Christ the King,25 November 2012

"There are female bishops in heaven, where God's really in charge. It's slower than it should be, but it'll come". A Facebook post by Frances, a Roman Catholic teenager whose mother is training to be an Anglican priest, offers us a richly textured reflection for the last week of the church's year.

According to the infamous atheist bus that can still be seen on our streets it's all much simpler than Frances would allow. 'There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life'. In his recent book Unapologetic (of which I'm an unapologetic fan) another Francis, Spufford, reserves some of his very considerable appetite for scorn for that bus and for its message. Paraphrasing him, to suggest that human life is something to be enjoyed is to turn human life into a tub of Ben & Jerry's or an episode of The Archers. Those are things to be enjoyed. But life has rather more flavours than a scoop of Caramel Choo  Choo and rather more depth than thirteen minutes of the nation's favourite radio soap.

For example, I spent last week in a Benedictine monastery. The chief work of monks and nuns is the worship of God. The divine Offices are sung with beauty and reverence from before the sun has risen until after it has set. It is a place of profound peace. But not just of peace. New doors have been fitted to the buildings, and the storms of last week revealed that they have not been fitted terribly well. So no sooner is the divine Office finished than members of the community roll up the sleeves of their habits, climb stepladders, and wield Stanley knives in an attempt to ease the hinges. I hope they enjoy their work and I hope they enjoy their prayer, but the one verb scarcely does justice to both. More is asked of them, and more is asked of us.

Various verbs are likewise needed to describe our membership of the Church of England. We know that, locally, church works. Here at St Peter's prayers are said, worship is offered and on the portico and in the playground community is built in a fashion that we are proud to call inclusive. Yet we also know that, nationally, church looks a bit different. At the end of a week like this week, it looks absurd. Even if we rejoice that our ecclesiology allows a handful of lay people to thwart the avowed wishes of their bishops (and I do rejoice in that - there are other ecclesiologies and other churches in which it could not even begin to be possible); even if we rejoice that the Church of England still manages to form Christians who are capable of thinking and voting counter-culturally (and I rejoice in that too - on the whole we're not brilliant at it, particularly when it comes to issues of wealth creation and redistribution); even if we rejoice in these things we are left with a episcopate which is theologically incoherent and a public profile which is utterly discredited. We still belong to St Peter's Eaton Square, and we still belong to the national Church. Yet our belonging to each is of a different order. It requires different things of us and makes different claims upon us.

And today's feast reinforces what Frances identifies, our need to live at different speeds and to face in different directions. Our year ends with the proclamation that Christ is King. He is risen from the dead; he has ascended into heaven; he reigns supreme over all things and in him will all things be made new. Yet we who proclaim his kingship know at the same time that evidence in support of our proclamation is often hard to find. The planet is disfigured by war, poverty and injustice. The king appears sadly negligent of his kingdom. Enjoy your life? We need a better formula.

It is provided by our understanding of who we are. We are dust, made of the same elements that make the world we inhabit. We share with our fellow creatures a capacity for enjoyment and for its opposite. Yet we are more than dust, too. We bear within us a spark of divine life that is heaven-sent; it is this that we will kindle in Thomas and in Sofia today. Christ's kingdom is not of this world. So we are made to fix the door hinges - and we are made to sing God's praises. We are made to share the common life of St Peter's - and we are made to pray for, live alongside and love our brothers and sisters who conceive of God's church rather differently. We are made to be citizens of Westminster - and we are made to be citizens of Christ's kingdom. We are called to tend the spark within us until it burns so brightly that when our neighbours see us they see heaven's fire.

So I want Thomas and Sofia to enjoy their lives; I want all of us to enjoy the year before us; and I want to see women bishops as soon as possible. But I want more than that. I want God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven; I want us to attend to the truth that comes from Christ; I want us to allow it to shape us, mould us and ultimately engulf us. "The Son of God became the son of man"

writes Irenaeus "that man might become the son of God". It's a rather more ambitious proposal than the atheist bus allows. Amen.

Second Sunday before Advent, 18 November 2012

 Is 'Skyfall' a serious contender for the title of 'best Bond film ever'? I think it is. The performances are excellent. The chases are fast. The fight scenes are thrilling. There are Komodo dragons, a blissfully limited amount of passionate slush, and one perfectly timed but utterly unacknowledged dry Martini. But there is also a story of two men who have been betrayed.

