Tag Archives: God

Parish Monasticism: an update

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Suscipe me, Domine, secundum eloquium tuum, et vivam; 
et non confundas me ab expectatione mea.

Receive me, O Lord, according to your word, and I shall live: and let me not be ashamed of my hope.

I started this blog at the end of 2013 as a learning project. I had no plans of what I would learn but would journal an intentional study programme of the Rule of St Benedict. I called is ‘Parish Monasticism?’ The question mark was important as I didn’t know if such a concept would work or be helpful to frame my reflections.

Well, 1 year and 9 months later and ‘Parish Monasticism’ is a thing! Who’d have thought it. By ‘a thing’ I mean other people are using the term independent from me. I had a parish priest who met me at a training event early this year use it and ask if I had heard of the idea. I asked him where he had heard it and he told me he had been told about it by a friend and that there was a Facebook group called ‘Parish Monasticism’ (no question mark). It’s funny how things develop…

I began this blog with a hunch; a hunch and a challenge laid down by Rev. Pete Askew at the Northumbria Community during a placement I did at Nether Springs in Felton. He said to me,

It’s impossible to live the way of life we live here at Nether Springs and be a parish priest. You’d have to be very stubborn to achieve it.

I don’t know if it is my stubbornness or something else but an increasing number of parish priests and ministers are not only discovering the benefits of monastic principles to ministry but also feel a sense that God is calling them to commit to the location in an intentional, communal way with other disciples.

This is at the heart of what ‘parish monasticism’ is, I feel. What I’ve been discovering in theory and, only in some parts, in practise is a way to effectively minister and transform neighbourhoods and communities through these basic monastic principles. No, it’s more than that. Parish monasticism is about reformation of the parish system to an explicit commitment to discipleship. I’ve discovered that the lack of effective mission and evangelism is a result of faulty discipleship. As I wrote before,

If a community is not engaged in mission then their discipleship is faulty; mission is the fruit of the tree of discipleship. There is no point in just forcing a community to ‘do mission’ and expect it to work. It would be better to go back to the basics of discipleship, correcting that and the fruit of mission will grow. You judge discipleship by the mission. (Ned Lunn, ‘Chapter 49: observance of lent’, Parish Monasticism? (Jan 17th 2015))

As the Church we have lost sight, as it did in Germany before World War II, of the cost of discipleship. Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s observations and reflections on the antidote to this is what has fuelled the New Monastic movement and I think we are now beginning to discover that it must be planted within the parish system.

It must be within the parish system because there is something deeply counter-cultural for the increasingly urbanised 21st century Britain where transport is easy and more people consume worship and community rather than create/live it. Where we have no strength to withstand the temptation to make everything into our own image and just as we want it we justify or sanctify our freedom to choose where we go and what we do/allow in our lives. The parish system challenges that ego-centric part of each and everyone of us who refuses to allow something external to change our inner life.

This journey of discovery has unearthed the interconnected roots of the saints of old who speak so clearly to me; St Aidan, Thomas Merton, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Shane Claiborne to name a few. In focussing my reflections I have discovered a call deep down within me that sings of a theology rooted in Ash Wednesday and the creation story; we are made of dust, we must fully grasp humility and acknowledge we are nothing without the tender touch of our Loving Father God, humanity needs transformation and grace. From this root it grows into an acceptance of God’s mercy and love reaching out to lift us up from humble beginnings to healing and salvation as God adopts us and works on us so we can conform to His Son, the perfection of humanity, Jesus Christ. When we give ourselves totally to this process of redemption in every part of our life He seals us with His Holy Spirit to equip us for the task of heralding in His Kingdom in our lives and the lives of those around us like the first discipleship at Pentecost.

It all begins with humility.

It all demands obedience.

It all leads to community.

Parish monasticism, for me, is an emerging call to intentional, radical discipleship that seeks to convert our entire life to that of Jesus and heals us of our capitalist consumer, neoliberal culture that Stanley Hauerwas critiqued 34 years ago. Are we willing to be a stumbling block to both poles of the political and moral map found in the UK today? Parish monasticism is not about being ‘relevant’ which is banded about so much, it is about being faithful to the distinctive call to follow Christ who came to heal and healing means things change! We look at the complexities and crisis facing us on every side of our world today and we keep kidding ourselves that we know how to solve them: we don’t! We desperately want our situation to change but Jesus changes situations by changing us… and that means you and me.

Thomas Merton, who I return to whenever I reflect on our self-identity crisis in our society, continues to inform me,

The reason we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly or openly hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. (Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.9)

This is the root of our problem. This is where real conversion and deep discipleship works out the healing and salvation of God’s grace, mercy and love for us.

So let us humbly acknowledge our total need for change. Let us obediently follow our healer’s instruction towards salvation and let us be adopted, by grace, into his family and live in true peace with him, ourselves and with others.

Chapter 61: reception of pilgrim monks

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A stranger from a distant locale may be received as a guest for as long as he desires providing he does not make unreasonable demands but accepts the ways of the brothers and is satisfied.

Where is the sacrifice?

A friend of mine has recently done some research on theological education in the UK. The research aimed to uncover the reasons behind a person’s selection of one theological training institution over another. My friend has not finished writing up the findings but they were struck by how the primary motivation for selection was personal preference.

That may not seem, on the face of it, a shock,

Of course, it’s down to their personal preference!

Personal preference always plays some part in any decision but when this is the primary reason we may be in trouble. Personal preference is now outranking God’s call along with the potential cost that that call may have on one’s life. The responses may well assume that ‘personal preference’ means God’s will but that is even more dangerous and leads me to some thing I’d like to briefly explore again.

Our current culture is so individualised that we have again committed the heresy of assuming too much that God is made in our image and not the other way round. Every generation is tempted to commit this error in different ways; ours has fallen for it in the way we interpret Scripture and discern the will of God. In our heady mix of neoliberalism and libertarian morals alongside the deeply ingrained consumerism we have arrived at the place where our primary authority in discernment is personal, private emotions.

I know God and He loves me just the way I am and He wants me to be happy. He’s not clearly saying “no” to this behaviour and it makes me happy so it must be ok.

This subjective authority is of no use in a functioning society. Yes, the heart is important but, as Jesus himself said,

”For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” (Mark 7:21-23)

We are capable of great love but we are also capable of great evil and discerning the two is not as easy as we assume. Love can be contaminated with these evil intentions. We have this arrogance to think that we know what love is but we limit it and we make out it is easy to love. Jesus showed us that great love has a great cost and the way to be like Jesus is narrow.

Where is the talk of radical, costly discipleship? Where is the conversation about the narrow road, the immediately exclusive way in Jesus spoke about this path of transformation? Consumer culture has infected Christ’s body and we need to deal with it. God can easily be thought of as blessing us with everything we want and our faith crumbles when things don’t go our way. We act however we like and we all search the Bible to justify our actions. We freely choose to behave in ways that seem perfectly reasonable and we judge them to be right by the happiness factor.

In a very banal way, consider church hopping.

I’m not against searching out a local congregation that will feed and encourage us. The style of worship has a part to play in whether you are called there, as is theological roots and tradition. You don’t want to be in a place where you are always frustrated and tempted to moan and grumble about that group of people. This desire to fit in though must be held in tension with God’s work in you.

I chose to go to Cranmer Hall in Durham not primarily because the people were nice, or it was closer to family but primarily because I felt God calling me to train in the difficult, urban communities of working class people very different from my experience. I visited Ridley Hall in Cambridge and it was great. I could have trained there and I would have learnt a lot and would have loved the people I trained with but the swinging factor was I felt God asking me to step out of my comfort zone and stretch myself. That was scary but my wife and I trusted that God would grow and change us and ultimately surprise us with what he can do through us.

