What a 24 hours

Home with a cup of tea, and recovering from / delighting in everything that’s happened over the last day. It started with the gorgeously sung choral evensong at Croydon Minster – and realising again what a privilege it is to be called to serve the people and churches of the Area. Then this morning – the taxi arriving at 6:45 was less of a highlight, but celebrating the 8am eucharist at the College of St Barnabas was pure joy. The breakfast’s pretty impressive, too.

Then on to the Orpheus Centre. Thanks again to the students and staff for making me so welcome. So good to see somewhere which really respected the students (who all have disabilities of one sort or another) as adults. Not just a place focusing on creative arts, but a really creative place.

There had to be one parish visit during the day – that is where the heart of the Church of England beats, after all. St Mary’s Reigate is doing the business is one of the many and varied ways that the Church of England offers. Great to get to know a bit about the parish (and to play ‘it’ with the children at the school). Looking forward to enjoying sharing the life of the other parishes across the Area.

Not done yet, by a long chalk … Then on to Croydon College, to meet the chaplaincy team and the Principal – such challenges, and opportunities, in equal measure, and such a resource for the town and the borough. On the tram (everyone pretending to ignore this man in a purple dress) to CFER to meet with representatives of other faith communities in the area. Very glad to see that we all agree about the importance of working together for social cohesion and renewal. Now looking forward to sharing a little of the life of the different communities as I’m able to visit, and develop our relationships more.

Then, wonderful civic ceremony to finish with the Croydon mayor-making, and a bash to finish.

And the best thing is, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface. Bring it on! (But let me have a good night’s sleep first.)

 

Oaks of righteousness

This is the sermon I preached this evening, at the beautiful evensong and service of welcome in Croydon Minster. The readings were Iaiah 61 and Luke 4:14-21, by the way.

When I realised that the New Testament reading set for this evening was the passage from Luke which we’ve just heard, I was tempted to change it. How could anyone dare to begin a new ministry with that text? ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me’ … But then again, how can anyone begin with anything else? In Luke’s account of Jesus’ ministry this is a pivotal moment, as Jesus proclaims the good news for the first time. Unworthy as any of us are, it is the same good news we are all called to live out as Christian people. And as our two readings make clear, Jesus was identifying himself and his ministry with the prophetic message already spoken through Isaiah. The message of hope he proclaims through the power of the Spirit is the same message that God always speaks – the message of salvation and hope.

 

Isaiah’s message comes not to those who were confident and self-assured, but to those in danger of despair – to people who are not sure if they have a future at all as God’s people, who are not at all sure that there is any good news to be had. The most likely setting for this part of Isaiah is after the people have returned to the promised land from captivity in Babylon – and as they begin to discover it isn’t quite as marvellous as they had hoped. Despite their liberation, they still feel that the future is with the gods of Cyrus the Persian, that a new world order is beginning from which they have been left out, that all that is left is decline and eventual extinction. They are a people desperately in need of words of hope.

 

I believe that now is a time of hope for the church, because all times are times of hope. If we lose hope, we lose part of our core identity. Hope is not optimism, though; it is more realistic than that. Christian hope recognises the extent of the challenges that face God’s people – and though I’m not going to dwell on them tonight, there are very many different challenges which confront our society as a whole, and the life of the church in particular. But Christian hope is also realistic about God. God is the one who brings life from death, who transforms sorrow into joy. Christian hope is not based on our own efforts or merits, but on the love and grace of God. Christian hope is not passive, though; salvation comes from God, and it flows through us.

 

The words Jesus proclaimed were Isaiah’s words, and they are ours. It is not someone else who is called to

Bring good news to the oppressed; to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and release to the prisoners;

it is us. A challenging enough calling, but one that I believe the church can, and does, rise to. It includes the whole range of the church’s mission, which is nothing more or less than to proclaim the good news of God’s kingdom. We have no alternative but to witness that in Christ we have found new life and hope, the salvation of God. We have no alternative to demonstrating that new life in service to the poor and marginalised, to all those who seem furthest from God. These are not separate options, two paths into the kingdom: they are both part of the one whole which is God’s project for the world.

 

That project is too glorious to be described in prose – the prophet has to turn to poetic imagery

To provide for those who mourn in Zion,

to give them a garland instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning,

the mantle of praise instead of a faint spirit.

