Presidential Address - Monmouth Diocesan Conference 12th October 2002
I hope that it doesn’t seem too strange to unite the Diocesan Conference with a Diocesan celebration! I realise that celebration isn’t always the first word that comes to mind when the conference date comes round; but in fact this is a rare opportunity to remember at the conference what we are meeting for, and to put the conference in the context where it belongs – not simply the AGM of an organisation, but a grateful review of what God has done for us in our diocesan life, and a commitment to open ourselves afresh to what he wants to do.
Many of us will still have a vivid memory of the ‘God at Work’ gathering a couple of weeks ago in Griffithstown, a meeting which I was tempted to describe as the real diocesan conference! It drew such a variety of people and in such utterly unexpected numbers that it was for a lot of us one of the most powerful affirmations of the real life and vitality at grass roots level of our diocese. It was exactly what such an occasion should be – a sharing of good news: no blueprints or external solutions or five point plans, but a variety of testimonies to how God was bringing growth to very different communities by very different methods. There is so much to build on; and I know that there is now some planning as to how another such gathering might focus more on rural issues. And this reminds me to underline the fact that, if we count in the several new congregations now up and running alongside the usual Sunday services, we can report for the first time in some years an overall increase in worshipping numbers in the diocese, as well as a quite healthy level of confirmations over the last few months.
So it is worth celebrating our diocesan life. But I want to take the opportunity of asking a bigger question: what is there to celebrate in being an Anglican diocese here and at this moment? As you can imagine, I am having to think a lot about what being Anglican means, and I hope you’ll allow me to share something of my musings on this today, as a bit of a farewell offering to all my dearly loved colleagues and friends here.
Anglicanism, in a nutshell, was what happened to the Church in England, Wales and Ireland during and after the Reformation. It didn’t begin with a theological theory – which means it didn’t try and invent the Church again from scratch. It said, ‘Here is the Church of Christ – it’s in a mess, it needs changes we haven’t begun to understand, but there is reality here in what we have received, and we shan’t throw out the baby with the bathwater.’ So the Reformation here was a slow and untidy matter because people disagreed about the kind and extent of changes needed. What was agreed, though, was the recognition that the Church had stopped asking itself awkward questions – or, more seriously, stopped letting God ask it awkward questions. The great Reformation insight was simply that, when you looked seriously at how and where Christianity started, quite a lot of things in the Church as it was didn’t look all that convincing.
So the Reformation was a colossal and liberating discovery of the Bible as the place where God’s challenges were to be heard. Here was the first and fullest witness to what God wanted and what God did; here was the book that defined the world in which God’s people had to live. The Reformers believed that the world of the Bible was the real world, and that the world of the Church had to test its reality and honesty against this standard. All Reformed Christians agreed with this, including all Anglicans (and quite a few Catholics as well until the waters froze over a bit after the Council of Trent). The trouble was that some in Britain as elsewhere took this to mean that the Bible was first and foremost a blueprint (for how the Church was to be run, for instance) – some even argued that the Law of Moses ought to be the law of England and Wales - think about that next time you eat a prawn cocktail! Others argued instead that the Bible was a touchstone, a rule in the sense of a standard rather than a legal regulation; so that you had to give a substantial place to history and common sense in thinking about God and the Church, listening to what earlier readers of the Bible had said and to what the best of human wisdom and knowledge could contribute to reading it. For people who believe that – and I think specially of the great Richard Hooker at the very end of the sixteenth century – what was needed was not enthusiasm for orthodoxy in all respects but a high degree of patience with the past as well as enthusiasm for purity.
This tension surfaced early on in quarrels between Anglicans in the late sixteenth century, and it was part of the background of the Civil War. It meant that the Anglican Reformation was always in some respects unfinished business – and the tensions are still there today. However, I’d want to say that it is not fair or accurate to see this as a quarrel between people who do and people who don’t take the Bible seriously, between people who think the Bible is just a human book and people who think it’s inspired. To be personal for a moment: you might have thought, from some of what has been in the press lately, that I regard the Bible as an outdated text with no more authority than last week’s newspaper. I hope that isn’t what you have heard me say as a pastor and teacher in this diocese. I believe that the Bible tells us what we could not otherwise know: it tells us that God, the maker of the world, is committed to that world and desires with all his being to save it from disaster and the imprisonment of sin; that he does this by calling a people to witness to him by their prayers and their actions, in obedience to what he shows them of his will through the Law; that he brings this work to completion when God the eternal Son, the eternal Word, becomes human as Jesus of Nazareth and offers his life to destroy or to ‘soak up’, as you might say, the terrible consequences of our sin; and that Jesus is raised from the tomb to call a new people together in the power of the Spirit, who will show what kind of God God is in the quality of their life together and their relation with him. This is revealed in the acts of God in history and it is once and for all set out in the Bible. There is no going round this or behind it.