One of the two is Silva, a languidly creepy villain, portrayed without any trace of a white pussy cat. He is one of Britain's top agents stationed in Hong Kong. M, played again by Judi Dench, hands him over to the Chinese before the territory reverts. Silva is part of the price she's willing to pay for a trouble-free transition. The other is Bond, James Bond. At the beginning of the film he wrestles with a terrorist on the roof of a moving train. Another British agent has the chance to take one shot. But the sightline is not clear. Bond's writhing form flits in and out of the crosshairs. 'Take the shot' says M. She betrays him, just as she betrays Silva. Adamantine certainty crumbles.

The mighty stones of Jerusalem's Temple must have looked like a certainty far more reliable and far less fickle than M's loyalty. Their massive weight betokened God's commitment to his people Israel. This was the place where he had elected to dwell, at the very heart of his chosen people. "What large stones and what large buildings!" exclaim the fishermen from Galilee who have come up to the big city. Jesus's response must shock them to the core. "Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down". Jesus predicts the inversion of all certainties. He predicts the overthrow of everything that the disciples - everything that the Israelites - believe and trust. "Take the shot" says M. Jesus takes aim at what is dearest to his people, and squeezes the trigger.

Jada and Lorian are being baptized in a landscape that bears an eerie resemblance to that inhabited by Silva and Bond. Just as betrayed secret agents must learn to live without the biggest certainty of their professional lives, so Jada and Lorian, and all of us are learning to live without the certainties with which we have long lived. A global  geopolitical settlement that prevailed for decades has collapsed. Religion has re-acquired its medieval potential for terror. The fragile planet creaks under the burden of unlimited growth. The Internet has revolutionized our communication. Like Silva and like Bond we live on the other side of certainty, in a place where the stones of the temple have been thrown down.

So how do they cope? I don't think I'm giving anything away if I tell you that Bond survives. The future of the franchise is assured. Silva longs for revenge. With fiendish ingenuity he plots M's destruction from his island hideaway. The only agent capable of thwarting him is, of course, 007. And Bond cannot resist the call. After the railway shooting he embarks on a lengthy binge in a tropical paradise, but when England is threatened he cannot but return.

Silva's response is nihilistic despair; Bond's is unquestioning patriotism. But what is ours? The Gospel does not offer a plan for our uncertain times. It has much to say about many of the crises that affect us: about the destructive power of greed; about the centrality of forgiveness; about the virtue of self-giving in place of self-serving. But it does not offer one comprehensive route-map out of them. The prophet Daniel foresees a time of anguish. The prophet Jesus foresees wars and rumours of wars. The prophets of political and economic punditry foresee protracted recession, global warming and intractable strife in the Middle East. And what God offers is not the sort of neat solution that Q Division is tasked with dreaming up. Baptism is not the sacramental equivalent of a bio-hazard suit that can be concealed inside a cigarette lighter. It will not shield its wearers against everything that they encounter. What God offers is far more intuitive than that. It is the deadliest secret weapon of all. What God offers is companionship.

Secret agents are probably the loneliest people on the planet. I can't help wondering if that accounts for the success and the longevity of the Bond series. I wonder if in Bond's aloneness we see our own aloneness: a far more exotic version of it, obviously, one that is full of beautiful women, gorgeous locations and world-saving secrets. But Silva and Bond are fundamentally alone. In their possession of state secrets, in the small hours of the morning, or as they confront death, they have only their hatred of England and their pride in England for company. They are like us. No matter how strong our relationships are we ultimately face the perils of the post-certain world by ourselves. Which is why God offers what God offers in baptism. God offers it because only God can offer it, and what God offers is what we need above all else. The only one who can be with us in our aloneness is the one who is nearer to us than we are to ourselves, the one who promises to be with us to skyfall and beyond. Amen.

  

All Saints Sunday, 4 November 2012

When we were children my sister possessed a good singing voice and enough confidence to use it when the occasion demanded. In church she sang lustily. The problem was that the only hymn she knew was 'We plough the fields and scatter'. Whatever the season and whatever the hymn chosen for it, that is what she would sing. Loudly.

