Church and Community 1400th Anniversary Service |
Resurgam- not a spell from Harry Potter despite my Dumbledore cope but the motto of this Cathedral.
Resurgam - I will rise again. St Paul’s has risen again and again from the ashes and this is also the experience of Christians by the gift of the Spirit of Jesus Christ who was raised from the dead.
But the Church of England “as it now stands no human power can save”. Pause, however, before the headline writers come out with “Bish Raps Church”. As you will have guessed, the comment comes from Thomas Arnold, the great Headmaster, more than 170 years ago.
One of the things which become obvious when you look back at the story of the Church in London over the 1400 years St Paul’s has stood on this site, is that there has always been a crisis. There is hardly any period in which the church was not thought to be in urgent need of reform.
Here is another quotation “The parochial system standing alone is unable to supply the wants of our complicated state of society”. Some trendy bishop advocating new ways of being church? No, my predecessor Bishop Tait in his Primary Charge in 1858. It took five hours to deliver and necessitated him going off to Southend for a holiday to recuperate. The result was the formation of a Home Mission Fund which we have just reinvented and the appointment of sector ministers like the missioner who was assigned to look after the 80,000 hansom cab drivers and their families thorough the capital.
The challenges may be recurring but this should not breed complacency in Sion rather an urgency to re-connect with the wider community. We have been challenged to do this again and again in London’s past. The Church of England at its best has always had a big tent ethos. We should not spend our time on ecclesiastical inutilities, or merely speaking words of fire among consenting adults.
One thing is clear. We shall be useless to our contemporaries unless all that we do flows from listening and waiting on God in the Holy Spirit. We behold a mystery that many people in today’s London are serious about their spiritual search but they operate in the spirit of ABC – Anything But the Church. A busy, hectic church does not help them.
Nothing has deep healing power without the kind of prayer taught by Jesus Christ who enables us to be attentively present and able increasingly to let go of ego. This is the way to fullness of life not only for ourselves but for our neighbours.
The cultivation of some merely individual spirituality is not the calling of the church. One of the highlights of my own programme this year has been a visit to Broadwater Farm to learn more about the Christian response [because it is fully ecumenical] to the tragic events of 19 years ago. It is place defined for so many people by the statement made by PC Keith Blakelock’s widow when asked to describe her feelings. She said that she felt God’s heart was breaking too, that day when her husband died in Broadwater Farm. The Christian response to fear and suspicion has been and must be to build communities of faith in which people can learn to love and see the Holy Spirit in one another and heal one another. This work is truly, word made flesh.
Much has changed on the estate and I was able to experience the fresh Christian energies at work there. Christian unity is a gift of God which comes as we look together in the same direction, in Christ’s spirit of compassion at the suffering and need which confront us rather than by looking minutely at one another.
Don’t let us stop at Christians. There are other people of faith who are part of our city and some of them are feeling very vulnerable. Now is the time to befriend them, accept rebuffs and look for partnerships.
Don’t let us stop with the people of faith. There are many people of goodwill who are equally perturbed by the challenges facing our city. We should seek to build alliances in a common cause.
The party conference season is just over. More police more prisons, more regulations point to an anxiety about a social fragmentation which causes misery to thousands especially in some of London’s poorest boroughs. Today, our hearts go out in particular to the family of 14 year old Danielle Beccam murdered on the streets of Nottingham.
What is to be done? The traditional answer is to sack the old management mobilise new resources, tighten up the regulations and change the educational curriculum. This method has in fact brought about huge and beneficial change to a point where most citizens enjoy a higher standard of health and prosperity than at any time in the last 1400 years.
The trouble is that this method depended for its effectiveness on pre-existing social spiritual capital, above all the capacity to relate, trust and cooperate. This social oxygen is generated from stable and loving family life and a myriad of associations, schools and churches, which lie between individuals and the state, and which provide an education in trusting relationships and promise keeping.
This social-spiritual capital is eroding and although the regulations are being tightened, problems are arising which are not susceptible to legislative quick fixes. The capacity to trust and relate is the indispensable foundation for the city, for a functioning democracy and a flourishing market.
It is especially good that there are so many schools represented here by students and their headteachers. The church is not just involved in describing situations but involved in transforming them with the realism that comes from standing alongside those who have to make difficult and complex decisions about the use of resources. Schools are places where society seeks to build its future and it is good that the church and the 150 Diocesan schools are partners in this work
We have been looking at the way we have come these past centuries. What is going to be our contribution to the story?
I share with you the passionate conviction that we should not fear because God is King despite the shaking of the foundations. I share a non exclusive confidence that the Church of England has been given the gifts to respond to God’s challenge to be an expression of the love we see in Jesus Christ for all the people of this city and country. Spiritual life flares up we put the centre of attention in our neighbour. That was the experience of the missionaries who in fear and trembling brought the word of God to the East Saxon tribe in 604. It is still true now. Resurgam. I will arise again in the power of the risen Christ.
