CMS Annual Sermon 2000
I know people begin by saying what an honour it is, but it is indeed an honour to give the Church Mission Society annual lecture, although I've discovered it's now a sermon, so this is rather difficult, and raises the question, 'what is the difference between a sermon and a lecture?'
It reminds me of the story of the person who was in the pulpit for a rather long time preaching - I'm sure you've never been afflicted with this - and the vicar was embarking on his second point after one hour of being in the pulpit. This was too much for the churchwarden, indeed for the whole congregation, and the warden took it upon herself to deal with the matter. So she reached for a very heavy copy of the prayerbook in front of her, took aim at the pulpit, and with all her worth threw the book at the vicar. Unfortunately it missed the target, instead hitting a person sitting in the front row, who as he slumped forward was heard to say 'Hit me again, I can still hear him.' I sincerely hope you will not be expecting that ministry here tonight, otherwise I will have failed you.
It is so good to come down from Liverpool to London. I always enjoy my visits, although I'm always glad to get back to Liverpool and to what I feel is the real world, because it's such a strong community. When I was Bishop of Hull I used to go round the Dioceses holding a series of meetings, 'meet the Bishop' and one boy, an eight year old asked his father if he could come to one of these meetings to meet the Bishop. The father said 'Well why do you want to go?' incredulous that an eight year old would want to go and listen to a Bishop. Well the little boy had started to learn how to play chess and he said he wanted to come and ask me whether or not I moved diagonally. Of course that is the popular conception of Bishops in the Church of England, that faced with a straight question, that is exactly the direction we go in. That little boy's question happened to be a prophecy because within months I was on my way, diagonally from Hull to Liverpool.
Jeremy Paxman once rang me up when I was Bishop of Liverpool. He was interviewing the Lord Chancellor for Newsnight and doing his own research which surprised and impressed me, and he wanted to know what questions I'd put, because I'd been in the public domain about the governments policy on taxation on the family. He said 'You'd be interested to know Bishop that I rang directory enquiries and asked them for the telephone number for the Bishop of Hull and the lady said, 'Is that a pub?' To which he said 'No it's a crook, a dog-collar and a mitre', to which she said 'Where's Hull?'
Wel, that's another story, though I have to say that the people of Hull and the East Riding of Yorkshire, for whom I had Episcopal responsibility, I will forever owe a debt because they taught me, in that great city, which of course has a great history attached with the Church Mission Society, they taught what it really means to be a Bishop in today's Church.
I now find myself in Liverpool. The two cities share very much, a similar heritage, an urban landscape, a port, trying to move from one century into another. Shortly after I arrived in Liverpool various things happened on the national stage. Sadly, Cardinal Hume died, and there was great speculation about who would be succeeding him. One day my chaplain took a telephone call from Sky News. They said they wanted to come and do an interview with me,'We'd like to ask the bishop what he thinks his chances are of succeeding Cardinal Hume as Archbishop of Westminster.' I said to my Chaplain, 'We should have done the interview and seen how far we got before they rumbled they've got the wrong person, with me saying things like, well what a terrific compliment this is to our predecessors, Derek Warlock and David Shepherd, that I should be in the frame, and how enlightened of the Pope, that no matter that I have a wife and three children. These are enlightened times that we live in.'
In Lent of this year, I visited every deanery in the Diocese and in each Deanery Idid four things. I asked the local secondary school headteacher, if I could meet with all the sixth form and whether he would invite all the sixth formers in the deanery to come and join in that session. The doors were flung wide open. I said I wanted to hear young people and their aspirations for the future and I wanted to tell them why I thought Jesus Christ was relevant to the third millennium. Some occasions there were up to two hundred and fifty sixth formers. The engagement with those young people was some of the most stimulating company that I have enjoyed in my two years on Merseyside. The questions came thick and fast.
Then I wrote to all the teachers through the Head, saying that I'd love to meet with the schoolteachers, just to say to them thank you for all that they're doing for young people today and to explore with them moral and spiritual values in education. In Everton on a Wednesday afternoon at half past four over one hundred teachers turned up, mostly not Christians.