What we sing in church matters, and the day on which we sing it matters too. On one Sunday of the year my sister's choice could not be faulted. On every other Sunday it would have jarred horribly had she not been three years old. Some hymns simply belong on some days. It's impossible to conceive of Palm Sunday without 'Ride on, ride on' or of Pentecost without 'Come down, O love divine'. And, for me at least, it's impossible to conceive of All Saints without 'For all the saints'.

Why is that? It part it's sentiment, of course. That hymn has ushered in every All Saintstide that I can remember and is as much a part of this time of year as fireworks, poppies, and the church heating not working. In part it's that it's dear to any priest who has ever worked as a bishop's chaplain. Our motto is 'We feebly struggle, they in glory shine'. But it's the combination of William Walsham How's words and Vaughan Williams's tune which have assured the hymn its place in the pantheon of classics. It will surely be sung for as long as hymns are sung. 

The words. How was a nineteenth century Shropshire parish priest and a rather reluctant bishop, and in 'For all the saints' he sketches out for the church he served the essence of saintliness. The saints are not principally those who have done great things or thought great thoughts. The saints are, first, those who have confessed the name of Jesus before the world. They are those whose witness to the name of Jesus has been costly. How characterizes saintliness in bellicose terms. Saintliness is a well-fought fight; there is fierce strife and warfare long.  He published the hymn in 1864, when the American Civil War was at its height and the forces of the British Empire were engaged against the Ashanti. Today it is almost always sung a week before Remembrance Sunday, when images of men huddled in their trenches are fresh in our minds. Then and now the image of saintliness as struggle resonates deeply with those who sing the hymn.

Yet, secondly, this struggle, the struggle of saintliness, is not a struggle fought in vain, for the saints are rewarded with rest. After the noble fight comes the golden evening and the sweet calm of Paradise. But if this sounds like a rather individualistic account of the Christian life - sainthood as a tough job well done with an an appropriate recompense attached - then How envisages more.

Thirdly 'But lo! There breaks a yet more glorious day; the saints triumphant rise in bright array...' Beyond the struggles of the saints, beyond their costly witness and beyond the martyrdoms of centuries there comes a day when the King of Glory makes all things new, gathering the faithful from earth's wide bounds and ocean's farthest coast. So How sets before the church the vocation of the saints, the consolation of the saints, and the hope of the saints: the vocation of the church, the consolation of the church, and the hope of the church.

The music. Vaughan Williams entitled his tune 'Sine Nomine', as it was destined for the feast when all the saints are honoured but none are named. I know I'll be corrected if I'm wrong but it's written in four-four time and so could - I think - be played as a march. It was certainly intended as a processional, and the adjective 'rousing' could have been invented to describe it. It's not just soldiers who march, of course. Civil rights campaigners march; ban-the-bomb protestors march; anti-poverty agitators march. People march with a common purpose. They may be diverse in almost every respect, they may be a countless host, but the cause unites them and makes them one. And a march - any sort of march -  is a good metaphor for the life of a saint: never static, but always advancing, in the company of others, in knowledge of God and obedience to his call.

And perhaps it is this that accounts for the status of 'For all the saints'. The words are theologically coherent (which cannot be said of every hymn), and the tune is a good sing (ditto). But, more important than either is that 'For all the saints' enables the church to become a part of the reality that it's singing about. When the struggle of sainthood is at its darkest, writes How, the distant triumph song can already be heard. The times may seem bleak and hope may seem impossible, but the embattled saints are already on the side of the victors. Desmond Tutu says 'We used to say to the apartheid government "you may have all the guns, you may have all this power, but you have already lost. Come, join the winning side!"' The same is true of the saints, and the same is true of us. When we sing Alleluia to Father, Son and Holy Ghost we are not just exercising our lungs, or politely doing what custom expects of us at this time of year. We are adding our voices to those of the blest communion. We are claiming our place among the fellowship divine. We are singing because they are singing, and they are singing because they know they've won. '...All are one in thee, for all are thine'. They are singing us home - in a song that will never end. Amen.

  

Sunday 14 October 2012, 19th after Trinity

"Hate evil and love good, and establish justice..."

 

Delegates to the Conservative Party conference, which met in Birmingham last week, listened to two proposals from the platform aimed at establishing justice. Chris Grayling wants to change the law on self-defence to allow individuals to defend their property instinctively and honestly, even if the force they use is disproportionate to the threat they face. Theresa May wants to change the law on sentencing to allow individuals who are victims of anti-social behaviour to choose the penalty that those convicted receive.

