ViaMedia

Category: Coronavirus

  • We Can’t Go Back….Remember, These Are Early Days

    by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

    my-name-is-paul

    A few weeks ago I broke a tooth. It was a big molar that had done great work for me for well over fifty years, and I broke it by biting a potato crisp. I didn’t bite hard, and there wasn’t a stone in the crisp. According to the dentist, the edge of the crisp had simply impacted on a thin crack, a fault-line in the tooth, as any crisp could have done for decades. All the fault-line needed was a piece of food in the wrong place at the wrong time – and I now have a broken tooth, and of course no immediate prospect of a filling.

    The Coronavirus has more in common with a mouthful of broken glass than with a Salt and Vinegar crinkle. And it is impacting on all our personal and institutional lives at once. But the principle is the same; ways of being and living that have done us well for decades and centuries are suddenly under impact, and if there are fault-lines some of them will break, with no immediate prospect of a filling.

    That’s where we are across the world; biting down on the hard thing, and finding what breaks. In a similar image the writer to Hebrews speaks of things that can be shaken “that is, created things” – and things that cannot be shaken (Hebrews 12:26ff). What is God saying to us about this as we are shaken today, as the fault-lines are tested in our lives as a society and as a Church? What from the past is indeed essential to us? What treasured ways of living will prove in the end to be utterly peripheral? And the constant, overarching question: how do we build a future that nourishes the human family as a whole?

    All this was doubtless in the Archbishop of Canterbury’s mind when he meditated on the resurrection of Jesus Christ, and from his meditation produced his Easter sermon, in which he said this:

    “Yet in the resurrection of Jesus, God lights a fire which calls us to justice, to live in humble generosity, to transform our societies. After so much suffering, so much heroism from key workers and the NHS, so much effort, once this epidemic is conquered here and round the world, we cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all is normal. There needs to be a resurrection of our common life, something that links to the old, but is different and more beautiful.”

    In this unfolding Via Media series a range of people will be offering their sense of what that resurrection of our common life should be. For now as I reflect on my own response, two things come to the fore. The first is a basket of possibilities, and the second is the sense, which I need constantly to remember, that these are early days.

    The basket of possibilities in my mind reminds me that I am a child of my time, a time which is passing. Nonetheless I know what I long to see. In values and feelings I long to see inequality broken, inclusion honoured and promoted, faith respected, diversity affirmed, love and joy celebrated and defended wherever it is truly found. In practical politics I long to see Universal Credit paused and repaired, a Universal Basic Income explored and properly trialled, austerity finally halted and rejected, the future of the planet finally treasured and preserved. In the Church I long to see doctrinal harshness reduced, love celebrated, quiet service honoured, worship and prayer restored, people fed, the lonely loved, the dying supported.

    I continue to long for these things among so many more, and I commit myself to work to see them come. I will advocate for them and I hope for the courage and grace to oppose all that stands in their way.

    Alongside this I must remember that in the new world, the world of the Coronavirus, these are early days. I rejoice that the testing of fault-lines has meant that some parts of my basket of possibilities may finally be affirmed and implemented, and I lament that other parts will struggle to prevail, especially in the face of corporate anxiety, institutional inequality, the desire to go back to a safe and unchanging past, the rush to give people certainties which may not help them in the end, when so much that seemed strong has already been shattered by the impact of the virus.

    These are early days, and no one knows the answers to questions that the virus compels us to ask; questions the modern world has not had to ask before. Will I then have the patience and humility, whatever my basket of possibilities may contain, to refrain from closing down conversations too soon?

    If we are to bring good out of the impact of evil, then we need a discipline; to sit patiently with uncertainty even though uncertainty makes us anxious. The poet John Keats famously explored this discipline in a letter, written of course in the language of his time:

    “ …at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously — I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason…”

    I hope we will be capable of that, and that we will not hurt one another in our haste. These are frightening days, but they are also early days. “We cannot be content to go back to what was before as if all is normal”; no indeed. Instead we must explore a new future for the world, and for the Church within the world, each one advocating for what matters most, but each one also listening hard before arriving at conclusions. That at any rate is my own commitment, as I seek to put the Archbishop’s words into action, and to work with others to discover a future that will surprise us all.

  • Do Not Be Afraid!

    by the Rt Revd Paul Bayes, Bishop of Liverpool and Chair of the Ozanne Foundation

    my-name-is-paul

    People cope with anxiety in different ways. For Christians, the hope and the truth of our faith gives us resources to cope. And the fact that the Coronavirus has struck at this time of the year can be and should be a blessing to those who believe in the resurrection.

    However faith in the resurrection is a delicate and fragile thing. It can easily be broken, or at least bent out of shape, by anxiety.

    So for example the gift of life in Jesus was received by his disciples as an astonishing and frightening surprise. It’s a theme of the gospels that, despite the fact that Jesus spoke about his resurrection before he died, nobody got what he was on about. And so the astonishment and joy of the disciples is tinged, and made more human, by their fear and embarrassment at not having believed what they were so clearly told. Luke’s story of the road to Emmaus clearly illustrates the blindness that anxiety can cast over the eyes of people of faith. The two disciples are “downcast”, and so they fail to recognise the living One before their eyes (Luke 24:17).

