Coping with Change

Coping with Change

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” Hebrews 12.28

I must have told you about the strict Baptist minister visiting Newmarket. Out of curiosity he goes to the race course and knowing that nobody knows him there, decides to have a flutter. He goes to the paddock first and is intrigued to see a Catholic priest praying in Latin over a horse. He is even more surprised when it wins. The priest prays over two or three more horses and they all win.

So finally he lays half the church funds on the next horse the priest prays over. The horse starts well but then keels over before the first fence and dies. The minister is distraught and rushes to ask the priest what happened. “Ah that’s the trouble with you Baptists,” the priest replies, “you don’t know the difference between a blessing and the last rites.”

It’s said that the Seven Last Words of the Church will be “We’ve never done it that way before.” The Church does not have a good track record for coping with change. Whether it’s Copernicus and the earth going round the sun, or a new Archbishop who is being tried for heresy before his episcopal bottom has touched the throne.

And we Anglo-Catholics are sometimes the worst. ‘How many Anglo-Catholics does it take to change a light bulb?’ ‘Change!’

Heraclitus had the measure of things in his much slower culture than ours: “There is nothing permanent but change.”

And there is nothing more exhausting. Even young men and women grow weary. But continuous change is here to stay so we all have to learn to cope.

First there is a very important characteristic of the human psyche.

“All change is perceived as loss.”

When 70-year old George dies, we do not go to widow Edith with encouragements like: “He was pretty old and useless anyway, and there are plenty of younger, better men around. A younger husband would improve your image. So just forget George and get to like a new trendier husband.” Of course not. We understand bereavement.

I remember trying to get rid of the pews in one of my churches. I knew I had lost when I found myself denouncing the pews as uncomfortable, jerry-built, Victorian monstrosities. This was no way to prepare people for a bereavement.

What I and others said about the pews may well have been true, but their departure from people who had sat in them for 20, 30, 80 years would be perceived as a real loss. My arguments were pastorally insensitive. (They removed the pews ten years after I left.)

Alvin Toffler, in his classic work Future Shock, talks about PSZs - Personal Security Zones. We all need them and often they comprise familiar surroundings with the comfort that they bring. I still remember the secure feelings engendered by the gentle hiss of the gas heaters in my old church on a winter’s evening.

For the past 30 years the arrangement of bits and pieces in the drawers of my desk has changed very little. I don’t actually use the sealing wax in the Bendicks Bittermints box, but it is somehow comforting to know that it is there.

When for three weeks I was living out of boxes in the vestry down in Torquay, sleeping under the Communion Table where the carpet was cleanest, I thought I could cope until my nice new flat was ready.

But I couldn’t. My emotional life fell apart and more than once I found myself sitting on the floor in the corner of the vestry sobbing. My Personal Security Zones were shattered and the everyday stresses of ministry overwhelmed me. It was a great and painful spiritual lesson for me.

And what is often true about the routines of our daily life and ordering is sometimes even more true of our mindset.

It was George Bernard Shaw who observed that “Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

One of the hardest areas of change that we have to face up to is the change in our own theological outlook: our view of God and the church.

There is sometimes a psychological play-off we indulge in. As we become less certain about some of the doctrines of our faith we become more dogmatic about liturgical procedures. We may not be too clear any more about what we believe concerning heaven and hell, but we know exactly what speed the ‘Our Father’ should be sung!

Stephen Madden was a retired minister in his 90s when I went as a young minister down to Torquay.

What I admired greatly in him, was his ability to change his mind about various theological issues during his lifetime - even in his 80s. He was secure in his faith in Christ and there was little solid ground anywhere else. He would tell me of views he had held during his ministry, and then chuckled at the thought of them.

It is interesting that old age often gives security and the middle-aged are those most threatened in the church - the men and women who have to face up to so much change in the family and at work and so put all their PSZs in the church.

Of course too may changes at once can push the stress levels up to danger point. Gaius Davies in his book Stress, gives The Social Readjustment Rating Scale: ranging from 100 points for the death of a spouse, through 50 for marriage, 31 for taking out a mortgage, 24 for revision of personal habits, to 13 for the changes brought about by holidays and 12 points for Christmas! It’s a good chart to fill in when you wonder why you feel as though it’s your turn to have the nervous breakdown.