They will be called oaks of righteousness,

the planting of the Lord, to display his glory.

 

The endpoint of the prophet’s message is a three fold transformation: those who felt they were beneath other’s notice are made beautiful – the ultimate makeover, starting from the heart, not the wardrobe. Those who felt they had nothing to offer are anointed, made special. Those who were weighed down with loss are lifted up with praise. All of this leads to a culmination in how they are seen – the meek, the broken hearted, the captives, the prisoners – it is they who are now recognised as ‘oaks of righteousness’. Not the prophet, but those who would have seemed, to themselves and others, as weak and hopeless. They are now as strong as the strongest tree.

 

There is a another reason why I chose to focus on that passage tonight – in fact, I knew I was going to preach on the Isaiah passage at least before I even looked at the lectionary. I was intrigued to discover – I don’t know how many people know this – that the emblem for the Croydon Area, at least on the chair I sit in in Southwark Cathedral, is an oak tree. The image of the oak tree as a sign of the transformation that can come to individuals and communities through the action of God is a powerful one, full of possible meanings. As part of the Scripture it is of course relevant to all believers, but it stood out to me as something of particular relevance tonight. And following that lead, I would like to explore a little of what it might mean for the church today to live out our calling – and take the oak tree as our example. They are some of the reasons why I have hope for our future, and why I feel so honoured and privileged to serve as bishop in this part of God’s kingdom.

 

Oak trees are durable. It takes a lot to knock an oak tree over. They may lose a branch or two, or have a crown taken off by lightning, but an oak tree which becomes established will live for hundreds of years. Some will fall in the storms of the years, but as a whole, they survive. The church has something of that quality too, by God’s grace. We may get knocked about, apparently devastated by terrible storms or random lightning strikes. We may suffer damage – but the tree keeps on going, it keeps on putting out new shoots each spring, sometimes where all life seemed to have gone. As Christians, we need to remember that the church of God is more than our own congregation, more than our diocese or denomination. That should set us free to experiment, to grow and to change, even to make mistakes.

 

Oak trees are deeply rooted. It is from those deep roots that our hope comes, and our capacity to respond to the challenges of mission that face us. It is being sure of the heart of our faith – the faith ‘revealed in the holy Scriptures, and set forth in the Catholic creeds’ that enables us to worship God together as one body, as one church. It is that security which enables us also to change. If the church does not change, it dies – living things are always changing, but in continuity with their past. So we must be open to the ways and places in which the church can share the love of God with the world. We live in a mixed world, in which there are many people who find their networks and contacts far from wherever they lay their head at night. But most people still find their meaning in the places where they are day by day and the people they meet day by day. The church must be wherever a community forms, actively building the kingdom of God in the midst of the other kingdoms which claim people’s allegiances. The church needs deep roots, drinking from its sources of truth in scripture, in tradition and in reason, so that it is able to continue to be the church for our changing and developing communities.

 

Oak trees are hospitable. Hundreds of species of beetles, swarms of moths and birds and mammals as various as the dormouse and the wild boar all flourish under oak trees. If the church is to live up to the prophet’s calling, we must learn to exercise that same hospitality. Hospitality is difficult and demanding. I started writing this part of the sermon in Malaga airport, after my flight had been cancelled, and I was put on to one nine hours later. In compensation, we were given vouchers to use in the food outlets – which were carefully calculated to be enough to prevent open rebellion breaking out, whilst not being nearly enough to carry any sense of an apology for the extreme inconvenience we were all suffering. That’s not hospitality – hospitality makes available to the stranger not what we can spare, but what we cherish. Hospitality invites the outsider to change us. Many churches manage to be friendly – which often means that we like each other (and that’s quite an achievement), and we like people who are like us. The hospitality of God loves those who aren’t like us, whom we don’t like, and sees God in them too.

 

I’m sure there are other analogies, but those are the ones I would like to focus on tonight: that the church can live in hope because, and insofar as it is durable, it is rooted, it is hospitable. If we can be those things, we need have no fear.