    The risk can be different for those of us who have been Christians for a while. We know about the victory of Jesus. We know that the blessedness of Easter flows from a reversal – light reversing darkness, victory reversing defeat, life reversing death. We are not surprised when Easter comes. We expect life. When these certainties and expectations bump up against anxiety, for example the anxiety caused by a pandemic, the resulting tone can be harsh.

    I am not only referring to magical thinking, seen for example in the United States among Christians who continue to meet together, believing that Jesus’ blood will see off the virus immediately in their case. Nor am I thinking only of the view that I’ve seen expressed in the US and in Europe among deeply traditional Catholic Christians – that one consequence of the doctrine of transubstantiation is that the blessed and transformed bread and wine cannot possibly contain, or be a vector for, the virus. These forms of magical thinking are profoundly dangerous, though mercifully pretty rare.

    The more common dynamic is beautifully captured by Hilary Ison, drawing in the previous Via Media post from the work of the “Tragedy and Congregations” project:

    Community responses to disaster typically show a ‘heroic phase’, full of energy and self-sacrifice, which burns itself out and is followed by a ‘disillusionment phase’, which may contain much mutual blame and suspicion. Only as the disillusionment phase loses its force can realistic, hopeful re-making take place.

    The persistent emphasis of our Lord Jesus was not that his followers should surpass one another in being spectacular in heroism or holiness, but that we should not be afraid. So we are led to an inner place from which we may live a non-anxious life – without heroism, and yet without disillusion, ready to re-make the world. It does not seem particularly glamorous, or exceptional, simply to live our lives without anxiety. But it seems to me that this is our calling at this time. A Church that heeds this command is quietly unafraid; fundamentally marked by the spirit of its Lord. And God knows, to be quietly unafraid is a big ask in these days.

    Glimpses of non-anxious living may be seen in many places. As an example from outside the Church of what it might mean, I was challenged and delighted by a recent interview with David Hockney. I’ve always felt an affinity with this artist, who like me is a Yorkshireman and a Bradford lad. Hockney is a much-beloved artist because of his truthfulness; a gay man who has lived unafraid as he was created, and who for decades has painted the world as he has seen it, carefully and beautifully and accurately. A few days ago he said this:

    “We have lost touch with nature rather foolishly as we are a part of it, not outside it. This will in time be over and then what? What have we learned? I am 83 years old, I will die. The cause of death is birth… the source of art is love.”

    David Hockney

    The faith of Christians is built on Jesus Christ, who saved us on the Cross and who was raised to life at Easter. He it is whom I proclaim. But if I had to express the outworking of that faith in an attitude to the world – to express the non-anxious life – in words that did not mention Jesus, I could do a good deal worse than those words of Hockney.

    And if I ever reach the age of 83 – and indeed now, when I’m 66 – I hope that this will be my approach. That this approach, built on the faith in Jesus that I have received as a gift, will  issue in a non-anxious life. That I might be truthful, and speak simply, and not fear death, and see love at the root of things.

    And as we move into Eastertide, and as the number of cases of the virus and the number of deaths continues to rise, I hope that I may resist anxiety as my Lord commanded me to do, and that I may live in hope, and may love my neighbour in ways that will help them first. In that spirit I wish you all a blessed Easter. Not necessarily a happy one, not for so many of us; no. But in the faith of Christ a blessed one nonetheless; one in which we may live, unafraid, in the One who loves us.

  • Trauma & Tragedy in Congregations & Communities

    by the Revd Hilary Ison, Project Team Member for Trauma and Tragedy in Congregations

    Hilary Ison

    The local church often finds itself at the centre of response in situations of tragedy and trauma, ‘opening the doors’ of the church for refuge for frontline responders, providing sacred space for gathering and vigil, or providing practical support and supplies for the local community.

    In order to help understand how best to equip churches to deal with this the Templeton World Charities Foundation agreed to fund a three year project led by Professor Christopher Southgate, to research how best to prepare and train ministers to lead congregations in times of tragedy and trauma.  The small project team, of which I am pleased to be a part, brought together various specialisms: the Bible and Trauma, Christian theodicy, practical and pastoral theology, and embodied and systemic approaches to ministry.  As such we have been able to offer various training days and have published a book (for more info www.tragedyandcongregations.org.uk).

    It seems now more than ever it is important to understand how we respond in situations of trauma so we can help each other navigate our way through these uncharted waters.

    At the start of the lock-down stage in Britain our project team therefore gathered virtually (!) with other specialists in trauma studies to think about how the learning from our project applied to the Covid-19 crisis.  This resulted in a short document (see below), which was produced with ministers in mind, but can be used by anyone in leadership.

    Before reading it, it is important to remember that we are in it for the long haul with this present Covid-19 crisis.  We will need to build new things, new ways of being and of doing, new understandings and connections as we emerge from trauma.

    The thoughts that follow are offered to help navigate this process:

    Thoughts for Ministers during the First Phase of the Coronavirus Crisis

    We are offering these out of the work of a three-year project on trauma and tragedy in Christian congregations.

    First thought: context is everything.
    You will know better than anyone else how your particular community is likely to react.

    Second: this is a trauma to communities, the nation, the world.
    It’s not a shock-event like a fire or a terrorist attack, but slowly there has built, and is still worsening, a crisis that shatters people’s assumptions that the world is generally safe and reliable, and that all that we have worked for in businesses, churches and communities will be fruitful.  The loss of those assumptions, the breaking of connections between people, and the overwhelming of people’s ordinary resources – all of these are characteristic of trauma.