In Wigan on a Friday afternoon afternoon over eighty teachers turned up, not all Christians. Glad that there was somebody in the community who was recognising what they were doing. And thanking them because they feel beleaguered, hit on the head by every politician of every part.
I called together all the Anglican Christians and asked them if they would meet with me for an hour, so that we could worship together and I could teach about prayer. I have never had such reaction on the door of a church, with people thanking me for what really was just simple teaching, expounding the answer that Jesus gave when the disciples said 'Lord, teach us to pray'.
And then the evening ended with me meeting and inviting eighteen to thirty year olds to a local pub to hear from them and talk with them. One evening just one person turned up, and another evening one hundred and fifty.
These engagements underlined to me that there are three basic instincts in humanity, rather like faith, hope and love and that these three basic instincts will never change as long as there are human beings on the face of the earth. A spiritual instinct, a moral instinct and a social instinct, and the Christian faith speaks directly into each of those three instincts. At Holy Trinity Cambridge on Sunday night, I expounded in detail these three basic instincts. I'm just going to recap briefly on those three before I go into what is the second part of my lecture/sermon as to whether or not conflict can be a sign of effective mission today.
But just a few cameos on these three instincts. When I was a vicar in South Croydon the church was fortunate enough to have the vision and resources to appoint a full-time youth minister. His first work was to do research among 14-18 year olds who do not come to church, as we call them the unchurched. One of the questions was this - When did you last pray? Last year. Last month. Last week. Over 60% of the young people said they had prayed in the previous week. They didn't come to church, but they prayed.
Please do not any of the postmodernists tell me that young people are not spiritual. They are deeply spiritual, they simply find the church irrelevant. When I told this story to a reporter from a broadsheet newspaper he rather dismissively responded to me by saying, rather patronisingly, 'Oh yes, well what did they pray for?' To which I said and I hope not too arrogantly 'And what do you pray for? Your wife gets cancer, of course you start praying. You're about to be thrown out of a job, course you start praying'. I said, 'its no different from young people who are about to see their parents split up, and of course they pray. Or maybe go into an exam for which they haven't done enough work, and of course they pray.' Their prayers are no different from ours. That is the amazing grace of God that even though we come to him only out of need and disaster, he doesn't turn us away.
There is a spiritual instinct and I could cite many examples of where that is evident in our culture today. Is it not remarkable the greatest piece of public art in Britain at the end of the twentieth century was a spiritual icon, the Angel of the North dominating Tyneside. Tthey could have put a footballer up there, of course they did try and put a Newcastle United shirt on the Angel of the North, but it was a spiritual icon. Listen to the lyrics of modern songs and go into Waterstones or any other bookshop and look at the table of new books and see how many spiritual, spiritual words are there. Angels, God, 'spiritual' itself. And even in the debate on urban regeneration, spiritual words like regeneration. Please don't tell me that our culture is not spiritual.
And then of course there is a moral sense. Please do not tell me that we are dominated by moral relativism. It may be true of the chattering classes in Hampstead and places like Islington. But it is not true of swathes of this country. The last government was expelled from office because of a moral absolute. People believed rightly that you cannot hold power and have your fingers in the till at the same time, and they were got rid of. That was a moral perception, a moral value, a moral instinct. And indeed when I was with young people and listening to them, it was they who told me about the moral imperative and in Kantian terms a categorical imperative that you ought to look after the planet. Not just hypothetically for your own sake, but as an absolute.
I have to say that it is an encouraging thing that the church has finally latched into the environment in missiology. If the church wants to find a bridge between the gospel and young people today, then rediscover what the scriptures have to say about the environment.