I feel God is challenging His Church to readdress the question of commitment. I think there is a great move of the Spirit towards an acknowledgement of ‘costly grace’ and I don’t think any of us really knows what that looks or feels like but I can assure you that it won’t be comfortable.

Rowan Williams, in his book ‘The Wound of Knowledge’, says,

Humanity is created in God’s image – created with the capacity for relationship to God in obedience: its fulfilment is in this relationship…But the image is potential only, it must be made into a ‘likeness’ by the exercise of goodness. Had humanity been created in perfection, it would have performed its good acts automatically. (Rowan Williams, The Wound of Knowledge (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1990) p.27-28)

The Anglican Church adopts a three fold authority structure to guard against mis-guided discernment: Scripture, tradition and reason. All three must play a part in the discernment process. This is why discerning moral responses to issues takes time because all three must be held in tension. In our current age we have, at times, thrown all three out of the window and adopted the authority of this world, private happiness.

Although it is not obvious, St. Benedict is talking about discernment in this week’s chapter. He talks about how a visiting monk should point out things he thinks are wrong and how the abbot should respond.

If he thinks something wrong and points it out humbly, charitably and judiciously, the abbot should circumspectly meditate upon it, for the Lord may have sent the stranger for that purpose.

Humility, love and wisdom. These should be our desires for ourselves. What does it mean to pray for humility? What does it mean to be loving? What does it mean to be wise? All of them are life-long journeys of discovery and our prayer should always be that God works these things through us and all of them will require that we change who we are.

Reflection

There has been a really interesting report out this week from the Centre for Theology and Communities entitled ‘Deep Calls to Deep: monasticism for the cities’. In it they have explored monastic expressions from various traditions in East London. At the end of the interviews they share the following suggestion,

The stories in this report are challenging to our urban consumer culture. They are stories of people prepared to commit to something for life, living together in community, willing to forgo and to share money for the benefit of others, devoting their careers to pursuit of the Common Good. (Tim Thorlby and Angus Ritchie, Deep Calls To Deep: monasticism for the cities (London: Centre for Theology and Communities, 2015) p.43)

The reason I would argue that the New Monastic movement is an evangelistic and missional movement is because of this direct challenge to our culture at this time. I see many people proclaiming Jesus Christ as Lord and coming to Church but there is little focus on the conversion, the turning away from a previous life.

I guess Shane Claiborne says it best,

We are cultural refugees. The beautiful monastics throughout church history were cultural refugees; they ran to the desert not to flee from the world but to save the world from itself… Much of the world now lies in ruins of triumphant and militant Christianity. The imperially baptized religion created a domesticated version of Christianity – a dangerous thing that can inoculate people from ever experiencing true faith. (Everyone is a Christian, but no one knows what a Christian is anymore.) Our hope is that the postmodern, post-Christian world is once again ready for a people who are peculiar, people who spend their energy creating a culture of contrast rather than a culture of relevancy. (Shane Claiborne, Jesus for President: politics for ordinary radicals (Michigan: Zondervan, 2008) p. 238-240)

The New Monastic movement is, I feel, taking an interesting turn in the UK towards a parish focus. This parish focus reintroduces sacrifice into a movement that could have been seen as pic and mix spirituality. With an emphasis on location the new monastics are called to even deeper obedience and commitment that counters that consumerism that is ingrained in all of us. With the emphasis on committing to a particular community and a particular area, no matter how hostile or challenging, the new monastics are bringing the contrast of the disciplined life into the heart of a culture and changing it. The new monastics are living in exile in the midst of an alien culture and living an alternative lifestyle.

Loving Father, you are unchanging and steadfast but we are not. We thank you that the path of transformation is open to us and that we can change. Guide us by your grace and your Holy Spirit that we would be transformed into the likeness of your Son, Jesus Christ. May we grow to be steadfast in our commitment to you, that we would be more and more faithful disciples, humbly loving the world and seeking to establish your kingdom here amongst us.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 60: priests who would live in the monastery

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Should a member of the priesthood wish to enter the monastery, permission is not to be immediately granted.

What is it God is calling me to?

Having discussed general principles of vocation and commitment for the last few weeks and having spoken earlier about a potential monastic understanding of vocation, the Rule now causes me to reflect on my own personal discernment. It’s been hard reading this chapter on the acceptance of a priest into monastic orders partly because it forces me to see my sense of calling to a form of monasticism from the other side.

This week I sat in front of a panel and answered questions of vocation. I think it went well. I answered as openly and honestly as I could but there will always be a small sense of disappointment in these situations due, in part, to always being unable to discern, precisely, the will of God. Discernment, for me, is a corporate activity; it is best done within a community listening to God together. This ensures personal agendas and egos are balanced and the Spirit can confirm itself through the Body of Christ.

What is it God is calling me to?

I have been asking that question for a year and a half now. My prayers have circled round this question as I have sought God’s leading for Sarah and I post-curacy. There have been some encouraging glimpses as God uses all the vehicles of communication to show us his plans and purposes.

But…

All of those glimpses are potential and not actual. Dreaming is easy (I can do it in my sleep!) walking them out is hard. Reality is a cruel beast with a seeming will of its own not easy to tame with our desires. The stirrings of my heart are one thing but what will happen may well be quite different.

There comes a point in the journey of discernment (and I have reached it now) where one falls on the mercy of another, usually a person in authority. This is an act of trust. In vulnerability one offers the dreams, the stirrings, the private wisps of conversation between ones heart and God and ask another to decide the path to take. This is never straight forward and the person to whom you pass those cherished fragments of one’s inner life to must handle them with great care. To trust that person with such treasure is made easier when it is done in relationship.

At some point in June/July I will head to my bishop with the fruit of my wrestling with God and ask him to discern my next step.

How do I communicate what I feel God speaking to me about?

Our lives, our vocation, everything that makes up the cocktail of what makes ‘me’ me is like a tightly knotted ball of odds and ends which are so intrinsically woven to discern what to do with it takes care; a mixture of gentleness and love alongside bold and decisive cuts. It is not something to hand over easily but, sitting with it in your lap won’t help either.

Yes, I feel called to ordained ministry as a priest. Yes, I feel called to the Church of England (for whatever reason!). Yes, I feel called to married life. Yes, I feel called to sit on committees/ strategy groups, Synods, etc. Yes I feel called to the ministry of reconciliation. Yes, I feel called to the wilderness context. Yes, I feel called to serve in the ordinariness of life and, yes, I feel called to monastic life, intentional community, a contemplative rhythm of prayer and action. What does this particular concoction of callings look like in practice? How do they connect and work themselves out? I do not know… and so the ball of confusion gets passed with great trepidation to the bishop with a prayer that God’s will be done in my life.

In the Rule of St. Benedict there is a sense that the call to priesthood is to be set under the call to be a monk. That monastic call supersedes the call to priestly ministry. This, for me, makes me reflect on how I see the priestly ministry. I still find myself considering it as a function rather than an ontology (a question of being). I see myself as being a priest in that I am someone who instinctively inhabits the ‘between places’ but I increasingly feel I am a monk in that I think I am at home in the wilderness with a gathered community of other desert dwellers.

The key question for me, as I wait for the call to move,

Where then is my home?

My answer (if I am forced to be so bold) is identifying the wilderness that is all around me and building the altars there. Abraham meets God in the journey and is called to encounter him there. There are increasing number of people who feel a similar call to establishing community of intentional disciples pitching a tent and setting up a place for God’s presence to be amongst them. Will the Church recognise this move of the Spirit which seems to be birthing monastic communities within the wilds of 21st century western civilisation?

Reflection

It can feel like what I am envisaging is having my cake and eating it! This chapter has highlighted that.

You want all the pleasure of being a monk without any of the cost

The New Monastic movement is criticised on this point, I know. How is it monastic if you’re not alone? If you rarely have to face the cost of poverty and chastity how is it any form of monasticism?