    Some of the wisdom that has been gained about trauma recently can help us:

    1. People’s whole selves are affected – they may feel all sorts of strange symptoms because the body is reacting to the fact that they are not safe. Emotions will be all over the place in surprising ways. Concentration may be difficult. Sharing this information – that it is normal to be up, down, energetic, exhausted, afraid – will help people to cope with it.
    2. People react very differently depending on different backgrounds and experiences, including past traumas.
    3. People respond best when they have clear, reliable information; when they have something to do – ‘agency’ of some sort; and when they are cared for in warm and authentic ways. Even phone calls can be reassuring.
    4. We make sense of things by being able to integrate the experience into an overarching story. But it is much too soon to assemble a coherent narrative out of all this. Even the process of meaningfully gathering together to lament what has been lost is very hard. The trauma is unfolding and there are many losses yet unrevealed

    Community responses to disaster typically show a ‘heroic phase’, full of energy and self-sacrifice, which burns itself out and is followed by a ‘disillusionment phase’, which may contain much mutual blame and suspicion. Only as the disillusionment phase loses its force can realistic, hopeful re-making take place.

    Many of the responses in communities can be celebrated and affirmed. It is worth ministers thinking about what, over and above the generous and heroic actions of many in the secular world, Christian story and practice can contribute. That is particularly true in this time approaching Holy Week and Easter. Public worship may be suspended, but these great transformative moments in the whole human story need some sort of marking.

    Lastly and in a way most importantly, this is a very confusing and draining time, a time when ordinary healthy rhythms are lost.  Trauma professionals are disoriented!

    You may be feeling in yourself and your body the impact of trauma – feeling low and anxious one day and hard to get your brain in gear, energetic the next, and all at a time when clergy are needing to be creative and adaptive in their approach. So self-care, attending to your own well-being, is vital. That includes the basics of good rest, eating, and exercise. It also includes having people you trust whom you can share with, and making sure you are in touch with them.

    With warmest wishes for every blessing in this strange time,

    Christopher Southgate, Carla Grosch-Miller and Hilary Ison, Tragedies and Christian Congregations Project 

    Download this Summary Sheet

    Tragedies and Christian Congregations ed. Megan Warner et al is published by Routledge
    and is available from c.c.b.southgate@ex.ac.uk for £20 plus postage.

     

     

     

     

  • Who’s Caring for our Nation’s Spiritual Health?

    by Jayne Ozanne, Editor of ViaMedia, Member of General Synod and Director of the Ozanne Foundation

    Jayne Ozanne new

    We’ve heard much from the government in recent days about the importance of looking after our physical and mental health. It’s one of the reasons we are still able to go outside and exercise and a primary reason why our parks and gardens are being asked to stay open for as much as they can.

    It’s good to know that there are voices at the ‘top table’ speaking out for our well-being in this way. But it has left me wondering who is championing guarding the nation’s spiritual health?

    Maybe it’s not seen as so important. Maybe it’s seen as a “nice to have” amongst those “who think like that”, but it certainly doesn’t seem to be taken as seriously as our mental or physical health.

    I recognise that most of us who are already part of worshipping communities know where we can now go for support and sustenance (even if some miss physical services in their local church), but what of those who don’t? What of those who are going through crises of fear, doubt, anxiety or loss – and just want a place to run to? Where can they find sanctuary? Where can they “find God”?

    A friend told me this week how she had seen an elderly man approach the main door of their local cathedral only to find it locked. He had banged on the heavy wooden door with his fists before putting his head in his hands and wandering off in tears, obviously upset. Had he just lost a loved one? Had he just heard some worrying news? We don’t know. But we do know that his over-riding memory will be of trying to connect with God at a time of need and finding himself “shut out”.

    Research has shown that in times of crises people “retreat” to their places of sanctuary, where they feel safe and secure. For many in our nation, research has also shown, that is still their local (established) church. It is a physical place where they know they can find spiritual sustenance and refuge – a place that has weathered various storms through the ages, from World Wars to Black Death plagues. It is often done at a time of great mental stress and anguish, such as that we are experiencing right now, and is a time when they are keen to reach out and connect with the Divine.

    Now of course we need to be extremely careful about social distancing and indeed of any transmission risks, but surely we can find a way of keeping our larger churches open with clearly marked spaces indicating where people can stand and pray? Rather like our local supermarkets which have clearly marked footprint stickers on the ground showing where people should stand to queue, surely we could mark just as clearly where people can kneel or stand to pray? Could we not then also have volunteers, or indeed paid church staff if we still have them, on hand to wipe down the handrails and pews afterwards to minimise infections. They could also monitor and restrict numbers entering as well as the time spent inside.

    To be clear, I am not suggesting we reinstate church services – that to me is a completely different matter. For those of us who already have a faith know that we can connect with our loving God without the need for walls or pews. No, here I’m talking about a way of enabling the “gateway” to remain open – the lifesaving rescue ring to be still visible on the shore during the heavy storm.

    I personally believe that our spiritual health holds the key to our mental, emotional and indeed physical health. We are body, mind, soul and spirit. To be so dismissive of the latter is, I fear, a tragedy and one that we will learn the impact of over many years to come.

