Priesthood of all believers

Priesthood of all Believers

“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples” (John 15.8)

In the 70s and 80s, many churches used to have those big sign boards outside with a text or a little thought for the week painted on in dayglow colours. eg “Don't let worry drive you to despair - let the church help.”

Some of them were quite witty, but all of them were subject to additions by anyone with a spray can.

So “The meek shall inherit the earth” had added underneath - “if that’s alright by you?”

And someone had supplemented the rather hopeful: “Are you tired of sin? Then come inside.” with “If not, phone Bayswater 7328!”

But I remember it was an Anglican Church in the vanguard of the charismatic movement which had the usual more discreet sign outside, which said:

Vicar: The Revd So-and-so
Ministers: the whole congregation.

So what is the distinction between laity and priests, and how do we carry out our common task as disciples of ‘bearing much fruit’?

Most of my working week at this time of year is taken up with organizing the ordinations of many new deacons and priests. There are about 60 in our diocese alone, which is most encouraging. We have 146 ordinands in training at present.

The 1960s was a time when all distinctions of persons were being swept away and so it is hardly surprising that Vatican II addressed what was seen as the problem of clericalism - nothing could happen without a priest. Priests were to become just ordinary chaps!

I think it was that great 60s theologian Spike Milligan who said: “never trust a priest who wears a rollneck sweater and says ‘call me Ken’”.

The Vatican II document Ulterior temporibus in 1967, while recognising the increasing role of the laity, still maintained that priestly ministry is ‘distinct from the common priesthood of all the faithful... in essence and not merely in degree.’

Many of my low church Anglican colleagues would disagree with this Vatican II distinction between ministry and priesthood. They would agree with the famous Church of England evangelical WH Griffiths Thomas, who was very influential at the beginning of the 20th Century and sometime Principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford. He said: “Christianity is a religion that is a priesthood and not one that has a priesthood.” This was seen as a strong part of Prayer Book, Reformation faith for many evangelicals.

Like Luther and the continental reformers they interpreted the Communio Sanctorum not in the medieval sense of being participants in the sacraments – the Communion; but in also being part of the fellowship of believers. They argued that there is nothing true of bishops, priests and deacons that is not true of the whole church.

So we must acknowledge that there is still a debate that divides the Christian church: is priesthood a matter of ontology or function? - does ordination change the very being of a priest, or does it just set a person apart for a particular ministry within the church order? (Eric Mascall gives one of the best and imaginative treatments of this in the last chapter of Theology and the Gospel of Christ, SPCK, 1977.)

Well, however we view priesthood, clergy both model and mirror the priesthood of all believers or the priesthood of all the baptized as it is often stated. We are all disciples, and in the words of our text, we are called to bear much fruit.

I want to suggest that we do this in two ways: by sign and by service. And these two ways reflect our Lord’s instructions to all Christians, priests and people, that they are to be a light to the world, and the salt of the earth.

I remember Bishop Richard saying at a deanery chapter as he looked round the room at those few not wearing dog-collars: “I want no anonymous priests in my diocese!”

But it is of course more than simply donning clerical dress, or for the laity, wearing a cross or some other Christian symbol, or carrying a large black Bible and reading it on the tube.

As lights to the world, we are to be signposts to the transcendent God. What does that mean?

At some social function this week I found myself, for the umpteenth time, trying to explain what a priest does.

People are generally happy with your doing good about the community, but what genuinely puzzles most of our contemporaries is any sense of devotion to God; of meaningful engagement with the Almighty through prayer and by the sacraments; of saying you can’t meet them for drinks till 7 because you are saying your prayers.

They don’t understand why I should spend so many hours in church every day or week. They do not understand that a priest’s engagement with the world is dependent upon his (or her) engagement with God.

It is especially in this way that the ordained are called to be the focus of transcendence; an archetype of the priesthood of all the baptized.

Our life in Christ should be a challenge to those round about us. It is a signpost to the transcendent God.

We must not hide our light under a bushel, or under some false humility that argues:
‘I’m such a poor disciple of Christ that I’d better keep quiet about.’ As the lady said to the Vicar on the door after a particularly fiery sermon: “Oh Vicar! We never knew what sin was until you came to the parish!”