We counsel the bereaved not to make too many changes too soon, yet in personal growth and church life we often expect far too much too quickly. Despite modern technology and Instant Renewal, the mills of God still grind slowly. In my spiritual formation classes, I always encouraged students to try and change only one habit at a time, and even then to take at least six months per change. We all know that crash diets really don’t achieve much. It is the steady discipline of change that which brings about real growth in Christ.
Archbishop Stuart Blanche once wrote that “Change is the angel of a changeless God.”

All this unavoidable change is there to help us grow in grace. In the sovereign purposes of God, he has called us to be a pilgrim people. He constantly shakes our world (Heb.12.22-28) so that we can clearly discern the things that cannot be shaken and place all our hope in the City of God and Jesus Christ who is the same, yesterday, today and forever. (Heb.13.8)

If you read through the book of Numbers which tells of the Israelite pilgrims on their long journey from slavery in Egypt to the Promised Land, then you will see how again and again God reminds his people that their security is not in the ‘flesh pots of Egypt’, but in God himself.

Or while Abraham lived with God in his tents among the hills, his nephew, Lot preferred the security of the cities of Sodom & Gomorrah. But our Lord warns in the Gospels of the consequences of longing to go back to the secure Cities of the Plain with that enigmatic little phrase in Luke - “Remember Lot’s wife!” (Luke 17.32)

Whether it is personal change or change in our churches, they all throw us back onto God. “All my hope on God is founded” is never more true than in times of rapid change. Our faith is renewed; we come to an end of self and church ‘schemes’; we throw ourselves upon God and find in him our strength and shield.

Now an interregnum is not a time for major changes. It is hard enough to be bereft of our Vicar. For many of us he was a very important part of our Personal Security Zone. We are too fragile for too many changes too soon.

But it is a time for taking stock. For thinking about where we are, and praying about where we might be. Some will be frustrated because they want to get on with things. Others will be apprehensive about an uncertain future.

In these ‘in between’ days, the old nun’s prayer has never been truer:

God, grant me the Serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can
and the Wisdom to know the difference.

And in all the changing scenes of life, we keep our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, regular in our attendance at the sacraments, gratefully receiving the security of the Body and Blood of Christ. As the writer to the Hebrews puts it:

“Therefore, since we are receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, let us be thankful, and so worship God acceptably with reverence and awe” Hebrews 12.28

Edward the Confessor

Edward the Confessor and Faith

“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Romans 10.10

One of the letters I had from a cousin after my father’s funeral commented on my eulogy. My family had wanted a non-religious service, but I had said in the course of the tribute “I am a Christian and so believe that my dad is now with God, and more alive than he has ever been, and that I shall see him again.”

My cousin wrote: “ It’s a shame that we can’t all believe that there will be life after death and that we will all be together one day. But it’s such a huge thing to believe. Paul, my husband, has such faith and I envy him.”

It is a genuine plea which I have heard so many times down through the years: “I wish I could believe.” And then they often add, “like you”. And I think, “if only you knew how I believe...”

How is it that some people seem to believe so fervently and deeply and others cannot believe even although they want to?

I make no apology for returning to a subject that we have looked at before because it is so important for our own self-understanding and for our understanding of the task laid upon us by our Lord to make disciples of all nations.

Today we remember one of the many rather dubious saints, Edward the Confessor. He was born in 1003 and became King Edward III in a roundabout way, when Hardicanute died unexpectedly in 1042.

He had a fruitless marriage to Edith Godwin, probably because he had taken a vow of celibacy and eventually banished her to a monastery. Rather extreme family planning.

Some historians blame him for the Norman invasion of 1066. If he had left an Anglo-Saxon heir, William the Conqueror might never have invaded.

Edward seems to have been a peaceful man and undertook no wars except to repel an inroad of the Welsh (and we can understand that), and to assist Malcolm III of Scotland against Macbeth, the usurper of his throne.

He was certainly a devout Christian, was very religious as a boy growing up in Normandy, took care of the poor when he was king, and decided to build a great Minster mausoleum to the West of the City of London on the site of St Peter’s Abbey - this became Westminster Abbey. It was consecrated only a week before his death in January 1066,

He was canonized by Pope Alexander III in 1161. His body was translated on this day in 1163 by St. Thomas of Canterbury in the presence of King Henry II.

So much for the history. But was it easier for Edward to believe than for us? Is the gift of faith somehow historically dependent? Did he live in an age of faith?