    Please, I pray, may we think again and find a way of creating a sanctuary for people to run to in order to connect – perhaps for the first time – with their Creator God, the source of love and the giver of hope. It is, after all, Easter – where the message of new life is more poignant than ever.

  • Do We Believe in Life After Death? – A Response

    by the Revd Canon Simon Butler, Prolocutor for the Province of Canterbury and Vicar of St Mary’s Battersea

    Simon Butler

    In last Friday’s Church Times, Canon Angela Tilby wrote a typically provocative and thought-provoking piece entitled Do we believe in life after death?  In it she noted that, amid the many helpful and wise pieces of advice given by the Church of England about protecting life in the face of COVID-19, what appeared to be missing was any reference to life after death. She wondered whether we had abandoned belief in life after death, preferring the language of ‘building the Kingdom’ to ‘life after death.’ She concluded, “If the Church of England has no good news to spread about death, I wonder whether it has any good news at all.”

    A modest opinion piece can only of course raise the issue. But it has caused me to wonder, at the beginning of Holy Week, whether Angela is right. Do we still, in the Church of England, believe in life after death?

    The article rightly articulates our society’s dread of death and it seems very clear to me that, whether in its hedonistic rush to consumption, or in its pathological need to extend life in a perpetual sacrifice of quality over quantity, we face a challenge. It’s not that I believe that we have ever stopped believing in life after death (in fact, every indication is that the church of today is more theologically orthodox on this matter than it was a generation or two ago). Rather, it is because the Church had become used to operating in a world where death is squirrelled away to private rooms on hospital wards, and to the loving ministrations of the hospice movement and to professional chaplains. Clergy are fortunate indeed if they get to accompany people on their journey towards and into death, something which came home to me last year when faced with a series of untimely deaths in my congregation and community, one after another. Death hasn’t impinged on the Western public consciousness in quite the way it is doing now.

    History teaches us that such matters often come to the fore when faced with a global catastrophe; so, for example, prayers for the departed became a much hotter topic of doctrinal dispute and pastoral practice in the years following the First World War (itself overlapped by the Spanish Flu Pandemic). It may well be the case that, in the light of who knows how many deaths, we need to re-emphasise this central element of the Christian hope, to respond to the natural feelings which the poet Jane Mead describes as “our own wish for something to hold forever, some way to be, in the end, anything but alone and incomplete.”[1] Perhaps our recent history has been coloured by the relative absence of mass suffering, leaving us able to focus on working for a better world, ‘building the Kingdom’ and developing schemes, strategies and visions, all of which may be the luxuries of first-world privilege. Perhaps, when all this is over, we may rediscover a renewed need to focus on the preaching of eternal life in the face of death. Perhaps Angela is on to something. Time will tell.

    But, and this is where I think Angela might be allowing journalism to over-state her case, it is this doctrine of eternal life that motivates much action in the present crisis. Where perhaps our theology of salvation was lacking in previous generations (and a cursory examination of the theology of most traditional hymns and many modern worship songs will reveal this) is in the focus on eternal life as a matter about life-after-death and ‘going to heaven’ rather than a fully biblical one. So, N.T. Wright helpfully corrects this popular perception when he says that eternal life is not about life going on in a world beyond time itself. Instead, he says, that eternal life is about the coming of the new age, brought forward into the present by the death and resurrection of Jesus. The message of eternal life is not so much about life after death, but about the new creation coming into being in the present age. The Jewish idea of “tikkun olam”, literally “repairing the world” is much closer to the biblical view of a world transformed, ushered in by Jesus, about whose work – “building the Kingdom” – the church is called to be doing.

    For me, the most important thing I can do in this crisis is to focus on that, as much as possible, we in our local church are serving those in need, prioritising the relief of hardship, hunger and isolation, and serving those in illness and bereavement. I haven’t given much time since these strange days of separation began to wondering about the eternal destinies of my parishioners; it seems a luxury when there is good that can be done. Maybe I’m missing something. But what drives that is this sense that God, in Christ, has come into the world and, through his death and resurrection, ushered in the age that is to come, eternal life.

    What does that mean about life after death? I am content to my own future to God to decide. But I hope that, as I go about my service of others in these times, the opportunity will come to explain what it is that leads me to expend my energies in this way. It’s not a bland desire to do good, nor a lack of confidence in the Gospel of salvation. It’s an expression of the life that is to come, eternal life, that by faith in Christ and baptism we are incorporated into.

    [1] When the Zinfandel Pass their Seasons in Mute Rows, The Lord and the General Din of the World, p. 12

  • Into the Dark….

    by the Revd Canon Giles Goddard, Vicar of St John’s Waterloo and Member of the Co-Ordinating Group for the  “Living in Love and Faith” Project

    Giles Goddard

    I’ve spent the morning trying to work out how we can have our Palm Sunday Eucharist online. Yesterday I used my daily exercise to take a video of the walk from St Andrew’s, Short Street to St John’s, Waterloo – the route we take for our Palm Sunday procession. The roads were nearly empty and the quiet was palpable.

    We will show the video in our service on Zoom on Sunday, as our Director of Music, in Walthamstow, plays ‘Ride on, ride on in majesty,’ on the piano in his living room. People across the world – from South Africa, Singapore, the USA, Scotland, Wales and England – will join us as we begin this strangest of Holy Weeks with a virtual procession along empty streets.