 

We should be under no illusions: both proposals represent a change in the way we conceive of society. Both represent substantial shifts in the balance that we have historically struck between the individual and the community. The first will, if passed into law, allow an individual to use inappropriate force upon another as long as he judges that his act is reasonable. The community will hand that judgement over to the individual and, as long as the individual judges that his act is reasonable, the community will not question his exercise of it. The second will, if passed into law, hand to the individual who has been wronged the authority to select the wrong-doer's punishment. No longer will this function be exercised by the Crown, acting on behalf of the wronged individual and on behalf of the whole community out of the deeply-held belief that a wrong against an individual is a wrong against the whole community. The wrong suffered by the individual, and the individual's response to it, will be what determines the wrong-doer's fate.

 

As I have said, the proposals represent a change in the way we conceive of society.

 

In his lecture to the Theos think-tank, delivered not far from here the week before last, Rowan Williams spoke eloquently about how we conceive of society - how we will miss him. He suggested that to conceive of society as a balance between the individual and the community, a balance exaggerated by these two proposals, is to conceive of  it wrongly. The real balance is the balance between the individual and the person. Williams reminded his audience of Saint Augustine's observation that a person is in relationship with God before he is anything else, or before he is in relationship with anything else. None of us is on our own, and none of us cannot pretend to be - or, at least, we can pretend to be. We can pretend that human society is a matter of managing the relationship between a collection of individuals, each of whom has a stockpiled birthright of liberties and dignities. But for people of faith human society is a matter of ordering the relationship between a collection of persons, each of whom is the object of unconditional divine love.

 

In his encounter with the rich young man and in the exchanges that follow it Jesus has a lot to say about how we conceive of society. He has a lot to say about how wealth, property and family all conspire to distort the loyalty that our primary relationship should command. The young man is good-hearted and eager to please, but the possessions that he loves mean that God's claim on him will always have to compete with the business affairs and commercial anxieties that fill his head. He sees himself as an individual in a matrix of relationships which he has chosen, just one of which is with God. Jesus addresses the complexity directly.  "Sell what you own" he advises. In other words, stop trying to amass an identity for yourself; stop relying on what you own to create your conception of who you are; stop building yourself up as one individual among many. Remember instead who you really are: God's beloved. Rely  instead on who you really are: God's beloved. Give away everything else. Don't build up, and you will discover the treasure of heaven.

 

The rich young man goes away grieving and we do not hear of him again. Yet all who respond to the call to follow Jesus are asked to do what the young man was asked to do. They are asked to give up everything that they cling to, everything that distorts their loyalty to their primary relationship. This is what we call Baptism, in which God washes away every trace of present sin and through which God offers a sure route home from all future sin. Try hanging on to wealth or position; try hanging onto brothers or sisters, aunts or uncles when you are plunged into the healing and cleansing water. Baptism is an assertion of our primary relationship with God; it reminds us of our duty to it; and it underlines its fundamental significance for everything we are.

 

So where does this leave last week's proposals? Perpetrators of anti-social crime offend against the primary relationship, against the truth of God's eternal regard for every one of us. But a system of justice that panders to us as individuals, a system of justice that neglects our common origin in God, in a God who gives each of us equal eternal worth, offends against that truth as well. We of all people have an interest in the treatment meted out to alleged offenders. After all, we worship one. Faith compels us to see ourselves in them, and them in us, too. Amen.

 

 

Sunday 7 October 2012: Harvest Thanksgiving-The Screwtape Emails

My dear Wormwood,

 

Seventy years have passed since your uncle Screwtape picked up his pen to send you words of counsel. I suppose I ought to say that it feels like an eternity, but demons who inhabit everlasting fire know what eternity feels like, and it feels a good bit longer than seventy years. And now that I have picked up my pen I find that pens have largely been replaced by keyboards and letters by electronic communications. 'The Screwtape Emails'. It doesn't have quite the same ring.

