St Paul’s Cathedral - 10/05/04

The Charge of the Churchwardens in the first general visitation of the Reverend Father in God Richard, Lord Bishop of London. - Holden in the year of our Lord 1605.

This charge delivered by the newly appointed Bishop of London, Richard Vaughan followed hard on the Canons of 1604 which first gave a full account of the office and responsibilities of Church Wardens. Together with the Conference held at Hampton Court in the same year, the 1604 Canons contributed much to develop the identity of the Church of England.

The tone of Richard, 99th Bishop of London was more peremptory than I would care to be. As the 132nd Bishop, I am grateful for your presence here and I am moved and encouraged by our partnership in the gospel.

Churchwardens, however, remain a vital part of the identity of the Church of England. Following the practice of the Church in the Springtime of the Christian movement, leadership in the Church of England has never been a clerical monopoly but a partnership.

There seem to be anticipations of the office of Church Warden in the fifteenth century. There is mention of a church reeve in 1396 but your office only came into its own with the recasting of the Church in Tudor and Stuart England. It is interesting that the word used in the Jacobean Canons for your office is oeconomi – derived from the Greek for House Keeper or Overseer.

My predecessor Richard addressed the Church Wardens of London with 98 questions covering the whole life of the Church. They were to check on the uniform of the clergy, whether the surplice was being worn or whether any London minister harboured the view enunciated at the Hampton Court Conference that the surplice was the kind of garment worn by the priests of Isis and not fit for Christians. [I gave a lecture on the Hampton Court Conference in its 400th anniversary year at the Palace last week and it is available on the web-site.] Another question was, Does your minister wear an academic hood according to Canon 58, and so on? Fortunately the atmosphere is rather different today and you are not being asked to be the bishop’s narks, although you continue to have vital responsibilities for the reputation and the identity of the Church.

Your electorate consists of all the inhabitants of the parish whether church attenders or not, so yours is one of the great elected offices of England. That is why Parliament was so sensitive when it was suggested that bishops should have a right of summary dismissal in extraordinary circumstances. It was not a power I craved. Churchwardens are a bridge to the wider community.

But you are also, as this service emphasises, officers of the Bishop, partners with the clergy in developing the mission of the church and leading representatives of the laity.

I regard you with considerable awe and I know with what care parishes choose their Churchwardens. You are some of the most trusted people in London.

In the period of elaborate institution building in the church which extended from the fifties into the sixties there was an attempt to translate the principle that the Church of England is a partnership between bishops, clergy and the folk into a complex superstructure of committees. In London we have gone a long way to lighten the load with the abolition of Area Synods and sundry Boards. The secession of busy people from committee work and a change in social attitudes means that the old representative structures are under strain. They are not adequate as we seek to make and communicate decisions by consensus. This means that the real, personal and spiritual partnership between bishop, priest, church warden and the people who relate to you is once again the way in which energy for the gospel can be generated and shared. Please pray for me as I pray for you.

Bishop Richard Vaughan, however did not confine himself to agreeable generalities and nor shall I.

The purpose of our partnership is that the church may flourish and be in evident health so that “all may know” that we are the disciples of Christ and, through our life together, may come to understand something of the quality of his love and its demands.

It is your business and mine that the church should flourish and be in health. The key to flourishing and good health is the proper balance between order and freedom or to put it another way keeping a middle way between preserving our identity as persons and communities and being nourished by the challenge of what is different. If we become obsessive about our historic identity then the result is a fossil church. If it is all change then we become a chameleon

It was the fashion at the end of the last century to contrast maintenance and mission. Now it is clearer that you cannot have one without the other.

So as partners in the gospel how are we to define the order and identity of the Church of England. What are those things on which we must insist if the Church is not to disintegrate into a loose federation of discussion groups? Fortunately the work has been done for us in a declaration which all loyal members of the church ought to know by heart. This is the declaration which all ministers and bishops must affirm as they undertake new work or offices.

The Church of England is part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The Church of England both lives in continuity with the Church of the Apostles and has an oecumenical vocation to work for the healing of the Christian world and to transcend its present fragmented state.

One of the curses of the Western Christian World in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was the tendency to over-define mystery with a polemical intention. After the nuclear explosion which shattered the old Western Church, all the fragments recast themselves as the churches we know today. In Diarmaid MacCulloch’s excellent recent history of the Reformation in Europe, he points out that there were no Roman Catholics in Europe in 1500 with the sole exception of the Kingdom of Bohemia where there were churches loyal to the Pope operating under an Establishment which traced its origins to the Hussite movement. The Roman Church recast itself at the long running Council of Trent and in many ways it was reformed more successfully than the Church of England. In the course of drawing up battle lines in the disastrous civil war which was to convulse Europe until the Peace of Westphalia and beyond, all sides were tempted to greater and greater clarity about what divided them with consequences which last to this day.

