52 hours in A&E

The other day I was walking down a familiar footpath alongside some of the glorious Fenland drains near where I live. There was a strange smell. It was slightly putrid. Smelt like sewage. As I gazed into the water I noticed it wasn't exactly crystal clear, more like some kind of beef broth, only not quite as appetising. And then the cause of this putrid mess was revealed. A sewage outlet pipe just along the drain had opened and half the effluent of the town was spilling in. There is no doubt that the management of our water system in this country is broken. The privatisation of the companies which run our water network have often been blamed in recent times for the state that we now find ourselves in. “Surely”, we are told, “public ownership is the answer”. A system where we, the public, have direct control and shareholders’ greed no longer holds sway. 

This week has been a rather challenging week for me. Another challenging week in a year of challenging weeks. Priestly ministry takes its toll. The corporate wing of the church has created a system that has overloaded and overburdened the very people whose calling it is to show the world another way, a more prayerful way. The answer to all our problems always starts and ends in prayer. Why is it that we so easily buckle to the temptation to push it to the periphery? 

The institution's answer to its clergy crisis isn't to address the fundamental drivers that are driving people away and making the priestly calling difficult for so many to hear.  The institution has now decided that the future no longer lies in local priestly ministry. The future is a proliferation of lay ministry at a local level, apparently forgetting our inherited call to apostolic succession, threefold order, and the very platforms on which the Church has been built since its origin. 

Now, to be clear, this is not an attack on lay ministry. I have been a principle training officer for lay ministry in two dioceses and have taught in four. I consider lay ministry to be a healthy and vital part of the rich menagerie of ministry. A diverse number of lay ministries are vital to provide the local church with the energy and capacity it needs. The point is that the priestly calling is very different, essential and without it the church simply cannot grow. It is simply folly for corporate elites to have decided to try and strategically outmanoeuvre the Spirit's call to the three-fold ordering of the Church, simply to massage the budget or so that they do not to have to address the inherent cultural issues that they themselves have created and which are driving good priests away. No good can come of it. And let's be clear, the 21st century corporatism of the church has inflicted massive damage. 

Going back to my challenging week. Alongside all the pressures of my role which are largely the result of a combination of previous poor culture and under resourcing, My wife has been taken suddenly and seriously ill. So, on Monday, we found ourselves in the Accident and Emergency Department of our local hospital. A whole day spent sitting in chairs, being seen by different consultants, numerous tests, all which came back clear. So, she was sent home with no diagnosis. If she felt better after Tuesday, she could return to work as normal. 

Then at work, the pattern repeated itself. So, we found ourselves once again in A&E, sat in a chair, numerous tests, beautifully caring staff. But consultant after consultant after consultant, all with differing opinions, some of whom listened, some who were frankly just rude and clearly only wanted to get the waiting list down. Different possibilities. Seven more collapses in eight hours at hospital, some in front of consultants. They loosely termed these absent seizures, but there still was no clear diagnosis. 

Two hours later...

“Well, we'll refer you to a specialist. Go home and you'll receive a letter in the post. It might take a month.”

A month of collapsing every few hours. A month of further possible seizures. That didn't sound very satisfactory to me. So, I requested a second opinion (my wife was unable to because she wasn't yet fully lucid). So, one referral later and two more episodes in front of consultants and they decided that she needed a bed urgently. “Very urgently!”

The consultant told the nurse in front of us that sitting in a chair was dangerous to her… and for others. Yet, no bed was forthcoming. For 52 hours she was forced to sit in a chair, whilst various members of staff claimed there were no beds.

“There were beds.” Let's be clear, there were beds, and there were trolleys, but the bureaucracy had got in the way of the caring.

This is a public health service in public ownership. And yet people are being forced to sleep on chairs for 52 hours even when they have significant neurological conditions, all because the systems don't allow for beds to be found.

At one stage, my wife was transferred out of A&E and we thought, wonderful, just 36 hours it is then! Only to be chaperoned into a day ward, which used to have beds, but where a bureaucrat had decided that it's better to fill that ward with chairs to fit more people in. Presumably, this pretence was all so that they could say that the patient had been moved out of A&E.

My wife did finally get into a ward and we're still waiting for that diagnosis. One day she will be visited by a consultant who shows the patience and time to care and explain, and my wife’s day will be eased. The next day she will see someone who doesn't want to be there, won't let her speak, rudely cuts her off midsentence when she is trying to describe her symptoms, offering as his excuse that he does not have much time to spend with each patient. 

There was one beautiful moment when, looking at my collar, a senior clinician said to me - "your job is to pray!" She then turned to my wife, pointed at the cross around her neck and said "this beautiful thing around your neck means something, you must believe in its power, and Jesus will guide us to do the rest". A beautiful moment of God breaking through, in the actions of a remarkable individual. Such encounters matter. 