Well, in the long-term, faith is certainly dependent on our long human history.

And before we look at faith we should perhaps ask where did self-awareness come from in our evolutionary history, for there can be no faith without self-awareness?

Well, we don’t really know. About 3 million years ago - a mere nothing in comparison to the age of the earth. (If the 4 billion years of the earth’s existence are represented by a clock, then we are looking at just over half a minute ago.)

-about 3 million years ago, Neanderthal humans appeared with brains the size of the planet; brains bigger than any other animal on earth. And they used only a tiny proportion of that massive brain.

So late Neanderthals or maybe Cro-Magnon humans began to use this spare brain capacity for inventing language and tools and weapons; and then art and music; religion and laws; and eventually political parties and Kentucky Fried Chicken…

At some point, and the experts differ as to when, these humans started to reflect upon themselves. They realised they would die, like the animals which they killed to eat.

They realised they were conscious - they were self-conscious. Julian Jaynes in his controversial book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Penguin 1990) (it would have sold a lot more copies if it had had a more memorable title) reckons that self-consciousness as we know it appeared less than 4 thousand years ago - that there was a dramatic shift in the hard wiring of the human brain. Most scientists think it was much earlier.

Whatever, our God-consciousness emerged as part of our self-consciousness.

Non-realist theologians, sometimes called textual nihilists (Don Cupitt and the Sea of Faith group) and many philosophers of other faiths and none, assert that God-consciousness is only an extension of our inward monologue.

In other words, it cannot be an awareness of a Mind that is ‘other’ and somehow separate from our own minds. It is a defence mechanism that religion provides to make sense of our existence. It is talking to ourselves.

This argument runs, that the elaborate development of religions is an internal trick that has served human evolution quite well. It has socialised us and, for quite long periods, stopped us living like the beasts we are, red in tooth and claw.

And the argument concludes that in the 20th and 21st centuries intelligent men and women can’t believe in this objective reality of God any more.

But of course many millions of people do believe. And many wish they could, and can’t.

Is it hard-wired in our brains? Is it in our psychological make-up? Is it a gift from God, given to some and not to others?

Remember Elsie whom I met in Southlands Hospital in my home town of Shoreham- by-Sea? She’s an elderly lady and Southlands is a dilapidated, run-down old 30s building, that was due to be rebuilt after the war.

She had been close to death at one point, and a bright young doctor had asked her, if she lapsed into unconsciousness, whether she wanted to be revived?

“I ask you” Elsie said, “I’m at the gates of Paradise and they ask me if I’d like to come back to Southlands!”

I envy that sort of faith.

The Myth of Certainty (Daniel Taylor, Word, 1986) is a book I found very helpful back in the late 80s when all the certainties of my faith seemed to be deserting me. I was sinking into post-hippy scepticism. And more importantly, I was turning grey and turning 40. I was beginning to think that faith was believing what you know isn’t true.

And so I learned, with many others down through the centuries, to abandon certainty and to embrace genuine biblical faith. That is, acknowledging what I believe - more strongly on some days than others - and acting upon it.

We cannot wish for the faith of others if we will not build on the little faith we have. “Lord I believe. Help thou my unbelief!” is the cry of all of us.

However intricately tied up our faith is with perhaps our genes, our psychology, our upbringing, an unpleasant experience with a nun...

If we wish to follow the likes of St Edward the Confessor, then we must act upon what we do believe.

There are certainly sufficient reasons for faith, but in our age in the West, few seem to find sufficient reason for a religious faith that results in action.

Biblical faith and hope always spring from action. If we believe half of what we are about to sing in the creed, then the hope and love which are the hallmarks of Christians, will flow from the actions we take in the light of that belief.

People stay away from church and sacraments and then complain that they find it hard to believe - it is hardly surprising. Those of us who come regularly to the altar often find it hard to believe!

People act in unloving and embittered ways and complain that they cannot believe in a God of love. It is hardly surprising.

John Donne, that early 17th century poet priest, was in some ways a great man of faith, another great confessor, and yet he hardly dared believe. He ends his Hymn to God the Father with these words.

I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
And, having done that, thou hast done;
I fear no more.

Whether we have great faith, or only a tiny mustard seed of faith, if we act upon it, and treat it as a revelation of God’s truth, the hope of the Gospel,we can be free from fear.

“For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved.” Romans 10.10