In these circumstances, we must co-operate with fellow Christians where we can. Unity is often well served by looking together in the same direction at common challenges rather than by minutely scrutinising one another. It is good to see progress on this front in local arrangements like the new partnership between Wesley’s Chapel and the parish of St Giles Cripplegate here in the city of London.

The next phrase in the Declaration refers to the Church worshipping the one true God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Some of the Christian heirs of the convulsions of the Reformation era are called after the name of great theologians, Lutherans or Calvinists. We are not Cranmerians because the most characteristic invitation of our Church has not been “here are a list of theological propositions – sign here” but “here is a book of worship – will you worship with us in this way?”

It is therefore vital to our identity as a Church that we respect the liturgical tradition. Recent years have seen a huge extension of the range of choice. Materials have been provided to reflect a great variety of local circumstances. Strict informality and the breezy style of a chat show host may amuse for a while and may have its place from time to time but liturgical lite does not suffice in life’s great crises and we have a responsibility to make the rich treasury of worship available for the next generation.

The Declaration continues, The Church professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures. Again and again in the life of the church over the past 1400 years in London it is clear that there is no fresh inspiration without a return to the well spring of holy scripture. It was one of the greatest achievements of the Reformation to make the scriptures available to all the members of the church. A rich interpretation of scripture flows from an immersion in both Testaments and from developing a capacity to hear how scripture in all its parts builds into a symphony. I am therefore anxious about whether the scriptures are being heard in their entirety. Is the lectionary being used in your parish? The lectionary is provided so that in the course of a cycle of years members of the body are introduced both to the familiar passages but also to those parts of the Bible which mean little now but which will mean everything later in life.

We profess the faith uniquely revealed holy scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds. The Church of England said Bishop Launcelot Andrewes is a Church of renovators not innovators. We hold the faith of the undivided church contained in the two testaments, the three creeds and the four councils. We do not seek to multiply the essential truths of the Christian faith. We follow the way described by St Augustine in his dictum that the church should be united in essentials, in certis unitas, free in discussing disputable matters, in dubiis libertas, and observing in all things the demands of Christian love, in omnibus caritas.

It is obvious however that if we are confined to this passing moment and we seek to understand the New Testament in isolation then it will be no surprise if, instead of being inspired by scripture, we impose upon it our own most pressing interests. We need the companionship of those who have poured over scripture in other times and other places to save us from becoming provincial in our understanding.

But there is also profoundly creative work to do. No two historical moments are precisely alike and the Declaration proceeds, which faith the Church is called upon to proclaim afresh in each generation.

One of the most telling statistics in the recently published report “A Mission Shaped Church” [in whose preparation the Archdeacon of Hackney played such a significant part] relates to Sunday School attendance. In 1900 55% of all the children of England were enrolled in some form of Christian Sunday School, apart from the religious instruction which was universal in schools. In 2000 with the capacity of schools to provide religious education limited, the figure for Christian Sunday Schools was 4% of the children of England.

The picture given in “A Mission Shaped Church” of the society we are called to serve rings true. The mainstream of thought and action concerned with social, and even spiritual betterment, according to most commentators, no longer flows by the church door. The authors of the report concur with the judgment of Adrian Hastings in his History of English Christianity 1920-1990. “If it is remarkable how little histories of the eighteenth century and nineteenth century mostly bother to say about the weight of religion – that of the Church of England especially, - for the twentieth century they have been almost entirely silent, except for the occasional caricaturing aside.” We know the truth of that. The good we do will only rarely be reported but anything risible or scandalous will receive great attention

Those of us who live inside the church know that this prejudice is strange and unfair. The London Challenge video of 2002 was the merest snapshot of a church “preaching the gospel of the kingdom and healing all manner of diseases” with an imagination and verve provoked by the diversity of contemporary London.
Canon Bob Jackson’s work about the Diocese, “A Capital Idea,” is a record of growth and energy, which ought to be read as a tribute to what has been achieved in the partnership between churchwardens, clergy and the faithful in every area where we serve.

But let us not waste time complaining about the unfairness of it all. There is no progress in the spiritual life until we can let go of self-justification. In any case, our combined electoral rolls amount to less than the increase in the numbers of new Londoners officially recorded for one year, 2000, the year of Christ’s Millennium. Last night at the Mayoral Hustings I was hearing that the projected increase in the population of London in the next ten years will exceed the present total number of worshipping Christians – that is 600,000. Many of these new Londoners will settle in developments to the East of our Diocese in the Thames Gateway, which is why we are making special efforts to develop a closer relationship with our old East Saxon friends in the Chelmsford Diocese. The growth on the borders of the Stepney and Barking areas is one of the major challenges of the next decade.