 

I am writing in response to your difficulties with the tiresome people of St Peter's Eaton Square: the shiny, happy central Londoners who are so smugly pleased to describe themselves as a growing community, a vibrant community, and an inclusive community. I know, nephew Wormwood, I know. It makes my horns droop, too. What is to be done with a collection of people who are so confident and so competent, and who have rarely ever been more so than now? This year alone they have staged a blockbuster Jubilee Fete and hosted the mother of all pig roasts. They have run a cafe on their portico and launched a new Mission Action Plan.   They have begun the rebuilding of their school and hosted their bishop, their Lord Mayor, and a celebrated Paralympian. Now they are planning a gala autumn party, a parish pantomime, and a four-week exploration of Luke's Gospel. There is no end to what they are willing to do. They seem utterly formidable, utterly beyond our reach. Our Enemy once urged his scatter-brained companions to consider the lilies in the sublime effortlessness of their beauty. St Peter's Eaton Square looks like a field full of them: gorgeous, exotic, unique.

 

But do not despair, Wormwood, do not despair, for their moment of triumph can yet be our moment of triumph. Today at St Peter's they celebrate Harvest Thanksgiving. They will bring to church tins of baked beans, boxes of tea bags and, because their postcode is what it is, bottles of extra virgin olive oil. These will be given to the poor. It is all part of the same tiresome pattern. People at St Peter's are ceaselessly active. They do things. But you and I have something in common with the Enemy. And that is that we see them as they really are. Confident, of course; competent, definitely; active, certainly. The sun shines in SW1. But the sun always casts shadows. So they are also ridden with anxiety, crushed by fatigue, bruised by their relationships, disappointed in their hopes, and hurting bitterly. And all that, my dear nephew, gives us plenty to work with.

 

The more successful they seem the harder it is for them to acknowledge the shadows. They can raise £20,000 from a church fete, cook canapés to die for and plot strategies for their children's schooling that would shame Napoleon Bonaparte. How can they also be exhausted, stressed, and angry? The Enemy knows that they are, of course, and he loves them for it. That's the whole dreary point of the Enemy. He wants the disposable razors and the instant coffee. He wants their home-baked cakes, he wants their committee membership, he wants them to erect marquees and hand out hymn-books in church. But he also wants their weariness and their pain, their dysfunction and their dis-ease, their depression and their despair. The Enemy knows that lilies flower only briefly. He knows that for every luxuriously extravagant bloom, wondrous to gaze upon, there is a brown and shrivelled-up stick, excruciating to gaze upon. Being the Enemy he gazes upon both, knows them to be one and the same, and loves them nonetheless. And if he gets his way he will go on loving them until the dryness and the deadness and the lifelessness have been pruned away and glorious, abundant, eternal life springs up in its place.

 

It's a frankly appalling prospect, but, luckily for us, the people at St Peter's don't get it. They still believe that the only harvest that matters is the harvest of their success. They still believe that everything else is to be hidden away. I hope you'll understand the opportunity that this creates for us. Let them believe in the myth of their confidence and their competence. Let them believe that they are world-beaters. Let them believe that it's what they do rather than what they are that ultimately counts. Let them believe all that, and the poor fools have purchased a one-way ticket to destruction. How wonderful.

 

They must never know that it could be different. They must never know that the Enemy longs for it to be different. They must never know that they could do more than nod at him with a 'sorry God', 'please God', 'thank you God'. They must never know that they could stop, that they could be still. They must never know that they could look at themselves in the light that shines so blindingly from the Enemy's face. They must never know that if they did they would begin to discover who they really are - the cherished objects of unmerited, unconditional, everlasting love. But I'm not going to tell them that and neither - I am quite sure - are you.

 

With my most infernal regards, as ever,

 

Your affectionate uncle,

 

Screwtape.

St John's, Higham, Kent: 150th Anniversary of the Consecration

His most recent biographer does not record whether Higham's most illustrious resident was present at the consecration of its new parish church, but then 1862 was a difficult year for Charles Dickens. He turned fifty and he wrote little more than a largely-forgotten short story, 'His Boots'. His brother Fred was locked up in the Queen's Bench Prison and his son Alfred failed the Army exams. Closer to home he was forced to exchange his beloved Gad's Hill for what he called 'the nastiest little house in London' in order that his daughters might enjoy the metropolitan season - and the historical detectives suspect that the actress Nelly Ternan may have born him a child, in exile in France. Perhaps it's no wonder that he didn't play country squire when the altar and walls of St John's were anointed with holy oil and God's praises were sung for the first time within these walls. They had been sung here for well over a year before things began to look up and he began work on the novel that would become Our Mutual Friend.

