Weekly Reflection - 26 July - 1 August 2009
July 26, 2009
Coughs and sneezes…
On Monday afternoon I attended a briefing at Westminster City Hall about the local strategy and response to the current Swine Flu Pandemic. Flu Pandemics seem to happen, on average, every forty years or so. Some of you may recall the Asian Flu of the 1950s which killed millions; fewer now will have any direct memory of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic which is estimated to have killed up to 100 million people. The good news for those over 52 years old is that if they had Asian Flu in the 1950s they may well have some level of immunity to the present virus. The bad news is that the virus has now got a real grip and many have already experienced a short sharp burst of high temperatures, aches, pains, coughs and sneezes - usually over in 48 hours, thankfully. Antiviral drugs may help a little if taken in time, but may also have unwelcome side effects.
Towards the end of the week, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York issued guidance to the National Church about what constitutes ‘good practice’ in these uncharted days. Cleanliness and sensible basic hygiene seems to be the order of the day - and though we are always scrupulous about these things at St Paul’s, it may be worth just reassuring our congregation that hands are always carefully washed before holy vessels and holy things are handled. One specific piece of guidance was the discontinuation, for a while, of the sharing of the chalice at Communion, and we will, for the time being, observe this. Again, it is worth reminding members of the congregation that to receive Communion ‘in one kind’ (i.e. the bread only) is nonetheless fully to make your communion - though the practice of sharing both bread and cup is obviously preferable. We will resume our normal practice as soon as we reasonably can.
However, amidst all of this anxiety about the spread of infection and the need for self-preservation, it may also be worth reminding one another of one other piece of ‘good practice’! Our calling as Christians is to servanthood in a religion that places love and service of neighbour on a par with love of God. So, lest we become totally consumed with selfish anxiety about our own wellbeing, it is worth remembering that one opportunity this pandemic may present us with is the chance to attend to the needs of the sick, to keep an eye open for our neighbours, to support those who are in need and to reach out to the frail and the needy. If the clergy or the parish office staff can help in any way, please don’t hesitate to be in touch.
Fr Alan Gyle, Vicar
Weekly Reflection - 19-25 July 2009
July 19, 2009
“We are family: new thinking for the twenty first century”
I shall be speeding through Leicester (or past it) on my way to Yorkshire this weekend to preach at the Ryedale Festival, but had I time to stop en route it would have been interesting to eavesdrop on the annual conference of QUEST, a group of gay British Roman Catholics. Not always noted for being either affirming of ‘alternative’ lifestyles, nor in the vanguard of progressive social change, parts of the Catholic church are responding - at least at a national level - creatively to changing social norms in our day. The title of the conference is “We are family: new thinking for the twenty first century”.
Had I had time to stop on my way to hear our former Director of Music, Justin Doyle, directing the music at Malton Priory at the Annual Festival Service (…with distinguished guest preacher, blah blah…), I would have enjoyed listening to Terry Prendergast the Chief Executive of Catholic Marriage Care tell the assembled delegates (in a heavily trailed speech - but you read it here first!) that “the Church has often built up a romantic image of a golden age of the nuclear family which has not found expression in reality, often with unwelcome consequences for those who “do not fit.” These include single parent families and also co-habiting and same-sex families. He says that often “those individuals… want to live good lives according to the precepts of the Gospels. They are an advert for the Church, an advert that the Church often ignores, or consigns to the waste bin.” He will say that in all relationships, the institutional aspects are less important than the sacramental qualities: “The presence of God mediated through commitment, consent and covenant. The move from the institutional to companionship, choosing for love, has been marked, possibly more deeply, in co-habiting and same-sex couples.”
I think that - while wanting as we do here to continue to affirm those who chose to live, and do successfully live, in ‘conventional’ relationships - there is a lot of truth and good sense in that. It is, after all, not a question of either/or. And it is the sort of honesty we perhaps need in a week in which the attempt of the American Episcopal Church to say something similar at their General Convention has been met by cries for schism and the breaking of our communion with them. There may well be institutional anxieties about the manner in which they have chosen to advance the agenda (poor Rowan Williams, who would have his job, this week especially?!), but I suspect that ECUSA is simply slightly ahead of the game in saying something most sensible and thoughtful people are thinking, and one day we will look back on Anglicanism’s reactionary outbursts with not a little shame.