The neglect of the environment isn't just a crime against humanity, it is ultimately a blasphemy, because Colossions 1 tells us that creation was by Christ and for Christ, therefore, to desecrate the environment is to desecrate His gift by and for Him. Young people understand that, and I cannot tell you how heartly sick and tired I am of people telling me how we cannot communicate the Christian faith with young people. Their agenda is a biblical agenda, the future of the planet. It's there in the Scriptures. Please don't tell me the Bible is irrelevant to the aspirations of young people today
The greatest example of course of the world, living by a moral absolute is what happened at the end of the twentieth century when the world community acted as one and forced a sovereign nation to change its' internal structures. South Africa was forced to abolish Apartheid and rightly. Did you ever hear anybody in that debate tell you that morality was relative? Did you ever hear anybody hear say that what you believed about another human being was the product of social conditioning? That dependent on how you were brought up as to whether you thought blacks and whites were equal or not? Of course you didn't. There was no hint of moral relativism and rightly so. The world spoke with one voice, spoke out against a nation, forced a sovereign nation to change its internal structures and what the world was doing in that moment was intuiting a moral absolute, that all men and women children and young people are equal regardless of race, colour or creed and equal in the sight of God.
The calling of the church (and we thank God for the Anglican communion expressed in South Africa, an heroic leadership of brothers and sisters in Christ, black and white in South Africa many of them Anglicans) the calling of the church was to help people trace back from their moral intuition to the God who has spoken, and supremely in the person and teaching of Jesus Christ.
There was a lovely story about Nelson Mandela when he came here for his first state visit after his release from prison. On the last night there was a wonderful concert in the Royal Albert Hall. Nelson Mandela was in the Royal Box sitting next to Her Majesty the Queen and for the finale all the actors, dancers, musicians and singers all came up onto the stage for the final reprise. And as they sang on the stage so the audience stood up were they were sitting and began boogying to the music and Nelson Mandela, not to be left out even though he was sitting next to Her Majesty the Queen in the Royal Box he too stood and danced away. I heard this described on the radio, the reporter then said, 'and then the Queen stood and swayed gently'. Tthere was this marvellous picture of Nelson Mandela, Messiah-like coming to the very heart of the establishment that had been party to his oppression historically and breathing life and freedom into it.
What unlocked the key, what key unlocked the door of his cell? The world community intuiting an absolute moral value, that it is absolutely not right and positively evil for one race to oppress another. Not relatively wrong, but absolutely wrong and there was no talk of relativistic morality in that moment, one of the great meta-narratives of the twentieth century. Please do not tell me that there is no moral sense in the world today, there is.
So there is a spiritual instinct, there's a moral instinct and there's a social instinct. Every single human being has been made to love and to be loved, and it is a mystery why anyone should love any one of us. That is how we have been created - as social beings.
I remember one of my daughters Harriet, she was very very young and I was being rather soppy and sentimental as a father, I had my arms around her and I don't know why I did it but I was speaking to her in the third person singular, put my arms around her and said ' Harriet, you know daddy loves you very much'. She pushed me away from her, looked me straight in the eye and she said 'Why do you love me?' I was tempted to say 'Because you have beautiful eyes and pretty face and lovely hair. Thank God that I didn't say that, because what would happen to her if one day she lost those looks? Would she think that she was no longer lovable? I've known too many people in my own ministry as a pastor who have felt that they have only ever been loved for what somebody else could get out of them, rather than for who they are. And so I just said to her 'Well I love you because I love you, that's why.' Well she was decidedly unimpressed and walked out of the room.
But that same question was put by the children of Israel in Deuteronomy 7 to God. 'Why has the Lord set his love upon us? We are not the greatest of the nations on the face of the earth? We're not the most numerical so why has the Lord set his love upon us?' And the answer comes 'The Lord has set his love upon us because the Lord loves you. That's why. Why? Because he loves you. Why? Because he loves you.'
There is no rhyme nor reason to love. If there were it wouldn't be love. It would be a means to some other end. Love is a mystery because you do not know why you are loved. But when you are not loved there is no self-esteem, no energy; when we are loved we are valued and energy flows in and through our lives. So there these three instincts like faith, hope and love. Spiritual instinct, moral instinct and social instinct.