My point is not primarily to complain about the National Health Service - we know that it is in crisis that no-one seems to want to grasp. My point is much broader. Something has gone very wrong with 21st century corporatism. It matters not very much whether it's in public ownership or private ownership. Our corporate elites, be them chief medical officers, bishops, CEOs, so often seem to forget that their service, whatever it is they may be providing, is worthless without the person. The person is central to every service. The frontline experience matters. We can throw all the money we like at these institutions, but unless we address the cultural illnesses and malaise that puts greed and ambition before people, we may as well throw money down the drain where it can join the rest of the floatsome bobbing down the river. 

Until the natural world is treated with the dignity it deserves. Until the individual is held up as a person who deserves to be valued, heard and loved. Then our corporations will continue to be infected with this awful plague.

And before those of us in the jolly Church of England get on our high horse, let's remind ourselves what parishes and clergy face every day.

According to the most recent figures, a third more clergy have resigned from post due to working conditions than have retired in a year. 

That's the first time in history. And we must remind ourselves that we live in a moment when retirements are already at an all-time high because those who were ordained in the 1960s and 70s are now coming to the end of their working-life.

One third more! Resigning office because of poor work conditions, unreasonable workload and expectations, a lack of employment protections and being driven into hardship because of poor remuneration and associated issues. 

The water system seems as broken as its pipes.

The NHS as poorly as its patients. 

The Church in England as damaged as many of its priestless churches. 

On my drive home after three days in a chair, I popped into the petrol station. Now, here are businesses that seem to be thriving! Petrol prices have soared as a result of the war in Iran. Apparently, BP, Shell, ESSO, have all returned record profits.., on the back of household hardship.

And so, it would seem that the companies that run our petrol pumps are also pretty broken.

The issue with these corporations is not necessarily whether they're in public or private ownership. The problem is the kind of corporate greed that we have allowed to develop in the UK these last 20 or 30 years. The kind of corporate greed that doesn't see value in staff, doesn't see value in customers. It doesn't value people and it doesn't value the natural world.

It only values exploitation for profit.

Meanwhile, the world gets greyer. The anxiety levels of the average person escalate. And life gets more difficult.

I wonder how much lower our benefits bill would be if we had beds. And if we took the time to listen so that we could diagnose conditions correctly the first time, access treatment more quickly and remove some of the anxiety and stress that causes so many secondary conditions. And allow people to live life in all its fullness.

52 hours sitting on a chair in A&E gives you time to think.

But, I wouldnt recommend it! 

 

Christmas Eve/Day 2024

Today is the most transformative the world has known. It happens every year, and yet every year we learn new things about love and joy through our interactions with each other.  

It is my overwhelming wish that you may all have a very merry Christmas. Perhaps a few cheesy jokes might help…

What do you give a lemon that needs medical attention? Lemon-aid.

My nephew used to be convinced that Fr Christmas was a Polar Bear, so one year I asked him why. He responded, “because Santa has claws”.

Seriously though, did you know ‘the word ‘merry’ derives from an Anglo-Saxon word which literally means ‘valiant’, ‘illustrious’, ‘great’ or ‘mighty’. Therefore, to be ‘merry’ was not merely to be mirthful, but to be joyously strong and gallant. In Shakespeare we hear of fiercely courageous soldiers who were called ‘merry men’. Strong winds were ‘merry gales’. Fine days were marked by ‘merry weather’. So when we wish each other a ‘Merry Christmas’, we are exhorting one-another to take joy in faith, to take heart, to stand fast!’[1]

History is important. We either learn the lessons of history or we are condemned to repeat them. Before the birth of Jesus, compassion, empathy, forgiveness were all seen as weakness. If you were in a position of power and you exhibited these traits, then you showed yourself as a weak leader.

This all changes with the birth of Jesus. Jesus turned the model for good leadership on its head. Two thousand years on, and the world is still working this out. We mustn’t give up on the fight. What we see in Jesus is that giving and serving others sits at the very heart of eternity – that there is no better way to be in-tune with God.

As Saint Augustine of Hippo put it: “if we believe that God has given us everything, then giving will be our way of living.”[2] “If we believe that God has given us everything, then giving will be our way of living.”[3] As Bishop Graham Tomlin reminds us, ‘When we give we do something cosmically and ethically very significant - we are in step with the very heartbeat of the universe.’

‘Giving is good for society and for us as individuals. It is good for the needy. It is good for the wealthy. It is good for all of us. However much we own, much or little, giving away some of it is good for us. It emboldens and enriches the soul.’[4]

Father Arturo Sosa SJ, the Superior General of the Jesuits (formally known as the Society of Jesus) reminds us that ‘the birth of the poor and humble Jesus was a decisive, silent revolution that engendered a fundamental transformation of humanity.’[5] That transformation revolved around the realisation that every individual held equal dignity and that God was just as present in the other person as he was in ourselves. To serve another person was to serve God himself.

Tomlin continues: ‘At the heart of the Christian idea of Christmas is the greatest gift of all - where God gave himself to humankind as a crying baby in an obscure town on the edge of the Roman Empire. As a result, the Christian celebration of Christmas has always involved the giving of gifts. Yet giving is not just for Christmas. When you search the Internet for the right gift, when you make a seasonal donation to a charity, you are echoing the very heart of reality, creating a habit that goes way beyond Christmas, making generous giving a way of life.’[6] You are modelling the life of God, because that is just what God has done through the birth of his Son.

