ST. MARK’S, NORTH END
LICENSING OF MALCOLM KING
APRIL 2nd 2004 at 7.30 P.M.
Readings: Isaiah 29: 17 – end
Luke 13: 10 – 17
Every Saturday, I manage to look at what’s coming up on television in the coming week. The last time I gave the T.V. Guide more than a glance, I tried to arrange them into different categories – that is, apart from the obvious news bulletins, films, programmes, and soap operas. Each category echoes particular needs. There are hospital dramas, that reflect concern about health and danger. There are police dramas, that reflect an abiding interest in crime, and how it’s detected. There are house dramas, that reflect a desire to start all over again somewhere else, or have a holiday in a dream home in another country. And there are competitions of various kinds; these seem to appeal to a basic sense that the man or woman in the street has a right to a moment of glamour, alongside the big celebrities we hear about on an almost daily basis.
I am not sure how all this will work out in the future: who knows how many television channels there will be in twenty years’ time – and whether they will be worth watching. But I expect that the market will be there; and there will, of course, be even greater scope for watching old films! But whatever degree of relaxation, stimulation, and dreaming television provides us with – health, crime, homes and holidays, the competitive spirit are all likely to remain part of the scene. They are abiding concerns, sometimes even obsessions, and because they are abiding, they will probably get more and more complex as the years go on.
In the midst of all this, the question has to be asked, where is the place, or the space, for exploring humanity as a spiritual being. One answer is to look at the specifically religious programmes – those few that are allowed – like Songs of Praise, or the special service, or the occasional documentary. Each has a fairly standard format. Songs of Praise is a selection of hymns from a particular place or on a particular theme, with a lead in from a local or a national celebrity; a service of a certain kind is geared towards television, so that it is visually effective, and more demanding of the congregation involved in terms of pace and concentration than your average Sunday liturgy; or there is the documentary programme that looks at a particular person or issue – where we may be at the mercy (or lack of it!) of investigative journalists, the scriptwriter, or the panel of commentators.
Another approach is to look at the ordinary programmes, and see some of the deep, spiritual issues that assail our world. We want good health, and are helped to see on the screen the ethical (and sometimes financial) dilemmas that face the modern health service; has the local Health Turst, for example, the resources for this operation on this particular person? We also like to be reminded of the complexities to which people are prepared to go, even with modern technology, to conceal – and then have uncovered – the most terrible crimes. To have a fresh start, or to go somewhere amazing for a break, is a fantasy we all want to live through – but perhaps never quite come out of at the other end! And our basic desire for success to be real, and to be recognised through some unknown person, even in some quiz show, is undeniably real.
Which of these two approaches is the ‘right’ one? The overtly religious one or the basic, ordinary story, which lies there, between the lines of some drama, waiting to be decoded? The answer, of course, is that they are both correct, and they are both needed; such alternatives as these relate directly to the mission of the Church in general, and to the shared ministry to which we have called Malcolm King to begin tonight, here at St. Mark’s. Some bits of the Church want to rush too quickly into the ‘religious programmes’ mould, and remain there, stuck in what sometimes seems like the holy ghetto of the Sunday liturgy; while other bits of the Church want to jettison these altogether, and to live the permanent, and semi-hidden life of an anonymous evangelist, occasionally articulating the spiritual realities of these broader issues, such as health and crime, our livelihood and our projected desire for public success, and others as well.
How I sometimes wish we were better at holding both approaches together, not in some kind of contrived, theoretical balance, but in the way we live our lives as stumbling disciples of Jesus! St. Mark’s, and St. Nicholas’ and St. Francis’, are all centres of devoted worship, where day-by-day and week-by-week, prayer is offered for the local communities of North End and Hilsea. Worship must be at the heart of what we do; and speaking for myself, it is very different to say Morning Prayer in my chapel, with preparation and pace, than to say it, as I occasionally do, on the early morning train to London, when I have to work harder at preparation and pace. Like our personal prayers at home and elsewhere, our public worship could benefit from a simple boldness, with space to savour what we are about to say or have just said, and to let God allow us to give time to ourselves with him. I even suggested the other day at a meeting that the Sunday Intercessions in many of our churches would be immeasurably improved were they to be cut down to a half of their normal length, so that our congregations can be given time really to pray. Nor should we be tempted to flatten our worship, to make it look like anything else. The ‘religious programmes’ are, after all, supposed to be a bit different from all the others, and people become understandably disappointed if they are not.
But what of the more undercover mission that corresponds with human needs that lie waiting to be decoded, like those programmes that are not intended to be ‘religious’? Of course, God does not depend on a fixed number of people to believe in him, or to need him, in order for him to exist. Of course, God is God – and all our efforts to serve him are going to be limited and inadequate; and, in the foreglow of Holy Week, we have the annual collective stroll past the cross, in order to bring home to us that we are not here to turn the Church into a commercial success, especially when the community of faith, our birthright’s symbol, is failure – namely the cross.
But each parish, each congregation, has its own set of local challenges, in terms of human need, human questions, human dreams that only seldom come true. And it is to these that we need to turn, so that what we celebrate and do at the Lord's table week-by-week, day-by-day, has a context, an earthly reality, a specific focus. For example, every day of the week, I pray for a different part of the diocese; and I start on Sunday with Portsmouth, its Lord Mayor, its Chief Executive, its Leader of the Council, its MPs, and other people, including Bishop Crispian, and not forgetting Pompey Football Club, so that I don’t pray generally and vaguely; and I think about some of the many concerns and interests those people (and others) represent. There is indeed much of ordinary humanity, here in this parish, both to celebrate and to decode. There are issues and questions waiting to be uncovered, such as racism, homelessness, and what it really is like to be a young person out there on that street – and that is what I call mission.
Tonight’s two readings bear testimony to this, first with Isaiah’s promise that the meek will indeed be given joy, and the ruthless come to nothing; and the way in which, in the gospel, Jesus refuses to be put back in his box, when rebuked for healing a cripple on the Sabbath, just because he will not have the work of God limited in any way, by the human rule book. As we welcome Malcolm into the heart of Portsmouth tonight, may we be ready to deepen and widen all that we do, and all that we are, in the service of the everlasting gospel.
+ KENNETH PORTSMOUTH
