Education Sunday: Cathedral Evensong,
6.00 p.m. Sunday 8th February
Readings: Wisdom 6:12-20
Matthew 5:13-20
‘The desire for wisdom leads to a kingdom’ (Wis 6:20)
‘You are the light of the world’ (Mt 5:14)
‘You are the salt of the earth’ (Mt 5:13)
In all the paperwork that reaches my office each week, a significant proportion concerns the workings of various committees. These obviously include education committees of one sort or another. In a sense, they all look the same: welcome, attendance, apologies, minutes of previous meetings, matters arising, action points (and perhaps silently noted ‘inaction’ points as well); then the main items; followed by Any Other Business (if that’s still allowed, and if it’s not, people do have a habit of smuggling in their own concerns somehow); and right at the end, the most difficult item – the date of the next meeting! Common themes run through them all: aims, plans, strategies, financial projections, and, most important of all, that much-used (and often misunderstood) word, consultation. Successful committees are usually those which are focused, and sufficiently open-ended to meet new eventualities, and even a challenge or two. The less successful either become talking-shops, or are sidelined by that new-look animal, the inter-departmental working group, which often threatens to overthrow existing structures. Sometimes, of course, this is necessary, but there are occasions when they are a confounded nuisance, because they can undermine morale and generate mistrust.
I do not know if this is the kind of world inhabited by at least some of you here in the Cathedral tonight. I suspect that it does. The challenge is to ensure that between the lines of these committee minutes something significant goes on – the education enterprise, which is about leading someone away from where they are, out of their existing world, towards something different, which gives greater value, meaning and purpose to the lives they lead. Education is therefore about people, not just processes. Which leaves me with the question, what resources can the Christian tradition provide to put flesh on all that paperwork? Tonight’s two readings give us some stimulus. The Book of Wisdom, which sits on the edge of the Old Testament, muses on life in its heights and depths, and away from the surface. Then, in Matthew’s Gospel, the Sermon on the Mount places the spotlight on Jesus of Nazareth as a teacher who is in the business of proclaiming a new way of living, a new approach to God. Together, they tell us something about wisdom, something about faith, and something about truth.
First of all, wisdom is not a commodity, but a gift, as we read ‘the desire for wisdom leads to a kingdom’ (Wis 6:20). We have to keep hold of that truth in a world in which courses are constantly evaluated, and financial constraints inevitably push us towards viewing the education enterprise in terms of what is cost-effective; for parents do not order good A-Level results by dutifully paying their taxes. Wisdom is about more than knowledge of facts or technical skills, important as they are: I cannot drive a car without knowing about gear-levers, and I will drive less unsafely in a snow-storm if I have some experience not only of what snow is like but of the effect it has on roads. But wisdom takes us beyond these criteria, and leads us from the facts and experiences themselves to the facts and experiences behind them. Human growth is stunted if we are not given space and encouragement to ask these deep questions – otherwise we will continue live on the surface, and our lives will become as superficial (however speedy) as the thinking we dare to do for ourselves. That is the reason why wisdom, in both the Jewish and Christian traditions, became associated not just with a creative, reflective and prayerful life, but with God himself.
Secondly, faith is not exclusive, but particular, as we read what Jesus says to every one of his hearers, ‘you are the light of the world’ (Mt 5:14). Light shines in the dark and is to be shared, and, like good education, needs to be experienced in due measure, otherwise, like a blinding light, it can overwhelm us. When faith is seen as exclusive, we get into the trench warfare of different church groups or ideologies (because faith is not the prerogative of Christians), which compete with each other for soundness, numerical acceptance, and success. Fortunately, God does not depend for his (or her!) existence on a reasonable number of reasonable people believing in him. Faith is about trust, and in a world that finds trust, both public and private, a difficult dimension of human relationships, we tend to show some understandable reserve, even suspicion when people or institutions ask to be trusted. But then at precisely the time when we least expect it, the powers that be, in Government and elsewhere, ask for a new relationship with the Churches, and faith-communities. This will require not exclusiveness, but particularity, whether it is running a school, or initiating a project at a college, or providing Higher Education chaplaincy. I suspect that this is going to be a feature of life for the foreseeable future: the radical western secularist agenda is becoming increasingly tired, and, as in France at the moment, frankly illiberal. No one really respects a religious faith that fades away into the background of our culture. But when it hits you from the foreground, it has little of lasting impact, unless it relates to the personal context of the moment: faith and education need each other, and they cannot afford to live in separate compartments.
Third, truth is not obvious, but is there to be discovered. When Jesus says ‘you are the salt of the earth’ (Mt 5:13), he is suggesting that truth can act as a sharp preservative, and so far from being an optional extra, is an essential aspect of our life together. When I watch the evening television news, I always look out for the opening headlines, which will tell me what someone else thinks are the most important events of the day, translated into simple slogans. That is the ‘obvious’ approach. I may or may not agree with the selection, their order in priority, and the way they are summarized, but the process has to go on into more detail, more depth, with comparisons, contrasts, and even some analysis – if, that is, we are to be educated beyond the obvious. William Barclay, the popular Scottish preacher, once remarked that ‘truth which is merely told is quick to be forgotten; truth which is discovered lasts a lifetime.’ For those of us involved in developing education programmes, and not just surviving the current series of reviews, the search for truth remains paramount. When is a new idea a mask for falsehood, or an avoidance of the harder, more rewarding path? When does a new discovery need an ethical critique, because life is about more than consumerism? The Hutton Report in this respect is a bit of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, public opinion is unlikely to be entirely convinced, because some people just won’t. On the other hand, it may well become something of a milestone in the way public opinion is becoming even more sceptical about the power of some sections of the media than it is about the extent to which politicians are to be trusted. So often our own day-to-day experience of truth stems from the sharp interplay of different approaches and ideas, like a good team hammering away at a problem in order to discover a solution.
All of which brings me back to those endless minutes of those seemingly interminable meetings, and the challenge to put flesh upon them, as a community in search of wisdom, faith, and truth. I am often asked why people are so keen to send their children to a Church School, or why there is an upsurge in the number of students wanting to take Religious Education at GSCE and A-Level, or why chaplains are such valued people in their communities, and often by people who have little time for organized Christianity. One answer in particular keeps standing out. It is what the cross, which hangs in so many of our churches, halls and homes, is there to symbolize: a world much bigger than ourselves, and a world in which success is not the only guide for living. Education is often about picking up the pieces, learning from our mistakes, and providing space for mercy and forgiveness, in a culture in which our minds and diaries are, frankly, overpopulated. The cross is, to put it directly, about the wisdom of God, it is about an inclusive but challenging faith, and it is about a truth that sets people free.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