There is a liberation, however, in facing the fact squarely that we are no longer called to defend the curtain walls of an entrenched institution. Instead we are free to be God’s joyful subversives with the advantage that we still have many sympathisers within the camp through which the mainstream now flows.

If the Holy Spirit is at work amongst us then there is no room for anxiety. We can detect and reject the loveless deflection of our anxieties on fellow members of the church and treat with compassionate humour the suggestion that if only everyone believed as I believe then there would be no problem. The Church of England will not be able to do her work in London unless with all her faults and absurdities, she is loved by the churchwardens.

We can be confident but clear-sighted. The thesis of “A Mission Shaped Church” is hard to resist. With the diversion of the mainstream away from the church door, any church organised exclusively on a “Come to us” basis must dwindle. It is time to change the emphasis to “Go to them”. “Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and preaching the gospel of the Kingdom, and healing all manner of disease and all manner of sickness among the people.”

We do not lack for ideas in the Diocese of London but sometimes we have had less zeal for consistent implementation. Bold policy statements, without constant re-iteration and not translated into persevering action, breed cynicism. The past two years have, I believe, helped us and equipped us with a corporate agenda for action and a clarity about our situation which releases fresh energy.

Last year we concentrated on relating our spiritual ambitions to our resources as we respond to the financial revolution which has flowed from the dramatic contraction of the historic asset base administered by the Church Commissioners. Because of prudent management in the Diocese, defeatist and mischievous talk of bankruptcy or melt down is out of place. Please discourage such talk. We are however confronting the salutary challenge of husbanding our own resources for the sake of the work of Jesus Christ in London and beyond the borders of our own Diocese.

Thank you for your part in responding to the Time for Decision Consultation and for the generous level of pledges to the Common Fund. As part of the follow up to the comments made in the 2003 exercise we have been exploring ways of offsetting necessary administrative costs with a more imaginative use of our property assets. I am glad to be able to tell you that from July this year, about a quarter of the costs of the office in Causton Street will be covered at a stroke as we welcome a new rent paying tenant to take over the ground floor of the building.

The Consultation did, however, reveal other things. There is a call for radical action on all hands but only if it affects the parish down the road. There is constant reference to “them” or “the centre” which suggest that we have some way to go before we live and breathe as a Church worthy of the name. Le centre c’est toi and we are partners in the gospel. We can do miraculous things for God in his power if we do them together. There is no place for parish, area or even diocesan chauvinism. We need to make one another our work of art. There must be cross fertilisation and mutual support and accountability between all the communities in the Diocese. We must not withdraw to the pockets of prosperity and quit those places where the poor are our teachers and the church is renewed. Beloved let us love one another for love is of God.

In 2002 we faced the London Challenge and enlarged our understanding of what God was already doing amongst us. In 2003 we faced the Time for Decision and the task of matching resources to spiritual ambition. In 2004 we turn to London Visions and a re-imagination of our life as a Church in this world city. Active preparation is being made for the launch of a dedicated Mission Fund while a task group under the chairmanship of the Bishop of Willesden is at work translating the general propositions of the Mission and Ministry strategy approved by the Bishop’s Council into policy at the Deanery level.

The programme for this year has the teasing title London Visions – Back to the Future. This is not a reactionary slogan. The contemplation of Hebrew verbs conjures up a picture of our addressing the future rather as a sculler makes progress on a river. We cannot see the future, which is all the while flowing from behind our back into view.

The events of this anniversary year give us an opportunity to reflect on the way we have come. We can see that part of the stream of tradition over which we have passed as we have navigated the river. As a new future comes from behind our backs into view, we are being encouraged to re-discover the life giving, liquid strength of the stream of tradition, not as an oppressive burden but as a river that bears us up. These are the true waters of life, which flow through and from the record of God’s dealing with his people in the Bible.

God no doubt has surprises in store for us, which we cannot see but as we navigate into the future a sense of the story of our community diverts the pressure of the passing moment. A lively understanding of the many different ways in which the Church has been steered and organised saves us from being oppressed by any sense of inevitability about where we are now. Some acquaintance with the story of the Church in London and the conflicts and numerous choices, which have been encountered along the way, can deepen our awareness of the choices we have to make now. A memory of our story can give us the spiritual and mental space to respond to the unexpected, not merely to react to it.

