Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old
22 February 2009
1. ‘I hope that Divine Providence intends the Church of England to exist over the next year or two without a schism which would separate off the Catholic section..... but I dread the Lambeth Conference and its consequences.’
2. No not the words twelve months ago of Rowan Williams, though they could well have been, but a cry from the heart of the first principal of this House and sometime Bishop of Oxford, Charles Gore, writing in the run up to the Lambeth Conference of 1920.
3. Reflecting on how our forbears tackled similar challenges to ones we face today can help inject a sense of perspective when we are tempted to see our problems as overwhelming. So, at first blush, God’s words through Isaiah in our Old Testament reading- ‘Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old,’- strike a jarring note, not least for those of us for whom history is a consolation, a pleasure or even a profession.
4. We naturally feel a bit better about present prospects when we come across some doom laden prediction from a previous generation that proved wide of the mark. Happily the following words were written not by one of our present bishops but by Hensley Henson in 1930 as the Lambeth Conference of that year wrestled with proposals for Church reunion in South India. (I quote) ‘The truth is that, under the description ‘the Anglican Communion’ there are gathered two mutually contradictory conceptions of Christianity. How long the divergence of first principles can be concealed remains to be seen. Sometimes I think the rupture is very near.’
5. Of a slightly different character is the memorable account of the meeting exactly a hundred years ago, between King Edward VII and Cosmo Gordon Lang, when the new Archbishop of York went to Windsor to receive his marching orders. The no doubt slightly mystified Archbishop was told by the Supreme Governor that the two most important things were (quote) ‘to keep the parties in the church together.... and to prevent the clergy wearing moustaches.’ Timeless advice rather than a gloomy prediction- and at least we have made some progress with the moustache issue.
6. Now, Isaiah’s description of God earlier in chapter 43 as ‘he who made a way through the sea, a path through the mighty waters, who drew out the chariots and horses,’ makes it clear that the warning in our reading was not in fact against learning lessons from the past. How could it be when standing at the heart of Jewish identity was the annual commemoration at the Passover of what God had done to deliver his people from captivity?
7. Isaiah’s warning is more an echo of that passage in the Book of Numbers chapter 11 when the people in the wilderness think back fondly to slavery in Egypt and say: ‘If only we had meat to eat! We remember the fish we ate in Egypt at no cost- also the cucumbers, melons, leeks, onions and garlic. But now we have lost our appetite; we never see anything but this manna.’
8. After all that God had accomplished in leading them out of captivity, calling them to be a priestly kingdom and a holy nation, giving them new hope and meeting their material needs, all they can think of is that the miraculously provided food in the wilderness is not up to the local produce in Egypt. Their circumstances had changed but their hearts were still the same as they always had been. And so the people of Israel fail to appreciate the new thing that God is about to do. ‘Now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?’
9. The Gospel reading tells of something dramatically new. The dramatic healing of the paralysed man and the declaration that his sins are forgiven prompt those present to declare ‘We have never seen anything like this’. This time there is a change of heart as well as circumstances. Jesus perceives in the paralytic man and his friends authentic faith, and as a result restores him to physical and spiritual health. What can we take from this striking story and how does it help us make sense of Isaiah’s warning against being so preoccupied with the past that we fail to see the new thing that God is doing?
10. There were at least three sacrifices that the paralysed man had to be prepared to make in allowing his friends to take him to the new healer who had just burst onto the scene in Galilee. The first was to sacrifice the security of predictability.
11. Being paralysed was a severe limitation but the probability is that that had been the man’s condition for a long time. It meant a constrained life. But it had its routines. Over time we all adapt and become accustomed to our circumstances however frustrating or limiting they may be. In theory we may long for all sorts of things to be different. Yet change involves uncertainty, risk, the loss of the familiar landmarks.
12. When the rich young ruler came to Jesus it was not merely the challenge to sell all that he had and give to the poor that was too much for him but also Jesus’ final words- ‘then come, follow me.’ The man’s security lay both in his wealth and in his confidence that, if only he knew what the right rule book was, he had the strength of character to keep it. ‘All these I have kept’ he said when Jesus reminded him of the commandments, ‘What else do I lack?’ Jesus faced him with the challenge to sacrifice the familiar and the predictable. The eternal life he sought could not be obtained by clinging on to wealth or to the old routines and self disciplines.
13. In the same way, the paralysed man had to be prepared to sacrifice the security associated with a predictable if limited way of life if he was to be healed and forgiven. As Christians we too want to have the assurance of sins forgiven and the power to lead living lives transformed by the Spirit of God. The question is whether we are always prepared to face the change that that necessitates.