As Christians, the call to give is at the root of our calling. As we gaze into the eyes of the precious Christ-child born in the Manger, those beautiful piercing eyes stare back into the centre of our souls, and what does he see?

Does he see a humble, generous soul or someone who takes whatever they can get?

What a privilege it is that so many of our young people should have been given access to a level of education unimaginable a few hundred years ago. How fortunate we are that through the deepening of our learning and the development of our industries we should have been given access to jobs, comforts, provisions and healthcare unheard of ever before in human history. What is our response? Are we grateful and humbled? Or do we expect and demand even more?

As difficult as it is for our ears to hear, and as politically and commercially inconvenient as it may be to acknowledge, we must not lose sight of the fact that Jesus was born into a scenario not so very different from so many we see around our world today – a family in poverty, forced to travel to an unfamiliar town, where his parents relied on the generosity of strangers to give them the most primitive shelter. All this in a war-torn middle eastern country that was under occupation from an invading force, whilst all the time the local ruler contrived to persecute and kill the Holy Family to appease his own insecurities and ego.

The shocking news of Christmas is that God took our human nature, even the most difficult bits, and hallowed it. As a result, our lives become hallowed too. Our lives become holy.

At Christmas, we meet Jesus with straw for his pillow and stubble for his bed. The raucousness of the marketplace outside and the animals within provide his only lullaby and comfort. It is disordered and challenging because that’s where real life happens. He is the eternal gift of God the Father to humanity, yet he is received into the backstreets of this world not its palaces. This King of all Creation is born out of the very core of eternity into the messy centre of the world he comes to serve and save, so that in our darkest moments, when we have nowhere else to turn, he can meet us in that darkness and brings us home.

The birth of Jesus shows us that at the core of our human condition is the need to serve others and to give generously from the abundance that we have, no matter how great or small our resources might be.

So have a very Merry Christmas, take joy in faith, take heart, stand fast! Let this be the legacy of Christmas 2024 etched on your memory.

May the birth of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, encourage kindness, love, hope and steadfastness in your hearts, your families, your communities, churches and our world this Christmas.

Amen.

 

R. T. Parker-McGee 2024

 

---

[1] Taken from George Grant, Facebook, 2019

[2] Augustine of Hipp

[3] Augustine of Hipp

[4] Quote (and adapted) from Graham Tomlin’s Christmas message in The Financial Times, 14^th December 2024

[5] Father Arturo Sosa SJ, Christmas Message, 2024

[6] Quote (and adapted) from Graham Tomlin’s Christmas message in The Financial Times, 14^th December 2024

Advent 3 2024 – “You Brood of Vipers!”

 

Advent 3 2024 – “You Brood of Vipers!”

It will not have escaped your attention these past few weeks that the Church of England it's in a bit of a pickle. It has been going through some struggles, not least in understanding what it’s leadership should look like. Amidst it all, many feel that one lone voice seems to have been crying out in the wilderness - that of the Bishop of Newcastle.

It has been interesting to observe how brave she has been in calling out the institutional elitism that is at the heart of so much that seems to so many to be wrong, demanding radical root-and-branch culture change at the top of the institution. It has also been interesting to witness some of the backlash she has faced as a result - not least from some of her colleagues. I find this especially troubling given the general institutional silence over the direct issues at hand. It seems many are more concerned for with their own standing than addressing the corporate culture that has corroded the higher echelons of the Church of England for so long. This all raises some probing questions about how the Church should be led.

So, how are those called to lead the Church to understand their roles, and how can they inhabit them in a healthier way so that they are a Christ-like presence in leading God's people?

It is interesting, isn’t it, that at this moment and as we begin stepping up our preparations for receiving Christ at the celebration of his birth in just 10 days’ time, the Sunday Lectionary gives us John the Baptist – this lone voice crying in the wilderness. And how does his proclamation begin? “You brood of vipers!” Later on in the reading, we are told that this is Good News. I must say, on first hearing that doesn’t sound much like good news. Perhaps, we need to consider the wider narrative?

As we discover later in the passage, some were challenged and changed by John’s ministry. Some would oppose it and deal with John just as they had the many prophets before him who had said things those in places of power had not liked to hear.

“You brood of Vipers!”

Sometimes it's difficult for us to hear the truth, especially if it requires from us a response which demands we change or one which challenges our reputation and status. Truth can easily get thrown out of the window in an attempt at self-preservation. Sometimes it is hard when other people are sent to us by God to proclaim the truth they see in a prophetic way. How are we meant to receive that?

“You brood of Vipers!”

It can be difficult for us to receive. It's all too easy to become defensive, resistant or project blame elsewhere – often the prophet themselves, the whistle-blower, the accuser or the victim. It is too easy to become obstructers of the truth rather than receivers and bearers of it.

“You brood of Vipers!”