    The psalms set for Morning Prayer this week have been uncanny in their precision.  For example, Psalm 55, vv 5- 7:

    My heart is disquieted within me, and the terrors of death have fallen upon me.

    Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and a horrible dread has overwhelmed me.

    And I said ‘O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I fly away and be at rest.

    For me, these past two weeks have been a strange combination of adrenaline and heartache. We have all had to adapt, fast, to a completely new situation, and there’s been a refreshing communal engagement as we have tried to share what works and what helps congregations to stay in touch and to care for one another.

    At the same time I have been listening to and supporting members of my congregation who are working in intensive care at St Thomas’ or who have close family members with COVID-19. And underlying all that has been the knowledge that Holy Week is fast approaching, and we are about to walk together into the darkness of the crucifixion story after the adrenaline of Christ’s entry into Jerusalem. As we remember the Passover on Maundy Thursday, perhaps we will also remember that first Passover – the plagues visited on the people of Egypt – the death of the firstborn sons and the liberation of the Hebrews.

    Reams have already been written about this new situation. I think we are all reflecting on the challenges and the opportunities which we face. For me, what’s been overwhelmingly clear is the absolute lack of favouritism which the virus is demonstrating. We are all at risk, whether we are a senior member of Government, an exhausted doctor, a thirteen year old boy in Brixton or refugees struggling to survive in a camp in Uganda. The virus shows no partiality. Those who are most affected are often those who are, for whatever reason, the weaker in society, perhaps because of age, or illness, or poverty – but this darkness which we face is the shared darkness of human vulnerability and death.

    On the other hand there is this extraordinary and shared upsurge in the recognition of our common humanity. In spite of some tales of hoarding and of bad behaviour, and in spite of the awfulness of some of the pronouncements from some of our world’s politicians, the overwhelming response across the world seems to have been one of caring, sharing and supporting – it seems, across all the artificial boundaries which are created by societies.  A breaking down of exclusion as we find ourselves physically distanced.

    I have a stronger and more direct sense now of being engaged in the sharing of the love of God than I think I have ever had – despite this weird physical separation. Crucifixion and resurrection feel very close and profoundly connected. Perhaps within the church as much as outside it, we are trying to connect to one another in love and mutual support. It’s very moving, and very unexpected – as George Monbiot wrote last week in The Guardian about the impact of the virus, the horror films got it wrong.

    So, for me, the big question is – how long will this love last, and what will we be able to take forward when we are the other side of this crisis? What can the church learn from all this, and how will we be changed? Will we find new ways to reach out to those who are most vulnerable, and break down the barriers which divide us?  Where will we find the resurrection, when, by God’s grace, the deaths are over?

    My prayers are with everyone as we learn anew how to experience Holy Week in a time of pestilence.

     

  • Covid-19, Theodicy and Common Grace

    by the Revd Canon Rosie Harper, Chaplain to the Bishop of Buckingham, Member of General Synod and Trustee of the Ozanne Foundation

    Rosie Haarper

    In the middle of last week, when we’d been physically distancing for three or four days this message popped up in messenger:

    ‘This is a one time prayer request!  I was asked to be part of a 1 million Lord’s Prayer chain to slow and stop Coronavirus. The idea is you pray and then pass the message to 8 other people. Let me know if you can’t, so we don’t break the chain. It took me 30 secs to do it. Thank you!’

    Apart from the basic principle that I never respond well to anything that tells me not to break the chain, it does make me ask all sorts of questions about what we think praying is about. Is the proposition here that if a million people were to pray the Lord’s Prayer, God would decide to slow down and stop the corona virus? Is that really any different from doing a rain dance in a drought?

    To be clear; Covid-19 is not malign. It is not evil. It just exists, and part of its nature is to spread and it is very successful at doing that. The cough that most people develop is ideally suited to getting the droplets passed on. You might want to argue that the conditions through which it emerged and transferred to humans had a moral dynamic to them, but it seems to me that to pray about a virus is no different to praying about a brick. That’s not prayer it’s superstition.

    So it doesn’t make any sense either to talk about God ‘allowing’ this virus for some greater purpose. There is a natural human search for meaning in the face of threat. We tell stories because the idea of something being random is hard to live with, but to tell a story in which God is in a battle with a virus and eventually wins, is at best nonsense and at worst blasphemous. Do we really believe that God allows Covid-19 to kill some people but not others? If so, how does God choose  – by how hard the relatives pray?  Personally I’d go down the road “that shit happens” – don’t blame God (or the Devil for that matter).

    Does this mean there is no point praying? Of course not!

    There are many reasons why we need to pray. Most crucially because prayer is a breeding ground for love and compassion. It settles our hearts, allows us to off load our anxiety and expand our horizon beyond self-obsession to the people around us.

    Which brings me to Common Grace.

    At one level it is a tricky one because it goes hand in hand with predestination.  However, painted with a broader brush it helps to talk about the extraordinary good that is in the heart of most people.

    As a child I always wanted to know why, if Christians were supposed to love God and love their neighbour, many of the non-Christians I knew were good and loving people and many of the Christians I knew were mean and judgemental. The answer from my Dad, who was also my vicar, was that goodness from God is given to all humanity.

