Paul, he is truly useful. Onesimus has been baptized.
It is this that has wrought the transformation in his relations with Paul and with Philemon. His baptism means that he is no longer a heathen or a slave. He is the dear son of one; he is the brother of the other. Baptism has brought solidarity out of hierarchy. It is to this that Jesus is pointing when he addresses the multitudes in the stark terms that open this morning’s Gospel: ‘if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and bothers and sisters…he cannot be my disciple’. In Christ a whole new set of relationships is forged: in him the unthinkable becomes the reality.
No prison walls surround us but we come together as Paul and Onesimus must have done, to baptize with water, and to break bread. And today a transformation will take place just as it did in that far-off cell. It may be difficult to discern. There are miracles, after all, and miracles. The child we baptize this morning will return home the same bundle of mischief her family knows and loves. But although the water will dry and the oil will fade the change will be real. In a few moments she will take her place as a member of the body of Christ, one with every one of us who has been baptized, one with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, one with Philemon and Onesimus, one with Paul himself. And in a few years she will take her place at the altar, where the baptized recall their unity by feeding on the one bread and drinking from the one cup, those living symbols of the presence of Christ, the Christ who is the ground of their unity.
As with all good novelists, JK Rowling’s books tell us truths about ourselves and about the society we inhabit. Voldemort’s arrogant isolation spells disaster for the wizarding world, and our suspiciousness and refusal to trust, which he might applaud, spell disaster for ours, as the headlines from Liverpool and Basra and Praia da Luz attest every day. The choice before us is the choice that Moses puts to the Israelites: ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live…’
In choosing the Christ we choose one another for we choose the unity and interdependence of baptism. In choosing the Christ we choose life. Amen.
Sunday 9 September 2007
Deuteronomy 30: 15-end;
Philemon 1-21;
Luke 14: 25-33
Yes, the Vicar’s summer reading was, as this congregation would expect, irretrievably high-brow. I take comfort in the knowledge that I was not the first among you to devour Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (I am looking in the direction of two senior members of the PCC. They know who they are). In reading that particular passage to you I give nothing away, so if the book’s six hundred pages are a peak as yet unscaled you have nothing to fear. The seventh novel in the series reads as a three-cornered struggle between the hero, Harry, the arch-villain Lord Voldemort and the saintly but departed Albus Dumbledore. Yet in those few lines JK Rowling bares Voldemort’s very soul, uncovering both the originating root and the inexorable consequence of his malevolence. For Voldemort is utterly alone, consumed with a hideous vanity, and incapable of confidence in or reliance on any other living being.
Saint Paul’s letter to Philemon, one of the shortest books in the New Testament, also reads as a triangular human drama, although at that point the preacher ought to stop looking for similarities between it and the realm of Rubeus Hagrid and Luna Lovegood. The first player is Paul himself: at the time of writing an old man and a prisoner. The second is Philemon, Paul’s friend, to whom the letter is addressed; and the third is the subject of the letter and its probable bearer too, the slave Onesimus, whose Greek name means ‘useful’. Philemon has despatched his slave to care for Paul while he languishes in prison; the letter accompanies Onesimus as he returns to his master, his service of the apostle complete.
A momentous change has occurred during the time that Onesimus has spent with Paul. The slave, writes Paul, has become his child. He has become the slave’s father. Now, as Onesimus returns to Philemon, Paul urges his friend to receive him as a slave no longer, but instead as a beloved brother. Something radical has happened, something that has burst the ties of convention and habit and rendered them redundant. It is something that compels the elderly Paul to accept the pagan slave as his own child, and that compels him to ask his friend to treat Onesimus, hitherto his property, as his equal.
What has happened is spelt out by Paul in clever wordplay that no English translation can ever adequately explain. Before the change, he writes, the supposedly useful Onesimus had in fact been useless. Since the change he has begun to live up to his name by becoming truly useful. The Greek word for ‘useless’ is achristos. What is concealed from our ears is that achristos, useless, is also, a-christos, ‘without Christ’. When he was without Christ Onesimus was useless: now, writes Paul, he is truly useful. Onesimus has been baptized.
It is this that has wrought the transformation in his relations with Paul and with Philemon. His baptism means that he is no longer a heathen or a slave. He is the dear son of one; he is the brother of the other. Baptism has brought solidarity out of hierarchy. It is to this that Jesus is pointing when he addresses the multitudes in the stark terms that open this morning’s Gospel: ‘if anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and bothers and sisters…he cannot be my disciple’. In Christ a whole new set of relationships is forged: in him the unthinkable becomes the reality.
No prison walls surround us but we come together as Paul and Onesimus must have done, to baptize with water, and to break bread. And today a transformation will take place just as it did in that far-off cell. It may be difficult to discern. There are miracles, after all, and miracles. The child we baptize this morning will return home the same bundle of mischief her family knows and loves. But although the water will dry and the oil will fade the change will be real. In a few moments she will take her place as a member of the body of Christ, one with every one of us who has been baptized, one with the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Pope and the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople, one with Philemon and Onesimus, one with Paul himself. And in a few years she will take her place at the altar, where the baptized recall their unity by feeding on the one bread and drinking from the one cup, those living symbols of the presence of Christ, the Christ who is the ground of their unity.