It is abundantly clear that the Church of England must change, and its hierarchy has to listen. More than that, we desperately need a new form of hierarchy than we have witnessed these past few years. We need people in senior positions who strive to be pastors to the Pastors and lovers of the people. Individuals of compassion and care. More of those who have grown up on our council estates, in working class communities and have seen the struggles first-hand. And certainly, we need the majority to have done significant time in parish and front-line ministry. We need parish priests and chaplains as the next generation of bishops, not strategists, corporate elites and conglomerate CEOs. The only kind of ‘top-down’ should be the direction of money. Decision making must become ‘bottom-up’. What we know about Church growth is that the long-term growth of the Church happens at a local level. It happens when priests are present, active and available in their communities – when priests are praying for and with the people they have been called to serve and leading them on in a missional way, so that those very people become emboldened and empowered to engage in the mission of God in their communities, being able to explore their own callings under God and under the guidance of a leader who cares for them. That is how the Church grows.

Yet, we must avoid the kind of hero worship and short-termism that we have seen strangle the Church in the last decade or so – that way always leads to disaster – a kind of boom and bust economics of mission. The only hero here is Jesus. It can never be any pioneer minister, vicar, bishop or archbishop. All must point to Christ.

At a much deeper level, this reveals is the need for us, both as individuals and as a community, to keep pondering deeper our understanding of the Church. The Church on a purely human level, as a human institution, will always fail us, because the Church as an institution is of human design. It doesn’t matter how many reforms and changes we make, human institutions will always let us down. So, we must sit lightly to the institutional aspects of the Church whilst continuing to hold it to account and change it for the better.

Yet, as much as we may need structures to make the whole thing creak along, we are not here to worship or be a part of an institution actually. We do need structures to manage our earthly resources, keep the buildings standing and to ensure that we have ministers to deploy at the local level. All of that takes organising in a materialistic sense. Sadly, however, we may have fallen into the trap of thinking about the Church far too much in institutional and corporate terms and not nearly enough according to its spiritual, ecclesial and eternal credentials. As much as we may need structure, the Church that we are a part of is not fundamentally an institution, it’s a Church that is eternal and universal and has very firm spiritual foundations. It is the gathering of God’s holy people, the Body of Christ, fed by the Holy Spirit and by Christ’s Body in word and sacrament. It recognises God’s agency in the coming of Jesus sent in human form so that we can feel, touch and see what it is to live a perfectly godly and righteous life and, God willing, emulate him. We are fed by our Incarnate Lord in the Eucharist, where we step into his enteral sacrifice, made once for all, as we worship our Father in heaven through that same Jesus who has given access to his grace. Our measuring rod is not strategies, statistics and action plans, but those beautifully rounded historic formularies that the early Church spilt blood, sweat and tears bringing into existence, rooted in the historic ordering of the Church, the Apostles teaching, the breaking of bread and the prayers. That’s what unites us as people of God the world over and members of Christ’s Church. We are a hopeful people looking forward with expectation to the coming of the Kingdom of God, when a new dawn will break through bringing with it the justice and peace for which we strive. Perhaps the time has come for the Church of England to find its ecclesiological grounding, its theology of Church, once again.

So, I pray that as we continue to walk through Advent in the Spirit together we may keep walking that self-reflective spiritual journey of repentance that John calls us to from the wilderness. May we open our hearts to the redemptive grace of our God, so that come Christmas Day when Jesus is born anew into our world, we may also find space for him in our hearts as well.

Amen. 

R.T. Parker-McGee 2024

 

A Reflection on Makin, the Archbishop's resignation and the Church - ‘your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19)

 

‘Your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:19) These are the closing remarks of Jesus in today's Gospel reading. So often the Spirit moves through the lectionary to give us what we need to hear in a given moment. 

Following the recent revelations brought about by the release of the Makin Report into historic abuse perpetrated by the Evangelical Lay Minister John Smyth, and the subsequent resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury owing to criticisms of oversight made in that report, many will be feeling pain, anxiety or bewilderment. More important than anything else is that we hold all survivors of abuse in our prayers now and into the future. We also need to pray for those called to deal with these issues on the ground, as they are always complicated and difficult. This is a very challenging time for so many.

We may have many different views about the issues raised in the last few days. Whatever our thoughts, we must all now take account of what has been going wrong for so long and address them. Whatever failings there have been, they have come about as a direct result of us, the Church, losing our focus on the Jesus we are called to follow and reveal to others.

Now, we must always remember that we are not called to worship the Bible, we are called to worship God, the God we see in and through Jesus Christ. This seems obvious, but getting this the wrong way round, which can be so easy to do, can be the cause of significant problems. Christians have never believed that the Bible is directly dictated by God. The Bible is divinely inspired, not divinely dictated. The Bible for us contains the reflections, revelations and historical retellings of God’s interactions with the world and humankind through the experience of very faithful and saintly individuals. The Word of God is Jesus Christ, the Bible leads us to him!

Each of the Gospels are written by a writer, an author, and there is much debate about who those authors were. They may or may not be the people they are ascribed to. What we do know is that the Gospels contain eyewitness material and are remarkably historically accurate (as archaeology so often confirms). This gives us a direct connection to Jesus. That eyewitness testimony, testimony of people who witnessed these events first-hand, reveals to us the God who was present in the person of Jesus. When the Church gets into a pickle, when it loses its way, it is nearly always because it has lost its focus on that real person of Jesus.

