Article
- Date:
- Sunday 24th November 2024
Year B, Christ the King (The Sunday next before Advent) - Place:
- St Peter's, Woodmancote
- Service:
- Matins
- Readings:
- [passage=Daniel 9-10,13-14/]
John 18.33-37
Our two Readings for the Feast of Christ the King offer contrasting views. The Reading from the Book of Daniel reminds us of the "Almighty God" of the Prayer Book whereas the Reading from John reminds us of the Lamb of God. The first reinforces the belief of the authors of the Prayer Book in the "Divine right of kings" which has now dwindled from the dictatorial to the ceremonial, whereas the second brings to mind the Servant King deliberately putting himself at the disposal of a murderous Roman state.
This is an opportunity to think about the exercise of power, particularly in our Church and this immediately brings to mind, for me, two recent events.
On the 5th November America voted decisively for Donald Trump in spite of his egregious, well known moral failures. They might have thought of the ethical tangles of immigration and reproductive rights but, in the end, they held their nose and voted for putting bread on the table and gas in the tank. Now I happen to think, as an idealist, that they should have put personal considerations aside and voted for the common good, but the real sadness is that a millionaire megalomaniac isn't going to put bread on their tables and gas in their tanks. But the root of the problem is that poor white men in particular, with no College education, felt rejected by the elite; they had no time for liberal ethical agonising over women's rights, the status of trans people and which theory of creation is taught in schools.
This is very similar to the crisis of decline in numbers and influence we are undergoing in our Church. We have been agonising over sex and gender issues for half a Century when what a desperate and bewildered world needs is the Good News of Jesus.
The second event is the forced resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury. On the surface, this looks as if it is related to the first because of the apparent sexual connection but the offence here was not excessive sexual desire but excessive power. For a complex combination of causes the Church has become accustomed to exercising power over our lives, primarily, but by no means exclusively, in the area of sexual conduct: first, the early Church ranked the spiritual over the physical and then ranked celibacy over family life; then in the Middle Ages Priests with the power of Eucharistic Consecration exercised moral power in the Confessional; then, at the Reformation, both sides used the civic powers to impose behavioural conformity, particularly in the three areas of doctrine, hierarchical rule and sexual conduct. They were deeply suspicious of spirituality and love because they are impervious to external control.
If we are to remain as an Episcopal rather than a Congregational Church we are going to have to do something about the Episcopacy. If I were to get us to construct a word cloud relating to Bishops, I wonder how strongly "servant" would feature. All we really know of our Bishops is ceremonial Confirmation when the Church is not sure whether or not this is a Sacrament, the occasional Pastoral Letter or theological clarification and, very occasionally, the report of a speech in the House of Lords. How diligently are our Bishops looking after their clergy and leading and teaching us? Do we really think these people in their fine garments resemble shepherds in any way?
For the past fifty years the trend to transform Bishops into bureaucrats and managers has been relentless, duplicating the mistake of civic society which promotes the best nurses, policemen and teachers into offices in order to reward their good work and, at the same time, kills it. This bureaucratisation is a natural reaction to decline, it forces us onto the defensive, prioritising keeping what we have; but we are not an office of Government but a Spirit-led Church in the service of Christ's mission. We are not to imitate the civic power but to challenge it, not by aggression but in humility. We are not to think of the King in Daniel but the King standing before Pilate.
The entanglement of Western Christianity in private behaviour is so ingrained that we hardly question it but it has been an unmitigated disaster and, if it persists, it will be our undoing. Our unique selling point, what we believe we were created for, is to love God and our neighbour - that is a good working definition of living a holy life - and of that we need the constant support of God in Trinity and each other. Non-believers follow ethical codes and because they do not have God in Church their efforts to lead good lives are even more heroic than ours. So we should stick to the corporate mission of spreading the Good News of Christ so that the heroically alone, the distressed and the bewildered who live without Christian hope, can be strengthened in their efforts to live holy lives buoyed by Christian hope, not because right living has anything to do with salvation but because it is our created purpose.
If we are to be happy and effective Christians we simply have to stop moralising for three reasons: first, we do not know what hands others have been dealt and how well they are playing them; secondly, we are incapable of drawing a sensible line between sickness and sin; and, finally, we do not know about the relative weight of nature and nurture in the way each of us lives. But we do know that every human being is made in the image of the Incarnate Christ, that each is therefore entitled to our equal concern and respect and that God's mercy, not our censure, is the ultimate arbiter.
And so, let us at least take a holiday in Advent from moralising and focus in our believing and in our not yet believing communities in Christian hope made real for us in the Incarnate Christ, the Lamb of God, the Saviour of the World.