This is the world of the Bible into which the Church has to be brought again and again. Christians have to be in the habit of looking into Scripture to find where they are failing to understand and trust the God of the Bible and living in such a way that no-one outside the Church would guess what kind of God they served. Nowhere else do we find the questions of God put to us so authoritatively and directly. To say that the Bible is inspired is to say at least that God’s Spirit comes to us through the text to call us to repent and be converted. Some would want to say further that we must also say certain things about the absolute accuracy of every detail in Scripture if we believe in inspiration. I understand that impulse, but I don’t think it is a view on which Anglicans have ever wholly insisted or agreed (nor did the great Reformers on the Continent, incidentally). But I can say with complete conviction that a Church that does not listen for God in the Bible, and treat the Bible as the unique touchstone of truth about God and about us is losing its identity, its raison d’etre.
And before I leave the subject of recent reports, may I add one more thing? If the Bible requires us to live so as to show the character of God, we must live in a way marked by faithfulness and patience. This applies to our most prosaic relationships; to our business commitments; to our approach to charitable giving and to our support of each other as Christians; and to our sexual ethics. Once again, I hope I can make it clear that, whatever reports may suggest, I have always been committed to the Church’s traditional teaching on sex before marriage and adultery! It seems to me obvious that if we are to show God’s costly commitment in all areas of our lives, this applies here as elsewhere. We may want to be compassionate and realistic with people coming from a setting where these ideals are remote or completely unintelligible – but the last thing I’d want to do is to weaken the challenge and excitement of that traditional view that says we can and should demonstrate God’s faithfulness in our bodily lives, and that this is the meaning of Christian marriage.
Enough of this (I say it with feeling!). I want to pick up what I think is central in all this for our contemporary lives as Anglican Christians in this diocese. I’ve described the Anglican vision as one in which there is patience with the past – but also patience with exploration and experiment. Often in Anglicanism patience with the past has dominated; but there is equal danger in becoming impatient with it. So, for example (repeating a point I’ve made many times) to say that the parish system is outmoded ignores the ways in which it can and does still work for the Kingdom – as was clear at Griffithstown two weeks ago. But those for whom the sytem works must be careful not to be impatient with the new experiments springing up and, as we’ve seen, already bearing fruit – the church plants and incipient mission districts. Mutual patience will let us see how all these can work effectively for the gospel. The only thing we are entitled to be impatient about is a situation where no-one is asking what works for the Gospel – and that’s rather like the situation into which the Reformation first came, a situation where people are no longer letting God ask them awkward questions, where the Bible is silent in their lives. By all means be impatient about that! and work to become literate in the Bible and accustomed to measuring your vision of God and yourself and the Church by the Bible.
I hope this diocese will go on being a place where such patience and such impatience will exist side by side. Mutual patience with the past and the future, with those for whom the parish works and with those for whom it doesn't, with the new and the old, with sacramental worship and with new forms, with tradition and with experiment – which also means patience with each other - even with your bishop! It really means - to use again language I’ve used before – approaching our situation, and therefore every person in it, with an expectation of meeting God and being called further towards him. Impatience with lazy thinking, lack of questioning, lack of eagerness to meet God and know God.In last year’s presidential address I talked a bit about possible futures, which was heard by some as too slanted towards impatience, and as a sign that it was time for me to take a break…Little did any of us suspect that God’s idea of giving me a bit of a change would be what it turned out to be! But I shan’t be too sorry if that was what was heard. Urgency is a dominant note in the Bible, especially in the gospels. What would be quite wrong would be to let urgency become feverish busyness, or over-anxious planning and calculating, or contempt for the good that exists but we need to accept the urgency of Christ's Coming and of Christ's questioning which is not the urgency of having my plans adopted and received.
This is a Christian family I am proud to belong to – the Anglican family and that corner of it called the diocese of Monmouth. You have taught me so much, stretched me so much, maddened me so much and supported me so much, and I’m deeply glad for it all. My successor will be fortunate. I hope you will greet him with the expectation I have just been talking about, and that he and you together will show the divine patience and the divine impatience alike. ‘The Lord is patient and longsuffering’, ‘The Lord waits to be gracious to you’; yes, and also, ‘His mercies are new every morning; great is his faithfulness’, and ‘Behold, I make all things new’.