As I said a few weeks ago, The Bible is a huge document, so with a narrow overly literalistic view, we can find justification in it for whatever we like.

We can find in the Bible justification for genocide or for the protection of minorities. We must ask ourselves which looks more like Jesus?

We can find justification for abusive control or for gentle encouragement. We must ask ourselves which looks more like Jesus?

We can find justification for pursuing inequality or for upholding every individual in the dignity of God as equal. The question we must ask is which one looks more like Jesus?

We can find justification in the Bible for trying to sweep things under the carpet, for not being transparent and open, for protecting the institution, for deviating from the truth, for denying what’s before our eyes –Joseph, Moses, David, Peter, Thomas, Paul… Whilst all of these are no doubt holy men, they each have their flaws. So, we have to ask ourselves, does lacking transparency, does failing to show concern to victims of abuse, failing to take whistleblowing seriously, failing to properly support people dealing with abuse issues on the ground, look like Jesus? If the answer is no, then we know we have got things wrong…

I think, for the last decade or more, our Church has lost its way primarily because it has forgotten its primary calling is a pastoral calling; it’s a calling to care, a calling to empathy, a calling to be present and visible. It is a calling to stables and alehouses and homes; to market squares and offices and factories; to crack dens and brothels and hovels. Just as Jesus’ calling was a local calling to be on the ground with real people in all the messy complexity of the world, so the Church’s calling is a local calling to serve real people on the ground in community. It is a calling to be where people are, to understand their issues, their pain, and to bring them close enough to Jesus to touch his cloak and look into his gaze.

Charles Simeon, onetime vicar of Holy Trinity Church in Cambridge, had carved on the inside of the pulpit, where only the preacher could see, the words from John 12:21 when some Greeks came to Philip saying, “Sir, we want to see Jesus”. Our job is to show people Jesus, and by seeing Jesus, they will be healed. Our churches should be places of wellbeing, safety and healing.

For too long this has been obscured as we have pursued glamorous growth agendas, vision statements and neat managerial concepts above all else – a corporatism has swept through our church that has made us feel more like a cold and hard Church of England PLC rather than a warm and welcoming Church of England please come and see. We have presented a Jesus that looks more like a calculating CEO than a caring physician.

So, this next period must be a period of change. Each of us has a responsibility for transforming the culture. We each need to do our bit to help our Church heal and become a place where people can see Jesus. And on seeing Jesus, they will be healed. Our Churches should be places of safety and healing. Our job is to make them safe, loving, caring places to be. Places that reflect those qualities we see in Jesus. Locally and nationally, our Church is called to the same.

So, my prayer is that we will have a major reset: that we will learn the lessons and challenge the toxicity in our systems and structures. As a Church, let us turn away from the corporatism and entitlement that has so dominated and devoured us - challenge the elitism, break up the cliques and throw a sledgehammer through the glass ceilings. Let us once again recognise that our primary calling is a pastoral calling to real people at a local level – an institution of transparency and openness, that cares for people and clergy, and places their wellbeing above all else. Let us recommit again to being an institution that exists to serve and care for everyone, including those outside of our metaphorical walls. May our Church nationally and locally be a place where people come and are able to find Jesus; a place of health and wellbeing, safety and healing.

Jesus, light of the world, who came as a healer, full of love and compassion, and speaks up for those who have no voice. May our churches be places of safety, where we stand up for the vulnerable. Places of justice, kindness and humility. Light of the world, drive out the darkness. May we bring light and life to others. May it be so (prayer taken from Safeguarding Sunday Materials).

Amen.

“I will give you rest”

 

“I will give you rest” –

A Sermon for Evensong on Sunday 13^th October 2024

In this evening’s Gospel reading[1], we were given another reminder of Jesus’ offer of spiritual rest and refreshment. It is my belief that those who come seeking God through the Church are, above all else, nearly always in search of that rest and refreshment.

In tonight’s reading, we first hear Jesus denouncing those places where he has performed miracles. He is doing this, in part, because of their lack of response. It would be easy for us to hear in his words a call to greater activity.

Response. Activity. Most often for us, the two things become one and the same. But what if the kind of response Jesus is calling those communities towards is something very different indeed? What if we don’t hear his words through 21^st Century corporate ears, but instead through the ears of an older, more devoted age? I wonder if as Jesus is denouncing those places where he has performed those miracles, he is challenging them not to return to their lives of busyness and corruption, instead inviting them to allow the love of God to transform their communities into something more?

What if some of the frustration we hear coming through Jesus’ words, a frustration so understandable after he has poured out so much of himself into their communities; what if that frustration is based on his call to them not returning to the mundane busyness of their lives, but to something deeper instead?

Maybe, if Jesus’ words and actions had transformed those communities, they would have recognised the folly of their fraught, feverish and frenzied living, and begun to replace it with lives of peace, rest and refreshment. Not lives without anything to do, but lives filled with purpose and order precisely because of their individual and corporate focus upon God – lives marked by gentleness and holy tranquillity. 

