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Readers Service at Portsmouth Cathedral
Sermon for the Admission of Readers
Portsmouth Cathedral
Saturday 27th September
At 11 am
Reading: 2 Corinthians 5:1-10
‘We walk by faith, not by sight’
(2 Corinthians 5-7)
Some weeks ago I watched a television programme about Joanne Lumley’s journey up the west coast of Norway to near the Arctic Circle, in order to see the ‘northern lights’ – those staggering flashes of light in the sky that appear during a particular point in summer when the sun and the clouds and the atmosphere interact in a special way. Before she gets to her journey’s end, however, there’s a delightful trip among the Sami people, folk that we used to call the Lapps, who have inhabited that part of northern Norway, Sweden and Finland for centuries. Their lifestyle means moving from one place to another, quickly and easily, and that involves setting up and dismantling their tents.
In a much less cold, and Mediterranean environment, St. Paul describes in this morning’s reading our human existence on this earth in terms of ‘an earthly tent’. Here is Paul, the tent maker from Tarsus, a town slightly inland from the eastern coast of Turkey, that’s now buried about twenty feet beneath a modern city. It was an important place in his time, a renowned centre of education and commerce. To be a tent maker was an honourable trade, as it serviced all kinds of folk, including those whose life and work took them into what we nowadays call temporary accommodation. The cloth that he wove from goat’s hair (the normal source) was thin but durable; and it was also used as a kind of hair shirt. At any rate, it was common at the time to use the word ‘tent’ to refer to one’s skin. Here, therefore, are two images. One is about mobility and provisionality – moving from one place to another, being flexible and responsive to changing circumstances. This is exactly what John’s gospel captures in that wonderful phrase about the word made flesh in the prologue - ‘and dwelt among us’,which really means ‘and pitched his tent among us’. The other image, perhaps slightly nearer the bone, is of the hair shirt next to the skin. We live in this ‘earthly tent’, and that’s about the fragile and passing nature of human flesh, and the human body.
Well, the man who plied his trade in various places as tent maker may well have these ideas in mind when he exorts the Christians of Corinth to be confident – a word repeated a number of times in this part of what we call the second letter to the Corinthians, which is probably made up of different bits of correspondence that were somehow put together. For in spite of the provisional and mobile and passing nature of our existence, whether we’re thinking of a nomadic tent, or our human body, we know that we are destined and called to be ‘clothed with our heavenly dwelling’, as he then puts it. The contrast, therefore, between our heavenly calling and what we have to put up with on this earth, in ourselves and each other, is both a profound and lasting hope, and also a way of pointing up the transitory, changing, and at times frustrating aspects of this mortal life.
Such a stark contrast is, rather appropriate for a gathering of Readers with their Bishop! There is something transitory and limited – and also at times frustrating! – about our work of ministry and mission. And that’s not just because someone else sometimes seems to be doing it all, and we feel constricted - try and make sense for me of some of the weird complexities of the parish vacancy processes, and I’ll give you a remaindered copy of one of my books! It’s also because patterns in ministry are always changing, even if the forms of ministry are more stable. I know that the ‘Readers Upbeat’ report wasn’t given the easiest time at General Synod in York in July – the Saturday evening slot doesn’t always find Synod at its most creative and accepting. But it’s good to know that many of its main recommendations are already part of the Portsmouth scene: Readers can serve in all aspects of ministry allowed by Canon Law; Readers can be appointed as Chaplains both to institutions in new areas of work; Readers are normally licensed to the Deanery, and not to a specific parish; Readers are encouraged to have a spiritual director; and they’re often invited to Deanery Chapter meetings. But there are two important areas that still need more attention, and perhaps some deeper thought.
The first is about promoting collaborative ministry. This is not about getting involved in everything, and doing everything that one ‘feels called to do’. I often wish that we put a ban on that expression anyway, since there are lots of things, which for example, bishops don’t feel called to do, but jolly well have to do, because that’s where God is pushing them. Collaborative ministry means not going it alone, and holding one’s work to oneself, like a dog with a bone. Most of my work is not about presiding at big services, it’s about getting other people to do things. Collaborative ministry therefore means both sharing and respecting space, not just our own space, but the space of others. That’s the best kind of bond in the fellowship of the gospel.
The other area concerns our calling in the world. It’s so easy to get lost in the paraphernalia and the detail of the local Christian community. In fact, I sometimes think that church people spend far too much time and emotional energy there. Of course the local show has to be kept going, and we do face big challenges ahead. But there’s a world beyond the church, and we keep having to thank God that his mercy and love are far greater than our sometimes rather narrow interests and concerns. Readers are a lay ministry, and that must mean a concern with the world beyond the church, which can enlighten preaching and teaching, and strengthen our missionary witness. I spend a certain amount of my time far outside the confines of the church’s life, and it’s often something of a respite from the concentrated ecclesiastical aspects of a bishop’s ministry. But it also provides a welcome opportunity to think ‘outside the box’, as we say nowadays, and return to base refreshed with new perspectives.
Let me return finally to Paul’s contrast between the earthly tent and the heavenly dwelling. For this is where we do indeed walk by faith and not by sight. We can’t spend our whole time measuring all that we do in terms of over-specific goals, and over-precise management language. We do need to be more sharp and disciplined and less vague and sentimental about a lot of things. To think about what we’re doing can be a bit threatening for some people. A church that is really ready to change is a church that has a mature perspective about the difference between this world and the next. The tent that is pitched and then dismantled, and re-pitched somewhere else, on the journey of faith’s pilgrimage, is a more authentically Christian model; just as it’s more authentically Christian to see our human bodies with all their imperfections not as machines to be driven into some kind of perfection, but as part of that incomplete, provisional world, that awaits a glory yet to come. When Joanna Lumley at last saw the ‘northern lights’, no one who watched her could doubt the sincerity and amazement of her smile as she gazed heavenward, and the extraordinary almost prayer- like way in which she looked upwards and said ‘thank you’. Intended or unintended, here was a real harbinger of heaven.