I do not have an immediate answer to that but I know that we will only come to an answer by living in those questions rather than jumping to some theoretical answers. The Desert Fathers and Mothers didn’t write out a plan, a strategy, a theory; they moved into the edge lands and lived, struggled, failed and persevered.

I want to end with a picture that I have begun to own for myself; the bear.

The bear is often a solitary animal but is fiercely social as well. They live in the wild and gently plod around existing in quite extreme environments. When you bring them into a different surrounding you have to cage them because they cannot be contained. They are wild, strong and dangerous when caged or cornered. They are resilient in their natural habitats but their defence mechanisms kick in when they are out of it and God have mercy on those who are on the receiving end of their fury.

As I wait in a context I don’t feel naturally comfortable in, my prayer is simple,

Father, lead me. Meet me. Strengthen and defend me.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 59: sons of noblemen or of poor men offered to God’s service

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…if the child is under age, the parents should write out a petition as above.

What is the role of godparents?

Whilst introducing some members of our church to the Anglican baptismal theology in the hope that they may join the baptism team, I found a great oversight in our basis for preparation policy. At our church we currently invite parent(s) to come along for an evening to talk about what baptism is and to ‘help them to work out if baptism is right for them’ (to which the snowier seems to always be “yes”!) This ‘preparation evening’ is a great opportunity to share the good news of Jesus Christ with them and to encourage them to consider the life of a disciple and to answer the call to follow him. No problems so far…

Then I looked down at Canon Law B22.3 (you know the one, right!?)

The minister shall instruct the parents or guardians of an infant to be admitted to Holy Baptism that the same responsibilities rest on them as are in the service of Holy Baptism required of the godparents.

This assumes that due instruction has been given to the godparents; that the godparents are aware of their responsibilities and can,

…faithfully fulfil their responsibilities both by their care for the children committed to their charge and by the example of their own godly living.(Canon Law B23.2)

In our parish we currently only ask that the parents speak with the godparents about their responsibilities but we have no contact with godparents prior to the baptism.

I asked some other clergy to send me their baptism preparation process to see where we could develop and improve ours. Of the 6 shared with me none of them do any instructing of the godparents on their role and responsibilities and of the 5 churches where I have been aware of their preparation process none of them did either. Bearing in mind that we struggle, in my current parish, to get godparents who are baptised let alone practising Christians we are a long way off. We have long since wavered the requirement of confirmation as set out in Canon Law B23.4!

So here is my question (and it is a question): Would it be so bad to adopt a stricter policy of admission to Holy Baptism based on the requirements laid out regarding godparents?

Let’s take the idea of looking at the admission to Holy Baptism through the lens of a monastic model in a parish church. If a parish church’s baptism policy was connected into a more monastic understanding of discipleship then the approach to infant baptism could be viewed in similar terms as St. Benedict does in this chapter of his Rule. This would be no different to the theology behind infant baptism outside of a monastic understanding of discipleship with parents and godparents taking on the responsibility of making vows on behalf of the child.

In practice, the parents of a child being offered to the monastic life would need to write the petition, an unbreakable contract agreement, with the same understanding of the commitment being made if the child was of age. This would mean the same sort of rigour of instruction before an offering of the child was made. In Canon Law it states that,

No minister shall refuse or, save for the purpose of preparing or instructing the parents or guardians or godparents, delay to baptize any infant within his cure that is brought to the church to be baptized, provided that due notice has been given and the provisions relating to godparents in these Canons are observed.(Canon Law B22.4)

For every child to be baptized there shall be not fewer than three godparents, of whom at least two shall be of the same sex as the child and of whom at least one shall be of the opposite sex; save that, when three cannot conveniently be had, one godfather and godmother shall suffice. Parents may be godparents for their own children provided that the child have at least one other godparent…No person shall be admitted to be a sponsor or godparent who has not been baptized and confirmed. Nevertheless the minister shall have power to dispense with the requirement of confirmation in any case in which in his judgement need so requires.(Canon Law B23.1&4)

Now, whenever delaying baptism is discussed there are some who get uncomfortable with placing ‘hoops’ in the way. They feel that the parents will feel shunned or rejected by the church and that experience of ‘not being worthy,etc.’ will impact in their view of church in general. I understand the fear of this and can see the complex pastoral issues this raises but this is what happens when you develop such an open door policy in the first place. How do these pastoral minded objectors interpret Jesus’ challenge in Luke’s gospel,

As they were going along the road, someone said to him, “I will follow you wherever you go.” And Jesus said to him, “Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.” To another he said, “Follow me.” But he said, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” But Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead; but as for you, go and proclaim the kingdom of God.” Another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but let me first say farewell to those at my home.” Jesus said to him, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the kingdom of God.” (Luke 9:57-62)

William Barclay suggests,

It may well be that we have hurt the Church very seriously by trying to tell people that Church membership need not make so very much difference; we would be better to tell them that it must make all the difference in the world. We might have fewer people; but those we had would be totally pledged to Crist. (William Barclay,The Gospel of Luke: the daily study bible (Edinburgh: St. Andrew Press, 1961) p.133)

I had a young man contact me wanting to be baptised and so I eagerly met with him to talk about it. I asked him why he felt he wanted to get baptised and he ‘just wanted to’, his family had all ‘been done’ and he had ‘missed out’. I asked if he had any experience of God. He answered by saying that he once prayed for something and it happened. I talked about what he would have to promise if he wanted to be baptised and talked about the need for a personal relationship with God through Jesus Christ. I sent him away with homework; to read Mark’s gospel and to write down any questions or confusions about what he read. I asked him to contact me in a week and we’ll chat about what he had discovered. I also invited him to come to church and to experience worship and prayer in the context of a community of believers.

He never came to church and I still wait for him to get back in touch. This is not the first time this has happened to me. I have had three previous conversations which have ended after our first meeting. All of them began with a request to be baptised. After these conversations I feel guilty that they hadn’t taken the opportunity to explore faith, I questioned whether I was putting too many barriers in the way and I beat myself up that I wasn’t able to share my faith i a way that was attractive or exciting for them.

Then I remind myself that for each of these encounters I also have stories of when I have sat with someone and share my faith with them and they now stand as faithful, practising Christians. God can and does use me sometimes!

I read the gospels and I see there Jesus asking people to follow him and many turning away and not taking him up on it. These refusals to follow Jesus don’t make Jesus change his admission policy but rather to pray and love them nonetheless. We should do the same. Keep the challenge to be a disciple but love those who feel it is too costly for them. There’s nothing wrong with being the crowd, Jesus still loved them, they just weren’t disciples with the responsibility and cost involved.

Reflection

We can all feel great pressure to make everyone we meet a Christian. The focus on mission and evangelism can be heard as a drive to increase membership in our churches but there is a distinction which needs to be heeded to stop us from selling grace too cheaply. Evangelism is not about the results. Evangelism is only about proclamation of good news; the word in greek for ‘evangelist’ means messenger, someone who speaks a message of good news. How the hearers responded was not their job, their sole purpose was to say the good news to the people. Let us not change the message so that it is favourable to the hearer. Let us instead proclaim the message faithfully and allow the hearers respond how they wish; some will hear, others won’t. Jesus knew this more than any of us.

Mission is more about establishing God’s Kingdom in our hearts and proclaiming it with our mouths and transformed lives than it is about increasing our market share. The results of mission and evangelism must remain out of our control if we are to not become manipulative or manipulated. This should not hinder the passion with which we engage in mission or evangelism we must still do it with all our heart and lives but God builds his Church. He must encounter people by his grace and he has always given humanity freedom to choose to respond or not. Allow him to take the heart ache of all those who do not listen to his voice.

Gracious Father, you came and met us in your Son, Jesus Christ, and called us to live a life as your disciples. You told us the cost and warned us of the challenge but you also showed us the glory of your resurrected life and the power of your Spirit. May we never forget reward of being in you and having you dwell within us. May we not sell that powerful experience of grace short with the people we meet.