Together with all of this in Acts Chapter 17 v27 St Paul in his address, or was it a sermon, to the Athenians of the Areopagus said that God had put it into the heart of humanity to search, grope and find him. That is why fundamentally I am optimistic about the future of the Christian faith, because it is dei rarum naturities. The very nature of things for men, women, young people and children is to be spiritual and to seek for God. I don't pretend for a moment there are people wandering around London or Liverpool with their fists on their forehead all asking the question, but I do know this, there isn't a person who doesn't at some stage in his or her life find themselves praying. Interestingly when I said that with the sixth formers and said 'Well you know, that moment may not have come to you yet but maybe it has', a silence descended on the gathering, even of two hundred and fifty. Giving the sense that that moment had already arrived for some of those young people.
Now the church has been created, born out of love. We are called to be a community of love, a community if you like of the forgiven, forgiving. Oh that we were. We are called to be in relationship with God. We are called to be in relationship with each other. And we called to be in relationship with the world, so that we can testify to that message which speaks directly into those three basic instincts.
I was longing to be called to a day to tell this story, as the church glibly debated racism yet again and committed itself to rhetoric but with a life that tells a different story. How just a few weeks ago, I was at a centre for asylum seekers in Liverpool. I met a young man from Africa who showed me the machete wounds in his own body and then my heart rose within me as he said to me, 'Bishop, I go to church every Sunday from the Asylum Centre. I go to church every Sunday', and I thought that's wonderful because there you will find people that will welcome you. My heart sank when he told me, this young black man, that not once has anyone spoken to him on the way in or the way out. God forgive us! I should imagine there were prayers for asylum seekers. I should imagine there was a sermon about justice and about the oppressed and the marginalised and all those cliches and yet they were entertaining angels unawares in their very midst and nobody spoke to him! God forgive us!
And the church is turned in on itself and not in relationship with the world. Talking to a young man the other day who reads his bible and prays and tries to go to church and he said, 'do I really have to put up with all that hyprocisy. Can't I just get by with praying and reading my Bible'. God forgive us.
When the church has no relationship with the world, its mission is defunct. Now relationship is the essence of everything. It is the essence of love, of life and of the future and I heartily underline what Tim has said about the future being relational. We see that supremely of course in God the Trinity, persons in relationship with one another. Beautifully nuanced for us in the pages of the gospel of John, where the Father the Son and the Holy Spirit give glory to each other. Of course as they give glory to each other then ipso facto they receive glory from one another. And so we have a mutuality of giving and receiving of glory except, and I can hear some of you already thinking, that no one gives glory to the spirit. Right! They don't, because you see that is left to the church to do that, to be brought into the circle, the ever-widening circle as God embraces the whole world in that community, in that relationship or persons in relationship with each other.
Jesus himself the author of community, not just the one who gives, that's a reading of the gospel that is far too myopic, because the gospels most beautifully show Jesus as one who both gives and receives. Everybody expounds John chapter 13 and I expounded this when I was invited to be at the bicentennary conference at Leicester. Look at Jesus on his knees washing the feet of the disciples. But what people overlook is that in the previous chapter who is having his feet washed? Jesus. And when they try to stop the woman doing it Jesus is indignant, yes indignant, that's the word in Greek. And he says 'leave her alone'.
Nobody dare plum the depths of Christ's psyche, yet, I dare to believe that he needed her touch, her ministry; that he needed to receive, and that he received the washing of his feet, before he knelt to wash the feet of his disciples. The example that was given was not just of John 13, the chapter headings are artificial, but of John 12, it was the mutuality of feet-washing, the washing and being washed, that's the example.
He said I've given you this example that you should do this. Again this verse is frequently misinterpreted. He said that you should do this to one another, he didn't say that you should do this to other people. He said you should do this to one another. So he was calling them to follow his example of washing and being washed and therein lies true community. If you come across those people who say 'Well how are you?' 'No, no how are you, how are you? And there is no mutuality, no reciprocity and the relationship with such a person can be only superficial. Its only in the mutuality of giving and receiving that a relationship can be borne and Jesus is the author of true community in that giving and receiving example.