Our neighbouring bishop, Dr Guli Francis-Dehqani, the Bishop of Chelmsford, has been in the press recently following a lecture she delivered at the Festival of Preaching in Cambridge a few weeks ago.[2] In that lecture she describes the weariness that she has discovered among clergy and congregations in her diocese since taking up post. She speaks of anxiety created from unreasonable workloads and expectations coming from both local and central pressures. She associates an awful lot of the weariness and anxieties as being created by the Church of England’s preoccupation with growth at all costs…

She goes on to suggest that very preoccupation, that frenzied activity that central church is calling everyone to in order to avert their fears and the inevitable decline that they have convinced themselves of, is actually causing that very decline – or at least accelerating it. Perhaps, if we were to take the foot off the gas a little people may well be drawn to us all the more, precisely because we become places of rest and refreshment instead.

Some of the stuff - these are my words not hers – some of this stuff we see coming from the centre can seem almost faux-Gospel (anti-Gospel). Why? Because when we look below the surface we see that it is ladened with guilt and fear, or a combination of both. There is often a ‘carrot and stick’ approach. ‘We need to see quick gains, action plans and initiatives or else you might lose your priest…or else you will be worse off and you will not be thought as well of as those down the road who are doing better. However, if you have a plan that can convince us that you will be able to bring about disproportionately quick growth, and we don’t much mind what this will entail, then here’s a huge sack of money to help you along the way’… Carrot – and – Stick. Fear, Anxiety, Guilt.

These things do not come from the Gospel of Christ. These things come from a different actor. Thank God for Bishop Guli being the first one to be brave enough among the bishops to openly speak out against it. It is a shame that the authorities in the central church chose to give her a dressing down for not keeping to ‘script’ when she first spoke of these things at her Diocesan Synod shortly after coming to office – something she openly talks about in her lecture. I think I am pretty clear in my mind which persons the Spirit is working through.

It is so easy to focus on what is missing, and so we should forgive those who find themselves in places of central authority, enveloped by anxiety and fear as they feel the weight upon their own shoulders to bring about results. When they look at the figures, the spreadsheets and the pages of accompanying analysis, why wouldn’t they be filled with fear? And relying on all that their lives in business have taught them, why wouldn’t they look to all kinds of management theories and initiatives to try and turn the tide? We can surely understand all this, because it is so easy only to focus on what appears to be missing or going wrong. Yet, what we see when we take a step back is that such focus, whether in the business world or in the life of the Church, eventually only ever creates a kind of feverish and frenzied fear which feeds the inevitable decline – not to mention the untold damage it does to individuals and communities.

Decline - Fear – Frenzied Activity – Decline, an ever-decreasing circle. Tonight’s Gospel suggests we are called to something different, does it not? Maybe, in tonight’s Gospel, we can see what we have been missing for so long.

You see, the world of the past few decades has seen change at unprecedented levels – people are less likely to stay in the same community for as long, families are far more likely to split up, individuals have far less job security, homes are no longer lived in for a lifetime – and we haven’t even touched on the accelerated change brought about by computers, the internet, social media and artificial intelligence. This has all propelled a pace of change in society that we could barely have imagined just ten years ago.

Is the Church called to inhabit that same pace of change? Or is it called to be an oasis for people to find when their souls are wearied? Is the church called to a different kind of presence? God has a concern for the marginal spaces and for those who feel on the margins. For many, a fear of failure places them on the margins. A fear of not being able to keep up with this fast pace of change puts people on the margins. Levels of anxiety and depression in our society are at an all-time high – and is there any wonder at it. It’s not just our young people, but people of every age.

Where do they find the space to be fed, nurtured and cared for. Where do they get the permission to just stop and bask in something enriching of their souls? What if, amidst all the fevered activity of the world, our churches and their communities offered something more life giving and refreshing?

To my mind our churches should and could be places where people can encounter a stilling and grounding peace. The kind of peace only to be found among the people of God.

The word ‘Mission’ in our current age has become badly misunderstood. ‘Mission’ has come to imply feverish activity, getting people in through the doors and their bums of pews at any cost whatever. Yet, ‘Mission’ properly understood should mean a drawing of people more deeply into the gathered ecclesial community. That is the kind of mission we find in the New Testament. Mission should be seen as the drawing of people into the Church as a place where the wanderer and the weary can find their rest and be refreshed by basking in the stilling presence of God.

What an attraction that might be to a world obsessed by fast passed everything…

‘Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.’[3]

R. T. Parker-McGee 2024

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[1] Matthew 11.20-30

[2] https://soundcloud.com/user-632063010/dr-guli-francis-dehqani-encouraging-the-weary-with-a-word, 27^th September 2024

[3] Matthew 11.28-30

‘I only pray to God when I need a favour’ - Prayer

 

‘I only pray to God when I need a favour’ - Prayer

Trinity 18 - James 5.13-20; Mark 9.38-50

I know this will surprise you all, but I have finally got to that age where I can no longer listen to Radio 1. Radio 2 occasionally replaces it in my eclectic soundwave selection, but even that can be a struggle. More often than not, it is talk radio that grabs my attention, a combination of Times Radio, LBC, Radio 4 or Radio 5. Sometimes, when I need to chill, it’s Classic FM, but to even my surprise, I have recently become a convert of Country Music. When all else fails to hit the spot, I find myself listening to Smooth Country. I know, right! Mid-life crisis or what?  