Our involvement with church must be seen to be an involvement with a God whom we believe to be there; and not just as members of a local social club with nice music. Or as George Orwell put it: "choir practice in a jeweller’s shop".

Religious faith has become so internalised over the last 50 years - it’s all a matter of private belief - that many in western society find it very strange when Christians assert that it is a public truth. That the transcendent God has revealed himself to us in Christ, and that we are all called to respond. (The late Bp Lesslie Newbigin was very concerned with this.)

So we are a sign, lights to the world.

But secondly, we are to bear fruit by service. We are to be the salt of the earth. Jesus set us the example: “the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.” (Matt 20.28)

It was this sense of service which fired the new democracies that sprang out of the Reformation in Europe. People realised that it was not just for clerics to be civic leaders, but all Christians were called to serve their society - for the common good and not just for their own good.

Salt that remains forever in the saltcellar is of no use. As disciples of Jesus Christ we should have a strong sense of public service.

In the simplest of terms, we should be known to be people who are kind and who do good in society.

I was at a seminar this week on the theology of development projects. It was for those 80 or so churches in our Diocese who have major building projects on the go and about 40 attended. It was inspiring to hear how different churches were developing their buildings to serve Christ in their community, whether the £35m scheme of St Martin in the Fields, or our own more modest attempt to make our buildings more useful in our mission.

So as priests and people, disciples of Christ, we are all called to be signs and agents of the kingdom of God, to be a royal priesthood.

“My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become my disciples.,” (John 15.8)

Abiding in Love

Abiding in Love

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
1 John 4.16

Love is the powerful theme of today’s epistle and it relates of course to the Gospel, for abiding in the vine is to abide in the love of God and to bring forth the fruit of that love.

Even the Acts reading of Philip baptizing the Ethiopian eunuch reflects the love of God driving the infant church out of Jerusalem and to those who traditionally had been shut out from the love of God by a bigoted religious establishment.

It reminds me of a little verse by Edwin Markham which captures the essence of John’s teaching in his letters:

They drew a circle that shut me out
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But love and I had the wit to win
We drew a circle that took them in

St John takes the two great apostolic foundations of the Christian faith - the incarnation and the atoning death of Christ - and clothes them in love. He uproots them from the realm of pure doctrinal necessity and plants them in the fertile soil of God’s great love for us.

Listen to his words: “In this is love - not that we loved God - but that he loved us - and sent his Son - to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (v10)

And then he draws the blindingly obvious conclusion from this: “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.” (v11)

Now we might have expected him to conclude “Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love him.”

But no! Since God is love, both in essence and attitude - both in who he is and in what he does - then the fact that he is in us, through the mystical union of his Holy Spirit; this finds expression in our love for one another.

This is God’s ultimate purpose, the perfection of love as John calls it. He wants to reproduce his love in us so that we can pour out our love to others and so bring them into the circle of God’s embracing kindness.

People are often concerned that they don’t believe the right things. And it’s good to study and to expand our understanding of the faith. But John brings it all down to earth.

He presents a simple test. Is what you believe about God enabling you to love others, with kindness and good deeds? Is it leading you to a place of personal freedom?

Or, is what you believe leading you deeper into self-absorption; an inability to give yourself in love to others; an underlying fear of life and commitment?

Of course it’s never quite that simple. There will always be our daily failures and inadequacy.
There will always be room for improvement. There will always be adverse circumstances and impossible people. As the old doggerel puts it:

To dwell above with those we love
O that will be glory;
But to dwell below with those we know
Is quite another story!

But, John concludes, that if our belief in, and love for God results in a practical love for others, then we will not fear God or man.

I have always remembered the verse that follows our text in 1 John 4.17. ‘Perfect love casts out fear’. At a wedding where I was best man, a pious absentee sent simply that biblical reference in a telegram. But without checking, I quickly turned to John 4.17 and read out: “Jesus said to her, ‘You are right in saying, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband!’"

John urges us to believe in the evidence we see with our own eyes: our love for one another. He urges us to believe that we need have no fear. God is at work in us.

On the other hand he gives stark warning to those who would ignore the Christian’s primary mandate to love God and love others. There is no peace for the loveless heart. It is doomed to the turmoil of fear and distrust.

This first epistle of John is an open letter to the church, with a message very pertinent for our present age. It calls for Christian loyalty, love and understanding as we try to work out our faith in a changing world.