 

There’s one final reason for our ‘oak’ theme tonight, which is more personal. When I discovered – it was at the photo shoot after the announcement of my appointment – that the symbol for the Croydon Area was an oak, I was delighted but also slightly spooked. A very long time ago, when I was a keen young undergraduate, a fellow member of the Christian Union said to me that in their prayer, they had felt that the final verse – ‘they shall be called oaks of righteousness’ was in some way a particular word from God for me. I felt flattered, but a little over-awed. Who would ever dare to think of themselves as an oak of righteousness, after all? But it remained with me, nevertheless, and though I know I’ve never attained it, it has been one of my guiding lights in my own spiritual life and in my ministry.

 

It may be an analogy which individuals should shy away from claiming for themselves, but it’s definitely something the church should not be afraid of seeking. Churches and chaplaincies are planted in particular places in order to represent there the universal good news of Jesus Christ. So it may be completely appropriate that I was making that connection, there and then, at the announcement of my own appointment as a bishop. Because one of the key tasks of a bishop is to help the church to realise its own identity. To realise in both senses of the word: to know again who we are as a community of faith, and to make that real in our lives, as communities and as individuals. My job is to be a gardener in the kingdom, tending and planting oaks of righteousness, that God might be glorified. All of here share that calling, those of us who call ourselves Christians. We are those who have heard the good news – our lives should be becoming those of which others say ‘see what God has done there’. And precisely because we have received hope, we should also be heralds of hope, standing in the place of the prophet, enabling others to hear that same message we have received.

 

What would you give in exchange for your soul?

The most depressing thing about Michael Sandel’s book, What money can’t Buy is that the list is so short. You name it, there’s a market for it. What’s even more depressing – there are respectable and authoritative figures ready to argue that the market is the right and proper place for discerning the value of unborn children, or for trading on the probability of a terrorist attack.

The connection that Sandel made for me, more clearly than I’d seen it before, is the one between the economically orthodox view of human beings, and the ethical degradation it drags in its wake. Through many examples, he shows how a view of human beings as ‘rational actors always looking to maximise their utility’ (sorry, I didn’t come up with the definition) carries with is an unacknowledged ethic of individualist satisfaction at the expense of any public good or commonly held ethical standards.

I heard about this book through the Archbishop of Canterbury’s article about it in Prospect: he sums up the ethical problem thus:

A world in which every object is instantly capable of being rendered in terms of what it can be exchanged for is one in which there is nothing worth looking at for itself, a world systematically ‘de-realised’.

How do we make the world real again: how to extract the market from those parts of our society into which it has wormed its way? Maybe the other book the Archbishop was reviewing will help with some answers. But I am also reminded of a meeting a few days ago in my area, at which we were discussing educational achievement for excluded young people. When we began to discuss the importance of a wider and deeper sense of purpose in life, as a crucial factor in young people’s lives, there was no dissent – I’m sure a few years ago it would have been written off. Maybe a tide is turning? In which case, will the churches be brave enough to articulate what Christian faith has to offer, not as a private lifestyle option but as a gift to the whole of society?

 

Ending poverty, living richly

Christian Aid Week reminds me each year how poor my life is. I am of course phenomenally well of, by global standards. Pretty good for the UK too. But there’s always the danger of impoverishing my own life – not by becoming financially poor, but by turning inwards, remembering only my own needs and concerns or those of my immediate friends and family. I know I live more richly when I am conscious that I’m part of the whole human race, and that the joys and sorrows of the whole world are to some extent mine too.

But it can be too much to bear, especially when the world’s sorrows are so great. Then the temptation to withdraw into my safe, poor little world can feel very strong. For me, it’s only prayer that keeps me strong enough to be connected to all my brothers and sisters who are God’s children like me. In prayer the world’s sorrows become God’s sorrow – and are undergirded by the joy and hope which is at the heart of God.

 So it’s really important that Christian Aid are trying to remind us that Christian Aid Week is about more than envelopes. Prayer and giving go together, intimately. Prayer unlocks the heart – and therefore also the wallet. Try it, if you dare:

You and your church can be part of a ‘prayer moment’ for Christian Aid Week that everyone can see.

We’re asking individuals to stop, reflect and text the word or phrase that’s in their heart to 70788. Your words will then appear on this page – along with hundreds of others as we create a mass prayer moment this Sunday 13 May 2012.

 

Retreating or advancing?

