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Sermon for 2nd Sunday Before Advent |
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Friday, 27 November 2009 |
The Pope is to set up a non-geographical diocese for Anglicans who will be able to join and keep some of their liturgical heritage
I was asked to give an interview for German radio this week about the Apostolic Constitution which you may have read about: if not, the Pope is to set up a non-geographical diocese for Anglicans who will be able to join and keep some of their liturgical heritage and will also allow married Anglican priests to be re-ordained into this church, although ex Roman Catholic and married bishops will be excluded.
This was rather sprung on the church, the Archbishop of Canterbury was informed only a couple of weeks before the announcement. He put a brave face on it. Others have been less kind about the motives of the Pope in doing this. I wonder what the Roman Catholic church would say if we set up a church for disaffected Anglican - mind you, I suppose we did that in 1532!
A few words about the politics and then some more general comments about the church.
It seems to me that what the Pope is doing is gathering conservative minded Christians back into the fold of the Roman Catholic Church. You may think this a good or a bad thing, I don’t know, but that a re-alignment of christianity is happening seems now rather clear. The Anglican Communion’s attempts to hold together, though well intentioned, and in my view correct, do look increasingly doomed to failure. On the one hand many see the Pope’s initiative as a hostile takeover bid, others believe that as a result, the Church of England will now make less provision for conscientious objectors to the consecration of women to the episcopate, though we will have to wait until the General Synod in February to find out which way the wind blows.
As far as relations with the Roman Catholic Church go, I wonder in what way things can now move forward, when such a move is sprung on us without the usual courtesies or consultation. Ecumenical dialogue is surely only possible with mutual respect and an acknowledgement that we are both equal partners. That the Roman Catholic Church now refuses to refer to us as the Anglican Church but as the Anglican Tradition, thus implying that we are not a proper church. Gone are the days when the talk was of sister churches and pope Paul famously gave his episcopal ring to Archbishop Ramsey. Nor must we take all the blame for the stalling of relations between our two churches, for the Roman Church is equally responsible, it seem to me.
Now then, some thoughts about the nature of the church, which are inevitably personal to me, this is my view on the church and may well not be yours, nor am I saying it ought to be, but here I can only speak for myself.
Many of the arguments the church faces relate to church structures, arguments about who is the real church and who is not.
However, I think most scholars would agree that Jesus left no blueprint for a church at all, but rather some principles for a new kind of community. How that community should be organised he gave no clue to - indeed as we can see from the pages of the New Testament, there were strong disagreements from the beginning as to how the communities should be organised and there were different practices in different places. The first major row that hit the church was whether gentiles could be admitted or not and whether they had to be circumcised. Jesus had left no instructions on this either. As to the succession of apostles and bishops this idea did not emerge for another three hundred years. I am a loyal anglican and believe in an episcopal church and apostolic succession, but there is no independent ecclesiastical historian who will tell you that apostolic succession exists in real time. It is a symbol and an idea, an important one, but not a historical certainty. Something we should bear in mind in our discussions with the German Protestant Churches which do not profess Apostolic Succession and the Roman Catholic Church which says it alone has preserved it.
The absurdity which can result from the mentality that says you have to have apostolic succession to be a real church you will see in many of the so called independent catholic churches of which there are hundreds: the Traditional Anglican Church or the Open Episcopal Church or the LIberal Catholic Church etc. If you look at the websites of these churches you will see men togged out in the most bizarre outfits all claiming apostolic succession from this bishop or that, but what is also clear is that they have no congregations. But they claim they are validly ordained and may be so but what has this to do with the price of fish? Is that the sign of an authentic church living it’s life in the faith of the apostles? I wonder.
We say every Sunday morning that we are part of the one holy catholic apostolic church. One means that all the baptised belong to it equally, holy means it lives a life in union with God, catholic means it embraces all people and all things and apostolic means it lives its life in the faith once delivered to the apostles. This is the sticky one. This does not mean apostolic succession in that bizarre way in which those independent episcopal churches mean. What does it mean? Well let’s have a look at the life of the apostolic church and see what Jesus actually did tell it to do, we might get a shock.
The life of the church traditionally begins at the Last Supper, when Jesus, on the night before he died, gave his disciples three instructions: do this in remembrance of me, though he gave no instructions as to how or who should do this; secondly to love one another as I have loved you, and thirdly to wash each other’s feet. After his death, the apostles sold all they had and held everything in common meeting to break bread, pray, heal the sick and give alms to the poor; how should this new community be characterised - a community in which there was neither slave nor free, male nor female jew or gentile seems to be St Paul’s best summary.
Now then how are any of our churches doing? Washing the feet of the poor, holding everything in common, a community of radical equality and mutual love? Is it more important to have the church structures right or to live that apostolic life? I merely ask the question. What does an authentic church look like, then? We are all failing. Of course the church has to have a structure and an order, but the big mistake is to say this particular order or structure came straight from the mouth of Jesus, because I do not believe there is any evidence to support anyone on that.
Furthermore, the church as a human institution will hold all sorts of ideas and beliefs which are to our own mind difficult, but to this I would say two things: first of all, I guess all of us look at the church in different ways and see it standing things which go against our conscience. That my church is the only institution of the state to be able to opt out of human rights legislation, is something I find very difficult, but I live with it because it is not the only thing about the church. Others’ conscience is offended for opposite reasons.
But, secondly, I don’t believe in a pure church, and I say that not to be cynical, in fact just the opposite. Those who wish to go to Rome will find a church just as riven by women priests, homosexuality, and many more issues too that the Church of England has to struggle with. Purity does not exist, the wheat and the tares exist together until the end of the world Jesus told us. So relax, take a chill pill and get on with it, concentrate on the church becoming that Body of Christ which Jesus actually did talk to us about, washing the feet of the poor and living in mutual love, this is how we remain faithful. The search for purity and absolute certainty is a feature of our age and increasingly of religion. I believe it is a false trail. As those who have pursued the religious life throughout the ages will testify, the closer you get to God the more uncertain, the more in the dark you are.
So here is my last suggestion: instead of the church claiming absolute truth and certainty, can it help the world live with uncertainty and anxiety, can it be, to quote Karen Armstrong a midwife of truth not its owner. Can we help society to explore honestly and without pretence or illusion what life is all about, what we can really say about it, can we help people, with humility, to search for the divine in their lives and to follow Jesus of Nazareth, because we believe what he told us is the message of eternal life. What he did not tell us, however, is a matter of interpretation and personal conjecture, perhaps we can learn to distinguish the two and relax about the rest.
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Addresses |
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St. Boniface, Bonn
Haus Steinbach chapel in Mehlem,
Rüdigerstrasse map..
St. Cyprian, Bonn
Adenauerallee 61, Bonn. map..
All Saints, Cologne
the corner of Bonnerstr./Lindenallee,
Cologne-Marienburg map.. |
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