As with all good novelists, JK Rowling’s books tell us truths about ourselves and about the society we inhabit. Voldemort’s arrogant isolation spells disaster for the wizarding world, and our suspiciousness and refusal to trust, which he might applaud, spell disaster for ours, as the headlines from Liverpool and Basra and Praia da Luz attest every day. The choice before us is the choice that Moses puts to the Israelites: ‘I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse; therefore choose life, that you and your descendants may live…’
In choosing the Christ we choose one another for we choose the unity and interdependence of baptism. In choosing the Christ we choose life. Amen.
Sunday 9 September 2007
Deuteronomy 30: 15-end;
Philemon 1-21;
Luke 14: 25-33
Wednesday, 15 August 2007
Tenth Sunday after Trinity
You have only one more week to go and see Anthony Gormley’s exhibition Blind Light at the Hayward Gallery. It closes next Sunday, and if you haven’t already bought a ticket then I urge you to do so.
The feature that’s caught the public imagination is a rectangular glass box filled with cloud-like mist. Into this the visitor walks. It’s a remarkable experience. The fog immediately swirls around; visibility drops to a matter of inches; and sound becomes disoriented and dislocated. Twenty-five are allowed in at any one time, but once you are in you wouldn’t know if two Premier League football teams were in there with you. Engulfed in the mist, sense is rendered useless and the visitor wanders alone.
Outside the Hayward is a rather different box, comprising water jets springing up from the floor to a height of eight feet. These are arranged so as to make up walls of water around the four sides of the box, with internal walls to make up four rooms. The walls spring up and then subside at random, so the visitor can enter when an external wall is down, and suddenly find himself a prisoner within. Then an internal wall subsides and he can move quickly to the next room. There’s a skill in choosing the right move, and in moving sufficiently quickly to avoid a soaking (a skill which may visitors plainly did not possess).
Abram’s exchange with God, heard as our Old Testament reading this morning, marks a paradigm shift in the history of ancient Israel. At such moments things change: the collective narrative or self-consciousness of a community turns a page. I suppose that the Berlin Wall provides us with two such moments in our own times, in its creation and in its demolition. In this exchange Abram hears God’s promise that he will be the father of many, and he believes it. His readiness to believe becomes the cornerstone of the covenant between Israel and Yahweh and also the crux of the European Reformations. Abram’s faith is credited to him as righteousness. So our faith is credited to us as righteousness. We are justified by faith, and by faith alone.
Which, of course, leaves us with the ticklish question of what faith really is. To some, it’s a word that represents a visit to Anthony Gormley’s box. Faith means flailing around in a world of misty uncertainty. For others it represents the ducking and diving of the water installation. Faith means the calculated (and rather cynical) judgement of how best to avoid a drenching. And for others it does not represent anything that can be illustrated by a sculpture. Faith means acknowledging, perhaps from the comfort of one’s own armchair, the irrefutable truth that Anthony Gormley does have an exhibition in London at present. Faith is the assent of the human intellect to a proposition put before it.
Yet for the author of the letter to the Hebrews faith represents none of these. The letter looks back to that paradigm shift in the nation’s life, the moment of Abram’s exchange with Yahweh. Faith for the letter’s author means Abram leaving his father’s land and venturing into the unknown. It means Abram sojourning under canvas in the land he has been promised. It means Abram eventually receiving the gift of a child despite his old age. In other words, faith is what happens when God’s promise invites and invokes a response. Faith involves movement from God, and movement from us.
So the third caricature, of faith as intellectual assent, must bite the dust immediately. We can believe in all sorts of things, in the sense of admitting their existence or allowing their efficacy: flying saucers, perhaps, or the superiority of a 1984 vintage, or world peace. But our lives are changed by none of these; they cost us nothing if they remain at the level of dispassionate mental activity. In no sense are they are they a matter of faith. Had Abram simply believed in God in the sense that you or I believe that the chemical formula for water is H2O then I don’t suppose he would ever have left Ur of the Chaldeans.
Nor will the second caricature - faith as a game of risk, of dodging from room to room and evading the water jets - detain us for long. The second sentence of today’s Gospel dispels any notion of faith as insurance, as a self-serving exercise in threat management. The words of Jesus are stark: in response to God’s promise, he urges, ‘sell your possessions and give alms’. That is faith. There is little room for the tactically faithful.
And as for the first caricature: well, there’s not much fog about what Jesus teaches. He’s quite clear. Those who follow him are to live lives of expectant watchfulness, lives lived in the knowledge not simply that God is, but that he is likely to tap us on the shoulder as he did our ancestor Abram. Coming as suddenly as a thief in the night, he will ask of us that we too make hard choices and real sacrifices.
But perhaps I have misread the symbolism of those two works of art. Perhaps they have something to teach us about the life of faith after all. Perhaps through the water box we could learn the attentiveness of which Jesus speaks. We watch for the moment when we can move. A wall of water subsides, and we cross quickly to the next room. Thus are we called to keep a constant look-out and to follow where God leads, his children moving perpetually forwards, just as did Abraham and Moses. Perhaps through the mist box we could learn the faithfulness of the one in whom we have faith. As we plunge into the fog of Blind Light we see not as a stumbling journey into the unknown, but a reception into the mystery of the divine. The cloud is not hostile; it is a welcoming companion. It is, in fact, the presence of God, surrounding us on every side and accompanying us as we discern our path, set our feet upon it, and walk the path of faith. Amen.
