Discriminatory Louse on Lady’s Bonnet

As Buckinghamshire experiences its annual Burns Night Kilt Hire peaktime, recitations will roll of Robbie Burns’ poem To a Louse, on seeing one on a Lady’s Bonnet at Church, 1786:

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An' foolish notion:

At a recent confirmation, I saw a louse in Church... It was a bonny evening with many candidates of all ages and a congregation of several hundred, and great joy and celebration. As I sat in the hall afterwards signing gifts and cards, a candidate in his late 20’s came up to me and, as often happens, we began talking about about his coming to Christ.

Formerly an atheist, he had found faith in a flourishing Evangelical church, but the biggest obstacle in his way had been what he called the Church of England’s sexist senior leadership structure and poor record on human rights. If his workplace behaved like that they'd be closed down. Here was a national institution claiming some kind of moral authority, but behaving in a way which he, and everyone in his office, found morally disgusting.

Steady on, I thought, and trotted out a line about tradition and variety. How could I say that? he asked. Everybody knows that in the workplace discriminatory is as discriminatory does. It’s no defence in an Equalities case to say you didn’t consider your discriminatory behaviour to be so, far less that the Pope told you to do it, or that you’d always done it, or that God does it. Anyway there was a happy ending, he said, because after four years’ delay, he had eventually found in his local Church a genuinely open and apostolic community. But when was the institutional national Church going to catch up?

As legislation for female bishops goes out for consultation, everything will be framed in terms of the problems experienced by a tiny minority of churchy dissidents. I don’t suppose anyone will speak up for those who don’t yet go to Church, like my confirmation candidate and his work colleagues. They don’t show up on our radar. Maybe that’s why there aren’t more of them being confirmed.

Great Soapy debates will be held in the next day or so, with much lather produced in good faith and many croc tears about mission and why congregations fail, and how sad it is that the average English Anglican is 61. It’s not going to change, though, is it, until we accept the hard truth that some of our cherished behaviour and attitudes can be a real stumbling block to those on the threshold of faith. The problem is with us and either we don’t really care that we are blocking the gospel, or we have to do something, perhaps the obvious, about it.

Heather’s Leap of Faith

What is faith? What difference does it make? What’s the link between what we do and what God does? How much of it is a mind thing — what you believe — and how much the total package about how you live? In various ways this autumn, I have been feeling the Big Issue for the church is faith — getting real about it, getting involved, actually doing it.

A joy of this job is several hundred confirmations a year. People of all ages come, each with their own special story, seeking the laying on of hands with love. They tell me about many steps backwards as well as forwards on the way, but where people tune in to God’s music and develop their own ear for it, finding a voice, learning to sing with others brings real joy.

Someone showed me a picture this year of a bungee jump off Bloukrans bridge in South Africa, 216 metres. It’s a personal ride — others can inspire you that its doable, but for the full adrenaline, you do it for yourself. Like faith, it’s a corporate enterprise — just chucking yourself off the bridge, you'd get the thrill, but not for long. And just like faith, the better anchored you are the more exciting the ride.

I said this during a confirmation at Iver parish Church recently not knowing that there in the music group was Heather Harper. On 27 December last year she took her own leap of faith at Bloukrans, having gone to SA to celebrate a personal reinvention in her family — Click here to see a Video of her feat!
Heather says:

I couldn’t edit it and there is one ‘oh s…’ but nerves were pretty high up there!! As you can hear at the beginning I did ask God to look after me – he not only did, but enabled me to have a brilliant jump. It’s a long story as to why I was there, why I chose to jump off the Bloukrans Bridge, S.A. on December 27th 2007 (the film date is wrong) as it was the anniversary of one year of my sons recovery from alcohol and drug addiction. The more I think about your sermon last Sunday the stronger my new faith grows especially the power of prayer – I know I keep repeating it but it is quite frankly Awesome – and it makes me very happy.

And in this context I recognised the corporate reinvention we are currently unfergoing in Victoria Combe’s piece this weekend in the Financial Times, appropriately called Leap of Faith, based on an interview with Richard Chartres, Bishop of London.

Speaking of whom, many congratulations to Paul Williams, Rector of Gerrards Cross, who is to be the new Bishop of Kensington. Over my time in Bucks I've developed tremendous respect for Paul and for the prayer, discernment and hard work that goes into team and leadership development at GX, as it thrives and grows. I’ve also been with Paul at Willow Creek. I know that Paul has leadership wisdom and grace to offer the whole Church, and want warmly to congratulate him, and the Kensington Episcopal Area and the Diocese of London.