 

Dickens, that great teller of tales, loved to tease visitors to his study at Gad's Hill. They would enter and close the door behind them. Then they would look around and be amazed to discover that the door had disappeared. Instead all around them, all around the walls, were book-lined shelves. On close examination, some of these had extraordinary titles. There was Cat's Lives, in nine volumes, and A Short History of a Chancery Suit, in twenty-one volumes. His suspicions raised, the visitor might subject these books to an even closer examination, and would then discover that they were false. Dummy books had been built onto the back of the door. Their titles amused the great novelist. They couldn't be taken down and read, but they could be swung open, allowing the visitor to walk through and leave the study. The painted books were a doorway, a means of access to another place.

 

One hundred and fifty years after the consecration - and two hundred years after Dickens's birth - St John's is lit up by one hundred and fifty icons. Icons are pictures. Not landscapes or sea views, of course, but formal, stylized pictures of saints and Biblical scenes. But those who pray with icons believe that they have something in common with the study door at Gad's Hill. The visitor to Dickens's study might enjoy poring over the fictitious titles painted on the spines, just as a visitor to your exhibition might enjoy poring over the technical skill of the iconographers. But unless the visitor to Gad's was willing to look beyond the dummy books he would remain forever stuck in the study, looking at the surface of the door. And unless the visitor to St John's is willing to look beyond the gold leaf and the egg tempera he will remain every bit as stuck. For just like Dickens's practical joke the icons'  painted panels are a doorway, a means of access to another place.

 

Those who pray with icons believe that they are one of the means that God has chosen to reveal himself to the world. When a faithful person looks upon an icon he or she does not just look upon painted wood; he or she looks upon the one whose image is painted upon the wood, and the one whose image is painted upon the wood looks upon the faithful person. A computer-literate generation will not find this difficult to grasp. When we open up our computer screens we are confronted by an array of little images. When we click on one of them - Word, for example, or PowerPoint - we are taken to the programme that we want to use. The point of the little images is that they take us somewhere else. And we call the little images 'icons'. 

 

Most pictures hang on the walls gathering dust. They may entertain us and they may educate us. If the walls they hang on are the walls of Hogwarts they may even move about and speak to us. But most pictures do not allow us to gaze upon the face of God. Even to suggest that this is what icons allow should raise some questions for us - questions about the pictures, certainly, but also questions about God. We don't have to listen very hard to hear the scoffing of the cultured despisers of religion. What sort of God allows his creation to peer at him through wood and paint?

 

Our sort of God is the answer; our sort of God. For our sort of God is the God revealed in Jesus Christ; the God who sits down in a house in Capernaum and takes a child his arms. Our sort of God says 'Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me'. This is the God  who has not held anything back; the God who has come to us in person; the God who identifies himself absolutely with the small and the weak.

 

Charles Dickens wrote books. When we read his collected works we learn something about him. Our God did not write books. We do not have to read his collected works in order to learn something about him. For our God turned up. As Saint James puts it, Wisdom came from above, pure, peaceable, gentle and merciful, in the flesh and blood of Jesus. Wisdom came from above, and Wisdom comes from above. Wisdom's coming is an annoyance, as ancient Solomon said it would be, for Wisdom's coming illuminates all our faults, fragilities and failings. Yet still Wisdom comes, and Wisdom is not ashamed of us: not ashamed of the flesh and blood that Jesus shares; not ashamed of the works of our hands; not ashamed of the things of the earth that we work with our hands. Wisdom takes these and makes them holy. Wisdom comes and through the love we have for one another; through the holy icons; and above all through the bread and wine of the Eucharist Wisdom makes us welcome. Amen.

Sunday 16 September, 15 after Trinity

"Most young people in Britain think that morality means looking after your family or putting others first". So says a BBC poll published this week. Almost 600 young people aged between 16 and 24 were asked to choose which they thought was the most important moral issue from among eight alternatives. 59% opted for caring for the family: only 4% thought that having religious faith or beliefs was the most important.  A British Social Attitudes survey published simultaneously suggests that less than a quarter of young people now consider themselves to be religious.