Now, there is a modern Country artist whose name, I kid you not, is Jelly Roll (though, I doubt that is the name he was christened with). The other day, as I turned the radio on, Jelly Roll was singing a song called ‘Need a Favour’, and this song’s lyrics are fascinating. It goes something like this: ‘I only talk to God when I need a favour. And I only pray when I ain’t got a prayer. So, who the hell am I to expect a Saviour? Oh, I only talk to God when I need a favour. But God I need a favour!’[1]

These catchy lyrics are really clever. They cut right to the bone of what, I’m guessing, is so many people’s experience of prayer – it is certainly mine, all too often.

How many of us leave prayer to the last minute or as a last resort? How many of us only really return to prayer as a final straw, once we have exhausted all other options?

In the fifth chapter of his letter, St James is trying to encourage in us a different approach. ‘Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call the elders (priests) of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord…’[2]

In any given situation, our own endeavours can only take us so far. Sooner or later, it is only prayer that can bring the kind of holistic resolution of goodness that we crave.

As St James continues: ‘The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven’.[3]

As some of you know, the Parker-McGee’s had a rather tumultuous year last year. 2023 was probably one of the most taxing our family has known to date. In our darkest moments, one thing kept us strong – your prayers. I know that can sound like a platitude, but it is true. When we had exhausted all of our own abilities, it was then that we felt both mystically and tangibly held in the most profound way by the prayers of the Diocese, the Monastery, and of these parishes. I can’t explain it, yet it was certainly true. And all of us in the family felt it. So Thank you – your prayers really work!

I have a strong faith. I ordinarily feel a close connection to God in most situations and I have always been an advocate for saying that prayer works. I have seen it often enough in others. Be this as it may, our experience last year was on a completely different level - as though we were being carried by countless invisible wings of angels yet unseen.

Perhaps this reveals something else about prayer that we sometimes misunderstand. In the Gospel of St John, Jesus says “Remain in me and I will remain in you”.[4] Too often, we consider prayer to be of our making, in our control. Prayer only happens when we pray, right? Wrong!

We often approach prayer as though it were a shopping list of things for God to do, as though he needed reminding and isn’t already on the case. How silly of us. God already knows what needs doing and he is working that out for the best, not in the limited way our unimaginative agendas would have things go, but in infinitely better divine proportions. We come with our list of items to be bought cheaply from Aldi, when God is already filling his trolley at Waitrose (other premium supermarkets are available!). So perhaps we need to think again about what prayer really is.

To properly understand prayer, it’s helpful for us to go all the way back to the story of creation, to that period when God creates all things into being.

But, first a caveat. Now, this may sound somewhat controversial, but its important. When reading the creation narratives in the first few chapters of Genesis, we have to ask ourselves what is literal fact and what is allegorical device to help with deeper meaning and understanding. For instance, when the author speaks of the ‘days’ of creation, do they really mean periods of 24 hours or are they referring instead to less precise but nonetheless clearly discernible stages in the process of creation?  We might ask, for example, how can there be a day of 24 hours, before a day is even created? Is it plausible that the ‘first day’ actually refers to a discernible period of change which may have taken many years in our present understanding of time? Might the association of this period to a day be a textual construct employed by the author of the text to help the reader better understand? Just a thought!

Anyway, casting our minds to those narratives, how does Genesis tell us creation took place? Well, God spoke the universe into being and he breathed the Holy Spirit over it to give it life. God spoke with divine breath. That is fundamentally what prayer is – divine communication. It is that same divine communication that continues to keep all things moving in the right direction, bringing light out of darkness, good out of evil and life out of death. It is in God that we have our life and our being.

Our all-loving and caring God is constantly speaking words of love into creation. Love is always creative. It builds up and enables things to thrive. It overcomes darkness and brings light, just like the formation of the sun at the beginning of time. God does this through his divine communication. Properly understood, when we pray, we are simply stepping into that divine communication.

The English Bishop and Theologian, John V. Taylor, use to think of mission as ‘finding out what God is up to and joining in’.[5] To be truly engaged in mission, then, is to be deeply rooted in prayer, not activity.  When we are consciously praying, we become intimately and corporately swept up in the creative power of God’s divine communication and are carried along on the breeze of what God is up to. To pray is to live life as it is meant to be lived.  

This means that we do not need the right words or phrases. We can simply step into it at any moment. All we need is a little intentionality – to switch our focus from the material to the mystical – to invite God into our focus. To step into the stillness of the divine presence and allow him to take control.

This is how we access the divine power of which Jesus speaks of in today’s Gospel reading.[6] ‘No-one’, he says, ‘who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us’.[7]

So, not to contradict the inestimable Jelly Roll, although it is not ideal to ‘only pray when we need a favour’, we all have to start somewhere, and there is never a time when we ‘haven’t got a prayer’ because the divine communication of God is always ongoing. All we need do is find the headspace to join in.