Come, Lord Jesus

Chapter 58: the admission of new brothers

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Admission to the religious life should not be made easy for newcomers.

What does it mean to be a ‘Christian’?

It seems to me we have reached, in this chapter, another pivotal moment in the Rule. The issue raised in this chapter comes close to my central thesis (that sounds too pretentious) to this whole ‘parish monasticism’ project: what does it mean to be a ‘Christian’?

One of the trickiest parts of my role as a minister of religion in an established church is baptisms. You can choose any Anglican church in this country and ask the minister about their baptism policy and I can guarantee that they will speak, at some point, about it being ‘complicated’ or ‘disappointing’. It is on this single issue that I begin to consider disestablishment as a useful proposal!

I don’t want to go into my baptismal theology (it’s more Baptist than Roman Catholic but I understand the role of infant baptism) but I have never seen baptism as a legitimate evangelistic opportunity. The reason it remains disappointing is that we continue to delude ourselves that the majority of people bringing their baby to be ‘christened’ want anything to do with God. We invest time in ‘preparing’ babies to be ‘christened’ because we cannot refuse but in the end a small number of these families take the promises made at the baptism service seriously or anywhere close to understanding what they are committing to. The service becomes a theological farce in my mind and it forces me to ask: what is actually going on at those secular celebrations of our profound mysteries of God’s grace?

So, yes, I’m pretty distressed about this and easily slip into emotional rhetoric on the subject but to try and outline a positive response to the dilemma I will return to the question: what does it mean to be a ‘Christian’?

I ask this question at preparation evenings we host for potential baptism families. The phrasing of the question is important; I ask,

If your child, when they are 7 or 8 years old, comes up to you and asks, “Mummy/Daddy, are we Christian?” What will you say? And they ask, as they are likely to do, “why?” What will your response be?

From my year and a half of asking this question I have yet to hear any answer other than,

Yes. You were christened.

My heart sinks when I go month after month desperately hoping that one day someone will articulate in some way their desire to know Jesus. After they’ve answered I talk, quite passionately, about being a Christian, about following Jesus, wanting to be transformed into His likeness, to acting, speaking, loving like Jesus, to inviting him to direct my life, my behaviours and my attitudes. I, like many ministers, comfort myself with the only thing left to us: the ‘planting seeds’ analogy.

It is not that I don’t understand the sowing analogy but I have major theological issues when we’re sowing seeds at the point of baptism, our welcoming of new Christians into the Kingdom of God. Infant baptism, for me, relies, in part, on the faith of the parents and/or godparents. Of course, baptism relies on the grace of God and God’s relationship with the child but there remains big questions over whether salvation can be removed from someone; can someone turn away from God’s grace? It is about free will and choice in the matter of relationship with God. If choice is taken away from baptism then we may as well go round pouring holy water over people and proclaiming faith over them!

No, it will not do, for me!

Here, in the Rule of St Benedict, we hear of the admission to the religious life not being made easy for newcomers. In my heart I believe that baptism into the Christian faith ideally should be akin to taking up monastic vows. This does not deny infant baptism for the commitment made in that instance still takes the vows of the parents and/or godparents.

But, Ned, that’s monasticism and not ordinary folks!

Why do we still differentiate so much in this respect? Why can we not take the model of monasticism for general faith? Why must there be different levels of holiness, one level reserved only for the ‘monks’? Why do we not expect all Christians to be holy?

I have been reading Dietrich Bonhoeffer recently and studying his views on ‘new monasticism’ as well as discipleship. I’ve recently been skimming through his ‘Letters and Papers From Prison’ in which he begins to outline a book he never had the chance to complete. In this book he begins to formulate a ‘religionless Christianity’. The argument, for me, is persuasive but, unfortunately, he never fleshed out the practical implications of his theories. If I ever return to academic study I would probably base my dissertation on Bonhoeffer’s use of monastic models in his view of Christian discipleship.

His use of monastic metaphors began well before his time in prison of course. It was in his book ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ that I first came across his explicit use of monasticism.

The expansion of Christianity and the increasing secularization of the church caused the awareness of costly grace to be gradually lost. The world was Christianized; grace became common property of a Christian world. It could be had cheaply. But the Roman church did keep a remnant of that original awareness… Here on the boundary of the church, was the place where the awareness that grace is costly and that grace includes discipleship was preserved. People left everything they had for the sake of Christ and tried to follow Jesus’ strict commandments through daily exercise. Monastic life thus became a living protest against the secularization of Christiantiy, against the cheapening of grace. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Discipleship (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2001) p.46-7)

This whole section from the chapter on ‘Costly Grace’ jumps from the page and into our time. He attacks the division of the church into ‘a highest and lowest achievement of Christian obedience’. The work of the monks was used to justify the lack of discipleship of the many in churches.

But the decisive mistake of monasticism was not that it followed the grace-laden path of strict discipleship… Rather, the mistake was that monasticism essentially distanced itself from what is Christian by permitting its way to become the extraordinary achievements of a few, thereby claiming a special meritoriousness for itself. (Ibid., p.47)

Prior to his publication of ‘The Cost of Discipleship’ Bonhoeffer wrote to his brother and proclaimed,

The restoration of the Church will surely come from a kind of new monasticism, which has in common with the old kind only the uncompromising nature of life according to the Sermon on the Mount, following Christ. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p.424)

If you put these two writings together you can see Bonhoeffer beginning to formulate an ecclesiology which broke down the cloistered walls and brought the discipleship of the monastic life into the wider Church. Bonhoeffer goes on to use the biography of Luther, himself a monk, who ‘escaped the monastery’ to bring the discipleship to all the world.

By the time he reached prison, Bonhoeffer was grasping the implications of this ‘new form of monasticism’ which was based fully in the world. Part of Bonhoeffer’s argument for a ‘religionless Christianity’ centres on the un-biblical premise that Christianity is a cosmic escape plan from this world to heaven. In this schema Christianity is a religion interested only in metaphysics and individual salvation. His prison letters to his friend Eberhard Bethge, critiques our modern view of Christianity which desperately attempts to preserve itself against an increasingly forceful argument against the existence of God. In an baptismal homily written for Bethge’s son, Bonhoeffer writes,

Our church, which has been fighting in these years only for its self-preservation, as though that were an end in itself, is incapable of taking the word of reconciliation and redemption to mankind and the world. Our earlier words are therefore bound to lose their force and cease, and our being Christian today will be limited to two things: prayer and righteous action among men. All Christina thinking, speaking, and organizing must be born anew out of this prayer and action. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison (London: SCM Press, 2001) p.105)

If the reality of faith in Christ that God does not desire us to leave this world or be concerned with other worldly things but to follow Christ in committing to this world in all its suffering and challenges then what place does something as religious and metaphysical as prayer have in this faith?

I discovered later, and I’m still discovering right up to this moment, that it is only by living completely in this world that one learns to have faith. One must completely abandon any attempt to make something of oneself, whether it be a saint, or a converted sinner, or a churchman (a so-called priestly type!), a righteous man or an unrighteous one, a sick man or a healthy one. By this-worldliness I mean living unreservedly in life’s duties, problems, successes and failures, experiences and perplexities. In doing so we throw ourselves completely into the arms of God, taking seriously, not our own sufferings, but those of God in the world–watching with Christ in Gethsemane. That, I think, is faith; that is metanoia; that is how one becomes human and a Christian (cf. Jer: 45!)(Ibid., p137)

I know I’m quoting alot of Bonhoeffer but I think it’s important to show his thorough study towards an ecclesiology which I find helpful in pursuing this disturbing experience of baptising, wholesale, babies to parents who show no indication of any desire of relationship with Jesus Christ.