I’ve been for a few days on retreat at Hacienda los Olivos, being led by Bishop Stephen Cottrell in reflections on Stanley Spencer’s paintings of Christ in the Wilderness.

Great place, great time. A couple of haiku (ish) reflections on the place:

The hills stand round about
This corner of Jerusalem.
Peace anoints this place.

This one refers to the fact that olive trees are beaten with sticks to harvest their fruit. And it’s been a breezy week!

Wind and stick beaten
Olives are patient trees.
Suffering, they bear fruit.

And one on the paintings:

Spencer’s wilderness
And Christ’s is now ours too – full
Of grace and truth.

 

Bearing with one another in love – but without a Covenant

Paul wrote (I’m quite a traditionalist on the authorship of Colossians):

As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.

Which is his way of saying some of the things that the Archbishop of Canterbury said in commending the Anglican Covenant. Mutual accountability, and therefore a structure for conversing with each other about new or difficult questions in the church, are surely part of what it means to love one another in the body of Christ.

I doubt if any of those voting against the Covenant in the dioceses of the Church of England were voting against those principles. But as a church, we have now voted against that means of making them concrete – enough among us felt that the Covenant would not in fact deliver the dialogic co-operation that the Archbishop was talking about, but instead be a battleground for groups trying to seize power over others.

So what now? I wonder if we’ve been doing this on to grand a scale – it’s difficult to translate the words of Paul to the Colossians into a document which tries to encompass all the Provinces of the Anglican Communion. At the same time, new triangular relationships have been growing between dioceses of different Provinces, bringing together bishops, clergy and lay people in personal encounter and shared worship. I haven’t (yet) been part of one, but it seems that there the seeds of covenant are growing in a mutual accountability which comes from an understanding of difference along with a common sense of sharing in the same gospel.

It’s not something that can be dictated – but maybe it can be sown. If we can learn to love each other across unresolved differences, then we’re really doing the church’s work.

PS If you’re wondering how I voted: the issue was voted on in Southwark while I was still in London, and in London after I’d moved to Southwark.

 

Beginnings and Endings

Tomorrow is my last day as Rector of St Mary Stoke Newington; on Wednesday I am consecrated as Bishop of Croydon. But my little ending and new beginning is somewhat overshadowed by yesterday’s news of the Archbishop of Canterbury’s impending resignation. Maybe my own transition has set me up a bit to think about how we could approach this time of change with hope and purpose, rather than colluding with the media expectation that it will just be a bear pit of fruitless competition between our competing factions.

So let’s start by ignoring the bookmakers – make a resolution not to note how the odds are changing. Follow that up by paying no attention to anyone, inside the Church or out, who claims to know who the new Archbishop will or won’t be. Why? Not just because they’re probably wrong, but because doing either of those things is a way of trying to escape from the uncertainty which is a real part of the situation – and which is where God’s gift to us lies right now.

Plenty of people are predicting the end of the Church over this or that issue. They always have been. If the Church were a purely human institution (and it’s always in danger of becoming one) it would surely die. If it takes the risk of faith, then it lives. So every time you feel tempted to check the betting, pray. I will if you will.

 

Croydon

Croydon!

After keeping it quiet for so long it’s difficult to say anything – I still feel as if I’m breaking some sort of confidence, even when a press release has announced my appointment. I’ve spent a lot of the last few months trying not to think too much about what lay ahead; it was difficult enough to keep on with normal life as it was. Living two different futures, one of which you have to talk about, and publicly plan for, even though you know it isn’t going to happen, is a very uncomfortable experience. The real future sometimes seemed like a strange fantasy; until this week the only piece of paper I had with my name and ‘Bishop of Croydon’ on it was my CRB disclosure.

The moment Bishop Christopher rang to tell me I was the chosen candidate for Croydon ranks with those very few other memorable times which change your life, which open the door to something new, exciting, and of course scary. I remember getting the news that I had been recommended for ordination training – ringing home from Slough railway station, as it happens. I remember making my marriage vows, and addressing my first words to my newborn daughter. That phone call was another of those moments: everything’s different from here.

Mostly, I’m glad to say – and I hope the people of the Croydon Area will be glad to hear – it’s given me a great sense of joy and anticipation. I’ve done a fair bit of trawling the web, but however wonderful the virtual world might be it can’t beat real life. When I finally get to start work, sometime in May, I know there’ll be plenty to do and a huge amount to learn. I can’t wait.