The gnostic deviations of the first century had led to various groups who seceded from the apostolic band. They often claimed that they loved God more than those they had left behind.

Although John admits debate on certain issues, he makes it clear that in one area, and one area alone, there is no room for compromise. There is nothing to debate. He writes:

“Those who say, "I love God," and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother or sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen. The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.” (vv 20f)

It is the merciful who will know that God will be merciful to them. It is those who forgive who know that they are indeed forgiven. The example for us is the God ‘whose property it is always to show mercy.’ Or as John Donne put it in that Christmas Day sermon (1624):

God made Sun and Moon to distinguish seasons, and day and night, and we cannot have the fruits of the Earth but in their seasons; But God hath made no decree to distinguish the seasons of his mercies. In paradise the fruits were ripe, the first minute, and in heaven it is always Autumn, his mercies are ever in their maturity.

In following Christ we were never promised by our Master an easy life, or a successful life. It is hard to live in charity and peace with all. But we were promised a full life of inner peace and unspeakable joy.

The opening lines of that Hugh Grant film of a couple of years ago, Love Actually, capture it well:

“General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed - but I don't see that - seems to me that love is everywhere.
Igniting laughter, wreaking havoc, breaking hearts, daring commitments, forcing choices, catapulting spirits, forging inroads, creating risks - ecstatic, exciting, unexpected, unwelcome, inconvenient, inexplicable, inelegant, unequalled. Love, actually, is all around.”

In that multitude of ordinary moments of everyday living, with all its messiness and uncertainty, still there is a quiet music in our soul that reminds us that we are loved, and that in loving we fulfil our highest destiny.

And that is why this central act of Eucharist is an invitation to communion with God in the costly sacrifice of Christ, as well as a communion with each other.

Welcome Jesu,
Deep in my soul forever stay;
Joy and love my heart are filling
On this glad Communion day.

“God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them.”
1 John 4.16

Consciousness, prayer & the Holy Spirit

Consciousness, prayer and the Holy Spirit

Let me read you a part of a letter:

“I venture to put before the conference the following practical recommendations: (1) Education of Ordinands--- That the bishops shall emphasize the need and importance of a far more thorough, varied, interesting and expert devotional training in our theological colleges which, with a few striking exceptions, seem to me to give insufficient attention to this vital part of their work. (2) The Clergy--- That they should call upon every ordained clergyman, as an essential part of his pastoral duty and not merely for his own sake: (a) To adopt a rule of life which shall include a fixed daily period of prayer and reading of a type that feeds, pacifies and expands his soul, and deepens his communion with God; b) To make an annual retreat; (c) To use every endeavour to make his church into a real home of prayer and teach his people, both by exhortation and example so to use it.”

A letter from Evelyn Underhill to Archbishop Lang of Canterbury for the 1930 Lambeth Conference.

I used to tell my students that Christians were permanently guilty about two things: prayer and sex. Too much of one and not enough of the other. And which way round that is depends on whether you are an evangelical or a catholic!

This evening I want to ease our guilt about prayerlessness - a little.
I want to agree with what Evelyn Underhill expresses as her hopes for ordinands and clergy, but to widen it a little. To remind ourselves, in Michelle Quoist’s phrase, that all of life becomes a prayer. To reflect on human consciousness, as Underhill does in some of her own mystical writings.

“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” (Romans 8.16)

Hyenas don’t really laugh. Rather, like the chimpanzees in the tea adverts, we are anthropomorphizing animals and giving them what are uniquely human characteristics. Dogs, if they look as though they are giving you a toothy grin, are usually about to bite you.

Human beings alone (as far as we know) in the universe, laugh. Only humans can blush or be embarrassed. Only humans need to feel embarrassed.

All this is part of our self-consciousness. The fact, that unlike any other creatures, to our present knowledge, we can reflect on what we are. This is the joy and pain of being a human animal: homo sapiens.

Julian Jaynes puts it this way in the opening of his fascinating book with the snappy title, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Penguin 1990): (cf Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash)

“O, what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! … A secret theatre of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries… A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do… This consciousness…”

But where did self-awareness come from in our evolutionary history?

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.

It’s like the computers some of us have at home or in our office. They are capable of rocket science, and all we use them for is as a glorified typewriter & late night solitaire.