Sunday 12 August 2007
Genesis 15: 1-6;
Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16;
Luke 12: 32-40
The feature that’s caught the public imagination is a rectangular glass box filled with cloud-like mist. Into this the visitor walks. It’s a remarkable experience. The fog immediately swirls around; visibility drops to a matter of inches; and sound becomes disoriented and dislocated. Twenty-five are allowed in at any one time, but once you are in you wouldn’t know if two Premier League football teams were in there with you. Engulfed in the mist, sense is rendered useless and the visitor wanders alone.
Outside the Hayward is a rather different box, comprising water jets springing up from the floor to a height of eight feet. These are arranged so as to make up walls of water around the four sides of the box, with internal walls to make up four rooms. The walls spring up and then subside at random, so the visitor can enter when an external wall is down, and suddenly find himself a prisoner within. Then an internal wall subsides and he can move quickly to the next room. There’s a skill in choosing the right move, and in moving sufficiently quickly to avoid a soaking (a skill which may visitors plainly did not possess).
Abram’s exchange with God, heard as our Old Testament reading this morning, marks a paradigm shift in the history of ancient Israel. At such moments things change: the collective narrative or self-consciousness of a community turns a page. I suppose that the Berlin Wall provides us with two such moments in our own times, in its creation and in its demolition. In this exchange Abram hears God’s promise that he will be the father of many, and he believes it. His readiness to believe becomes the cornerstone of the covenant between Israel and Yahweh and also the crux of the European Reformations. Abram’s faith is credited to him as righteousness. So our faith is credited to us as righteousness. We are justified by faith, and by faith alone.
Which, of course, leaves us with the ticklish question of what faith really is. To some, it’s a word that represents a visit to Anthony Gormley’s box. Faith means flailing around in a world of misty uncertainty. For others it represents the ducking and diving of the water installation. Faith means the calculated (and rather cynical) judgement of how best to avoid a drenching. And for others it does not represent anything that can be illustrated by a sculpture. Faith means acknowledging, perhaps from the comfort of one’s own armchair, the irrefutable truth that Anthony Gormley does have an exhibition in London at present. Faith is the assent of the human intellect to a proposition put before it.
Yet for the author of the letter to the Hebrews faith represents none of these. The letter looks back to that paradigm shift in the nation’s life, the moment of Abram’s exchange with Yahweh. Faith for the letter’s author means Abram leaving his father’s land and venturing into the unknown. It means Abram sojourning under canvas in the land he has been promised. It means Abram eventually receiving the gift of a child despite his old age. In other words, faith is what happens when God’s promise invites and invokes a response. Faith involves movement from God, and movement from us.
So the third caricature, of faith as intellectual assent, must bite the dust immediately. We can believe in all sorts of things, in the sense of admitting their existence or allowing their efficacy: flying saucers, perhaps, or the superiority of a 1984 vintage, or world peace. But our lives are changed by none of these; they cost us nothing if they remain at the level of dispassionate mental activity. In no sense are they are they a matter of faith. Had Abram simply believed in God in the sense that you or I believe that the chemical formula for water is H2O then I don’t suppose he would ever have left Ur of the Chaldeans.
Nor will the second caricature - faith as a game of risk, of dodging from room to room and evading the water jets - detain us for long. The second sentence of today’s Gospel dispels any notion of faith as insurance, as a self-serving exercise in threat management. The words of Jesus are stark: in response to God’s promise, he urges, ‘sell your possessions and give alms’. That is faith. There is little room for the tactically faithful.
And as for the first caricature: well, there’s not much fog about what Jesus teaches. He’s quite clear. Those who follow him are to live lives of expectant watchfulness, lives lived in the knowledge not simply that God is, but that he is likely to tap us on the shoulder as he did our ancestor Abram. Coming as suddenly as a thief in the night, he will ask of us that we too make hard choices and real sacrifices.
But perhaps I have misread the symbolism of those two works of art. Perhaps they have something to teach us about the life of faith after all. Perhaps through the water box we could learn the attentiveness of which Jesus speaks. We watch for the moment when we can move. A wall of water subsides, and we cross quickly to the next room. Thus are we called to keep a constant look-out and to follow where God leads, his children moving perpetually forwards, just as did Abraham and Moses. Perhaps through the mist box we could learn the faithfulness of the one in whom we have faith. As we plunge into the fog of Blind Light we see not as a stumbling journey into the unknown, but a reception into the mystery of the divine. The cloud is not hostile; it is a welcoming companion. It is, in fact, the presence of God, surrounding us on every side and accompanying us as we discern our path, set our feet upon it, and walk the path of faith. Amen.
Sunday 12 August 2007
Genesis 15: 1-6;
Hebrews 11: 1-3, 8-16;
Luke 12: 32-40
Tuesday, 14 August 2007
Ninth Sunday after Trinity
It’s an unlikely contingency, but if I’m ever asked to complete one of those questionnaires that appears in the Sunday supplements then I shall enjoy being scandalous. My answers about when and where I was most happy, and about with whom I would most like to have dinner will pass unnoticed. But when I am asked ‘do you believe in life after death?’ I shall fix the interviewer with a steely glaze and say ‘I believe in life’.
