Hymns : Entering the Minefield

Sermon preached at the Parish Mass, St Matthew's Perry Beeches, Sunday 4th August

Some words of St Paul from this morning’s second reading:

I, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. (Ephesians 3:14-21)

On the evening of Wednesday 24^th July, a major service was held in the parish church of St Helen, Bishopsgate, London. St Helen’s is well-known as a stronghold of conservative evangelicalism. It attracts a large, predominantly wealthy, middle-class congregation. Its clergy eschew the ‘cool’ look of tee-shirt and chinos popular with so many of their evangelical colleagues and instead wear expensive suits and posh silk ties.

The service that took place on the 24^thJuly was no ordinary service,  indeed it was a profoundly significant event not only for those involved, not only for conservative evangelical Anglicans, but also potentially for the entire Church of England, and yes, for you and me.  

At that service, seven men - no women, notice - were Commissioned for Ministry at St Helen’s and a number of associated churches. These seven new Ministers were, and still are, lay people. They haven’t been ordained.

They have, apparently, been through the formal selection process that ordination candidates in the CofE must go through, and they have been trained for ministry in Anglican theological colleges or on recognised part-time courses.

Their role will be to preach the Word of God and - to quote the Rector of St Helen’s – “to share informal meals with the church family, at which bread is broken and the death of Jesus remembered”.

Now you may well be thinking at this point that that sounds remarkably like the Eucharist. Of course, they’re not calling it that. Their normal preferred name for the Eucharist would in any case probably be ‘The Lord’s Supper’ and they’ve been careful to avoid such terminology.  But whilst the St Helen’s clergy are claiming that these lay ministers may eventually go on to be ordained, in the meantime it’s hard not to see what is happening there as anything other than the introduction of lay presidency of the Eucharist.

Of course there are Christian denominations and sects which permit and encourage lay people to celebrate Holy Communion; but the Church of England isn’t one of them. Indeed, as part of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, we believe that the authority and ability to consecrate the bread and wine is bestowed only by the grace of ordination at the hands of a bishop – just as we saw with Br Martin a few weeks ago.

This makes what is happening at St Helen’s and elsewhere very worrying for anyone who holds a traditional understanding of the Church of England, and especially those of us who choose to emphasise and celebrate its Catholic identity and heritage. There is a word for this traditional understanding, and it’s the word ‘Orthodoxy’ from a Greek root meaning ‘Right’ or ‘True’.

The most ironic thing about this situation, is that the Rector and people of St Helen’s Bishopsgate, and the clergy and one or two rebel bishops who support them, are doing all of this precisely because they claim to be ‘Orthodox’ and reacting against a Church that is moving away from God’s truth.

They say this, not because the Church of England is changing or denying any of the clauses of the Catholic Creeds, nor because it is somehow being untrue to any of the central tenets of our faith or the loving message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. No, they’re doing it because the Bishops of the Church of England (or most of them at any rate), with the encouragement and support of General Synod, are daring to pursue the idea of making available prayers of Love and Faith – prayers of blessing – for people in same sex relationships.

Now of course, the Church of England is not of one mind regarding LGBTQ+ people and their relationships. There are some – including St Helen’s and their supporters – who believe all such relationships to be contrary to the teachings of scripture.  Many others, however, recognise that the few biblical references there are to homosexuality don’t address the question of loving, committed, faithful relationships between members of the same sex who are naturally attracted to each other, for that concept simply didn’t exist in biblical times. 

As Anglicans, our reading of scripture is also informed by tradition and reason. Even more importantly, individual scriptural texts need to be read and interpreted in the light of the overall Gospel Message of love and inclusion and weighed against Reason and the principles of Justice. The church has done this with many other issues like slavery, apartheid, the role of women in the church, contraception and the remarriage of divorcees. On these and many other issues, the church has had to re-think, change and move on.  

As a living body, the Church is constantly changing and developing in all sorts of ways. Change is never easy, and not everyone moves at the same pace in accepting change. So when the church navigates change, it quite rightly has to take account of this reality, and there’s a pastoral obligation to respect and accommodate those who are not in agreement with the overall direction of travel.     

Those who disapprove of saying prayers of love and faith with those in committed same sex relationships will be under no compulsion to do so. The prayers will only be used by those clergy who in conscience feel able and motivated to use them. They are merely prayers expressing God’s love, and as the bishops have made very clear, their introduction doesn’t indicate any change in the doctrine of marriage. (That’s a bigger debate for later!)  

It is, therefore, quite extraordinary, that there are now threats of schism from some parts of the church. ‘We will break away from existing structures within the CofE and take our buildings and our money with us and do it all our way. We’ll select and train our own ministers.  We’ll appoint our own bishops. We’ll withhold our parish share from the diocese, and we’ll do all this because we’re right and you’re wrong and we’re not prepared to live and work and worship alongside those with whom we disagree.”   

Make no mistake – that’s what the service at St Helen’s was all about. It was shameless sabre-rattling propaganda. It was an attempt to threaten and to manipulate. The tail, it seems, is desperately trying to wag the dog.

If we were talking here about the church disputing the divinity of Jesus,   if we were arguing about belief in the Holy Trinity, or if we were planning to formally deny Jesus’ death and resurrection, then I could understand it, and indeed I’d be one of the first to object. These are some of the essentials of our faith - what we often call ‘First Order’ issues.   

But to treat the question of who people happen to love in accordance with their God-given nature, as a so-called ‘First Order’ issue, makes little sense I believe to the majority of worshippers in the Church of England, still less to those outside the Church who see it so often as a bigoted, misogynistic, homophobic and generally nasty institution.

Quite how much of a serious risk of schism we currently face is hard to say. What the Archbishops and Bishops will do about the situation is impossible to predict. Personally, I hope that they hold their nerve. True leadership, after all, is never about yielding to the bully-boy tactics of threat and coercion.

In any event, some of us do find ourselves wondering whether the over-the-top response of some conservative evangelicals to Prayers of Love and Faith is actually a Trojan Horse – a convenient excuse to go their own way and to do what they have actually longed to do for years - to abandon the Catholic order that characterises true Anglicanism and to completely reject a sacramentalism that they have never really accepted. I hope that isn’t the case, but I do wonder.    

So while all of this plays out, what can we do?

Well, firstly, we can and must carry on being the body of Christ in this place. We can and must certainly continue to celebrate the Eucharist together in accordance with our traditional, catholic understanding. As we were reminded in today’s Gospel, Jesus is the bread of life and it is here at the altar in the mystery of the Mass that he feeds us as he has fed so many generations before us.   

Secondly, we need to make sure that anyone who comes here - anyone, regardless of their ethnicity, their age, their marital or relationship status, their gender identity or their sexuality - is fed and nourished both by Christ at the altar and by the loving welcome,  friendship and affirmation of his people.

And thirdly, as a church both locally and nationally, we must strive to live as Paul urged the Ephesians to live: with humility and gentleness and patience, bearing with one another in love. We must respect those who think differently from us whilst also praying that those who seek to threaten, cajole and control, will repent of the arrogance that demands the church entirely on their own terms,  and instead make every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.

For the Church of England, these are unsettling times.

For the Bishops, these are challenging times requiring courage and firm leadership.

For those of us whose lives and loves are at the heart of this debate, these are profoundly painful and distressing times.

But we travel on in faith and hope, and like the Israelites in our first reading, we are sustained on our journey by the Bread that the Lord provides for us; bread that is taken, blessed, broken and given by a priest validly ordained into God’s church, as it has been down the ages, and as it will be, God willing, for the ages to come.