The specific thing that I would like to say is to acknowledge the mistake that I made with regard to the process of what happened. By making my request to ____ in private I was acting outside of the knowledge of the wardens and church council. My reason for that I still believe to have been a good one: in order to achieve the changes that I was seeking, had I gone through the formal route, I would have needed to spell out my reasons for coming to the decision that I had. I felt that this would be pastorally disastrous. I wanted to find a route that would cause less pain. Sadly, when ____ chose to make my request public he closed that path and I ended up in precisely the place I had sought to avoid. Now, in acting initially outside of the due process I was aware that I was taking a risk. I understood that I was taking a risk on my own behalf. What I did not fully appreciate was that I was also taking a risk on behalf of the community. If I had followed the proper processes from the beginning then I believe that our church community as a whole would have been protected from some of the worst aspects of the power struggle that followed. The dispute would not have been presented as an issue deriving from my idiosyncrasies as Rector, it would rightly have been presented as a decision flowing from the church authorities in unity. I have apologised to the wardens and PCC, but I think I also owe you, the community gathered for our annual meeting, an apology for acting independently of the council. I'm sorry; I got it wrong.
However, following the correct procedure would not have prevented everything that followed. ____ would still have been asked to retire and, most probably, we would still have lost those elements of the choir who were not prepared to serve under someone else's direction. This, for me, remains the most painful element. I never wanted to lose the choir and, to repeat what I said in my letter to the congregation last May, I did not dismiss the choir. I miss those choristers who have chosen to leave, and I wish they would come back, and take part once again in offering their gifts to the glory of God. The door will always remain open to them.
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Now I have, contrary to my normal practice, changed the set readings for today. As time goes on I believe less and less that there is such a thing as coincidence, and one of the elements of what happened last May that struck me forcefully was the gospel reading appointed for the Sunday when the situation blew up – the same reading that I have chosen for this morning, with which to begin my theological reflections.
Jesus says “I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” Let me bring out two elements to ponder. The first is that pruning is painful. As we grow and develop over time, we develop attachments. We find a place where we are comfortable and we settle down and, as a result, we then resist any changes. However, God does not rest; he is always calling us to sing a new song. Preserving a tradition is never about keeping things exactly as they are, it is, rather, about expressing age old truths in a new context, keeping true to the underlying principles, but sitting lightly to any particular expression of them. When we are pruned, we are being called to surrender to God's process.
The second element to bring out is that Jesus describes the pruning happening to both fruitless branches and fruitful branches. All are pruned – it is our common lot. In other words, pruning is not a punishment for bad behaviour, it can, paradoxically, be the reward for good behaviour. That which grows is pruned, in order to encourage even more growth.
I believe that this language of pruning is how we are to understand what has happened to our choral tradition here in this place. My desire was to preserve the long term future of our choral tradition through reform and renewal – I sought evolution, not the revolt and revolution that in fact took place. Yet this is academic, for we are now in a starkly different place, with our choral plant greatly pruned back. This is the context in which we are called to affirm and nurture the new singing group. It is neither right nor fair to compare what went before to what we presently have – that is to compare a rose bush that had fully bloomed to raw new shoots. What I believe and trust is that, with time, and patience, and tender care, we will be surprised by what God has in store for us. I am immensely grateful to Peter Dollimore and to the singing group for all the work they are putting in, and I look forward to what they are able to share with us over the coming years.
Of course, the future will not be a repeat of the past. Although I very much hope to see a return of choral anthems at the 11am service, for example, we will not again have a robed choir sitting in the sanctuary area during communion services. I believe that the sanctuary was a contested space – that the physical cramping symbolised a spiritual problem – and that the re-ordering of the sanctuary now in train properly emphasises the altar-table, from which we receive our most essential spiritual medicine, the food for our pilgrimage.
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Which brings me to the main substance of what I want to share with you this morning. There are other elements in the gospel reading which are worth emphasising, not least the emphasis upon Jesus's commands – for what are we here for? What is the common vocation of all the baptised?
At the end of Matthew's gospel the apostles are given the great commission. This is something that is, so it seems to me, as often misremembered as followed, so I'd like to read it out to you. Jesus says “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” Note, in particular, that Jesus does not command us to go out and convert the world to the gospel. Rather, we are told to make disciples, through baptism, teaching and obedience.
The church is called to make disciples, a task which is, of course, not separable from our common baptismal vocation to actually be disciples ourselves. I would like for us to have as our theme for the coming year the theme of discipleship. What does it mean to be a baptised person? What does it mean to be a community that takes the making of disciples seriously – a community that is serious about its own growth in faith and which takes seriously the need to disciple those new to the faith? Or, how can we obey what Jesus commands us in this morning's gospel – to love one another as he has loved us – so that we might be worthy to be called his friends; how can we bear fruit to the Father's glory, thereby showing that we truly are Christ's disciples?
When we are baptised, and we die to the world, we die to judgement and condemnation. We are then raised to the life of forgiveness. That is the occasion and the meaning of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Just as the Satan is the accuser in a law court, so too the right understanding of the Holy Spirit is that of a defender in a law court. To be filled with the Holy Spirit is to be enabled, by grace, to set aside the drama of judging and being judged, to let the Holy Spirit handle all the accusations on our behalf. It is to accept the reality of our sin and at the same time the reality that through his death on the cross Jesus set us free from our sin. No longer do we have to worry ourselves with any concern over whether we are pure or not. No longer do we have to worry ourselves that our salvation depends upon how far we succeed in making ourselves morally acceptable. Let me tell you a secret. I am a sinner. Let me tell you another secret. So are you. So are we all. As Isaiah puts it, O woe is me! For I am a man of unclean lips and I stand amongst a people of unclean lips!
