Ministry Team Letters July – December 2007
Dear Friends,
What are your earliest or best memories of Christmas? I can remember, when I was no more than two or three, coming downstairs while it was still dark and the rest of the house was asleep, and pushing open the door to the sitting room. On the other side of the room was what seemed to me an enormous tree. I can’t remember whether I had seen it being put up – I suppose I must have done and that is what drew me downstairs, shivering in my pyjamas. But I do remember that in the gloom of that pre-dawn winter morning the tree, glinting with strange decorations, seemed like an apparition, vast and mysterious – a tree in our house! – and that I experienced a shock of wonder and awe. I stood in front of that no doubt ordinary Christmas tree held by something very close to adoration, tinged with something that was almost, but not quite, fear. I was, I believe, engaging in a nameless worship, without having the faintest idea of course that that was what I was doing. All I knew was that something very tremendous (it seemed to me) had gripped me.
I have grown up since then, and I am unlikely ever again to stand before a Christmas tree giving it my heart, as it were – and just as well. But we are now entering a season which gives us the opportunity to offer our heart to One who can respond. Over the next few weeks we shall once again prepare ourselves to hear a familiar story retold. Those of us who are privileged to do so in the company of children may find that they draw us with them into a realm where mystery and reverence and wonder confront us. For others, it may be harder to let ourselves be grasped by these things, either because the story feels too familiar, or because the trappings obscure it, or because life has made the story seem like sheer sentimentality.
The heart of the Christmas story is not something trite or saccharine at all, but is at once earthily physical and overwhelmingly mysterious. Anyone who has been present at the birth of a child knows what that is like. My prayer for us all this Advent and Christmas is that at some point, in some way, we will be granted a vision or experience that leaves us in no doubt that we have been visited by Divine Love. May God in Christ greet and bless us all.
With love,
David
Dear Friends,
The Anglican Church is in a mess. I’m sorry, let me write that again. ‘The Anglican Church is in a mess.’ What I mean to say is that there are several stories of unhappiness in the church going around at the moment, from the world-wide church, the national and the local. These stories are as it were ‘in inverted commas’, in the sense that they are not directly about things happening here in Godmanchester, not things that we are experiencing first hand. They are things we are being told. The first two are related, the third not exactly. On the global level, we hear constantly and increasingly of the rifts that threaten to pull the Anglican Communion apart. These rifts are to do with the deep discontent felt in some parts of the Anglican Church, particularly in Africa, over the decision of the Episcopal Church of the United States to consecrate an openly practising homosexual man as a bishop, and the general tolerance towards gay people shown by many other Anglicans. Nationally, a group of evangelical parishes in the Church of England with the name of Reform has warned the Archbishop of Canterbury that they will seek oversight not from their own diocesan bishops in this country, but from a kind of ‘flying bishop’ from Uganda if their concerns over the same matters are not dealt with. It must be stressed that by no means all, or even most, evangelical parishes in the Church of England come under the banner of Reform. Locally, the Diocese of Ely has just witnessed the distressing spectacle of one of its own clergy, the Vicar of Trumpington, being taken to an ecclesiastical court by some of his own parishioners over matters that appear to be entirely parochial in concern. This is all very sad, and does nothing to help the church make the voice of Jesus Christ heard.
My point is not about the matters that have caused these divisions. My point is two-fold. Firstly, that no matter what the concern may be, division within the church is a betrayal of Jesus Christ. Christians should do everything in their power, and then more, including giving up some of their most cherished principles, before allowing the church of Christ, the people of God, to be divided further. Unity (not uniformity) is the pre-requisite of the church. To the extent that the church is divided, she fails to be the true church. Where real division sets in, the reconciling Good News of Jesus Christ is drowned by bickering voices, and who wants to join a society of bad-tempered people who seem mostly intent on their own quarrels?
Secondly, whenever we are tempted to despair at the unfailing ability of the church to forget the meaning of its own message, we need to remember two things. Firstly, it was ever thus. There is sadly nothing new in the church making a fool of itself in the eyes of God and the world. From the complaints of those receiving a bread ration that others were getting more (Acts 6:1), through all the great and petty squabbles of the ages, the church, being composed of human beings, has never been entirely free of strife. Neither, of course, has the world beyond the church. Without minimising for an instant the seriousness of church divisions, we can allow ourselves to remember that this divisiveness is a human tendency, not an exclusively Christian one.
The other thing to remember, of course, is that this is not, to say the least, the whole story, either in the past or now. While there will always be enough failure to depress us if we focus on that, God remains God and through His grace, sometimes despite the church rather than by it, millions find and keep faith and extend love to their neighbour. As, I believe, we do here, however imperfectly. And for that let us thank God.
With love
David
Dear Friends,
This is a sermon I was privileged to preach in Westminster Abbey on 22 April this year – the abbey is the patron of St Mary’s Church and has the custom of inviting clergy from the churches in its patronage to speak there from time to time. The reading was John 11: 27 – 44, the story of the raising of Lazarus.