I shall do that because I believe that there’s a pernicious myth abroad about the faith of Christians that I should like to nail. It is that ours is a life-denying religion that exalts death; a religion that is so intent on what lies beyond the grave that it all too easily neglects what precedes it.
In his best-seller The God Delusion Richard Dawkins tells the story of the moment that Cardinal Hume told the Abbot of Ampleforth of his approaching death. The Abbot apparently replied ‘Congratulations! That’s brilliant news! I wish I was coming with you’. Dawkins concludes that the Abbot was a sincere man of faith, and concludes also that, as professed Christians do not on the whole react in such a fashion to such tidings, their profession can offer them little consolation, and that it therefore cannot really be sincere.
What Dawkins has touched upon is the conviction that Christians must infinitely prefer death to life; that the promised rewards of heaven must far outshine the inconveniences of the present and dazzle us with their lustre; and that our eyes are so firmly fixed on the far horizon that there is no chance of their slipping earthwards and lighting upon the miseries (or the beauties) of our time.
And the parable that comprises our Gospel reading this morning seems to give comfort to that critical view of the faith. God speaks to the rich man, telling him that he is to die, and almost mocking the labours of his life. ‘The things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ The rich man has given no thought to his own mortality and he will pay for it. The message seems clear. What really counts is what lies beyond death, when all else is forgotten.
A conclusion not dissimilar emerges from the Old Testament reading. When I complete my Sunday supplement questionnaire it is very unlikely that I will say that I want to have dinner with the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, who has a special line in doom-laden self-righteousness. If the rich man of Christ’s parable has though insufficiently about his own death it appears that the Preacher has thought of little else. So constantly has he dwelt on it that he has reached the famous and oft-repeated conclusion ‘vanity of vanities; all is vanity’. What is the cause of his grumbling? That when he dies he will no longer be able to benefit from the fruits of his life’s exertions; that, to coin a phrase, he can’t take it with him when he goes. The result is that the Preacher despises life; just as it might appear that the rich man of the parable is being urged to despise life; and just as Richard Dawkins and co. would like to think that we do today.
Were that to be the case, were we despisers of life, then there would be a number of immediate implications. One would be that Christians would cease to care about the thousands who will perish this week because they have no access to clean drinking water. Why would that matter if heaven beckons so urgently? Another would be that Christians would set about consuming the earth’s resources with feckless impunity. Why would the climate or our delicate ecosystems matter if global meltdown is in fact the gateway to Paradise? A third would be that Christians would begin to think again about the ethics of their response to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and war. Why would a response to any of those seem so difficult if we thought as Dawkins and many others seem to think we think?
In the face of an apparent pincer movement from Gospel and Old Testament St Paul does not appear to be of much help. After all, today’s passage from Colossians opens with the words ‘Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth’. Perhaps Dawkins has a point, and perhaps, if we are serious about any of this at all, we ought to go and sit on a mountain top imploring the Lord to finish the job quickly. But we do Paul an injustice if we stop reading at that point. Continue, and we get into an exhaustive moral instruction of his readers. We are advised against anger and foul talk; against lies and impurity, slander and covetousness. Why, we must ask, why does any of this matter? If our minds are properly fixed on things above then why should they be troubled by these questions of behaviour? Surely they slip into irrelevance once our hearts are engaged on loftier business?
Well, no, they do not slip into irrelevance. They do not, and this explains my heretical answer to the Sunday supplement question. They do not because, as Paul says ‘you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God’. We have died the death of baptism, and in so dying we have received the new life that is God’s gracious gift to his people. The new life has begun; the new life is now. It has no end. It will be changed by death, of course, but it will not be ended by it.
Hence I feel discomfort at declaring my belief in life after death, and hence also I have a passion for declaring my belief in life and in the sanctity of life: in the potential for holiness of every life. Of course the starving of Africa matter; of course the threats to our planet’s survival matter; of course the debates over morality matter. They matter to Christians because it is in life today that God makes himself known; in life tomorrow that we will grow into our full stature as his children; and in life everlasting that we will stand before his throne. Amen.
Sunday 5 August 2007
Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 12-14, 18-23;
Colossians 3: 1-11;
Luke 12: 13-21.
I shall do that because I believe that there’s a pernicious myth abroad about the faith of Christians that I should like to nail. It is that ours is a life-denying religion that exalts death; a religion that is so intent on what lies beyond the grave that it all too easily neglects what precedes it.
In his best-seller The God Delusion Richard Dawkins tells the story of the moment that Cardinal Hume told the Abbot of Ampleforth of his approaching death. The Abbot apparently replied ‘Congratulations! That’s brilliant news! I wish I was coming with you’. Dawkins concludes that the Abbot was a sincere man of faith, and concludes also that, as professed Christians do not on the whole react in such a fashion to such tidings, their profession can offer them little consolation, and that it therefore cannot really be sincere.
What Dawkins has touched upon is the conviction that Christians must infinitely prefer death to life; that the promised rewards of heaven must far outshine the inconveniences of the present and dazzle us with their lustre; and that our eyes are so firmly fixed on the far horizon that there is no chance of their slipping earthwards and lighting upon the miseries (or the beauties) of our time.