Fr Alan Gyle, Vicar
Weekly Reflection - 12-18 July 2009
July 11, 2009
ALMA Sunday
Sometimes people wonder why the Church spends so much time and so many resources on its relations with the developing world. Bang on from the pulpit too often about organisations like ALMA, our Diocesan link project in Mozambique and Angola, which we support with our Lent Appeal, and you can see congregations stiffen slightly and compose themselves into the appearance of polite attentiveness while silently working out Sudoku puzzles in their heads. This is, in part, because we feel that issues closer to home might be more profitably addressed, or we may have acquired a measure of forgivable scepticism about the usefulness of intervening in the politics and economics of poorer countries, or we may simply be bored. But I think also there’s something unsettling about being confronted, in our relative prosperity and comfort, with harsher realities. Look at the effect John the Baptist, unkempt and unmannerly, had on the court of King Herod, and what it cost him.
But that image of John the Baptist, of the prophet Amos, and of Jesus himself, appearing like irritating anomalies amid the luxury and self-regard of courts and palaces and Temples, is at the heart of Christian witness. If we wish to be faithful to Christ and his teaching and his example then we must stand alongside, and among, the poor. This is so fundamental to what we do, and so deeply rooted in our tradition and the Jewish tradition it arises from, that we perhaps take it for granted; perhaps we have lost sight of just how radical an idea this is. Why does our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth, every Maundy Thursday, hand out purses of money to the ‘deserving poor’, to use the antique phrase? Why does the Archbishop of Canterbury, at that same service, wash their feet? Even when these rituals have been abstracted by ceremonial there is still something strikingly odd about people of majesty and power putting themselves among the poor to serve their needs. Far more frequently the majestic and powerful seem to strive to distance themselves from the poor, for fear that they may lose their lustre?
Choosing to be among the poor, even if it is on unilateral terms, is a sign that who we are, at the deepest level, is not decided by our achievements, our standing in the world, our place at the top table, but by our common humanity, a humanity which only makes sense when we begin to understand it as bearing the likeness of Jesus Christ himself.
Fr Richard Coles, Curate
Weekly Reflection - 5-11 July 2009
July 4, 2009
Tu es Petrus (ii)
The instructive example of St Peter came to mind again last Monday, as I stood, sweltering, in our neighbouring church in Eaton Square, a church under the patronage of Peter, and thus a most appropriate venue for the ordination of five new priests. As Gareth, Mark, Annie, Ed and Pete faced the congregation, vested for the first time in their priestly stoles, a burst of applause broke out. It was an expression of affection for the five, from families, friends and parishioners, and also an acknowledgment, I guess, of the journey each has made to priesthood. Nevertheless, I winced slightly, not simply because applause is not in the rubrics, but because it suggests that being ordained priest is somehow a personal accomplishment, like passing your A levels or driving test.
The example of Peter reminds us that Christ chooses those whom he chooses not for our accomplishments, but in order to accomplish his work in us. Our job, if that’s the word, is not to get in the way too much; so theology degrees, liturgical expertise and familiarity with the historic formularies of the Church of England, while useful and necessary, are not ends in themselves, but the means to realise ends which are not ours at all.
And yet… there is something irreducibly personal about priesthood too. Priests are not mannequins but people, with character and individuality, in whom strength and weakness and confusion and insight contend (as if anyone needed reminding). Ordination does not relieve the priest of the baggage he or she has acquired on life’s journey any more than it cancels out personality. Jolly people make jolly priests, sarcastic people make sarcastic priests, angry people make angry priests and so on; and the Grace of Orders, by which we are empowered to discharge the duties that ordination lays upon us, works not around these things but through them. I sometimes think it’s a little like an orchestra, in which strings and woodwind and brass and percussion combine, in all their rasping, vibrating, sawing, clunky individuality. The net effect, however, is not cacophony, but harmony and pattern and meaning, the individual strands woven into a song which is greater than its peculiar parts. As an audience, sometimes we get too close and rather than harmony all we can hear is the mechanics of sound production. Maybe, like audiences, we need to stand back a bit, find perspective and distance, before we can really hear the music.
Fr Richard Coles, Curate