It is not with the beyond that we are concerned, but with this world as created and preserved, subjected to laws, reconciled, and restored. What is above this world is, in the gospel, intended to exist for this world; I mean that, not in the anthropocentric sense of liberal, mystic pietistic, ethical theology, but in the biblical sense of the creation and of the incarnation, crucifixion, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Barth was the first theologian to begin the criticism of religion, and that remains his really great merit; but he put in its place a positivist doctrine of revelation which says, in effect, “Like it or lump it”: virgin birth, Trinity, or anything else; each is an equally significant and necessary part of the whole, which must simply be swallowed as a whole or not at all. That isn’t biblical. There are degrees of knowledge and degrees of significance; that means that a secret discipline must be restored whereby the mysteries of the Christian faith are protected against profanation. (Ibid., p.369-70)

And so here it is, what I’ve been building upto!

Confession of faith is not to be confused with professing a religion. Such profession uses the confession as propaganda and ammunition against the Godless. The confession of faith belongs rather to the “Discipline of the Secret” in the Christian gathering of those who believe. Nowhere else is it tenable…The primary confession of the Christian before the world is the deed which interprets itself. If this deed is to have become a force, then the world will long to confess the Word. This is not the same as loudly shrieking out propaganda. This Word must be preserved as the most sacred possession of the community. This is a matter between God and the community, not between the community and the world. It is a word of recognition between friends, not a word to use against enemies. This attitude was first learned at baptism. The deed alone is our confession of faith before the world. (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Testament to Freedom (San Francisco:HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), p.91)

Baptism is not an opportunity to teach people the faith. Baptism must remain the result/ the response to an encounter with the resurrected Jesus in this world. Baptism is the secret admission of another into the community which professes by its prayer and action the reality of God amongst us, reconciling and restoring this world.

Reflection

I believe, now more than ever, the reformation of the Church will come through a new form of monasticism which breaks down the cloisters and is embedded in the lives of all Christians. By Christian I mean those who seek to know God in the world through the resurrection of Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit. This means a Church which knows itself as disciples living contrary to the world around them but still remaining embedded in it as Jesus once did. Jesus remains enfleshed in the very reality of God and so there will never be any division between flesh and spirit.

Jesus also differentiated between the crowd and the disciples and was unashamed in the distinction. We are not disciples to sell Christ as a product. We are disciples to seek Jesus and to be more like him. The established church has lost this distinction in our baptismal theology and we continue to cheapen the power and transformation of grace by colluding with it.

Having said all of this, I fall into silence at the horror and pain of my feelings and pray earnestly for wisdom. I know that I am at the very first stages of understanding and may be heading down a treacherous path but still that dissatisfaction for where we are now.

Gracious Father, let me not be pushed down the wrong path but rather be led by your Spirit into your will and right thinking. May my mind be your servant as well as my heart and life. I pray, have mercy on us all and lead us into the path of righteousness for your Sons sake.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 57: artisans and craftsmen

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… if anyone becomes proud of his skill and the profit he brings the community, he should be taken from his craft and work at ordinary labor.

Who am I?

As June 2015 approaches and I come to the end of my official curacy, marked by a final assessment panel and an interview with my bishop, I am finding it hard not to think about the reports that will be gathered about me and my suitability to minister. On the bishops desk will be a minimum of 9 reports assessing my progress over the last three years, my competences, my character and every aspect of who I am. It is a pretty daunting thing if you think about it too much!

I have also been undertaking some intense ‘soul searching’ and reflection for the last few months guided by a counsellor. This has helped me to understand a little more as to what makes me behave and think like I do. I am acutely aware of the complexity by which God works through my own free will and psychological and genetic tendencies to reform me. When is something to be named as ‘God-given’ and when is it not?

I find it hard to accept that all talents and skills are to be ascribed to the spiritual realm. There are things that I’m good at which are there because I have worked very hard at learning and perfecting them. When I was an atheist I would get frustrated with religious people saying God gave them that ‘gift’ when it could be taught without involving God at all. I’m not saying that God can’t use those skills that one learns and does courses in but that we shouldn’t ascribe all skills to God for there are some skills which do not honour him nor would he want us to use. Take learning how to torture someone. It may seem facetious to say this but there are some people who are very good at taking other human beings to the edge of their life but holding them on the brink to force them to speak on the desired issue. This is a skill which not everyone can do. We wouldn’t dream of saying,

They’re really good at that it must be a god-given gift.

What is the distinction? Is it in the purpose of the activity? If someone learns a skill without knowing God and uses it to actively deny God is that still God-given? Is everything we are and do because of God? If this is true then why does he change us? In saying that all skills and talents are God-given, to me, denies the wonder and power of God’s redemption.

There are things that I have picked up through my experiences that are not healthy. I respond badly in certain situations which are not edifying and I am not proud of and I wouldn’t dream of turning round to the people I hurt and say,

This is the way God made me so you can’t complain.

It would be nice to say that because it takes all the pressure for me to change off and to blame God for making me ‘this way’. The truth is God didn’t make us ‘this way’. We were made by flesh and blood and we’ve been shaped by an imperfect world filled with imperfect people. Some parts of me are messed up and need reforming and that’s also true of you.

When St. Paul talks about spiritual gifts he is both vague and specific. The lists of gifts are not, in my mind, exhaustive, nor are we meant to be focussing on the list of gifts but rather the point of these passages (1 Corinthians 12, Romans 12 and, some would argue, Ephesians 4 but I have my questions on that!) is to highlight God the giver of grace through his Holy Spirit. God equips us for the tasks he calls us to. In my view and my experience, God never equips us for no reason. God calls first and equips after. This order makes more sense for God wants us to serve and behave dependent on him not on ourselves. Naming and blessing all our capabilities on behalf of God is not the same as truly experiencing the transformation of God via his Spirit.

That’s why, in The Rule of St. Benedict, I think it is clear that the ‘artisan’ is described as having a ‘skill’ and not a ‘gift’. But, you may protest, what about Bezalel!

The Lord spoke to Moses: “See, I have called by name Bezalel son of Uri son of Hur, of the tribe of Judah: and I have filled him with divine spirit, with ability, intelligence, and knowledge in every kind of craft, to devise artistic designs, to work in gold, silver, and bronze, in cutting stones for setting, and in carving wood, in every kind of craft.” (Exodus 31:1-5)

My reading of Exodus 31 is that Bezalel is given ‘skill’ for a specific task. The call comes first the skill second. God helps Bezalel to learn the necessary skills with the other aspects of the gift, ‘wisdom, understanding and knowledge/intelligence’ (from the original Hebrew).

Now, I’m not saying that these skills are not important and can’t be used by God; quite the opposite! It is a testament and a witness to the redemption of God and how God works that he does use those things we learnt before we received his gift of grace. The distinction I am wanting to make is between that which God has given to us and how God uses us. The former is perfect for it comes from God and the latter is imperfect but redeemable if we choose to obey God’s will. Does this distinction need to be made? I would argue it does for we can easily slide into blessing everything we do as ‘God-given’ and controlled by God without considering the important aspect of our own fallenness and brokenness.

When it comes to questions of my identity I struggle to communicate such a concept because of the confusing assumptions of both myself and the hearer. When I sit before the panel assessing my vocation and competences and I talk with my bishop, I will struggle to communicate seemingly simple questions about discernment. This is not about what God is calling me to specifically but about how he has equipped me. What of my personality is God-given? What part of who I am is from God?

What it comes down to is I can only be sure of this: I am in Christ being renewed for his glory all the rest is debatable.

Reflection

The most significant challenge in this chapter of the Rule is the guidance,

…if anyone becomes proud of his skill and the profit he brings the community, he should be taken from his craft and work at ordinary labor.

As I face the panel I will be sensitive to my own pride and, as with most days of my life, pray that God will humble me, that he will remind me of my identity in him and to speak only of that.