    We have seen this rather gloriously over the past couple of weeks. Over 700,000 people volunteered to support the NHS. In every community there are schemes to ensure that no-one will be left without food or medicine. People are finding extraordinary ways of creating joyous and crazy ways of being community on-line. I’ve been very keen to encourage Christians to support local community ventures rather than set up alternative ‘holy’ versions.

    There is a profound challenge in the new dispensation. It teases out what we mean by “gospel”. It reveals what really matters to your heart and soul. It invites us to put our faith into action beyond the institution and get behind Jesus’ very simple and clear mission statement: love God and love your neighbour.

    So please stop twittering on about the church buildings being closed for a few weeks, or how valid your virtual communion is and, if you haven’t already done so, pick up the phone instead and have a chat with someone who is lonely. It might just be that this is our biggest mission opportunity ever. Instead of talking about the gospel we could actually be the gospel – no preaching, just loving.

     

    *Theodicy is the question of how God can exist when there is evil in the world, or a good reason or explanation for this

     

     

  • A Sermon for Our Time: Tears & Tombs

    by Wendy Bower, Trained Counsellor and Member of Littlemore Church, Oxford

    Wendy Bower

    I prepared this sermon a couple of weeks ago, when the world was a different place. However, the two things from the story of Lazarus (John 11) that drew my attention, seem even more relevant in the place we find ourselves in today.

    The first of these is ‘tears’. It was not just Mary and Martha who wept at the loss of their brother, this is one of the very few places in the Bible where we read that Jesus wept. Most of us would probably expect to see some tears shed at the death of a loved one, but I wonder if we have lost sense of the much wider language of tears and as a result we have stopped listening to what they have to tell us?

    Tears are the first language we learn when we enter this world. As a helpless baby we have no words with which to communicate and so our communication very often is in the form of tears. Many of you will know that I do some voluntary work as a counsellor, and one of the phrases that I hear frequently is “I don’t know why I’m crying”. It is only as we explore together the possible meaning of their tears that things begin to make sense and to shift. Tears flow from the most authentic place within us. The place that is hidden from others and maybe even from ourselves.

    David Runcorn has written a book entitled ‘The Language of Tears’, in which he says that one of the things that makes tears particularly significant is that they are a point at which our emotional, spiritual and bodily selves meet. Tears have huge significance for how we develop our understanding and consciousness, and our search for meaning and purpose in our lives. Yet even within the Church, awareness or discussion around a spiritual dimension to our tears is largely absent.

    In the Bible there is a particular expression of pain known as lament. It is an expression that is largely absent in Western culture and in the Church. Many of the Psalms start off on a note of lament: Psalm 4 ‘Answer me when I call, O God; Psalm 10 ‘Why, O Lord do you stand far off?; Psalm 13 ‘How long O Lord? How long will you hide your face from me?’; Psalm 55 ‘Attend to me and answer me’. The prophet Jeremiah was known as the ‘Weeping Prophet’ because he felt the distress of the people so deeply, and was so overwhelmed at times that he prayed for a greater capacity to weep.

    I have a very vivid memory of an event that took place when I was a young child, probably around the age of eight. My father was a very busy man – working, studying, a church leader, lay preacher and charity representative. When he could do so, he also loved to spend time gardening. He was a gardener of the old fashioned kind, in that he would clear his boarders every autumn and spring and replant with colourful displays. This particular Saturday afternoon he had planted out all the annuals that he had grown from seed and carefully nurtured in his greenhouse. He then went off to a charity fund raising event in the evening. While he was out we had the most spectacular storm, the like of which I have not seen since. The heavens opened and there were hail stones the size of golf balls that smashed glass panes in the greenhouse and decimated the garden. I remember going to my mother in floods of tears and asking her why God had let this happen, and that it was so unfair when my Dad was so busy doing things for God! My mothers response was to give me a telling off for daring to blame or question God! That response stayed with me well into adulthood. It wasn’t my Mum’s fault, she was only passing on what had been taught to her in the church we attended – a theology of submissive acceptance, but the result was that for many many years I lost the whole language of lament because I thought it was unacceptable to God.

    The book of lamentations in the Bible is probably the one that is least read, studied or preached on. It is an outpouring of raw grief, bewilderment and anger over the destruction of Jerusalem and the temple. It also has resonance with some of the distressing things we experience in the world around us today. The pain of the world has to go somewhere, it doesn’t simply disappear if we ignore it. What do we say to God when the world has gone wrong, when we experience those times of deep disappointment, fear or sorrow? Lamentation is a call to remember and stand alongside those who suffer, it is an acknowledgement that things and systems are broken. In fact it is more than an acknowledgement, it is an outcry. If we exclude lament we exclude the possibility of wrestling with our faith. We may not find it easy to ask the question why, but it does not go away. If we are going to be authentic in our relationship with God then there are going to be times when we protest and lament.

    There is increasing anger and protest in the world around us, and we might think those things have no place in our faith or in our church; that they are things that distance us from God. But if we look again at those places of anger and protest in the Bible we can see that they reveal a closeness to God, not a distance. Anger has no place in an apathetic relationship – why bother? Anger comes from a place of hurt within a relationship of love.

    It is often in that raw place of lament that we encounter God. We see this again in many of the Psalms that begin with lament but end with deliverance and praise. This is not the same as a happy ending. The circumstances which caused the lament may not have changed, but in the passion of honest tears we meet with God and hope is forged. We do not need to protect God, He is able to absorb our anger, our sorrow, and our pain.