42 adults and a baby

Epiphany has always been special for me. I never imagined there could be a more joyful way to celebrate Epiphany than in Reading, where we used to send out a server out after communion for fish and chips all round from the chip shop in Briants Avenue. But last night I went to confirm in St Mary’s Aylesbury, and the experience was wonderful. Frs Shane Wood, Mark Ackford and colleagues organised a most glorious time — 42 candidates plus a baby, with the oldest candidate in her 90’s. The service which was set up collegially (people facing each other with me going along the lines to confirm, and Fr Mark following to anoint). Quirky and wonderful happenings broke out all over afterwards — a Zimbabwean Mothers Union delegation resplendent in blue and white uniforms, somebody coming up and asking me to bless a pilgrim rosary from Knock... The whole place was heaving, but with a real sense that the light that shone over the stable is now shining in and through people’s lives — pure joy, real hope.

There may be an argument for the occasional really big confirmation, gathering people into a large Church on a special occasion for a slightly over-the-top but glorious celebration, really making something of it. Last night certainly showed how this could be done.

On the twelfth day of Christmas

A wonderful confirmation service on a glorious sunny morning at Hambleden for Epiphany — and the end of Maggi Dawn’s Beginnings and Endings (and what happens in between) which I've reading almost daily since 1 December. It’s been a very engaging way to stay focussed at a time of year I usually rather lose the script. This book gives a short scripturally based reflection for every day from the beginning of Advent to twelfth night. I have missed two or three days, but it’s easy to catch-up, and I've very much valued the overview, and some of the particular ideas. There’s a very strong biblical base, including the big picture alongside some analysis of particular parts of the story and context. This book puts you back in the place people were in before they did Christmas in an over-familiar way. Tracking through the tale from the very beginning stage by stage has been very enriching.

As Matthew tells the story it’s not a neatly wrapped-up ending, but a scene of urgent and slightly panicky journey making. Both the magi and the holy family are warned not to go back the way they came, and they depart from Bethlehem in different directions.... the end of the nativity story, then, marks the beginning of two new journeys into the unknown — two journeys in which the plans are changed at the last minute and departure is suddenly made more urgent.
The idea that we cannot go back the way we have come is an important spiritual metaphor: having encountered the Christ-child, we can never just go back. Even if we return to the same life we find that it has somehow changed...
For those who like the idea that the gospel gives us certainty — clear and applicable truths that we can solidly depend upon — this ending of the birth narratives is an uncomfortable disruption. The only certainty here is the promise of uncertainty. But it is an uncertainty that is full of hope, for it is also the promise of new beginnings.

My only qualification to this enthusiastic endorsement is to point out that you can’t exactly read it in the way it’s designed to be used for another 11 months — but Advent and Christmas will, almost certainly, be back next year...

Building Jerusalem in Seer Green

Back to Seer Green on Sunday, where I had such fun in the school, to confirm 12 people from there and Slough. One reading was slightly unusual — the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem in Nehemiah 16. This story shows that Christianity is an inherently corporate enterprise. People who stay together accomplish the impossible in spite of the politics of the proud. Chapters full of names make the point that everybody is somebody; a good note on which to be confirmed in the Christian faith. The other reading was from John 15. Jesus never wrote a book or founded a corporation, but he made friends, and calls us his friends, not servants. Abraham, from whose faith, and with whose faith, we find blessing, was called God’s friend.

• Real friends respect the other person as they really are, not just for what they can get out of them. So goodbye to the idea that Jesus is somehow after our money, or out to clone us all or homogenise us into something we’re not.
• Real friends desire and work for the real good of the other person, whatever the cost. Goodbye, then to the idea that Jesus is trying to recruit us all to some kind of cult that’s out to get us.
• Real friends love with open eyes and understand. They are always there for the other person. So goodbye to the plaster saint view of Jesus.
• Real friends show genuine empathy and sympathy. Jesus is not some great copper in the sky. True friendship also means having a vision for your friends. It’s accepting the way they are, but being open to what they could be.

True friendship with God and each other, is transformational, and a far more accurate model for discipleship than institutional religion. It was an honour to be among friends on Sunday. Thanks to Sarah Allen for a picture of seven of the eight confirmees from Holy Trinity — Gaenor the Vicar, Amelia, Tom, Conor, Sarah, Me, Matthew, Katharine, Roger. Sarah also brought an obscenely yummy fruitcake (from a mystery source I shall certainly use in future) which contained all kinds of strong liquor, and should be banned. Except at confirmations, where it should be compulsory.