We are so keen to establish our self esteem because we all are confused about who we are at the deepest level. We feel we should know ourselves but the truth is we don’t and that’s scary. Thomas Merton suggests,

The reason we hate one another and fear one another is that we secretly or openly hate and fear our own selves. And we hate ourselves because the depths of our being are a chaos of frustration and spiritual misery. Lonely and helpless, we cannot be at peace with others because we are not at peace with ourselves, and we cannot be at peace with ourselves because we are not at peace with God. (Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.9)

In his extended commentary on identity in ‘New Seeds of Contemplation’ he says,

In great saints you find that perfect humility and perfect integrity coincide. (Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1972) p.99)

Humility, Merton asserts,

…consists in being precisely the person you actually are before God, and since no two people are alike, if you have the humility to be yourself you will not be like anyone else in the whole universe. (ibid.)

For Merton the practical things of everyday life should not be items of conflict,

The saints do not get excited about the things that people eat and drink, wear on their bodies, or hang on the walls of their houses. To make conformity or non conformity with others in these accidents a matter of life and death is to fill your interior life with confusion and noise. (ibid.) (my emphasis)

My personality and my preferences are ‘accidents’ not to be seen as static like some perfect idol but rather to be sacrificed before God to used and changed as he wills. My skills and competences, likewise.

Genes, parenting, and spiritual forces do condition who we are. But for believers whose spirits have been regenerated by the Holy Spirit these conditioning factors cannot determine who we are unless we choose to allow them to do so. (Gregory Boyd, God of the Possible: a biblical introduction to the open view of God (Grand Rapids: Baker Books, 2000) p.147)

In order to know who we are we must know who God is and discover who we are before him.

But under the steady bombardment of meaningless propaganda that is always directed against us, we surrender our privilege to think and hope and make decisions for ourselves… And we will never find God if we are not ourselves mature persons. To find God one must first be free.(Thomas Merton, The Living Bread (London: Burns and Oates, 1976) p.11)

Freedom comes when we follow Christ into his death and live in his resurrection and new creation. Death of our ego, death of our personality, death of everything we think defines us which is not Christ. In uniformly being in Christ we find we are uniquely ourselves.
Abba Father, you call us to life in you through participating in the death and new life of your son Jesus Christ. We humbly approach you and ask that you take every aspect of our life and use it for your glory. We ask you keep our eyes fixed on you and to continue the work of discipleship.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 56: the abbot’s table

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The abbot will eat with guests and travelers.

What does it mean to have ‘a calling’?

I have spoken at length on my understanding of ordained ministers within the life of the whole people of God. The tension, it seems to me, is most obvious around questions of holiness. By holiness I mean ‘set apart-edness’ of the clergy from the laity. Some would say that ontologically, the very substance of the ordained is different from the non-ordained, while others see no division accept in the function of the clergy. It comes down to an opinion on whether the clergy are changed into something particular by God’s Holy Spirit, distinctive from the other members of the Body of Christ. Where you stand on that idea will mark out how you respond to the particular calling on certain people that differentiates them from others.

So what does it mean to have ‘a calling’?

The Bible is full of God singling out a particular person for a specific task. Some of these tasks are on a temporary basis (e.g. Moses leading the people out of Egypt to the Promise Land, Ananias welcoming Saul/Paul in Damascus) others are permanent (e.g. Abraham being the father of many generations, Peter to ‘feed [my] sheep’). God calls his people, as a collective, to particular tasks (to be holy, faithful, loving, etc.) but there are specific tasks to specific people.

It is clear from the Bible that God calls all people to himself to know and love him and to become his disciple. Once someone has responded to that call they are a disciple, allowing God to transform them, by his Holy spirit, into the likeness of his Son, Jesus Christ. After that God will call them to additional tasks or lifestyles to grow into alongside and in conjunction with the life’s work of discipleship.

What task, then, is given to those called to be ordained?

This is a contentious issue and it depends on who you ask. Some would say it is into a leadership role within the church, others would emphasise a pastoral, serving role, others will create a particular cocktail of various functions and characteristics which define ‘ordained ministry’ but there is no concrete definition because God calls many people to it from different backgrounds, upbringings, experience, personality types, etc. Ordained ministry will look unique to each person who tries to live it out.

The added complication comes when you distinguish, in the Anglican Church, between ordained deacons, ordained priests and ordained bishops. The Anglican Church ordains people into three forms of ministry and they have different functions, roles and some would argue, characters. We confuse it even further by ordaining one person as a deacon, a priest and (in some cases) a bishop, all of which are unique a separate callings but are held together. I am, for instance, both a deacon and a priest simultaneously.

God, it seems, calls us both into tasks (temporary and sometime repeatable) and into way of life (permanent and evolving). Trying to discern one of these is difficult enough but then distinguishing between the two becomes even more difficult. It is for this reason I struggle with the simplistic view of ordained ministry as synonymous with ‘leadership’. ‘Leadership’ is a task, a role. At some point you will cease to be able to function as the leader or you may find that in a particular context you are called to follow and not to lead. If you are ordained as a ‘leader’ then it means you must always lead or, otherwise, your status as ‘ordained’ must be able to be revoked when you don’t ‘lead’.

Take a hypothetical scenerio: you are ordained and you lead a church congregation. You go to a conference and are put in a group where you are being led by someone else. In this instance you are not ‘leading’ therefore are you ‘ordained’ if the definition of your status is ‘leadership’?

Ordained ministry for me is about a specific ‘way of life’. What that looks like needs to be clarified in general across the Church of England. We have fallen into a complicated situation of defining ordained ministry as so many different things that it is not any one thing; it’s subjective. The problem with it being subjective it can no longer be institutionalised and therefore anyone can say they are ordained. We have so many different forms of ordained ministry that I’m not surprised when people are dismayed when they are not selected to be ordained.

Throughout the Rule, St. Benedict distinguishes certain roles within the life of the community but establishes those roles within the way of life of the call to be a monk. The call is to be a monk and within that God may have a particular job, relatively temporary, to perform (e.g. dean, cellarer, infirmarian, etc.). The call of the abbot, however, seems to be different. In modern day Benedictine monasteries the abbot is clearly one of the monks with particular responsibilities and tasks to perform (outlined in the Rule). Here, in this chapter, it paints a picture of the abbot living a separate life to the community, welcoming guests in his own dining room.

Earlier in the Rule, St. Benedict indicated that the table was a symbolic place for communal life, it is around the table, as well as in the oratory, that the community grew. In separating the abbot from them at the dining table puts a division between the abbot and the other monks. I am glad to say that this chapter never really worked out and, in modern day monasteries it is not held to.

Reflection

It is easy to fall into the trap of setting the ordained ministers away from the people. They are to be set apart for their particular roles, which the non-ordained may not, for unspoken reasons, participate in. It is all too easy to settle for the ‘this is tradition’ argument for why only the ordained may preside at Holy Communion or why only the ordained may baptize.

Having walked the discernment process through with several people now, and having gone through it myself, I have discovered the process is far from uniform. Some are ordained for one reason which, seen in another person, is the reason they are not ordained. The deep questions of calling have become muddy to the point at which it is harder to discern the difference between ordained and non ordained ministry.

For what it’s worth, from this ordained minister, I feel a re-examination of the parish church to fit a model of monastic life may lead to a greater understanding of ordained ministry from the ministry of the people of God. The abbot is the symbol of ordained ministry and the callings and tasks of other officers in the church are valued with equal honour.

Father, I abandon myself into your hands.
Do with me whatever you will.
Whatever you may do I thank you.
I am ready for all, I accept all.
Let only your will be done in me and all your creatures.
I wish no more than this, O Lord.
Into your hands I commend my soul.
I offer it to you with all the love of my heart.
For I love you Lord and so need to give myself,
surrender myself into your hands without
reserve and with boundless confidence
for you are my Father.
Amen
Charles de Foucauld (1858–1916)

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 55: clothing and shoes

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Suitable clothing shall be given the monks…

Are you seriously going to wear that?