God enters into the relationship with us , into a mutual relationship: 'God so loved the world that he gave his only Son Jesus Christ' and I believe that at such a poignant episode at the end of that gospel when Jesus says to Peter 'Do you love me?' Well I have always expounded that verse as a leverage putting Peter into some kind of guilt trip until he finally capitulated and said 'Of course you know that I love you', but I dare to believe even in his risen body needed to hear Peter say 'Lord you know that I love you,' 'You know that I love you', 'You really know that I love you.' And in that climactic episode that is the denouement of John's gospel, there we have it the relationship: 'God so loved the world' in John 3 and in John 21 'Do you love me?' Is that love reciprocated? God invites us into a relationship of giving and receiving of mutuality.
So mutuality is the essence of all relationships, but I'm afraid that if mutuality is the essence of all relationships namely one of giving and receiving this does not characterise the relationship of the church with the world. For the church often sees itself, or at least is perceived as, only having something to give to the world, to speak to the world and never being in a position of showing itself receiving from the world.
How can we have a relationship with the world if the church never receives? The first followers of Jesus Christ were immensely popular. Yes we're told that in the Acts of the Apostles. 'Oh you say, but I thought they were all persecuted?' Yes but they were popular with ordinary people. They had favour with ordinary people and they said 'Look at these Christians how they love one another.' They could see that mutuality in their midst.
Clearly the Christians were irksome to those in power so they should be, but with ordinary people, they were immensely popular. And they were following the example of Jesus who was himself popular with ordinary people, again irksome to those in power. And Jesus, just to develop this theme, showed them examples of the way he was able to receive from other people.
Well he received affirmation from the Father didn't he? 'My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased' How Jesus must have rejoiced to hear those words and how devastated he must have been not to hear those words on the cross, as he bore the sins of the world.
He received ministry from the angels, he received hospitality from his friends as well as the washing of his feet. Jesus showing that to be a human being is to give and to receive. And as we begin to follow the Christians through the Acts of the Apostles and then begin to focus more on St Paul we discover that he too was a recipient as well as a giver.
I think one of the most fascinating verses about St Paul is Romans 16 where he talks about Andronicus and Junias, his relatives, or kinsmen, He says, who were 'In Christ before I was'. What do you think they did for their cousin as they saw him rampaging the countryside slaughtering the Christians? They must have prayed for him, because that's what the Master told them to do. The most dangerous thing in the world to persecute a Christian because you put yourself in the firing line of prayer.
Why was he converted on the Damascus road? Andronicus and Junias I'm sure had a part to play in their prayers. In parenthesis, I was brought up by parents of great integrity but when I was born they were not confessing Christians and it wasn't until my early twenties that I discovered a great-aunt who'd prayed for me every day of my life from my baptism as an infant. And when I became a Bishop my mother gave me this ring with my aunt's amethyst, her necklace at the heart of it, to remind me of the power of prayer.
But St Paul, right from the outset was a beneficiary of the prayers of his relatives. Well that's speculative, but of course Stephen prayed for him as he prayed forgivness for those who were stoning him, and there was Saul by the side, during the execution, so he came within the compass of that prayer at least.
But St Paul in his evangelism gives us other examples of the way he receives. For example in Acts Chapter 17 he quotes non-Jewish scriptures in order to build a bridge with his audience the Athenians.
And through St Paul and that extraordinary address in the Aeropagus we have received through his reception into our Christian liturgy a non-Christian, non-Jewish source in whom we live and move and have our being. Non-Christian and non-Jewish in origin.