And the parable that comprises our Gospel reading this morning seems to give comfort to that critical view of the faith. God speaks to the rich man, telling him that he is to die, and almost mocking the labours of his life. ‘The things you have prepared, whose will they be?’ The rich man has given no thought to his own mortality and he will pay for it. The message seems clear. What really counts is what lies beyond death, when all else is forgotten.
A conclusion not dissimilar emerges from the Old Testament reading. When I complete my Sunday supplement questionnaire it is very unlikely that I will say that I want to have dinner with the Preacher of Ecclesiastes, who has a special line in doom-laden self-righteousness. If the rich man of Christ’s parable has though insufficiently about his own death it appears that the Preacher has thought of little else. So constantly has he dwelt on it that he has reached the famous and oft-repeated conclusion ‘vanity of vanities; all is vanity’. What is the cause of his grumbling? That when he dies he will no longer be able to benefit from the fruits of his life’s exertions; that, to coin a phrase, he can’t take it with him when he goes. The result is that the Preacher despises life; just as it might appear that the rich man of the parable is being urged to despise life; and just as Richard Dawkins and co. would like to think that we do today.
Were that to be the case, were we despisers of life, then there would be a number of immediate implications. One would be that Christians would cease to care about the thousands who will perish this week because they have no access to clean drinking water. Why would that matter if heaven beckons so urgently? Another would be that Christians would set about consuming the earth’s resources with feckless impunity. Why would the climate or our delicate ecosystems matter if global meltdown is in fact the gateway to Paradise? A third would be that Christians would begin to think again about the ethics of their response to abortion, euthanasia, capital punishment and war. Why would a response to any of those seem so difficult if we thought as Dawkins and many others seem to think we think?
In the face of an apparent pincer movement from Gospel and Old Testament St Paul does not appear to be of much help. After all, today’s passage from Colossians opens with the words ‘Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth’. Perhaps Dawkins has a point, and perhaps, if we are serious about any of this at all, we ought to go and sit on a mountain top imploring the Lord to finish the job quickly. But we do Paul an injustice if we stop reading at that point. Continue, and we get into an exhaustive moral instruction of his readers. We are advised against anger and foul talk; against lies and impurity, slander and covetousness. Why, we must ask, why does any of this matter? If our minds are properly fixed on things above then why should they be troubled by these questions of behaviour? Surely they slip into irrelevance once our hearts are engaged on loftier business?
Well, no, they do not slip into irrelevance. They do not, and this explains my heretical answer to the Sunday supplement question. They do not because, as Paul says ‘you have died, and your life is hid with Christ in God’. We have died the death of baptism, and in so dying we have received the new life that is God’s gracious gift to his people. The new life has begun; the new life is now. It has no end. It will be changed by death, of course, but it will not be ended by it.
Hence I feel discomfort at declaring my belief in life after death, and hence also I have a passion for declaring my belief in life and in the sanctity of life: in the potential for holiness of every life. Of course the starving of Africa matter; of course the threats to our planet’s survival matter; of course the debates over morality matter. They matter to Christians because it is in life today that God makes himself known; in life tomorrow that we will grow into our full stature as his children; and in life everlasting that we will stand before his throne. Amen.
Sunday 5 August 2007
Ecclesiastes 1: 2, 12-14, 18-23;
Colossians 3: 1-11;
Luke 12: 13-21.
Eighth Sunday after Trinity 2007
An aspiring comic scriptwriter could do worse than study the book of Genesis. He could do far worse. For the dialogue that comprises our first reading this morning is a brilliant example of the comic writer’s art. The subject is the sin of Sodom and God’s planned destruction of the city. Abraham is perturbed at the possible loss of innocent life amidst the conflagration, and petitions the Almighty on behalf of hapless humanity.
In the conversation that ensues two features are remarkable. The first is the boldness of Abraham, who has no hesitation in addressing God directly. He argues with him and urges him to change tack. The second is the responsiveness of God, who listens and is won over. He is susceptible to the pleas of a mortal, and changes his mind.
In the hands of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, say, it could be a very funny sketch. Yet let’s leave aside for a moment the arresting image of Abraham, sitting on a park bench, tweaking the sleeve of the Omnipotent’s raincoat. What we are left with is a pattern of behaviour that is familiar. Humanity pleads; God listens. The plea is repeated; God acts. That pattern of plea and response is how we commonly understand our prayer.
It is, after all, a pattern that Jesus appears to commend. He it is who tells the parable of the friend who bangs on the door at midnight asking for three loaves of bread (some friend, we might think). The door is locked, the householder is in bed, and his children are with him. It’s not a promising scenario for the socially embarrassed and bread deprived friend. Yet, says Jesus, his persistence in asking eventually compels the householder to get up, disturb the children, unlock the door and hand over what he has been asked for. His perseverance is rewarded.
‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened’. According to the Gospel of Luke Jesus endorses that Genesis pattern of prayer. Humanity pleads; God listens. The plea is repeated; God acts.
I suspect that I’m not alone in feeling dissatisfied with the pattern. All too often it just doesn’t seem to work. Our prayers do not secure what we pray for: witness the agony of the McCann family, for whom the smug advice we were offered as children about God sometimes saying ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ must seem insulting. The pattern also betrays a rather odd image of God as a sort of auctioneer, selling his divine influence to the highest bidder, as it were, to the one who’s prayed longest and hardest.