I am not describing an easy path. I am describing what it means to take up our cross and follow Christ. It is much easier to find someone to blame for all our troubles, and join with others in rejecting them. To forgive sin is supernatural in the original and best sense, and it can only be achieved by grace. This is because sin hurts. Sin is not an abstract concept – it is very real. It is painful, it is costly, it draws blood both literal and metaphorical. But the remarkable thing is that when the path of forgiveness is chosen, and the burden of judging has been handed over to God above, then the soul is freed to love. In other words, although there is undoubted benefit to a reconciliation between two sinners, the principal benefit of forgiveness is to the one doing the forgiving, not to the one being forgiven. As St Paul writes, we are to “Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.” To live by forgiveness is what it means to be a Christian, to pass on forgiveness just as we have received forgiveness. To forgive is to be released from the Law, it is to claim what we say in our Lord's prayer: forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who have sinned against us. It is to claim our baptismal inheritance as God's beloved children. When we live by grace and forgiveness then we receive grace and forgiveness – now and for ever. When we live by judgement and condemnation then we receive judgement and condemnation – now and forever.
To be baptised is to find our unity and identity in a place other than our own virtues and values. We are the people who worship the one found outside a city wall, the one whom the whitewashed sepulchres repudiated and murdered. The glue that unites us is an acceptance that we each sin, that we can only be saved by unmerited grace, and a rejection of the path of judgement. If we are to abide in the Father's love then we are to love each other as Christ loved us. We have been forgiven; now we are to forgive each other. This is what we act out every time we share bread and wine together, this is how we proclaim the Lord's death until he comes. Sinners gathering round a table to share a meal, sinners distributing, sinners receiving, sinners setting aside their judgement of each other in order to receive a common mercy and forgiveness. Jesus said: “This is my blood of the New Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
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So, in the light of what happened to our community last year how can we, over the coming year, pursue the path of discipleship – the path of becoming more mature disciples ourselves, and the path of helping to form the newly reborn into discipleship? How can we become a place where conflict is able to be resolved creatively, not destructively? How can we live up to the promises made at our own baptism? How can we, in short, become a place and a people distinguished by our capacity to forgive?
Well, it won't happen overnight.
To use an evangelical phrase of which I have become quite fond: what the Lord has laid on my heart is that what I need to learn, and, I trust, what we need to learn, can be found in the Rule of St Benedict. I plan to spend the next year's Learning Suppers exploring what he has to say. I also plan to restore the Saturday morning Learning Church sessions, so that people have a choice over whether to come at that time – the talk will be the same for each occasion.
St Benedict established his rule at a time when the Western Roman Empire was beginning to disintegrate, and his communities became cultural arks, transmitting classical civilisation down to us today. I am sure the truth that his Rule has enabled Christians to share a common life for over 1500 years has something of importance to say to us, not least because I believe I am right in saying that the original foundation for worship in this place was of a Benedictine character.
Just to give you a foretaste of what I plan to discuss, I would mention just two of the things that I believe St Benedict has to say to us. One is that he discusses the virtue of stabilitas, what we might call stickability. In Benedict's time monks often moved around from one monastery to another. Benedict taught that this made spiritual growth impossible. If we walk away when we encounter difficulty then we can never learn how to deal with sin properly; we remain scandalised and offended, and the truth of God's amazing grace is not in us. To abandon the community is to abandon Christ.
Another is that Benedict spends much time dealing with issues of authority and obedience. Not to put too fine a point on it, what our community is suffering from, both in terms of what happened last year and the ongoing consequences, is a power struggle, a rejection of the duly appointed authorities in this church. A properly Christian and disciplined understanding of the nature of power is essential for the health of our church community. After all, as St Paul writes in Romans, the Kingdom of God is not a matter of words but of power.
These are the sorts of things that I look forward to exploring with you over the coming year.
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So. All in all it has been quite a year. I am not as innocent as I was this time last year. Yet I would also say that I have very rarely felt as close to and comforted by the Lord as I was last summer. I have a great deal for which to be thankful. I am very grateful for all the messages and gestures of support that I have received, often from surprising quarters, and most especially when the realm of Satan had me in their sights last month.
In truth, I think that we as a community are in a remarkable place and that God is very close to us. Although there are still unhealed wounds amongst us, and there remains work to be done in that regard, I am certain that God is guiding us to the place he has prepared for us to be. Remember that the Israelites had to journey through the desert for forty years before they were enabled to enter the promised land. Remember that Christ was not raised to glory before he was crucified. Remember that it can be a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God – and that is where I believe we are at the moment.
I would like to end by sharing something from St Paul's letter to the Romans, which is one of several passages that have given me comfort over the last ten months or so. I believe that it sums up all that needs to be said. “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us. The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed... And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose... What, then, shall we say in response to this? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all — how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who is he that condemns? Christ Jesus, who died — more than that, who was raised to life — is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written: "For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered." No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”
May the God of all mercy and forgiveness, source of all our life-giving grace, journey with us and guide us, this coming year and always. Amen.
Sam, yours are brave, humble, and wise words. May the Spirit of the living God be with you and your community as you continue on your path as disciples.
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