And he received as he built a bridge. Also what St Paul did is that he affirmed and received everything that belonged to him through his Jewish heritage. 'I am a Jew' he said. 'I am a Jew.' And he was glad to affirm that and in so affirming establish a relationship between himself and the Jewish community. 'I am a Jew.' He received everything his Jewish heritage could give him in order to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ and then of course he claimed 'I am a Roman citizen' and in that moment claimed from Rome all that belonged to a Roman citizen, so that through receiving what the Roman empire he was brought to the heart of Rome where he could preach the gospel of Jesus Christ. He claimed a relationship with the Roman empire, claimed the benefits of that citizenship and within that relationship proclaimed the gospel of Jesus. P
aul not just a giver of the good news, but Paul the receiver of what the world had to offer. But if we have no Pauline Christ-like relationship with the world we simply cannot be heard. Locally we cannot be heard, no opportunity to proclaim. Hence my friends the fact that there are very few converts in England today. And those who are converts, and I say this out of 12 years of parish experience, running Christian Basics, Sarah and I adding up that in the 12 years of parish ministry through our own home in Christian Basics, (similar to Alpha) over a 1,000 people came through our doors and sat in our home. Many of them came to faith in Christ but here I'm afraid I have to tell you anecdotally that those converts were mainly the de-churched, not the unchurched.
Many of the people who are converted today have some testimony of some Christian experience in their childhood or youth through family or a school that they've gone to we simply are not reaching the dechurched in our culture. Why? Because we have no relationship with the world that God loves and we have been called to serve. Nationally I fear the church sounds arrogant and irrelevant, even yesterday in the debate on the Church Urban Fund there was only one speech in that debate of two and a half hours that made a reference that today the government was publishing its long-awaited paper on urban regeneration. Only one speech in General Synod - no wonder that debate wasn't even referred to in any of the newspapers that I have seen today. Why? The church simply not in relationship with the world.
But when the church is in relationship with the world inevitably there will be tensions. Sometimes as you well know, the church finds itself challenging the culture, apartheid in South Africa, Jubilee 2000, and of course my great hero Wilberforce who from my student days became my hero. For here was somebody who took the Scriptures seriously, they were authoritative in his own life, in matters of faith and conduct and they led him to a radical stance.
And so when I was asked to drive around Hull with the Archdeacon incognito and he parked the car beneath the memorial to William Wilberforce I knew that if I was asked to become the Bishop of Hull I would say yes, because of William Wilberforce was the MP for Hull.
Sometimes the church will challenge the culture and Wilberforce was tempted to throw in the towel on more than one occasion. I think it's a lovely reference in Pollock's biography of Wilberforce to be told that at that moment it was Wesley - I gather they never met - who wrote to Wilberforce to tell him to carry on and keep his hand on the plough. How wonderful for that champion of the personal salvation through Jesus Christ should be allied to one of the greatest social reformers that this country has ever seen.
Interestingly too Wilberforce was told exactly what the Jubilee 2000 campaign was told, that if he persisted, he would ruin the world economy. Extraordinary - but did you know this? It was only the advent to the British parliament of MPs from Ireland that eventually secured the majority that led to the abolition of the slave trade and then slavery.
Well there are episodes when the church challenges the culture. And there will also be times when the church responds to dynamics of virtue and justice that emanate elsewhere and not from the church for example the status of women in our society, church was not the leader in that reform. Or health issues, church has not been the leader in that area. Or the environmental campaign, the church has not been the leader in that area either.
But let's not dismiss the fact that the church has eventually come on board with the ordination of women, with the importance of healing, with the importance of the ecological agenda. Let's not dismiss the church as just jumping on a bandwagon, but let's welcome this as a sign of the church actually at last being in a relationship with the world and being able to receive something from the world, and say ,'yes', we can see the rightness, the virtue of that. To see it as a sign that God who is the source of all truth, that his Spirit can burst through anywhere in the church or in the world.
Now as the church engages with different cultures, as it's in relationship with the world so it will absorb and bear in its own body the pain of that culture or sub-culture that its building a bridge with, identifying with.
As it seeks to relate Christ's message to those people, it may well find that as it does this, so other parts of the body might react negatively. For example, the divide in our society is not urban and rural. Those of us who have the privilege of most Anglican bishops find that in their dioceses there is both rural and urban. That's true of Liverpool - 75% of our land is Grade 1 in west Lancashire going up to Southport.