So late Neanderthals or maybe Cro-Magnon man 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 Brylcreem…

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 reckons that self-consciousness as we know it appeared less than 4 thousand years ago. Most scientists think it was much earlier.

Well what has all this got to do with our text?

Human beings are the only animals that consciously worship. Our God-consciousness emerged as part of our self-consciousness.

Non-realist theologians like Don Cuppit 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.

Rather like the self-deception which equates joining a gym with actually going to the gym…

But there is another explanation which our Christian faith provides and which many of us prefer to believe.

The Garden of Eden describes humanity coming to self-consciousness; and asserts that, that self-consciousness is a reflection of God’s self-consciousness. We are indeed made in imago Dei, in the image of God, knowing, and self-knowing. And so part of the human condition is bound up with knowledge of God: who is self-conscious within the Holy Trinity.

Adam is separate from the other animals, and to show his self-consciousness, he names them: they are tiger and horse; they are other; they are not flesh of my flesh and bone of my bone.

Unlike the other creatures, Adam and Eve know good from evil, and know that they are capable of choosing evil. The tiger and the horse can know no shame, but Adam and Eve hide from God, full of remorse and embarrassment.

Cain slays Abel, not for food nor for evolutionary superiority; but because of jealousy and on account of religious convictions.

Self-consciousness leads to self-doubt and to strong convictions. I remember hearing Peter Ustinov remind us again on the radio just before his death that “It is our doubts that unite us. Our convictions divide us.”

Indeed. But we can have no doubts without convictions and it is those convictions which determine what we do with our convictions; and how we handle our doubt.

The Christian story unfolds through the centuries until the second Adam comes: Christ, who as he matures as a man and grows into self-consciousness; grows also into that unique and aweful destiny that is his alone - that unspeakable agony of inner thought - God-consciousness: the horror of realisation that he is God.

For us, the realisation is that we are loved and that we will never be alone. In St Paul’s words: “The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.”

But for Christ, the Spirit testified to his spirit that he was the only-begotten of the Father.

One of the roles of the Holy Spirit is to direct our inner consciousness – to work alongside it, if you will. And he does this whether we are hectically busy, or whether we are in retreat: the Holy Ghost working alongside the ‘ghost in the machine’.

Maybe the human soul is a virtual reality created by the world’s most complex computer, the human brain. But that does not invalidate the belief that there is a Divine Consciousness, before all things, incarnate in Christ, and interacting with us by way of the Holy Spirit.

We believe that there is an internal dialogue - not monologue. We believe that our Divine Lover is literally, always in our thoughts.

Put another way, this is the testimony of the saints and the men and women of God down through the centuries: that they have tasted and seen that the Lord is good. The Spirit has enabled them, sometimes with faltering conviction, to cry ‘Abba’, Father.”

This understanding of human self-consciousness, certainly encourages us to make time each day when with conscious effort we open ourselves to the Divine Consciousness. It encourages us to make space in our lives in retreat to let our Older Brother heal and remould us in his image.

But it also encourages us to believe even through the guilt of prayerlessness and overbusyness, that even then God’s Spirit is at work in us: we are still useful servants.

We must not be robbed of that joyful conviction that

“The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children.” (Romans 8.16)

The Good Shepherd

The Good Shepherd

Readings: Ezek 34.11-16; John 10.10-20; 1 Peter 2.19-25

“I am the good shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” John 10.14, 15

The guide was explaining to the Holy Land pilgrims how an eastern shepherd always leads his flock from the front, gently leading the sheep who trustingly follow. Unlike the western shepherds who drive the flock forward from behind. Just then they drove past a dozen sheep being herded from behind by a man with a large staff and a loud voice. The guide immediately jumped out of the coach to investigate. He soon returned, and obviously relieved declared: “He’s a butcher, not a shepherd!”

It’s a common enough accusation, especially at election time, that our leaders are only out to fleece the sheep, not care for them.

And of course in today’s Gospel, our Lord would have to agree that in many cases, and in particular the shepherds of Israel, the pharisees with whom he is in dialogue, this is a true analysis. They are more concerned with self and self-interest, than their flock and caring for others.

In the scriptures of the Old Testament, the image of the shepherd is a symbol of divine government, and of human government, too, as an imitation of the divine.