    The lament in this story of Lazarus comes out of the closeness of the relationship that Mary & Martha had with Jesus. It was that close relationship that enabled them to admonish Jesus with the words, “if you had been here, our brother would not have died”. In other words, “where were you when we needed you”? Jesus had his reasons for being absent, nonetheless he was absent. It is at this point that we read that Jesus wept. How are we to interpret Jesus’ tears? I wonder if in part they were due to the terrible position he was in, of having the power to prevent the pain and loss that his friends were going through, and yet having to decide not to use that power, at that particular time, in the way that they wanted him to. When we lament the things that are broken and painful in our world, I imagine God weeps with us as he encounters again that same paradox of having the power to intervene but also having to decide, for reasons we may not understand, that he cannot use that power in the way we want him to.

    From the gospel reading we know that this particular story has a positive outcome and that Jesus calls Lazarus back to life from the tomb. However, it was the tomb that was the second thing which caught my attention in this gospel reading.

    For Lazarus the tomb was a literal physical place. Outside the tomb people were gathered to talk and weep, inside the tomb all was silent. Jesus cuts across both the noise and the silence and cries out with a loud voice ‘Lazarus, come out’. Lazarus hears the voice of Jesus calling him by name out of the tomb, and into freedom and life, and comes forth. There are other resurrection stories in the New Testament where it is the voice of Jesus that calls the dead one back to life.

    There are times in life when we find ourselves in a tomb. Not a literal one but a part of ourselves that feels empty, or bound, or voiceless, or perhaps even dead. It may even be that we are reluctant to leave our particular tomb – it has become familiar to  us, and who knows what might happen if we step outside it? Perhaps the current social distancing and isolation feels like a tomb to some. It is not always easy to believe and accept the promise that Christ makes to us, that he came to give us life in all its abundance. It is not always easy to make the choices that are the most life giving, especially in dark times. But know this, however, impenetrable we feel our tomb to be, it is no barrier for a saviour who shouts salvation through the rock.

    Lucy Winkett in her book ‘Our Sound is Our Wound’ puts it like this: the sound of resurrection is for us the same as it was for Mary Magdalene and for Lazarus and for Tabitha. It is our name yelled, whispered, implored, by a God who with unimaginable compassion … searches and pleads for us to emerge into the light of such love we have never thought of.

    So, there is a two fold invitation to us today. The first is, dare we be authentic and allow ourselves to voice our cries of lament before God and each other? The second is dare we listen to Christ’s voice calling us out from the tomb, and to say yes to the life that He offers us?

  • Space, Time, Prayer and Cranmer

    by the Revd Canon Dr Mandy Ford, Canon Chancellor at Southwark Cathedral and author of “God, Gender, Sex and Marriage”

    Mandy Ford

    https://zoom.us/j/2037804362

    I don’t even pretend to understand the physics of space-time. But I do understand the concept of time perception, because I experience it every day, just like you. And I’m finding that my perception of time has been doing some very interesting things in the past few days.

    Psychologists tell us that time appears to stretch when there is a lot going on and it does seem hard to believe that it is only a matter of days since we closed the doors of Southwark cathedral. We have been busy! We’ve had to make decisions about live streaming; managing funerals; worship and teaching in Holy Week, just for starters. And many of those decisions have been changed more than once as the guidance shaping them has changed in turn.

    And yet, as a colleague observed, while there seems to be a lot to do in responding to this new situation, there is also a sense that there is less to do, and so time seems generously available in ways that we don’t normally experience. With fewer meetings and less urgency about some activities, life is beginning to take on a different pace. We pray together an hour later than usual, which means more time in the morning or a bit of a lie-in. The importance of getting fresh air and exercise means a break mid afternoon for a walk, jog or cycle. There is time for a phone call to a family member or friend before supper.

    Many of us are recovering the ancient monastic wisdom of routine in every day life, shaping the day around prayer, refreshment, and work – with the work perhaps taking on a different quality and becoming more mindful as well. And in times of anxiety, it is good to remember the practice of the present moment, stopping to breathe and take account of the world around us when there is any danger of being overwhelmed by sadness or fear.

    Time (and space) has collapsed in another way as I’ve been more conscious of sharing the experience of Christians across history and across the world, for whom fear has been, or is, an integral part of every day life. And so I found myself thinking about the words of prayer and comfort we turn to instinctively at such times.

    On 21 March, the Church of England remembered Thomas Cranmer the author of the Book of Common Prayer, whose words have nurtured Christians in Britain and around the Anglican Communion for centuries. While Cranmer wrote the English prayer book in times of crisis, responding to the needs of the Church of England suddenly severed from Roman Catholic structures by Henry VIII’s urgent need of an heir, it took over a hundred years before the Book of Common Prayer became the established prayer book of the Church in England. Since that time they have been read, learned and prayed, through war and civil disturbance, plague and fire, through times when the church was barely functioning and through the great Victorian Evangelical and Catholic revivals.

    While we may chose to put aside some of its provision – I have never been asked in my twenty years of parish ministry to “church” a woman after childbirth for example – the Prayer Book remains a masterpiece of Anglican compromise. By providing words for prayer, but not instructions about how they are to be used, Cranmer enabled Anglicans of many different persuasions to pray together, and preserve a sense of collective identity through the idea that what we pray is what we believe (lex orandi, lex credendi).