The real divide in our society is urban/rural and suburban, that's the tension and, as we explore what it means to be church in urban/rural and identify with people in urban situations so we will find ourselves maybe at odds with the suburban Christians.
I chair the government's 'New Deal' for the community in Liverpool and I am constantly hearing things that are making me rethink my attitude to the Church and what it means to be church in an urban context.
As we have people in the church engaging with different parts of our culture, so we will bring back to the church some of those tensions that are in society at large. Now we've got to work at the truth, got to seek the truth, got to study the scriptures, apply the word to the contemporary world, but we mustn't worry if sometimes we feel there is tensions within the very body of Christ, it's a sign that we are engaging with the world.
We had a debate today on racism, again we shouldn't be surprised if beneath the surface of all the rhetoric we find the church in tension one with another, as some people live in mono-cultural situations and others in multi-cultural situations. We will necessarily, if we are engaging, bear those tensions in our own body and this tension in mission may well feel negative but it is a positive sign of engaging.
Of course the religious authorities couldn't comprehend what Jesus was about could they? There was tension. How he spent time with tax collectors and it wasn't money these people were against. Tobe a tax collector was to be a traitor.
That's why the Sabbath was so important, not because you were doing something on the Sabbath, but the only way they could reinforce their own identity in a land that was oppressed by a foreign nation, was to sit rigidly to their cultic rules. Keep the Sabbath.
So if somebody didn't keep the Sabbath it was like treason, they were betraying the community, and of course Jesus did set loose to the Sabbath and did eat with the tax collectors and prostitutes and the sinners. As he engaged with his culture and those who were in authority found it difficult because I suppose they felt it was compromise on the part of Jesus.
But the tensions and the conflicts that we see in the gospels are a positive sign that Jesus was engaging with the world, in a relationship with the world so that he could even be touched by a woman who washed his feet and wiped them with her own hair.
So the emergence of different denominations and traditions needs a different perspective. It's a sign of engagement historically. Isn't it interesting how the word tradition is good and the word denomination is bad, but actually they are both the same thing. And these things have emerged as the church and christians have engaged with different dynamics in our culture, to take an example from the modern day the charismatic movement.
The charismatic movement has been a response to a cultural feature, namely the elevation of feeling over intellect. A society's preoccupation with health and so we have worship that is very much playing into the desire to feel the presence of God. We have liturgies now that encourage people to come forward for healing which is extraordinarily honest - you could imagine it in the time of the plague but there has never been so much healthcare available in the history of the northern hemisphere. What is going on here? These are cultural responses.
Now please don't get me wrong I am a beneficiary of the charismatic movement I have delighted in having my own feelings engaged and if you don't feel the love of God or feel love for God then that's a deficiency. So I'm not wanting to rubbish any of this tradition. I do believe it has to be critiqued biblically but I want to signal it as an example of an engagement with our culture. Critique it biblically, but lets not have our eyes closed to the fact that the reason there are so many people in the charismatic movement is because it is speaking into where our culture is at the moment.
I am frustrated that in all the ecumenical debates, this huge number of Christians is totally ignored by the ecumenists, hundreds of thousands, many of them disaffected Anglicans totally ignored in the ecumenical debate. I think its extraordinary, I'm sure church historians in another century will look back and wonder.
But the nature of this ecumenical debate is frankly quarter of a century out of date. Twenty five years ago when I was teaching RE to sixth formers they would often say to me 'Ah yes, but how can you talk about Christianity when you are all so divided?' I never once heard once that point when I met in Easter of this year thousands of sixth formers. Shall I tell you why? Because twenty five years ago diversity was an obstacle to mission, twenty five years on diversity is the key to mission. We need as many different entrances into the Christian faith as possible.
