A Sermon by the Bishop of St Albans

Blessing of Oils and Act of Commitment to Ministry

St Albans Cathedral: Maundy Thursday 2006

In 1975, the Church of England produced a report called Alternative Patterns of Training - for those who love detail, it is report numbered GS 265. On page 28, paragraph 95, it said: 'We recommend the establishment of ten regional theological centres.' It was also in 1975 that our own diocese produced a discussion paper, entitled The Ordained Ministry of Those in Secular Employment. It was edited by Alan Wilkinson, who was Warden of Verulam House and Director of Auxiliary Ministry Training. Alan's paper opened with this statement:

God created the church to be a priestly and ministering community in the world. Every member of the church, by baptism and confirmation, has a share in its priestly and ministering work.

Twenty-eight years later, in GS 1496 (note the number), a report was produced entitled Formation for Ministry within a Learning Church, known colloquially as the Hind report. Proposal 6 states: 'We recommend the creation of regional theological training partnerships' and in paragraph 3.19, on page 31, we read:

Within the gifted community God calls all into discipleship and all Christians are called to represent Jesus Christ by virtue of their baptism into his death and resurrection.

I have drawn your attention to these reports, GS 265 and GS 1496, to illustrate a particular feature of our Anglican theological style. It is based upon a kind of holy conversation, on sweet and reasonable discourse - well, some of the time. I could have chosen other examples to illustrate what I mean but, essentially, we do much of our theology in conversational mode. We have conversations with fellow Anglicans, conversations with other Christians, conversations with the world, conversations with other faiths and, of course, conversations with scripture. And it all takes time.

As a style of doing theology, it has much to recommend it - it is essentially humane and pastoral. It is a style which is echoed in our parochial structures: in parish magazine articles ('Dear Friends, Lent is with us again ...); in study groups; in sermons; it is there in our pastoral duties. And all of this has a long history. I have a book I treasure, published in 1822, which contains instructions for the parish priest. For example:

The attentive pastor ... will not wait until he is summoned [to the sick] but on the first intimation that one of his flock is indisposed, he will consider that there his duty calls and thither he will repair.

It is possible to trace a similar pastoral theological style in the works of Hugh Latimer in the sixteenth century; his famous phrase is:

For preaching of the gospel is one of God's plough works and the preacher is one of God's ploughmen.

Or Thomas Cranmer's words about our Christian duty to care for others:

Christ is in all things. Every Christian man to another is Christ himself, and thy neighbour's need hath as good right in thy goods, as hath Christ himself, which is heir and lord over all. And look, what thou owest to Christ, that thou owest to thy neighbour's need.

These are some of our Anglican theological roots; our ways of doing theology, embedded in life as it is, expressed with firmness and courage and compassion. (Don't forget that both Latimer and Cranmer were burnt at the stake; their theology was created in a time of intense political turbulence and danger.)

Well, so much for our Anglican ways of doing theology - conversational and pastoral. I have drawn your attention to them because those ways, which I consider to be inherently gracious, are coming under real stress and strain at the moment. And why should this be? There is a constant demand from outside the Church for clarity and certainty - what does the Church of England say about this subject or that? The demand also comes from other Churches; because of ecumenical dialogue, we are required to speak our theology with greater coherence and sharper precision. But it is not only ecumenism that leads to the search for precision, so, too, does our encounter with other faiths. Similarly in major ethical issues, what exactly do we say, what exactly do we believe? The pressure for exactitude and certainty from outside the Church and from within it is now more intense that ever: 'Now, Bishop, what exactly do you think of x, y or z?'

I venture to suggest that those external and internal pressures are beginning to have a serious and potentially damaging impact, because they are forcing some of us to react in one of two ways: we react either by creating local Churches which are 'hyper-real' (and I'll explain what I mean in a moment) or by commodifying the Gospel. What do I mean by hyper-reality? (It's a phrase used by some critics in the worlds of art history and literature). Hyper-reality is that state of an institution, or of a concept, in which the relationship between the institution, or the concept, and reality is stretched to breaking point.

Disneyland is the classic example of hyper-reality. Here is a world (within the Disneyland gates) where princesses live in fabled castles and where greed and envy, dirt and grime, simply do not exist. On the one hand, there is Disneyland and on the other, there is reality as we normally understand it. The question I have is whether some of our Churches, either from internal or external pressures, are entering the realms of hyper-reality - of creating a world with its own ways of working, its own rules, its own sealed system, in which relationships with other churches are of the entirely yes/no system, that is, 'Yes, they are one of us' or 'No, they are not.' Conversational theology is not on the agenda.

That is one way of dealing with the pressures. Another way, and it's not unrelated, is to commodify Jesus, to commodify the Gospel. It is often phrased like this: 'How can we make the Gospel relevant to our society?' The Gospel is seen as a commodity - and all we have to do is find the right means of packaging and the right means of delivery.

I believe that hyper-reality should be avoided. I believe that commodifying the Gospel is not what we are about. We are, and must remain, in conversational mode; and why? Because it takes the insights of other people seriously; because it assumes that I have much to learn, as well as to give; because it is properly hesitant and open to the truth; because it is about the struggle and joy of relationships, and because it is the way in which God predominantly relates to us.

I have no doubt that the pressures upon all of you either to move into hyper-reality mode, or commodification mode, are intense; but on this day of all days, when we can see our own humanity exposed in all its weakness (have not each one of us betrayed Christ? - have not each one of us shied away from being washed by Christ? - have not each one of us denied Him?), our task is not to avoid or evade by entering our hyper-real silos but, instead, to wait honestly upon Christ and honestly upon each other. On this day of all days, when we can see the shape of the cross looming through the darkness, we have to recognise, surely, that this kind of death, this kind of Christ, really is not capable of being commodified. On this day, of all days, when we can witness the serving, wounded Risen Christ, coming towards us out of the tomb, we need to remember that He greets us not with exactitude but with the beginnings of a new conversation ... He speaks our name ... He calls us not into confessional definition of doctrine but into a living relationship with Himself.

Brothers and sisters, we need each other in our shared humanity; we are here to serve God's world in our weakness and with our conversations; we are here because God, in His abundant, overflowing and overwhelming mercy, has opened a conversation with us - and has asked us to continue in that relationship. That kind of self-effacing beauty and self-giving love is at the heart of all we do. May God bless our lives and may God bless all conversations - for Jesus' sake. Amen.