Prayer is about more than just the words we use. It is the place where our head is at. If we can, more and more, connect with that prayer that is already ongoing as the divine communication of God and the lifeforce of the world, then our lives and the world itself will be far better place for it.

Amen.

R.T. Parker-McGee 2024

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[1] Jelly Roll, ‘I need a Favor’, 2023

[2] James 5:13

[3] James 5:14

[4] John 15:4

[5] John V. Taylor, The Go Between God, 1972

[6] Mark 9:38-end

[7] Mark 9:39-40

I heard the voice of Jesus

 

I heard the voice of Jesus – Sermon – Trinity 16 – Mark 8:27-38

Who do you say I am?

Who do you say Jesus is? When you are alone, when all the distractions have disappeared and you find yourself sitting alone in your bedroom, or your living room, or that quiet corner of your garden; when the smart phone has run out of battery and the omnibus of ‘Corrie’ is over, and the North London Derby has been won or lost; in those quiet places and moments what does God’s voice sound like to you?

Over the last week, I have had numerous opportunities to ponder today’s Gospel.[1] When we read those words of Jesus, and many of us will have heard them hundreds of times before, I wonder, how does that voice sound?

‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, (read/recite with loud, angry voice) ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[2]

How often have we heard those words in that kind of angry voice? How often when in the liturgy the Gospeller has made it to the centre of the aisle, and whether or not the Gospeller has employed that actual tone, how often is that the way we have heard it nonetheless?

I wonder if there is another way of hearing that voice?

‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, (read/recite with a gentle, compassionate, understanding voice) ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[3]

When you hear that voice of God resonating with great velocity at the centre of your soul, when you are sitting in that quiet corner of your garden lamenting the fact that your favourite rose bush is wilting, which one of those two voices (angry or understanding, loud or gentle) is most like the living God you think you know?

For many of us… well, I know for me personally, I have picked up from a very young age that my God is an angry God. I know as an adult that is not true, and yet there is tiny bit of me that always goes back there – especially when I have done something wrong, or I am feeling a little bit ashamed, or I can’t summon the energy to get out of bed because I am feeling a little depressed or sorry for myself, it is too easy for me to return to that notion of my God being angry with me.

You know, I have been thinking about this an awful lot this week and I think some of this leads back to the way we read (and hear) the Old Testament in the Bible. You see, we can read the Old Testament in a simplistic superficial literalistic way, without context, deeper understanding or much intellectual thought of what might be going on in those pages, and then we can use that to inform how we interpret the New Testament and our image of Jesus. Alternatively, we can discover the Jesus of the Gospels and allow him to inform and add context to what we read in the rest of Scripture.

The Old Testament clarifies who Jesus is, it does not limit who Jesus is. We can find no truer representation of God than in the incarnate Jesus, God as man, God in our presence, real, alive. The Bible comes a good second in our search for God, but it is a clear second. We do not worship the Bible, we worship Jesus. Jesus is the living Word of God – the Bible leads us to him. Therefore, if our interpretation of the Bible does not fit the person we know to be Jesus, we can assume that we are interpreting that particular tiny part of the Bible incorrectly. ‘I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it!’.[4] This simple statement from Matthew 8 reveals that the Law of the Old Testament had not achieved its purpose, humanity was still missing the point, something else is needed in order to achieve what the Law set out to do. That something was Jesus Christ and the uncompromising all-encompassing love we see in and through him.

In other words, when we read the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, we need to read it through the lens of Jesus Christ. We need to hear all Scripture through the mouth of the loving Saviour we know him to be.

You see, it makes no sense for our living God to have given himself to us in such a way, if he were a vengeful and angry God. The idea that God somehow brought Jesus into the world just so that he could destroy him in order to satisfy his own vengeance, anger and blood-lust, like something from a terrifying horror movie, makes a complete mockery of the God of love. The only way the cross makes sense is when we realise that our God is a loving, compassionate and empathetic God. A God who is willing to give himself for us. A God who walks the way of the cross so that he can stay in front of us as our shield paving the way, clearing the decks, making our ways straight and our paths clear.

(Read/recite in a loving, compassionate, soft voice) ‘Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[5]

Reflecting on this over this past week has made me realise that I need to try much harder at some of this. When I am alone in those quiet spaces, I need to remind myself that my God is a loving, compassionate, empathetic God who gives everything for me… and everything for you. And then I need to model my life on his life. He calls us to ‘love one another as he has loved us’.[6] In a world that is too much obsessed with hatred and division, it is that God who brings the healing we all need.[7]

Amen.

 

R.T. Parker-McGee 2014

 

 

 

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[1] Mark 8:27-38

[2] Mark 8:31-33

[3] Mark 8:31-33

[4] Matthew 5:17

[5] Mark 8:31-33

[6] John 13:34

[7] Acknowledgement: much of the inspiration for this sermon comes from: V. Johnson, On Voice - Speech, Song, Silence: Human and Divine (Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd, Croydon; 2024).