We all know that one great convulsion occurred 1400 years ago in 604. The Church was re-established, rather tentatively at first, as the Church of the East Saxon tribe who occupied at that time the north bank of the Thames. Missionaries arrived here from foreign parts. Shaven crowned monks from Rome encountered Euro-skeptic East Saxons. The first St Paul’s was begun here on Ludgate Hill. New forms of worship and music were introduced. Chanting and plainsong proved to be powerful community builders. Minster Churches, “mission shaped churches” were established from which preachers went “about all Galilee,” to the scattered rural communities. As the seventh century moved on there were new life projects for women opened up and communities dedicated to prayer for both men and women were founded. The gospel of the Kingdom was being communicated in ways appropriate to the East Saxon tribe and the truth which was communicated proved to be transformative, not least in the healing ministry of St Erkenwald, once the beloved patron saint of London now undeservedly and temporally in eclipse.

For a church to flourish there must be order and a clear sense of identity which comes from seeing the story of the way we have come. But there must also be freedom to experiment with new forms and a readiness to engage with what is different and to discover in that encounter that the Holy Spirit is ahead of us and will bless and nourish us.

May I mention some of the possibilities and ask for your help in identifying and seizing some of the new opportunities which may be particularly appropriate in your local situation.

It is obvious to us all that London is no longer an East Saxon town but the most diverse great city in the world with over two hundred languages spoken in our church schools. Sometimes we can give the impression that the Church of England is a church exclusive to the English. This point was made to me very strongly yesterday by a young Italian family who had made a spiritual home at St James’s West Ealing a wonderful example of a church rescued from the doldrums and now full of life and a community which is a real cross- section of its locality. We must make special efforts to engage with and embrace all the citizens of our part of London – that is our tradition. I was very proud to hear from a young Korean when I asked the question “Why have you become an Anglican”, the answer, “Because the Anglican Church seems to care for the whole community whether they call themselves Anglican or not.” I hope that this is true.

Then we have hardly begun to come to terms with the communications revolution. As a Bishop who only late in the day graduated from quill to steel nib, I am hardly a role model but many of you have experience of the impact of the communications revolution in other parts of our society and you have much to contribute to ensure that cyber space is not colonised by cults of unreason. I am taking part in the launch of a new cyber church tomorrow on the first day of the Christian Resources Exhibition.

Then our church schools are more popular than ever before. Despite the mountainous difficulties of recruiting and retaining talented staff in London, the record of church primary schools in academic achievement and in promoting social harmony is such that there is huge pressure on our small number of secondary schools. It looks for certain that we shall we able to establish a new church secondary school in Islington and perhaps in other boroughs. Your support in alerting your community to what we are doing together as a church throughout London is vital.

We have risen to similar challenges in the recent past. This month is also the 70th anniversary of the production at Sadler’s Wells theatre of T.S.Eliot’s “The Rock” staged in 1934 on behalf of the appeal to build 45 new churches in the burgeoning suburbs of Middlesex. As I have already said we may be called to face a similar challenge in the expansion of London eastwards in concert with our friends in Chelmsford.

Some of the dialogue, in “The Rock”, especially the stab at cockney speech, is frankly excruciating and I can understand why T.S.Eliot discouraged publication after 1934 of the full text. Still there is an attempt to relate the church building campaign to the challenges of London in 1930’s with a cast of redshirts, blackshirts, “plutocrats, flash ladies, gunmen and other shady and rapacious individualists, getting lower and lower in class till the stage is pretty full” and there are some good lines.

“Of all that was done in the past you eat the fruit either rotten or ripe.
And the church must be forever building, and always decaying and always being restored.”

The Rock raises the large questions about our life together which are still with us.

“Though you have shelters and institutions
…
Or a house a little better than your neighbour’s;
When the Stranger says “What is the meaning of this city?
…
What will you answer?
…
O my soul be prepared for the coming of the Stranger,
Be prepared for him who knows how to ask questions.”

I took part in a debate in Parliament last week on the Governance of London. Understandably the contribution of the city to human flourishing was seen by most speakers in terms of the benefits offered by a place like London to ensure the prosperity and protection of its citizens. The meaning of a city, however, which releases creative energies and brings delight in life, goes beyond material benefits and has to do with common objects of love and shared vision. I believe that behind the hyping of every passing moment, the noise and the neon glare there is a void which aches for want of the wisdom of God. This is a time of great challenge and opportunity for the church. In this generation, we are not to concern ourselves so much with the harvest as with proper sowing.

Mere appeals to fraternity and human rights do not have the power to restrain the destructive forces that lurk in the best intentioned of us. The liberators can so easily be seduced into acting like the oppressors they overthrow. It is only in the power of the living God that we can build the city that is to come where that tree is planted whose leaves are for the healing of the nations. I thank you for our partnership in this gospel in the past. I thank you for your pledge to serve as a partner for the future. With you I rejoice as this season of Easter draws to a close that Christ is risen – Allelujah.