Licensing of Stuart Holt as Priest-in-charge of the Bridge parishes & commissioning as Area Dean of Bishop's Waltham

WEDNESDAY 8^TH JULY 2009

ST. MARY AND ALL SAINTS, DROXFORD AT 7PM

Readings: Romans 15:14-21

Mark 10:1-7

There are a number of occupational hazards in being a bishop, and as the date of my retirement approaches, I suppose you could say that some of them become more obvious than others.  On an occasion like tonight, I don’t think of busy and bossy e-mails, nor the latest missive from Church House, London, which I often want either to ignore or find a devious way round!  Instead, my mind goes towards a theme that runs through many of the appointment processes for new clergy.  It is that phrase about “being comfortable with certain forms of worship”.  

 I know that Anglicans thrive on variety and I expect that this true in a community like these parishes, with your different buildings, different histories, and varying expectations.  But I want for a few moments to cast myself in the role of devil’s advocate – if that’s not blasphemous for a bishop about himself!  I want to speak a few words of challenge both to Stuart and to you in these parishes as well as in the deanery as a whole.  After all, being prepared to say slightly offbeat things is exactly what St. Paul is making a case for in this evening’s first reading, and it’s certainly what the disciples were called to go out and do, in that wonderful list of names in tonight’s second reading, from the gospel of St. Mark. 

One of the things that I shall miss when Sarah and I leave Portsmouth in September is both the agony and the ecstasy, if I can put it like that, of going around the diocese to different churches, and savouring the experiences of worship there.  A bishop has to “meet all trains”. The Anglican spectrum varies, from being gassed with incense in one place, to being deafened by a noisy band in another.  I am not suggesting that Bishop’s Waltham deanery should opt for either of those extremes, but it does highlight both the strength and the weakness of the Anglican tradition.  We are very tribal in our mentality, and we like the local variations, even if they are barely recognisable somewhere else.   

So we need to work at holding together rather more than we do. We need to stop being consumers for Christ, only turning up when we get what suits us – or rather, what we are “comfortable with”.  I am afraid I have learnt to distrust that expression, because it implies that we are not really disciples at all, learning from Jesus. We seem, by contrast, to be people turning up at a religious supermarket, in order to grab the goods that are most easily available, preferably at cut prices.  Perhaps I exaggerate – but it’s to make a point.  Obviously what will work in Corhampton is unlikely to be the case here in Droxford, and what is done in Meonstoke may well not suit Exton.  The buildings are so very different – and I speak here as the son of an architect, who grew up with looking at old buildings.  But all that aside, perhaps we need to realise more deeply that the God driven instinct to worship is so deep that it is unifying, and not dividing: it’s supposed to draw folk together, not set them apart.  I worship in a vague sort of way when driving through the Hampshire countryside, or when listening to a piece of music. But worship is not just about being on my own, in a context and an atmosphere that is personally congenial.  It is truly about being uncomfortable – because it is about celebrating the presence of God himself.  It is not about turning Jesus into a cosy suburban pussycat, nicely rolled up on the theological carpet, that reflects our own prejudices, liberal, catholic, evangelical or charismatic, and being stroked by our very partial religious hands, so that we have total control of him – that is, until he awakes and shows his mettle!  It is not our worship.  It is God breaking into our lives, and ourselves being ready to listen to him, comfortably or uncomfortably.  As a wise American Benedictine friend once remarked, ‘the encounter (of Moses) at the burning bush was no seminar’.  That means it’s not our job to predetermine what people are going to experience or how they are going to relate to it – or worse still, understand it.  Of course all that has its place, in Christian formation but the starting point must be that sense of meeting, encounter, and love – with the living God. 

I am sure Stuart will have pondered many of these questions, because they relate not just to what goes on in our Church buildings, but to the mission and pastoral care with which he will be entrusted this evening in these parishes.  But let me offer two further observations. Because I seldom happen to use the old Prayer Book, I miss those words from the general confession – “we acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness”.  That is not because I like a good grovel. It is because nowadays we tend to underplay the forgiveness of sins, a burden for so many people inside and outside our churches. At its best (recognising what has happened) it should involve both acknowledging and bewailing (remorse, leading to repentance) – casual regret is not enough.  Some of those old words capture something we often miss, so that we might actually end up forgiving one another.  

Then, on the other hand, some of our modern prayers also repay some pondering, because they yearn for a God who is beyond words, beyond our understanding, beyond our reasoning.  In one of the new eucharistic prayers we come across the words, “all your works echo the silent music of your praise.”  There is no point in trying to take those phrases apart and define them too closely, because what they are really saying is that the whole creation – ourselves included – is made to praise God, and to serve one another.  It is not under our control, and exclusively for our use.  So neither forgiveness, nor the greatness of God, is something to feel ‘comfortable with’!   

Well, Stuart, you can now add your name to the many priests who have served here, part of a long chain that began centuries ago, and which will reach forward into the future, as that unfolds with all its uncertainties.  But you were wise when you wrote to me that you wanted to make prayer the foundation of your new ministry.  May God richly bless you and your communities with that great and precious gift.