So let me suggest a return to the comparison with which I began, between the Genesis dialogue and a comic script. One of the conceits of comedy is that the audience knows the truth which is concealed from the characters. The same is true of Abraham’s conversation. He is concerned that God may destroy the innocent along with the guilty. He embarks upon a negotiation, bartering God down, and securing his agreement that if as few as ten righteous are found then Sodom will not be destroyed. Abraham is no doubt mightily pleased with his efforts. Yet we the audience already know the outcome – don’t we? We know that God is just: more than that, that he is perfectly just. We know that he would be incapable of destroying innocent life.
What is actually revealed to us in the dialogue is Abraham, not God. What is revealed is Abraham’s credulity, his willingness to believe or suspect evil of God. What is revealed is the falseness of his humility. What is revealed is his presumption, his arrogant belief that he is more moral than God. Abraham’s questions - Abraham’s prayer - are about Abraham.
And the same comedic conceit runs through the Gospel. Jesus has taught his disciples to call God Father, and puts to them those famous rhetorical questions about fish and eggs, snakes and scorpions. The questions are what Dick Cheney would call ‘no-brainers’. We know the answers – don’t we? We know that our loving Father will never hurt us or trap us; we know that he eternally wants what is best for us. The teaching of Jesus sheds light only upon those who will not or cannot accept that, upon those who lay their own meanness or trickery, or that of others, at God’s door. Again, prayer reveals to us more about the one who prays than about the one to whom prayer is offered.
God is unchanging. He is not susceptible to our chaotic desires, treasured longings and fevered requests. As Paul writes to the Colossians, the earthly authorities, with their ethics and their strictures, have been disarmed. They have been set aside by Christ and nailed to the cross, symbol both of God’s love for the world and of the truth that in the world love is destined to suffer before it prevails.
Once we have grasped that prayer is about we who offer it than the one to who we offer it; once we have grasped that in Christ God has defeated the power of despair and death; then we understand our prayer anew. What will our prayer reveal about us? We must bang on the door throughout the night, not because by so doing we will eventually grind God down and persuade him to stir himself, but rather because in our patient, persistent waiting we will discover something of our own helplessness before God. We must ask for fish and for eggs. We will not change his mind about his giving them to us. God does not need to be persuaded that peace in Iraq is desirable or that an end to the English floods would be welcome. But when we pray for these things we unite ourselves to the suffering of our neighbours and find within ourselves the power to be God’s agents of transformation in the world he loves so dearly.
Michael Mayne, formerly Dean of Westminster, a priest remarkable for his holiness and his humanity writes about prayer in this way: ‘ … I have come to understand the heart of it as a disciplined taking of time to remind ourselves of who we are and whose we are, in which the one necessary element is stillness’. Amen.
Sunday 29 July 2007,
Genesis 18: 20-32;
Colossians 2: 6-15;
Luke 11: 1-13.
In the conversation that ensues two features are remarkable. The first is the boldness of Abraham, who has no hesitation in addressing God directly. He argues with him and urges him to change tack. The second is the responsiveness of God, who listens and is won over. He is susceptible to the pleas of a mortal, and changes his mind.
In the hands of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore, say, it could be a very funny sketch. Yet let’s leave aside for a moment the arresting image of Abraham, sitting on a park bench, tweaking the sleeve of the Omnipotent’s raincoat. What we are left with is a pattern of behaviour that is familiar. Humanity pleads; God listens. The plea is repeated; God acts. That pattern of plea and response is how we commonly understand our prayer.
It is, after all, a pattern that Jesus appears to commend. He it is who tells the parable of the friend who bangs on the door at midnight asking for three loaves of bread (some friend, we might think). The door is locked, the householder is in bed, and his children are with him. It’s not a promising scenario for the socially embarrassed and bread deprived friend. Yet, says Jesus, his persistence in asking eventually compels the householder to get up, disturb the children, unlock the door and hand over what he has been asked for. His perseverance is rewarded.
‘Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened’. According to the Gospel of Luke Jesus endorses that Genesis pattern of prayer. Humanity pleads; God listens. The plea is repeated; God acts.
I suspect that I’m not alone in feeling dissatisfied with the pattern. All too often it just doesn’t seem to work. Our prayers do not secure what we pray for: witness the agony of the McCann family, for whom the smug advice we were offered as children about God sometimes saying ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ must seem insulting. The pattern also betrays a rather odd image of God as a sort of auctioneer, selling his divine influence to the highest bidder, as it were, to the one who’s prayed longest and hardest.
So let me suggest a return to the comparison with which I began, between the Genesis dialogue and a comic script. One of the conceits of comedy is that the audience knows the truth which is concealed from the characters. The same is true of Abraham’s conversation. He is concerned that God may destroy the innocent along with the guilty. He embarks upon a negotiation, bartering God down, and securing his agreement that if as few as ten righteous are found then Sodom will not be destroyed. Abraham is no doubt mightily pleased with his efforts. Yet we the audience already know the outcome – don’t we? We know that God is just: more than that, that he is perfectly just. We know that he would be incapable of destroying innocent life.
What is actually revealed to us in the dialogue is Abraham, not God. What is revealed is Abraham’s credulity, his willingness to believe or suspect evil of God. What is revealed is the falseness of his humility. What is revealed is his presumption, his arrogant belief that he is more moral than God. Abraham’s questions - Abraham’s prayer - are about Abraham.