But in the meantime, it’s only six weeks until I say goodbye to Stoke Newington. After coming up nine years in the parish, and six years before just round the corner in Highbury, it’ll be a real wrench. This has been such a good place to live, and a great community to serve. But there’ll be time for farewells later …

One of the things I’ve enjoyed most about living and working in Stoke Newington has been the diversity of the community – different ethnic groups, social classes, religious traditions. Although I’ll miss where I am now, I’m really glad to be coming to an Area which is just as diverse, encompassing everything from inner urban areas to the Surrey countryside via Croydon Town Centre and the surrounding suburbs. It’s that diversity which I see as one of the greatest strengths of the Church, reflecting the richness of God’s love for all people.

I’m also looking forward to working with churches, chaplaincies and communities of faith which reflect the diversity of God’s grace – churches large and small, evangelical, catholic and firmly middle of the road. I’ve always been struck by the many different ways there are to live out the good news – expressing faith, bearing hope and embodying love, as Bishop Christopher expressed it in his Call to Mission. I will do all I can to serve and lead in the Croydon Area so that in our diversity we enjoy our unity in Christ.

It’s used too much, but it felt inescapably appropriate: ‘For all that has been, thanks. For all that will be, yes.’ (Dag Hammarskjold)

 

At the name of Jesus …

Christmas Day falling on a Sunday is one of the best presents a parish priest can wish for – though usually sandwiched by the less easy experience of Christmas Day on a Saturday and a Monday. But not in 2012 – as this is a leap year, Christmas is on Tuesday. So for those of you planning ahead already, you’ve got something to look forward to.

And in the meantime, what about the rest of 2012? Well, yes, I am looking forward to the Olympics. But there’s a lot else that doesn’t look too good on the horizon. Just looking at the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Christmas message reminded me of the nihilism and rage of the rioting last summer. As the Archbishop said, the answer to that sort of breakdown in society is to rebuild relationships. He emphasises relationships across the generations, but it could equally be across any of the barriers we build up so easily against the people we think are different.

So, guess how the Daily Mail reported the story? “Archbishop defends rioters”. Ah well.

On the other hand … The other good thing about Christmas Day being on a Sunday is that it gives us a chance to celebrate the Naming of Jesus (I didn’t emphasise the Circumcision, I must admit). I started to think about the fact that all Christians share in the name of Jesus – we are all baptised into it. Bearing that name means we can’t be any less welcoming than Jesus was. Ouch – but that’s exactly what Christians have to do, especially when times are tough and the instinct is to pull up the drawbridge. That’ll do for a New Year’s resolution.

 

The fog of war, and of politics

I’ve been trying to work out exactly what it was that made the Prime Minister decide this was the time to make such a crucial move on Europe. So far, he’s been cheered to the rafters by those who hate the EU anyway – and equally denounced by those (few) who think Britain’s future is fully within it. But what exactly was it that he was protecting? What interests me most about all this is that no-one much seems to care. The best reporting, maybe not surprisingly, was in the Financial Times … (sorry, you’ll have to register with them to follow the links)

And even then it appeared that the confusion was shared, even by the parties to the negotiation. The Financial Times‘ reporters put it like this:

“Nobody understood what Cameron wanted – nobody,” said one diplomat from a central European country that might be considered a natural ally of the UK. “We were talking about big things, saving the euro, and he was asking for peanuts. It was not the time or place.”

Eventually I did find a list of the issues at the bottom of this article (the BBC’s summary is here). They might be things that bother those working in the City, but I’m not all clear why the whole politics of the UK is centred around the levels of capital that banks are forced to hold, or why we are quite so upset about the structure of the European financial regulators that we helped to create. Since no-one who has the power seems interested enough to ask the Prime Minister, we may never find out.

So the debate continues at the level of general appeals to that anti-EU mood which is pretty widespread. Even then, it depends how you put it: if a pollster rang you up tomorrow and said ‘Should the UK jettison influence in Europe in order to help the bankers?’ – what would you say? Maybe a different answer than if the question was ‘Should the Prime Minister defend essential UK interests against interference from Brussels?’ And which would be the more accurate question to ask? That’s what I’d really like to know.