If you look around this church, you will see that it is filled with tombs and memorials. Many of the greatest figures from this nation’s history, and many kings and queens, are buried or remembered here. Surrounded by so much history, so much glory and ceremony, by so many of those whom the world calls great, it is easy to forget that each tomb, each memorial, marks the death of a single human being, and therefore it is also a reminder of human grief. Every individual who is commemorated here, no matter how famous or powerful, no matter what they achieved in his or her lifetime, had to pass through the doorway of death, and that is always a bitter thing, both for those who die and those who are left to mourn them. Those buried or remembered here, though they are in some ways all exceptional people, have their bodies or their names kept in this place because they represent the life of the whole of this nation, the lives of all the unremembered individuals who have shared this particular country, one among many of the nations of the earth. We are surrounded by our own brothers and sisters: and at the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, which you probably passed as you entered the church, we are reminded of the anonymous suffering of humanity itself.
Tolstoy, at the beginning of his novel ‘Anna Karenina’, makes this famous comment: ‘All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.’ I think I know what Tolstoy is trying to say; that happy people attract happiness, and their circle of happiness grows so that no matter where or who they are, people are drawn to them as plants are drawn to the light. Everyone can recognise happiness. Unhappiness, on the other hand, is not attractive, and may be hidden, so that those who are unhappy may become more and more isolated. The constitution of the United States of America declares that it is the right of all to be free to pursue happiness. But no constitution can guarantee that we will find it. What is certain, guaranteed, is that we shall none of us escape our measure of grief. You could say that it is sorrow that binds humanity together. Tears and suffering are part of the human condition. I do not know who I am talking to today, where you have come from, why you are here. Perhaps some of you are not sure yourselves what has drawn you here. But I do know you are my brothers and sisters in humanity, and that at some point we will shed the same tears for our own or for another’s pain or loss. Whatever brings us here, and wherever we have come from, God has given us this time and this space to share.
But Christians will always want to say more than this. The shortest verse in the bible – ‘Jesus wept’ – reminds us that God himself enters into human sorrow and pain. The tears of Jesus for Lazarus are God’s tears for the sufferings of humanity, and they are also the tears of humanity longing to see God in the midst of suffering. When we see Jesus weeping before the tomb of Lazarus, we see heaven and earth joined together in the same painful mystery of life. Where life hurts, and especially when death draws close, there is God.
It is because God is present precisely where life is most painful, that we can speak of resurrection, rebirth, life from death. We are in the season of Easter, when the Christian church throughout the world proclaims as loudly as it can, ‘Christ is risen!’ How dare we say such a thing? We see in the world around us, and often enough in our own lives, that the fate of all human creatures is to suffer and to die. The forces of death seem to be the most powerful there are. We look at conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Darfur and elsewhere, we hear the news of senseless killing in Virginia, or we see the helpless suffering of so many of the world’s most defenceless people or of someone close to us – or we live with our own mental or physical agony – and we are tempted to despair. Life seems a weak thing indeed when confronted by death. Martha was afraid to have the tomb of her brother Lazarus opened. All she could imagine was that the corpse of someone she loved was rotting inside; all she expected to encounter was the stench of death. Many people, perhaps all of us sometimes, feel like this about death – it is something best left alone, not confronted, because in death we will find only horror and unpleasantness.
Yet ever since that first Easter, men and women, taking the name of Jesus, have somehow lived as if death does not have the last word – they have lived, that is, in hope rather than despair. I invited you at the start of this talk to look around the church at the various tombs and monuments. I said that they are reminders of grief and of human mortality, and that is true. But these tombs are more than that. Where are they? Where are we, you and I, at this moment? Look around now not at the tombs and monuments but at the church that surrounds all of us, living and departed. What message does this building exist to convey? It is built to speak of God, who is life, and of Jesus, who opens the road to life for us.
In the story we heard from the Gospel of St John, Jesus stands before the open grave and calls with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out!’ Jesus calls for his beloved friend to come back to life, even though death appears to have taken him for ever. It is about the most incredible command that can be given. How can anyone come back to life? That question ‘how?’ is not answered, and I believe it cannot be answered, but life comes back to Lazarus, because God is there. And ever since the first Easter countless men and women, believing themselves to be beloved as Lazarus was beloved, have heard that call and have moved out of darkness into life and light.
Today Jesus stands facing the darkness of our own doubts, despair and sorrow, and calls us to come out into new life. Let us not ask how it can be done. We too are beloved of God, as Lazarus was loved by Jesus, and life awaits us. Let us join the living.
With love
David
Dear Friends,
Our annual Gift Day is on Saturday 6 October. The church will be open from 10.00 am to 3.00 pm. There will be coffee and other refreshments available, and members of the Finance Committee and others, including myself, will be on hand to give advice on the various forms of giving. Please drop in to the church and even if you do not feel you want to review your giving, it is a good opportunity to enjoy being in the church with friends (and maybe to make new ones). I do not want to say any more about giving here, as I wrote on the subject in the Parish News a few months ago. Paul Sibley has written in this month’s prayer leaflet about the ‘The Widow’s Millions’ (you will have to read it to find out what that means), but here is a tale that perhaps gives food for thought.