And the same comedic conceit runs through the Gospel. Jesus has taught his disciples to call God Father, and puts to them those famous rhetorical questions about fish and eggs, snakes and scorpions. The questions are what Dick Cheney would call ‘no-brainers’. We know the answers – don’t we? We know that our loving Father will never hurt us or trap us; we know that he eternally wants what is best for us. The teaching of Jesus sheds light only upon those who will not or cannot accept that, upon those who lay their own meanness or trickery, or that of others, at God’s door. Again, prayer reveals to us more about the one who prays than about the one to whom prayer is offered.
God is unchanging. He is not susceptible to our chaotic desires, treasured longings and fevered requests. As Paul writes to the Colossians, the earthly authorities, with their ethics and their strictures, have been disarmed. They have been set aside by Christ and nailed to the cross, symbol both of God’s love for the world and of the truth that in the world love is destined to suffer before it prevails.
Once we have grasped that prayer is about we who offer it than the one to who we offer it; once we have grasped that in Christ God has defeated the power of despair and death; then we understand our prayer anew. What will our prayer reveal about us? We must bang on the door throughout the night, not because by so doing we will eventually grind God down and persuade him to stir himself, but rather because in our patient, persistent waiting we will discover something of our own helplessness before God. We must ask for fish and for eggs. We will not change his mind about his giving them to us. God does not need to be persuaded that peace in Iraq is desirable or that an end to the English floods would be welcome. But when we pray for these things we unite ourselves to the suffering of our neighbours and find within ourselves the power to be God’s agents of transformation in the world he loves so dearly.
Michael Mayne, formerly Dean of Westminster, a priest remarkable for his holiness and his humanity writes about prayer in this way: ‘ … I have come to understand the heart of it as a disciplined taking of time to remind ourselves of who we are and whose we are, in which the one necessary element is stillness’. Amen.
Sunday 29 July 2007,
Genesis 18: 20-32;
Colossians 2: 6-15;
Luke 11: 1-13.
Sixth Sunday after Trinity 2007
When I was training to be a barrister one of the lessons I learned was that in court one should never ask a question to which one does not know the answer. It’s a pretty reliable guide to not getting caught out in front of the jury, but, I have to say, it’s a pretty dire prospectus for life.
I am an ex-lawyer who is married to a lawyer and so I suppose I feel qualified to cast a critical eye over members of my former profession (not that the absence of such a qualification inhibits others from doing the same). The lawyer who questions Jesus is instantly recognizable character and, I fear, an instantly dislikeable one. Legal training has plainly changed very little over the centuries. He knows the answers to both his questions. Neither is designed to elicit truth or broaden understanding. The first is a test: ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ The supplementary - ‘and who is my neighbour?’ - is asked out of a desire to justify himself. He brings to his questions a lethal mix of intellectual vanity and emotional insecurity. His desire to trap the teacher combines with his need of reassurance. Which of us is not familiar with at least one of those deep stirrings of the heart?
‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. The assumption of first-century Jews mirrored that of their ancestors in the days of the book of Leviticus, which is the source of the quote. Their assumption was that people do love themselves, that such love is a basic instinct of survival. Yet we, I suspect, are uncomfortable with that. Self-love is unattractive. Justifiable pride easily tips into overweening arrogance and modest self-assertion into extravagant self-aggrandisement. Yet I wonder whether this discomfort at the excesses of self-love masks a profound reality about our condition and about that of our interior selves.
Luke the Evangelist is referred to in Scripture as a physician, and although he is honoured as the patron saint of doctors we have no reason to believe that he was a psychologist. He was certainly not a writer blessed with the insights of modern psychology. These insights, which have influenced all sorts of therapies and theories, reveal that often, perhaps all too often, we do not love ourselves very much. We are not, by and large, consumed with self-loathing, it is true, a complex that some parts of the Christian tradition have done a shameful amount to encourage. But many of us, very many of us take easy refuge in the sorts of intellectual strategies and character traits that the lawyer who questions Jesus displays. These are our way of papering over the chasm that yawns at the very heart of our being, the chasm of nagging suspicion and persistent belief that, really and truly, we are not worthy of love.
This is an unspoken conviction with staggering implications. One in particular casts its long shadow over the Christian church and propels us into ceaseless, dizzying action. We ourselves are not worthy of love, of course, but so many others are. We tire ourselves in running after them and meeting their imagined and imaginary needs. But what we are actually doing is running away from our selves, and filling our diaries, minds and hearts with empty activism. I can think of at least one priest of whom it was said that he cared greatly, and for many: you could tell those for whom he cared because they had a hunted look. This is the inexorable path to exhaustion, defeat and despair.
It is not the path of the Good Samaritan, the fictional character created by Jesus in response to the lawyer’s hollow questioning. What is it that enables the Samaritan to cross the road when the priest and the Levite have passed by on the other side? He ignores the purity laws that have kept them at a safe distance. He disregards the racial codes that put enmity between his kind and the Jews. He does not consider his personal safety in what is so evidently bandit country. He dismounts, crosses to the helpless victim, and lavishes attention on him which far exceeds what is immediately necessary. Why?
