For I came not to call the righteous but sinners.
Matthew 9, v13
It seems basically to be the same agenda. There are concerns about public life and civil disorder. People wonder how to bring lasting peace to the world. There is an immense dispute raging over the right understanding of ordained ministry, where power ultimately resides when it comes to making hard decisions and how far dissenters can and should be accommodated.
No, I am not talking about the agenda ahead of us for the meeting of the General Synod but of the issues pressing in upon the national Church in the middle years of the reign of King Henry VIII. It was on this day, 6th July 1535, that Thomas More was executed, just two weeks after the same fate had befallen John Fisher, the saintly Bishop of Rochester. In my more unguarded moments, something that gives me some consolation as I look through the names of the many Englishmen and women who have had their names commemorated in our Common Worship calendar, is that one of the qualities that so many of them share seems to be an immense capacity for always parting ways with the majority opinion within the Established Church!
Henry VIII’s England was increasingly at risk from civil disorder, not least as he moved against those who questioned his divorce and subsequent attack on parts of the Church. Perhaps, more threatening, as Thomas More, himself, clearly identified, were those who had imbibed parts of the new Protestant theology now gaining ground in mainland Europe. They were busy telling folk that they were free under God to believe what they could discern from the Scriptures without need of reference to either king or bishop. Changes were afoot as to how the Church should be governed. For the minority who dissented, the choice was stark as the fate of Fisher and More demonstrates so clearly. And, as this sad period of history moved onwards, there would be those who thought that mission and evangelisation should rather be the main claim on the Church’s energy. By the time that Henry’s daughters were on the throne, people like Francis Xavier would be proclaiming the Gospel in parts of the world beyond Europe, despairing at a Church that had become so caught up in its own internal struggles.
There is then a real sense in the life of the Church of ‘what goes around comes around’. In this, as in every age, the Gospel is entrusted to us. With that responsibility, though, there ever comes both the demand for faithfulness and also, it seems, the persistent temptation to be distracted from the essence of our mission. You and I rightly are warned, time and time again, of the danger of fiddling while Rome burns; though, perhaps, on this occasion we need to replace Rome with Canterbury!
Jesus says:
I came not to call the righteous but sinners.
The first response of any Synod to its Lord must be that of penitence, of a change of heart. We can perhaps draw some comfort from the knowledge that only those who know they are part of an all too sinful Church can then use that self-awareness ever to generate a re-focusing on God and on His purposes. A Synod that cannot do this would be all too like that man in the parable, who was so completely lacking in self-knowledge that he could only stand in the Temple and thank God that he was not as other men are. Penitence is not just about continually beating ourselves up over the state of the Church but, rather, the constant stimulus to address our failings and then to move forwards.
Re-focusing on Christ in penitence can also sometimes lead us to revisit the statements that so easily slip off our tongues and so see them for being exactly that. It is uncritically fashionable at the present time to set the frequent discussion within the Church concerning its right ordering against the pressing claims of the world, whether that be in terms of the Palestine-Israel conflict or the recent disruption that has taken place within some of our own cities. And all that is before we consider the immense issues of world evangelisation. It might just be that before we buy this package too uncritically you and I need to recall that this has not always been the prevailing wisdom.
Think for a moment of another great English churchman whose name has only recently been added to our Church calendar: Bishop George Bell. Bell was passionately interested in world affairs, appalled by the indiscriminate bombing of Germany, and desperate to support the Christian church in that land as it sought to witness against Nazism. It was this very concern that brought George Bell to focus on issues of Church order and to become such a prominent founding member of the Ecumenical Movement. He realised, all too well, that only a Church that was seen as part of a united, greater whole could carry sufficient weight against Nazism and that, in similar terms, only a Church in England that saw the German Church as part of itself would be able to make the right moral judgements in coming to the aid of its Christian brothers and sisters. A common ministry bonding the Church together was an essential ingredient in this quest. We may well take our different positions on the ministerial questions before the General Synod during these coming days. You and I only do so because we see how much those decisions will bear on the future mission of the Church. We should not apologise for such concern; rather we can only thank God for His call to an ever sinful Church to reform itself.
Jesus comes to sinners to make them righteous. The Church, as and other bishops have been reminding countless people at ordination services these past few days, is Christ’s Body. That is something to be taken seriously, so seriously that those to be ordained priests are warned of the punishment that will follow if they do harm to any of its members. In our concern for the Church, you and I are concerned authentically to radiate Jesus Himself, sinless, completely integrated and seeking to bring the whole world within that integration. Perhaps it is time to stop at least some of our apologies for giving time to the Church and its ministry. It is all part of seeking to maintain the Church as one so that the world might believe. Unity and mission are inseparable.
Many years ago, when the film A Man For All Seasons was first being shown, I enjoyed a meal with my with local GP. A good and pragmatic lady, she remarked to me of Thomas More: “I could not help thinking he could have saved himself a lot of trouble.” But even the pragmatist must base his or her pragmatism on some principles. More said that ultimately, if the world were to grasp the true faith, then the ministerial issue, in his day the one of papal or royal supremacy, mattered. The integrity embodied in Jesus had to be something both witnessed to and offered by the Church.
It is in allowing that process to be done and done well that those who service the work of General Synod play such an essential part. I believed it when I once worked in Church House. I believe it even more having experienced that work through the eyes of a Synod member. As long as you and I do not forget that we are but sinners in need of Christ and being sought by Him, we will all be genuine agents in ever seeking to bring the Church into greater conformity with His will. And, now, in this Eucharist, we enjoy a foretaste of that perfect Church which is completely one inChrist.