Bury Parish Church

Dear friends 

If you were to go to almost any sort of meeting of clergy – that is something that I should not really want to wish on you, but just imagine it for a moment if you can – you would discover that the services that they tend to struggle with most, are the ones that their congregations look forward to the most.   There is Mothering Sunday (14^th March this year), Harvest Thanksgiving, Remembrance Sunday, and of course Christmas.   These are the days when the largest numbers of people seem to want to be part of the Church’s worship, but they are also the days when clergy feel under particular pressure,  I think because we can often feel that we are expected to say things, and to stand for things, that we are slightly uneasy about.

Take Mothering Sunday.   Parents and children come along, and Mothering Sunday gifts are distributed, and people want the Church to affirm the value and importance of these dearest relationships that they know.   And of course in one way that is something that most of us would certainly want to do.   My mother has been one of the great reasons that I have to be thankful to God, and I dare say that the same is true for many of you also.   But it is not the whole truth.   Not every-body’s experience of family relationships is joyful, and everybody knows that, while families are often the most fulfilling things in our lives, they can also be exceedingly difficult.   People have done terrible things in trying to dominate or control their children, for example, even though in their own eyes they have probably done it all out of love.   Jesus quite often has sharp things to say about ties of family, and you will all remember how, when he was presented in the Temple,  old Simeon warned Mary as she cradled her little boy in her arms that ‘A sword shall pierce you own soul also’.

Or take Harvest Thanksgiving.   Pretty well everybody likes food, and we must all have been struck by the beauty of the fruits and vegetables that decorate our churches, a little sample of the wonder of the whole created world.   But we cannot allow that to be the whole story, however much folk may wish that it was.   Because the heart of Harvest Thanksgiving is the fact that all of these things – all of life indeed – is gift, and gifts imply a responsibility to the Giver to use them as he would wish,  and above all to be mindful of those who are in need, and whom he also loves.

There is a similar pressure at Remembrance time.   It is a wholesome and a humbling thing to reflect together on the terrible human cost of so many of the freedoms and blessings that we easily take for granted, but we all know that Remembrance Sunday, if you are not careful, can involve more than a little bit of ‘my country right or wrong’, and especially in time of war it is easy to feel under pressure to sign up to policies and attitudes that we are not sure about.

And of course above all there is Christmas, when the whole world is keen to enjoy the story - the Baby and the animals – but not so keen to see where the story is bound to lead: ‘O may we keep and ponder in our mind God’s wondrous love in saving lost mankind. Trace we the Babe who hath redeemed our loss from his poor manger to the bitter cross’.

You will see that the natural human instincts that lie behind these popular celebrations in the Church’s life all have the same need if they are to be wholesome:  they have to be brought to the foot of the Cross.   That is the sacrifice that gives meaning to the whole of our lives, and hope for the life to come:  ‘God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son...’   Somehow, we all need to find a way to present ourselves there, and especially at this time of year.  Palm Sunday will be here before the month is out, and Good Friday is 2^nd April.   Make this your goal during the remains of this Lent.

Everybody knows that Christianity is a missionary religion:  it is not simply concerned to promote peace and joy among those who are already committed to it; rather, there is an obligation on Christian people to seek to bring others to the light.   ‘Go therefore’, says Jesus to his disciples in the last chapter of St Matthew’s Gospel, ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit’.

There is a variety of opinion about how this task should be undertaken.   We must all have noticed how particular Christians, or parts of the Church, use very different methods.   Some see their calling as that of  telling people who seem to be content with their lives that they have no business to be content:  ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand’, says the man with the sandwich board at Hyde Park Corner.   ‘You may think you’re OK, but you are not really’.   On the other hand, some see the task not so much as to challenge those without a faith, as to find common ground with them, and to suggest that they are already close to Christian truth without having realized it.   Both methods are apt to be patronizing:  the first says to unbelievers: ‘You may think that you are content to ignore God, or to disbelieve in him, but actually you have a big hole in the middle of your life, and are empty without knowing it.   What you really want is to be like us Christians’.   The other says to them:  ‘You may think that you don’t believe, but really, you know, the things that you do hold dear and important are more or less Christian anyway.   You are practically a Christian without knowing it’.   So the first way tries to tell unbelievers that they don’t know their own hearts, and the second, that they don’t understand their own minds.

It is a fraught and difficult business.   But I am certain that the first and necessary step for those of us who do hold the faith is to learn to give a far better account of  what we believe, and why, than we have generally done in the past.   You must all have noticed how much hostile coverage there is of Christian things in television and the newspapers, and how this has grown significantly over the past few years.   No doubt it is partly because the Church has somehow been diverted from talking about things that matter to the world at large, and has in stead turned in on itself, endlessly debating issues that are really of no interest to people outside the pews.   But it is also, I believe, because Christian people have not been half clear enough about what it is that they actually believe.   Again and again, I hear some media guru attacking what he or she calls ‘Christianity’, and ascribing to it beliefs and attitudes that no Christian I know has ever held.

With this in mind, I have decided to put together  a series of Evensong sermons in Lent, setting out as clearly as I can the heart of what Christian faith is about, and how it hangs together.   You may feel that that sounds a bit like King Canute trying to make the waters recede.   What are a few parsonical utterances to tiny Evensong congregations, against the advancing hordes of Richard Dawkins and all his minions?   Well, maybe not very much.    But it will be a useful exercise for me – and I hope also for those who choose to come – and I hope at least that my poor words will help to prompt a bit of useful thinking from us all.   The first two, as you will see from the Parish Diary – on 21^st and 28^th February – are about ‘Faith and Evidence’ (if faith cannot be proved, does that mean that it doesn’t have to make sense?), and ‘The God of Israel’ (what should Christians do about the Old Testament?).  I shall run off a few copies to give away at the back of Church, and hope to generate a bit of general thought.  If any of you have questions or difficulties that you would like me to try and tackle, please let me know.

 There will also be an opportunity during Lent to do some group Bible study – this year, on St Luke’s Gospel.   There will be a communion service in Church every Wednesday evening at 7.30, and we shall then move to the Ashton Room for just an hour.   We begin on Ash Wednesday, 17^th February.