 

Such figures must be read sceptically. The questions devised by the pollster determine to some extent the answers he is given. But if the figures give us a broadly reliable snapshot then perhaps it's worth asking whether what they suggest - that religion is barely esteemed among the young - actually matters. So long as the young care about something other than themselves - and it appears that they do - then does religion matter?

 

Unsurprisingly I think it does, and I hope that my reasons for thinking that it does amount to more than either professional self-interest or middle-aged reaction. I think that religion does matter. It's not that religion is something that the young should take a respectful interest in whether they like it or not, like they should maths lessons or piano practice. It's not that I adhere to a species of religion that holds that they are at risk of the eternal flames if they don't take such an interest. Put bluntly, it's that I actually believe that, like eating undressed salad and taking strenuous and regular exercise, religion is good for you, even if it's often considerably less fun.   

 

Why is it good for you? What is its purpose? Most people would agree that living in denial of something is unhealthy. Successive British Governments denied for twenty-three years that the blame for the Hillsborough tragedy could be laid anywhere but at the feet of the Liverpool fans. The consequences for us all of that denial will be laid bare in the months ahead: in the anguish suffered by the families; in the eroded trust between communities and police; in the dented confidence in our system of justice.

 

Yes, denial damages, and the purpose of religion is help those who practise it to live free from  denial. For the purpose of religion is to help its practitioners to understand who they really are. When Peter acclaims Jesus as the Messiah he is making a claim about himself as well as a claim about Jesus. He is acknowledging that God is God, that Jesus is God's Anointed One, and that he, Peter, is one of those to whom God's Anointed One has come. He is acknowledging his dependence upon God; he is acknowledging his need of God's Messiah; and he is acknowledging his solidarity with the people to whom God's Messiah has come. Those who live without religion are living, whether consciously or not, with denial. They are living without acknowledging this dependence, this need, or this solidarity.

 

So we're all right then? This is not a moment for complacency. It is emphatically not the case that the practitioners of religion have got everything sorted. Far from it. Peter himself illustrates this perfectly in his very next utterance. He has, as it were, taken the first tentative steps into religion. He acknowledges God. But he also presumes to know God, and to know that God's Messiah cannot suffer and die. In his confession of Jesus as Christ, Peter has begun the journey, but he has only begun it. He will have to follow Jesus to the cross and beyond before he fully knows what his confession means. He will have to set aside the notions of Messiah-ship that he has long held and treasured. He will have to be led into a wholly new understanding. He will have to grow up.

 

If the purpose of religion is to help those who practise it to live free from denial then one of the most pernicious forms of denial is self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is a denial of the passing years; it is a denial of our inevitable ageing; and it is a denial of the irrefutable evidence of our eyes, minds and hearts. If the purpose of religion is to help those who practise it to live free from denial then it is also its purpose to help them towards maturity. Those who live in denial of their dependence upon God or in denial of their need of God often find other gods to be dependent on or to need. But practitioners of religion often depend upon the God of their childhood, or need the God of their adolescence. And this is as unhealthy as living in denial of God. Like Peter, who cannot cope with a Messiah who suffers, we cling to a God who is in reality the tyrannical Headmistress who once terrified us, or the benevolent commanding officer who we once respected. We long for a God who punishes us (or, sometimes, for a God who punishes others); we long for a God who barks orders at us; we long for the God we've always longed for, the teddy-bear God or the Darth Vader God, the God who, whether he's an object of adoration or an object of fear, is the God who has never left the corner of the nursery of our lives.

 

Religion requires of us a mature understanding of the God revealed in Jesus Christ, a mature knowledge of the God disclosed most clearly in the crucified prophet of Nazareth. Hand-in-hand it also requires of us a mature understanding, a mature knowledge, of ourselves. Religion won't let us be toddlers or teenagers once we've left those years behind. Following God, journeying into God's mystery, means journeying into our mystery. The purpose of religion is to help those who practise it to live free from denial, and our greatest denial is our denial of our fractured, fragile selves. Spend any time at all in the company of the living God and the blind rage, the naked fear, the frustrated ambition and the visceral pain that we all hold within ourselves become all-too visible. It's far easier to stay in the nursery with teddy. It's far easier to deny it - but religion won't let us. That's why the polls' findings alarm me. Religion is good for us. What will take its place? Amen.