Thus, God is addressed as shepherd in the Psalms: "Hear, 0 thou Shepherd of Israel, thou that leadest Joseph like a sheep." (Psalm 80.1) And David, the shepherd boy, divinely anointed, becomes the shepherd King of Israel.

And when Isaiah prophesies the coming deliverer, he too speaks of a shepherd: "He shall lead his flock like a shepherd, and gather the lambs unto his bosom." (40.1)

So when Jesus, offspring of the House of David, calls himself the "good shepherd", his hearers would certainly have had all this background in mind. And that it was a Divine title, which further enraged the pharisees.

The image of the shepherd is a natural symbol of government. Not only in ancient Israel, but also in ancient Greece. From the time of Homer on, the Greeks spoke of kingship in terms of shepherding - a human office, no doubt, but also a reflection of the divine government of the universe. At its best, the image of the shepherd is a natural and universal symbol of divine and human government.

But there is this inbuilt ambiguity about the imagery.

So our Lord, in today's Gospel, draws a distinction between the good shepherd, who cares for the sheep, and the hireling, who is in the business for what he can get out of it for himself. "I am the good shepherd," says Jesus. "The good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."
Jesus' authority as shepherd, as governor of our lives, is established in his great act of paschal sacrifice: "I lay down my life for the sheep."

The idea of Jesus as the good shepherd is a popular and attractive image, which has inspired centuries of Christian devotion, and I suppose there is no passage in the whole of scripture better-known or more loved than the twenty-third Psalm, with its picture of divine shepherding.

But the image is almost too cute. It is too easy to be sentimentally attached to the image, and thereby overlook the deeper levels of meaning it implies.

In the earliest expressions of Christian art, the paintings which adorn the walls of the catacombs - those narrow labyrinthine tunnels which served as burial places in the early Christian centuries - a favourite theme is Jesus as the good shepherd.

It is natural and obvious enough, of course, that the Risen Lord should be represented as shepherd of the dead. But it's not just that. Jesus is represented there as shepherd of the stars - the universal, cosmic shepherd: the Son of God. He is shown as "the power of God and the wisdom of God," (1 Corinthians 1.24) that is, the good governor of all that is, shepherding all things to their appointed end. Even the mighty Roman Empire which was busy oppressing the church.

The image of the good shepherd is fundamentally an image of divine government, an image of the universal providence of God in Christ. But it is infused with the meekness of the Lamb of God, for Christ is both shepherd and lamb.

George Whitefield preached on “The Good Shepherd’ as his last sermon in London before his final visit to America in 1769 and picks up this same point.

“Meekness is necessary for people in power; a man that is passionate is dangerous. Every governor should have a warm temper, but a man of an unrelenting, unforgiving temper, is no more fit for government than Phaethon to drive the chariot of the sun; he only sets the world on fire.“

One of Dr Spooner’s celebrated ‘spoonerisms’ was to remember that ‘God is a shoving leopard!’ Perhaps in more biblical terms, Jesus is the Lion of Judah. This is the strength and moral demand of God; and yet the loving shepherd displays the self-giving and careful patience of God with human waywardness. The lion lies down with the Lamb.

When I lived in Torquay, I knew a young couple who were sheep farmers out on the moors. I would often spend my day off with them.

At lambing time, there were sometimes orphans left, whose mothers had died in giving birth. And then of course there were those mothers whose lambs were still-born or who died soon after birth.

Hungry little lambs and mothers with no young to suckle; want and plenty side by side.

But to match up these needs, the shepherds had to undertake a rather gruesome operation. They must take blood from the dead lamb and smear it all over the little orphan. Only then would the mother accept the lamb as her own and feed and nurture it. This is an ancient practice.

And so this rich imagery of shepherding; of death and life, is seen supremely in this mass: we are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb; accepted in the beloved; clothed in the righteousness of Christ.

This is the Good Shepherd who is Governor of all things and who orders our universe; this is the Good Shepherd the bishop and guardian of our souls, our loving friend and brother; this is the Good Shepherd who loved us and gave himself up for us. This is the Good Shepherd who calls us to follow his example in self-giving care of one another, in our exercising of authority here in church; or in the workplace, or in the home

This is the God we know and love; and who knows and loves us.

“I am the good shepherd; and know my sheep, and am known of mine, even as the Father knoweth me, and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.” John 10.14, 15