14. By a subtle and malign process the very things that have been given to support us on our journey of faith can themselves become ends rather them means. Instead of using Church history to illuminate how God works in every generation we find ourselves retreating into it for escape because past glories seem more attractive than present realities.
15. Instead of using the Church’s year and rhythms as an aid to disciplined prayer and teaching we approach them as the rich young ruler approached the commandments, as examinations to be passed with high marks.
16. Instead of seeing the scriptures as the dynamic, God given means by which we may be ‘taught, rebuked, corrected and trained in righteousness’ we turn their study into something safe and self-limiting. ‘A man that looks on glass, on it may stay his eye, or if he pleases through it pass and then the heaven espy.’
17. The forgiveness of sins involves a letting go, not just of what is bad but also of the insecurity and timidity that would keep us chained to the familiar and the predictable.
18. Secondly, for the paralysed man forgiveness and healing involved the sacrifice of status and identity. That may seem an odd thing to say when being poor and disabled in first century Galilee put you very low down the pecking order. But you did at least have a distinctive identity. The Jewish law prescribed that the poor had an expectation of being supported through the charity that others were expected to show them. You might not be important, but at least you knew who you were. As the working class character played by Ronnie Corbett said in the old comedy sketch: ‘I know my place.’
19. Seeking healing involved sacrificing the status and identity that had been an integral part of the man’s life. Now, I am conscious here of treading on delicate ground. How can someone graced with the title of ‘Secretary General to the General Synod and Archbishops’ Council of the Church of England’ talk sensibly about sacrificing status and identity without inviting snorts of derision? Not very easily, so let me hide behind someone with a far grander title and status, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Primate of All England.
20. I quote ‘The Anglican Church has bought very deeply into status. It’s one of the most ambiguous elements in the whole of that culture- the concern with titles, the concern with little differentiations, the different coloured buttons, as it were, the rosettes on the hat, as it used to be. And there have to be points where that gets challenged. There’s something profoundly anti-Christian in all of that. It’s about guarding position, about fencing ourselves in. And that is not quite what the Gospel is.’
21. I love that characteristically Rowanesque understatement- ‘... not quite what the Gospel is.’ Not quite indeed. Remember the old phrase: ‘Level ground at the foot of the cross.’ That is where the forgiveness of sins is available. It is only when we are prepared to cast off all that makes us special and distinctive and become just one of the countless multitudes who have placed themselves on that level ground at the foot of the cross that we can experience the assurance of sins forgiven.
22. Then, as the epistle said, God puts his seal on us and gives us the Spirit in our hearts as a first instalment. We acquire a new status and identity as part of the body of Christ. We are neither an undifferentiated part of some amorphous entity nor someone whose position is defined by the supposed number we have been awarded in some great spiritual order of precedence.
23. Thirdly, the paralysed man had to be prepared for the sacrifice of his dignity and pride. This was perhaps for him the least costly of the three sacrifices, since he would have been used to the daily indignities and dependence that a disabled person faced. Even so, being lowered down by four friends after they had dug a hole in the roof must have involved an embarrassing degree of attention if not humiliation.
24. For some of us it may be the hardest of the three sacrifices. So it is as well that each year we have the 40 days of Lent to count our richest gains but loss and pour contempt on all our pride. This Wednesday many of us will be in church to mark the beginning of Lent and will hear read or sung David’s words from Psalm 51: ‘the sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.’
25. King David had to be brought very low before he was able to cast himself on the mercy of Almighty God. Indeed so blind was he to his need of forgiveness that it was only when Nathan told him what appeared to be a story that his defences were pierced. ‘As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die, says David.’ ‘You are the man!’ replies Nathan.
26. ‘Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin. For I know my transgressions and my sin is ever before me.’ There are ways of acknowledging our faults and shortcomings that can sound almost like a shrug of the shoulders- it’s how I am, it’s the way I’m made, I can’t help it.
27. Politicians are of course the masters of saying sorry without actually accepting real responsibility for what they have got wrong. Given how low we have been brought by the financial crisis you can’t help thinking that Gordon Brown might just increase his ratings if he could find it in him to admit a few failings over the past twelve years. But what about us?
28. ‘Do not remember the former things or consider the things of old.’ If we are prepared to sacrifice the security of predictability, of status and identity, of dignity and pride, then God will be able to do a new thing in each one of us.
29. And like the psalmist we shall be able to say: ‘Blessed be the Lord, the God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and Amen.’
Mr William Fittal Secretary General, General Synod of the Church of England