Collation of Mike Sheffield at St George's, Waterlooville
FRIDAY 16 JULY 2004 AT 7.30 P.M
Readings: 1 Peter 5: 1-14
Jn. 21: 15-17
I don’t usually say very much – at least directly – about the new priest on an occasion like this. But there is a saying in the diocese that wherever Father Mike Sheffield goes, there will be a procession! Not, I hasten to add, because of a love of show, colour, movement and music for its own sake: but because, I suspect, deep down in his devotion as a Christian disciple and a priest, Mike sees the gospel as profoundly public. This follows in the steps of St Osmund, the Bishop of Salisbury – who died on this day in 1099, and about whom we know very little, except that he was responsible for the building of Salisbury Cathedral’s Romanesque predecessor on the hill above the city in Old Sarum. Every time I’ve been to any of the Churches Mike has served, Holy Trinity, Ryde, or St. Michael’s, Swanmore, on the Isle of Wight; St. Alban’s, West Leigh, and St. Alban’s School; to say nothing of the Havant Deanery Millennium eucharist, or the 75th anniversary celebration of the diocese on Southsea Common two summers ago, there has always been a great attention to detail, to reverence, to lively music. But I have always gone away from these occasions with a profound sense of gratitude that it has never seemed to be an end in itself. The worship of God is – to adapt Jesus’ command to Peter in the gospel we’ve just heard – about ‘feeding my sheep’, Christian nurture. We need to remember that those words were not uttered in the sacristy while Peter was laying out vestments, but in the risky, questioning environment of the post-resurrection open air.
The open air is indeed risky, and a context where people are apt to say some quite sharp and critical things. And so is a shopping centre. Which brings me to a true story about three people, not here in Waterlooville, but somewhere else in this, shall we say, region.
Two ladies – no age given – were talking to each other as they waited their turn at the check-out point. Behind them was a teenage girl, who was standing there, minding her own business, the topic of the loud conversation between the two ladies was young people – who, apparently, had no manners, no respect for their elders, foul-mouthed all the time, played truant from school, and were only interested in themselves. What neither of them realised was that the teenager behind them in the queue was quietly involved in a whole number of local, voluntary projects, like visiting the elderly; and she was responsible for looking after newcomers to her school. But (and this is the final disgrace of the older generation), one of the four wheels of the overloaded carrier being pushed by one of the ladies was resting on the toes of the teenager’s right foot while this conversation was going on, and was causing her some pain; yet she said nothing.
I hope that those two people were thoroughly ashamed of themselves – though I suspect they were unaware of what they were doing. Of course, there are occasions when we all behave thoughtlessly. I know full well that I am capable of bumping into someone when my mind is somewhere else. But at least the unintended victim gets an apology. Yet that story provides a gently chilling backdrop to the euphoria of tonight’s celebration. If we are to risk taking the gospel out into the shopping centre, out of what sometimes appears to be the cosy ghetto of the religiously like-minded, where we can do and say things with people we either like or are prepared to put up with, week-by-week, and instead enter the risky, questioning environment of the open air, then all sorts of things can happen that are no longer under our control. God does indeed walk ahead of us, but our religiosity can so easily get in the way of the kind of genuine engagement with the world that we are called to share. Whatever the KAIROS process is or isn’t, it is about precisely that engagement – among our people, and our communities. It is not a Lent course that we can somehow ‘do’, and tick the box, and get the qualifying T-shirt. It is a way for our faith to be rekindled, of becoming more faithful disciples, of being a Church that is less self-absorbed, so that we think first before complaining about everyone else, particularly if we don’t understand them in the first place, and instead take notice when our religious baggage is impeding – or even hurting -the spiritual movement of the very people we should be trying to reach, who are not necessarily hostile, but have questions to ask us.
‘Tend the flock of Christ’, advises St. Peter, or whoever it was who knew him who was writing in his name, in tonight’s epistle. Really ‘tending’ is about providing direction as well as nurture – and it is a ministry that can be just as demanding for the one who is doing the tending as it can be for the flock itself. Here at St. George’s, you have many challenges ahead of you. And I guess Father Mike will have quite a list of expectations to help you prioritise early on. When I first went to Guildford as Rector in 1986, there was a joke in the parish that everyone was going to give up their responsibilities, while still sitting on the PCC, in order to watch the new incumbent like hawks! Perhaps the name of this place gives you a hint about your capacity for keeping at it. After all, Waterlooville derives its name (does it not?) from soldiers who came back from the famous Battle of Waterloo, and weren’t paid. So they stopped and stayed here until they were. Well, stay on if you will now, but take care to note that the pay in this particular instance is of a different kind altogether. To be the flock of Christ in the risky, questioning environment of the open air is, after all, the calling of every follower of Christ.
+ KENNETH PORTSMOUTH
