December 5th, 2024
I’m here in Canterbury, by the cathedral. You could describe this as the centre of Anglicanism. This is one of the oldest Christian sites in the country, marking the place where Augustine brought faith back to the south of the country in the sixth century. It is a magnificent building, and perhaps in years gone by matched in style and grandeur the place the Church of England had in the life of the nation. With the demise of Christendom and rise of secularism, we are in a very different place. It isn’t very difficult to look at our church as an institution and see much to lament, despite the wonderful things going on at local level. To my mind, it has always been the case that local parish churches are the centre of the church, and certainly the centre of the lived proclamation of the Gospel. I often pray, “Lord, please help me not to say or do anything too stupid today to undermine that”.
However, I wonder whether it hasn’t always been thus. When people suggest to me that we need to get ourselves back to the New Testament Church, or the early undivided church to revitalise the church for today, I usually respond, “have you read the New Testament”? We wouldn’t have it unless most of the churches, even the ones founded by the Apostles, were deeply dysfunctional. These were men who had spent three years with Jesus in the flesh; witnessed the crucifixion, resurrection, ascension and received a spectacular endowment of the Holy Spirit. They continued to make mistakes, just as we do.
Yet, as you read the letters to these churches you find a touching undercurrent of affection. From the reading for Advent Sunday last week, we read of Paul’s affection for the Thessalonian church. "How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you." (1 Thessalonians 3:9). Granted, this Church was one of the most ‘high-functioning’ in the New Testament. Jesus has very little negative to say about them in Revelation. But this sort of affection isn’t restricted to those who are doing well. Romans 1: 8, “First, I thank my God through Jesus Christ for all of you, because your faith is being reported all over the world”. Even the Galatians and Corinthians, bywords of ethical and theological error, are wished grace. He even thanks God for the Corinthians in his first letter, chapter 1, “I always thank my God for you because of his grace given you in Jesus Christ”. In all these letters he resists the temptation to compare one to another. He never says, “you are doing so much better than that shower up the road,” and vice versa. But neither does he collude in bad behaviours. His challenges are frequently robust. In every case, whether ‘successful’ or ’failing’, and I put both in inverted commas since we are never that good at judging that in any case, it is to the Lord that he points them. For Paul the Church is the body of Christ – his family. Just as Christ’s body was at times broken and at times triumphant in the resurrection and ascension, so his body on earth can go through the same triumphs and travails.
In the challenges of church life, we can easily feel guilty that the current state of the church is our fault. And of course, its true that sometimes we may be guilty of things that have inhibited our mission and quenched the Spirit. We may have been so enamoured of our own preferred style of worship that we have effectively excluded others who don’t share our preferences. We may have had unrealistic expectations of what the vicar can achieve and not participated in the mission. But by and large, the motivation I encounter week by week is a deep love and dedication to the local church and a desire to see it flourish. The experience of many feels more like the words of the disciples to Jesus in the boat, “we’ve fished all night and caught nothing.”
I wonder whether the word we all need to hear amid the preparations for Christmas and general business of the season are those from Paul to the Thessalonians again, “How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the presence of our God because of you.” We need to hear those words from the Lord as spoken to us. To all of you working so hard in the Lord’s vineyard in the diocese, I pray that this week, you would hear those words as to you.
+Richard