The Church's preoccupation with uniformity and uniformity of organisation under the banner of visible unity, presents a major obstacle to mission today. Because the time and energy that is being spent on rationalising, organising, systematising is pulling her away from the very engagement with the world that we are bound to do. It is like, to borrow an image from our Lord, trying to sow a new patch on an old garment. I believe in organic unity but not organisational unity. I believe in life flowing to and from the traditions. I believe in open pulpits and open tables to every single person who has been baptised in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. I believe that the under forties see our denominational niceties as totally irrelevant to the world and to the church.
I believe that we should be Trinitarian in our ecumenical relationships. Instead of inspecting each other's credentials to see whether or not we are kosher we should be delighting in each others' traditions and thanking God that one tradition is able to reach those that our tradition is unable to gather. I believe we need to set each other free to engage with different cultures and different sub-cultures, instead of trying to constrain, constrict, confine us to one organisation.
Historically the Church has been offered a relationship with the world in the unique place that the Church of England has been given as the established Church, which some seem determined to abandon with all the passion and blindness of the Gaderine swine hurling themselves of the cliff, spurred on sadly by media pundits looking for a story. Establishment is an expression of a relationship with the world. At the very heart of it is a mutuality of giving and receiving.
My interest is not so much about Bishops being there in the House of Lords, though I welcome their presence for it is an emphasis on the holistic approach to public policy, involving spiritual as well as physical issues. I was saddened that this point wasn't made yesterday in the Church Urban Fund debate in General Synod.
The beauty of the Church Urban Fund is that it has enabled Christians, to say to those in charge of public policy that regeneration has to be more than economic and social, it must also be moral and spiritual. So I welcome Bishops in the House of Lords for the part that they are able to play in emphasising that point.
My interest was not so much in the Prime Minister's involvement in the appointment of Bishops, though it is a curious theology that says that God cannot work in anybody outside a confessing Christian. Have we forgotten Syrus? Have we forgotten that in Romans Chapter 13 v 4 Paul describes the civil servants in Nero's evil empire as God's diaconoi - as God's servants, giving us a theology of the Kingdom that shows that God is not limited to those who confess Christ as Lord and Saviour, but that God in his sovereignty is Lord of Lords and King of Kings is able to use anybody to advance his mission.
But that's not my concern. My concern is establishment at the local level, where the Church has a presence in every community, rich and poor, suburban and urban, rural and outer-estate, the Church has a presence in every community. The church is a proven partner, to use the current jargon, the Church is a community that sometimes is trusted because it has been borne out of its historic responsibility for the welfare for the whole community.
So, for example,, in Liverpool we are at the moment in negotiation with the Department of Education and Employment to see whether Liverpool might become the venue for a City Academy in our urban priority area of Kensington. Now I'm not saying that if the Diocese if Liverpool was not there, there would not be a City Academy, but what I am saying from that example is this: that there is a fabric in our society into which the Church is woven historically. I know some people say 'Well OK but if we were starting all over again we wouldn't start from here.' Frankly my response is we jolly well would start from here! Its about the Church saying, and this is were Anglican ecclesiology is different from others, the Church is saying that a Vicar is not just the Chaplain to the gathered, the Vicar is pastor to the whole community of the parish. So that even if a person doesn't come to church and he rings the vicar up, the vicar doesn't say 'Go away' because the vicar knows, the whole church knows, that he is there for the whole community.
Similarly, as Bishop of Liverpool, I am not just Bishop of the Christians who are Anglicans. I am Bishop to the whole city, so that when there is a major problem the city leaders come to me, not because I am the Father in God to members of the Anglican church, but because they say, as indeed the Lord Mayor did when he welcomed me to the city at my enthronement, we welcome you as pastor and teacher and advocate of the people.
So I want to lay before you that the Church can only advance its mission if it is in a relationship with the world. Its just as well that I put the word 'conflict' in the title of this address, because I'm aware that the things that I've said may well bring me into conflict with some of you and certainly with others in the wider Church. But as I pondered over that today, I have to tell you that it brought to mind a saying of Jesus when he told us, ' I have come to bring a sword'.