Well it was bound to happen, wasn’t it? Sooner or later the conversation would come up about…

Vestments.

I have run a session on Holy Communion for two of our church’s home groups. The first part of these sessions look at why clergy wear what they wear. I am always keen to point out that its probably the practices came before the theory but that doesn’t negate the importance of the theory; if it worked for the Trinity it works for anything!

I hope, dear reader, you won’t mind me skimming through the major aspects of Anglican vestments as I understand them. I also ask that you, hold off judgement on the legitimacy and missional pros and cons of such outfits until I am finished. Do you promise?

dogcollar

I will start with my ‘everyday wear’: the dog collar.

The dog collar is so called, in my mind anyway, because it is a symbol of being led and, simultaneously, leading a walk with my master: God. At the end of John’s gospel Jesus says to Peter,

“Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.” (John 21:18)

When I made my vows and entered ‘Holy Orders’ I handed over my freedom to live as I wanted to live, to say what I wanted to say, to go where I wanted to go… well that was the idea. The problem arose when I failed to live up to that promise. In that way I allow God to lead me (and when I put my dog collar on I am reminding myself that God is in charge and will lead me to where I do not wish to go necessarily) but I also have a tendency, like a dog, to run on ahead and drag God to the lampposts and other dogs that take my fancy. There is, in the image of dog and owner, a beautiful give and take. The owner is in ultimate control but they allow the dog to explore but when they need to go somewhere particular the collar becomes tight and the owner drags the animal in a certain direction.

There are time in my life now where I know where God wants me to go and what he wants me to do but I resist. It is at these times the collar becomes tight and I want to throw it off. I always listen deeper at those times! To use a simple example: when I’m driving. Say another driver cuts me off or forces me to break the Highway Code and I want to swear at them and let them know my anger but I’m wearing my dog collar; I tend to resist the temptation from expressing my anger and instead smile and pray blessing on them. Or say I am walking down the street in my dog collar and I see a homeless person begging for money… That usual dilemma of how to respond, knowing that money is not necessarily what they need but a meaningful encounter with another human being who will listen to them and their situation and care for them, is multiplied for me. There are times when I’m rushing to get to a meeting and pass several homeless people on my way; without the dog collar there is less guilt (because I’m a broken and fallen person!) than when I pass them in a dog collar. The dog collar at those times becomes so tight that I know of other clergy who don’t wear dog collars in the centre of cities. I find myself stopping for each one and being late for meetings… In this way the dog collar helps me.

There are two camps in the Church: those who do wear them and those who don’t. Dog collars divide the clergy. Some feel they are a barrier to genuine relationship with strangers whilst others feel they invite relationship with strangers where otherwise there would not have been. The problem is that it’s a bit of both; sometimes the dog collar puts people off talking or opening up to you, the wearer, while other time it starts conversation. I don’t think there is a stand out winner for which it is more: it just depends.

For me, personally, I find it more helpful than I do a hindrance. I have had my fair share of abuse thrown at me because of the dog collar (or at least I think it was the dog collar). I have even had a can of coke thrown at me by a stranger but the conversations that the dog collar has encouraged far out way the negatives. I was on a bus in Leeds wearing my dog collar and a complete stranger started sharing about his wife who was suffering through chemotherapy and he didn’t know how to support her. I listened and tried to encouraged him. He asked if I would walk him to the ward as it was close to my destination anyway which I happily did. I prayed with him before he went to see his wife before parting company. I know that wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t wearing a dog collar.

Some clergy feel the dog collar asserts authority onto conversation which may seem oppressive. I can see how that might be the case but that’s where the character of the wearer must be challenged. If that is the motivation behind wearing it then you should probably pray through that and challenge yourself. The dog collar does set you apart from other people, other Christians as well but that’s the point. Philip Lawrence astutely tells us,

Today many monks want a clerical wardrobe, a monastic wardrobe and a lay wardrobe so that “they will not stand out” when they are with various people. This seems clearly against the thinking of Saint Benedict. We monks should always look like monks. We have only one identity and that identity is being a monk. (Philip Lawrence, “Chapter 55: The Clothing and Footwear of the Brothers”, Benedictine Abbey of Christ in the Desert, March 1 2015, http://christdesert.org/Detailed/926.html)

There is a theory that clergy should be just like other Christians and I agree, in the most part, with that sentiment. There is, however, a distinction between clergy and laity but I don’t think it is where most people think it is.

Yes, we are ‘a priesthood of all believers’. Yes, we are ‘a company of saints’. Yes, I believe the hierarchy in the established Church hinders change and can be restrictive and it is here that we must rethink the distinction. Being ordained is not about raising a person ‘up the ladder’ but separating them for a particular task. Being ordained, for me, was about being set apart as a public example of discipleship. Yes, all should be public examples of discipleship, but we aren’t and we need people to be disciplined to do it so we can all be encouraged.

It’s the same with marriage. Yes, we should all love others intimately and with complete selfless, faithful and unbridled desire for the flourishing of them and their transformation into the likeness of Christ, but we don’t. In order to protect that ideal, some are called to commit themselves to the discipline of chastity to another and work out how to be faithful through the chains of marriage and part of marriage is about this type of ‘slavery’ but it is through this we discover true freedom.

For the Christian to be perfectly free means to be perfectly obedient. True freedom is perfect service. (Stanley Hauerwas, A Community of Character: toward a constructive christian social ethic (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981) p.131)

The dog collar is a reminder for me that I no longer have the freedom to shirk my discipleship. The dog collar is more for me than for others, to remind me that I am to learn what it means to be holy, set apart from the world.

I know that my view of ordination is monastic in character for this very reason and I’m still on a journey with this understanding.

Most of the other vestments, for me, stem from this basic understanding of ordination.

So a quick run down of what is what and why it is used. Bear in mind that people have different understandings of the symbolism behind vestments and this where the conflict in what they say to observers occurs. I will also only speak on vestments that I am asked to wear as a ‘low church anglican’.

cassock albCassock Alb: Is a white garment that goes over clothes. This symbolises a clothing of the wearer in heavenly glory. This is about identifying the role of the leader of worship and not the person wearing it. The leader of worship is an expression of the character of the whole company of worshippers; they are to be the spokesperson of the collective voice of the congregation. By draping them in white it is a draping of all the people in that resurrection glory.

cinctureCincture (girdle or fascia): Is either a strip of material that goes round the body above the waist (girdle) or a rope with tassels that is worn around the waist (fascia). This is meant to symbolise, like the dog collar, the being lead by God from John 21:18. I wear the fascia because it reminds me of my Roman Catholic heritage and has a monastic quality about it which I find helpful to remind me of my particular calling to ordained priesthood.

stolesStoles: Are the scarfs that get draped over the shoulders, for deacons in the ‘Miss World style’ and for the priests in the ‘Football Supporter style’. This sybolises the yoke of Christ being laid upon the shoulders of the ordained person. It originated in the Roman society as a symbol of ofice and responsibility and there’s still that element in the symbol today. We, who wear it bear the responsibility of leading the people in worship and voicing the communities prayers and concerns to God. You will find that these come in four or five different colours: white for times when we celebrate resurrection or the coming of God’s Kingdom into the present (Christmas/Epiphany/Easter/Trinity, baptisms, funerals (sometimes) and weddings), purple for times of preparation and penitence (Advent/Lent) (sometimes blue is used in Advent as the penitence is seen as different and it is more of a Marian focus but I use purple to see Lent and Advent in similar contexts) (there is also Lent Array which is unbleached linen), red for times where we remember the Holy Spirit or martyrs (Pentecost/Feast Days) and green for ‘ordinary time’ where we settle into the rhythm of the world and it is our natural position to counterpoint the points of celebration or preparation.

cassockCassock: Is a black garment similar to that of the Cassock Alb. At the reformation the Cassock Alb was seen as a symbolism of the abuses of clericalism where the clergy and those ordained were seen as being elevated beyond the reach of the laity. The reformers were keen to bring the work of the Church to the people and so they removed the symbolism. This reformation was focussed on the words used in the Church, hence the translation of the Bible into the common tongue. The reformation replaced the priest with the scholar, those who could read and interpret the Scriptures and the Cassock hints at the origins of being like the university gowns or the preaching monks (of which Calvin and Luther were).

surplice

Surplice: Is the thin white ‘dress’ which goes over the Cassock for the same reaon the Cassock Alb is white.

preaching scarf

Preaching Scarf: Is a black scarf that is worn with Cassock and Surplice and is a reformation alternative to the Stole which symbolises the office and learning of the wearer.