In 1992, a few months after the end of the Soviet Union, I visited Russia to try to forge links between the church in Stourbridge where I was then curate and some Russian Christians. Towards the end of my trip, I went to the recently re-named St Petersburg, and visited a famous monastery in the city. When I got to the entrance, I found that the approach to the monastery was up a long drive, and that on both sides of the drive people were seated begging for alms in total silence. There must have been a few dozen people in all. At that time the rouble was losing value rapidly, and many people were in desperate circumstances, but anyone arriving from the west with hard currency and converting it into roubles found that their pockets were filled with money. I was nonplussed by the sight of this avenue of beggars, and nearly turned back. I felt I could not walk up to the monastery as a tourist and simply ignore them all. But if I gave to one, how could I then pass by the next? If I gave to them all, it would be only a token to each, and what use would that be? Feeling quite miserable, I began to move slowly up the drive, trying to drop a coin in each cap or bowl. It seemed as if I were patronising those who clearly had no other way to support themselves, and merely trying to ease my own conscience with a meaningless gesture. I was nearly at the end before a thought struck me. I might only be able to give a token to each, but I was not the only visitor to the monastery that day. If each gave only a token, at the end of the day those seeking alms might have a bit more than a token, enough for a meal or a bed for the night. I did not have to take the whole burden of their plight upon my conscience, but only do what I could do in the faith that others were also doing the same.
I commend our Gift Day to us all in this spirit
David
Dear Friends,
In last month’s magazine I wrote about the proposal to re-order the west end of the church. This month I want to introduce another proposed change, not to the church building this time but to our worship. As you know, we have an All Age Eucharist nearly every month, usually on the fourth Sunday. The purpose of this is to have a service which, as its name implies, is accessible to all. I have come to feel that we can and should take this accessibility a step further. It seems to me essential that we include in our pattern of worship a service that is as easy as possible for all to attend, especially those who are not used to worshipping at all. Following conversations in the Worship Group and among the Ministry Team, and after consultation with the PCC, what I would like to propose is the following:
I am aware that this would be a fairly radical departure from the current pattern, and that it will not appeal to everyone. I feel two points are worth making:
The whole purpose of the change would be to help more people begin to make the journey towards faith. I would welcome your comments, suggestions and criticisms (yes, really!). Obviously, I would not be making this proposal if I did not strongly feel that something like this is necessary for the mission of our church, but if it is to work it will need support from more than a clique. My hope is that we can all see our pattern of worship not as something that meets the needs of the faithful alone, but which also speaks to those who find crossing the threshold of the church very daunting, and those who have never even thought of doing so.
With love,
David
Dear Friends,
Here are two pieces of recent church news, one national and one parochial. At the time of writing, the Church of England is considering suing Sony Corporation over a video game in which it is said that the players are supposed to slaughter hundreds of virtual aliens inside a virtual Manchester Cathedral. As you probably know, there were two attempts to break into the church in May. They were unsuccessful, but windows in the vestry and the north porch were broken.(It was presumably the same people who caused greater damage to the church hall at the same time.)
Both these events seem to show how our culture has lost its sense of sacredness. When I was a child, I felt a terrified fascination for the sanctuary of the church behind the altar rail, as I believed the power of God was concentrated there and that something dreadful would happen to me if I stepped inside it. I would not want to go back to that rather primitive fear, but it was a crude recognition of the meaning of the church building. It seems as if our churches, when they are noticed at all, are increasingly seen either as exotic locations for spooky fantasies or as vulnerable and isolated museums inviting plunder.
In other words many, perhaps most, people no longer feel connected to the churches that punctuate and, in many cases, still dominate our national landscape. This is obviously not a particularly original insight of mine, and I do not want to indulge in a bout of false nostalgia and hand-wringing. The point is that we have a challenge, and an opportunity, to give back to the community these wonderful buildings that are both a joy and a burden to us.
At the Annual Meeting in April, and again at the PCC in June, I spoke of my hope that we could soon begin to move forward with plans to reorganise the west end of our church. We have a beautiful, very large, under-used and inflexible building in our care. There is, quite obviously, nothing remotely like it hereabouts. Wouldn’t it be marvellous to see it filled with activity on every day of the week, not only at times when worship is being conducted? Couldn’t it become a place where everyone feels they belong and have a right to be, whatever their beliefs or lack of them? Rather than being, all too often, the hollow space in the centre of the town, couldn’t our church be the centre?
For the moment I only want to float the idea of remodelling part of the church, not propose detailed plans, though I would be very glad if we were able to offer visitors fairly soon the minimal courtesy of lavatories. Any work we might undertake would require a great deal of commitment and energy, and it would be vital to keep as our focus the mission and the worshipping life of the church, rather than any particular building project. The whole purpose would be to make our church a place which by its life and its layout draws more people a step closer to the presence of God.
With love,
David