It is not that he is well-intentioned, which is what makes Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 comment on the parable so extraordinarily crass. It is not automatic response of a do-gooder. The Samaritan crosses the road when the others do not because he loves the helpless victim as he loves himself. Cultic laws and racial segregations mean nothing to him. Personal safety and freedom from ridicule mean nothing to him. They mean nothing to him because he loves himself in the best and noblest sense of that divine command. He is not at war with himself or running away from himself: he has nothing to prove and nothing to suppress. He is at peace; and so he is set free to minister to another.
In our first reading Moses speaks to the children of Israel and explains to them that God’s word is not something that they need to chase after. It does not lie beyond the sea; it is not concealed within heaven’s vault. ‘It is very near you’ he says ‘it is in your mouth and in your heart’. The lawyer correctly identifies the greatest of God’s commandments. Their observance begins with our looking at ourselves, just as our ancestors in the faith Paul, Timothy and Epaphras must have looked at themselves. Their observance begins with our seeing there what God sees there: a person worthy of his love and therefore worthy of our love. And their observance begins with our using our confidence in that love to re-shape the world around us. Amen.
Sunday 15 July 2007
Deuteronomy 30: 9-14;
Colossians: 1: 1-14;
Luke 10: 25-37
I am an ex-lawyer who is married to a lawyer and so I suppose I feel qualified to cast a critical eye over members of my former profession (not that the absence of such a qualification inhibits others from doing the same). The lawyer who questions Jesus is instantly recognizable character and, I fear, an instantly dislikeable one. Legal training has plainly changed very little over the centuries. He knows the answers to both his questions. Neither is designed to elicit truth or broaden understanding. The first is a test: ‘what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ The supplementary - ‘and who is my neighbour?’ - is asked out of a desire to justify himself. He brings to his questions a lethal mix of intellectual vanity and emotional insecurity. His desire to trap the teacher combines with his need of reassurance. Which of us is not familiar with at least one of those deep stirrings of the heart?
‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’. The assumption of first-century Jews mirrored that of their ancestors in the days of the book of Leviticus, which is the source of the quote. Their assumption was that people do love themselves, that such love is a basic instinct of survival. Yet we, I suspect, are uncomfortable with that. Self-love is unattractive. Justifiable pride easily tips into overweening arrogance and modest self-assertion into extravagant self-aggrandisement. Yet I wonder whether this discomfort at the excesses of self-love masks a profound reality about our condition and about that of our interior selves.
Luke the Evangelist is referred to in Scripture as a physician, and although he is honoured as the patron saint of doctors we have no reason to believe that he was a psychologist. He was certainly not a writer blessed with the insights of modern psychology. These insights, which have influenced all sorts of therapies and theories, reveal that often, perhaps all too often, we do not love ourselves very much. We are not, by and large, consumed with self-loathing, it is true, a complex that some parts of the Christian tradition have done a shameful amount to encourage. But many of us, very many of us take easy refuge in the sorts of intellectual strategies and character traits that the lawyer who questions Jesus displays. These are our way of papering over the chasm that yawns at the very heart of our being, the chasm of nagging suspicion and persistent belief that, really and truly, we are not worthy of love.
This is an unspoken conviction with staggering implications. One in particular casts its long shadow over the Christian church and propels us into ceaseless, dizzying action. We ourselves are not worthy of love, of course, but so many others are. We tire ourselves in running after them and meeting their imagined and imaginary needs. But what we are actually doing is running away from our selves, and filling our diaries, minds and hearts with empty activism. I can think of at least one priest of whom it was said that he cared greatly, and for many: you could tell those for whom he cared because they had a hunted look. This is the inexorable path to exhaustion, defeat and despair.
It is not the path of the Good Samaritan, the fictional character created by Jesus in response to the lawyer’s hollow questioning. What is it that enables the Samaritan to cross the road when the priest and the Levite have passed by on the other side? He ignores the purity laws that have kept them at a safe distance. He disregards the racial codes that put enmity between his kind and the Jews. He does not consider his personal safety in what is so evidently bandit country. He dismounts, crosses to the helpless victim, and lavishes attention on him which far exceeds what is immediately necessary. Why?
It is not that he is well-intentioned, which is what makes Margaret Thatcher’s 1980 comment on the parable so extraordinarily crass. It is not automatic response of a do-gooder. The Samaritan crosses the road when the others do not because he loves the helpless victim as he loves himself. Cultic laws and racial segregations mean nothing to him. Personal safety and freedom from ridicule mean nothing to him. They mean nothing to him because he loves himself in the best and noblest sense of that divine command. He is not at war with himself or running away from himself: he has nothing to prove and nothing to suppress. He is at peace; and so he is set free to minister to another.
In our first reading Moses speaks to the children of Israel and explains to them that God’s word is not something that they need to chase after. It does not lie beyond the sea; it is not concealed within heaven’s vault. ‘It is very near you’ he says ‘it is in your mouth and in your heart’. The lawyer correctly identifies the greatest of God’s commandments. Their observance begins with our looking at ourselves, just as our ancestors in the faith Paul, Timothy and Epaphras must have looked at themselves. Their observance begins with our seeing there what God sees there: a person worthy of his love and therefore worthy of our love. And their observance begins with our using our confidence in that love to re-shape the world around us. Amen.
Sunday 15 July 2007
Deuteronomy 30: 9-14;
Colossians: 1: 1-14;
Luke 10: 25-37
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