    Prayer book language matters not only for church goers, as Cranmer’s beautiful poetic prose echoes in our daily language whenever we use those little phrases; “dust to dust” “miserable sinners”, “the face of the enemy”, “vile bodies”, “the secrets of our hearts”.

    We are called upon to proclaim the gospel afresh to every generation and it has been exciting to observe the plentiful demonstrations of the hashtag #newwaysofbeingchurch, as colleagues respond to this new situation. At the moment we are sharing online morning prayer in Southwark with as many as thirty people, many more than join us in the cathedral each morning! But, I’m conscious as we do this, of the telescoping of time, as we draw on deep wells of tradition, maintaining the rhythm of prayer that is hundreds of years old.

    So, for those of us who long for the Church of England to do new things for LGBTI+ people in our communities and churches, through and beyond Living in Love and Faith, what might feel different for us in the coming months?

    When we meet again, will we be frustratedly straining at the starting blocks, wanting to make up for “lost time”? Or will our enforced period of spiritual and physical retreat hone our sense of history and our capacity for patience?

  • Flattening the Curve

    by the Ven Peter Leonard, Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight, Chair of OneBodyOneFaith and Member of General Synod

    peter leonard

    I am sure you will be familiar with the statements about ‘flattening the curve’.

    I am of course referring to the curve of coronavirus infections and I hope you are reading this at home, unless you are a key worker, so that we can support the NHS and do our very best to help them cope with current health crisis. I’m working from home, which as an Archdeacon is more straightforward then many jobs, supporting parishes across the Isle of Wight to care for their communities and continue the work of prayer and worship albeit not publicly.

    There is of course another curve which I am trying to flatten, the curve of my mental health. Those of you who know me or follow me on social media will know I have a history of depression which, thanks to therapy and the support of friends, is manageable. For those in a similar position to me this management becomes critical as the mental health curve fluctuates up and down like some reckless roller coaster.

    I wake up and do a work out at home  – this feels good and I am relatively calm. I watch the news and anxiety levels increase. I pray and the calming presence of Christ restores peace. I check social media and the peace dissipates. I speak to some of the amazing people in the churches in my archdeaconry and peace is restored along with hope. Someone phones me in a panic and their anxiety feeds mine. Whether you struggle with your mental health or not this pattern is probably very familiar right now.

    If you are expecting me to list a series of helpful suggestions as to what to do during the current crisis which is expected to last for some time yet, then you are about to be disappointed. There are more than enough self-proclaimed ‘experts’ broadcasting on social media telling us what we should and shouldn’t be doing. Personally, I find that unhelpful and you do not need me to add to them. Instead I am going to share with you the single most useful thing for me at the moment.You do YouYou do what works for you in the current situation, within the Government guidelines obviously!

    I started last week wondering what it meant to be the Archdeacon of the Isle of Wight in this unchartered territory. What did it mean to be Chair of OneBodyOneFaith when our members will be concerned and possibly self-isolating? How should I be a priest, a father a partner? How should I behave and what could I do? Should I have rushed out and bought toilet rolls for all my neighbours? Should I have set up a TV studio in my office and started broadcasting inspirational messages across the airwaves?

    In a fast-changing environment I guess I am still working out the answers to these questions and they are changing as fast as I start to grasp them. The truth is, with or without a national health crisis the thing I do best, the thing I know how to do and can be is Peter. So that is what I am doing, and it looks slightly different to what doing and being Peter looked like a month ago.

    Firstly, I have rediscovered the power of personal prayer, not that my prayer is so good that I am changing the world around me, but that prayer is changing me. It is enabling me to be calmer, more peaceful and thus to be more useful to my family, friends and neighbours. Prayer is a stone which casts significant ripples. Peter prays right now.

    Secondly, I am working out at home rather than the gym. As an extrovert, who gets his energy from others, this is a big deal for me. But the home workouts are helping me feel better about myself and my situation. Do I work as hard as when I visit the gym? No. Given the third thing below will I gain some weight? Quite possibly. Does that matter – not in the great scheme of things and I can tackle it at some point if I choose to. Peter works out and doesn’t add guilt to his curve.

    Thirdly, biscuits! Well, strictly speaking tea and biscuits. I had forgotten how immensely comforting tea and biscuits are. Alongside drinking lots of tea and eating biscuits I am also baking. I find baking incredibly therapeutic and so that too brings a sense of calm and well-being. Peter finds time to do the things that make him feel good.

    Fourthly, resisting the pressure which others put on me, or more likely I put on myself, to do and behave in certain ways. There are plenty of amazing people broadcasting worship and prayers and reflections. I do not need to add to it. I was overcome with hope and peace and pride this morning as I visited more churches in my patch than I have ever done before – via live streams, recordings, podcasts, prayer leaflets and emailed liturgies. All from the comfort of my study. Peter receives from others.

    Fifthly, connecting with my neighbours via a WhatsApp group has been wonderful. I have had conversations about supporting each other, shared jokes and even been passed a recipe for hand sanitizer made from sexual lubricant! No, I am not posting this to my Facebook page! Peter does what he can to help others.

    Be the person God created you to be in these testing times. Do what brings you hope and peace and calm and joy. You do you.