When do I wear what?

I tend to wear Cassock Alb, Cincture and Stole for any sacramental activity (Holy Communion and Baptism). I am on a journey here too as to my honest understanding of ‘sacrament’ so this is not fixed at the moment in my mind. I ask myself,

Is my role to be placed in a ‘between’ time/space, an altar moment where heaven will kiss earth? Where we, the people of God will have a foretaste of God’s Kingdom on earth?

If the answer is “yes” then I wear Cassock Alb et al.

If the answer is “no” but I still need to be identified as ‘ordained’ then I will wear a Cassock, Surplice and either Preaching Scarf or Stole (usually Preaching Scarf). This tends to be in civic services and funerals.

Weddings are up for grabs at the moment!

Reflection

There is often much discussion and personal opinions around the conversation of a ‘uniform’ for ordained ministers and I think it betrays are lack of agreed understanding as to our language around ordination and vocation. We are all uncertain as to how leadership, ministry and vocation works because there are so many theories and schools of thought around the subject. All the different denominations pick and choose their own view of ordained/ lay ministry and it creates a big tension. I agree that it is a secondary issue but, like most secondary issues, this is highly emotive and people get confused as to why we feel so strongly about it. For what its worth I feel it’s about the personal response to distinction in vocation, history of who represents different ministries and how we have viewed it as an outsider. If you have been painfully hurt by the actions of an ordained person then that will tarnish your view of other clergy (understandably).

There is a complex cocktail of personal character and uniformed role going on with ordained ministry and therefore vestments articulate this tension within congregations. It is hard to hide from the confusion and different opinions when it is there for all to see. We can either get rid of the vestments and forget that different views are held or we can grab the nettle in our hands and patiently talk about what and why we think what we think.

There is an important conversation to be had about what it means to be ordained and what the alternative calls are on the life of a disciple. Maybe a more monastic view of ordination is worth revisiting and encouraging a distinction between church leadership and that of service through the priesthood and diaconate.

Lord, you call us all to be disciples, to lay down our lives and will to go where you want us to go. For some of us that will be a specific call to live out our discipleship in radical forms of obedience and to be an encouragement to others to pursue that holy life, set apart from the world but still loving and serving it. For others the discipleship will look very different and the role will be very specific in a particular area or to a particular people. Whilst we live in this complicated and fallen world may we hold out the hope that in the end we will all be transformed into the likeness of your Son and will worship together in Spirit and Truth at your heavenly throne.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 50: brothers who work at a distance from the oratory or are traveling

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Brothers who cannot come to the oratory at the appointed hours – because of their distance labor – should say the Divine Office where they are, kneeling in fear of God.

Who do I pray with?

Part of my personal reflections as I read the Rule of St. Benedict has been on my place within the Northumbria Community. My noviciate process has been stalled for two years now and recently I have been revisiting my future of the journey with them. I called a stop to the noviciate process due to my difficulties with the dispersed nature of the community. Despite having local groups that meet to encourage living out the Rule of Life and to have fellowship with, I have never found a group local enough. As a parish minister I feel a strong connection with my geographical location, serving and praying for the people in the area I live and work. I feel I would benefit from a community who walk the Rule of Life in that location asking the question, ‘How then shall we live… here?’

I still find the Rule of Life for the Northumbria Community enriching and challenging and I find myself returning to it and wrestling with its questions. I still say the Daily Office regularly and have settled into a sustained rhythm embedded over five years. I have made annual retreats to the Mother House over the years and contribute a relational tithe to them each month. I still feel a deep connection with the Northumbria Community and value their friendship and prayers but is the season changing now?

Part of my reflections on my relationship with the dispersed community has been the question of prayer and how it connects me into the community. Each morning, lunchtime and evening when I sit down to pray the Daily Office I feel a connection with the community, mainly those praying at the Mother House in Northumberland. I think of them often, sitting in Nether Springs, preparing meals, cleaning rooms for guests, leading workshops, pausing to say those shared words that I too am saying several miles south in my parish. It is the rhythm of prayer that connects me most; connects me into the established relationship with specific people and, in a smaller way to unknown members of the community across the world.

Over time, however, I find that I think of them less as my mind turns to my more immediate community in the parish. I now consider those who sit with me in situ regularly praying the Daily Office with me. My prayer ‘home’ is no longer up in Northumberland but here in York.

I have moved.

This is significant when considering what rhythm you pray to. I am feeling less and less of a relational connection with the people in Nether Springs (the Mother House of Northumbria Community) not because I love them any less or that I don’t desire to be with them more but because my rhythm of life has had to change. The Rule still stands as root for me to return to but the Daily Office has become less of that connection than it did. I don’t pray at the same time as my fellow journeyers up in Nether Springs due to the different work days that we have. I no longer pray for the same people as I focus my prayers on the local area with the prayers of the people around me.

Where does this leave me in my relationship with the Northumbria Community?

Many would say it doesn’t matter where you are, you engage with the community when and where you like; that’s what it means to be a dispersed community.

You’re expecting too much. It is too idealistic.

Maybe that’s true but I still have a deep call to be part of an intentional community which is rooted in the monastic tradition and part of that call, for me, is about location.

Another question I have is about the alternatives. I have yet to see God leading me to start an intentional community where I am at this point in time. I will soon be moving on from current role and it would be foolish and impractical to start anything now. I have, however, sensed there is a group of people orbiting the idea of this form of community discipleship in York and there is the potential bubbling up. What that looks like, how it would work and what Sarah and my role in that is has yet to be discerned. As my mind thinks over this possibility I think less of the Northumbria Community and more about the people who seem to share a call to intentional community in York.

Having prayed for over a year now around this subject all I can say is that I feel called to be a part of a group of disciples who live and work close to one another, who live out a life of prayer, study, dialogue and worship with one another, who have a passion for reconciliation, healing and creativity. I want to explore this with people who live close to me who can share my life as I share theirs and we share the life of Christ with the world.

Reflection

Parish life lends itself to a community at prayer in and for a specific location. Each morning and each evening I pray for my geographical area, I lift their needs and questions to God on their behalf and I am privileged to share that task with a small group of others who sit with me and support me. When I am unable to meet with them I still pray, wherever I am or they are and I do not feel alone… Of course I am not alone in prayer as thousands (if not millions) of others are praying with me at the same time, they’re just not in that room with me physically and that is where my reflections return.

Where is my physical community at prayer? Where is the community who not only say prayers with me but live out the prayers with me, who know me, know my heart, challenge me, pray for me and speak God’s word into my life?

Father, you are with me and by your Spirit you pray through me. You have called me to this place with a particular vocation and ministry. Keep me faithful to your timing and rhythm. Lead me in the way of Christ and gather round me the Body of Christ that I may play my part in it.

Come, Lord Jesus.

Chapter 49: observance of lent

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A monk’s life should always be like a Lenten observance.

Why wait?

This week I have mainly been… Writing lent material for our church family.

In May this year we celebrate the fiftieth year of the church of St. Aidan in Acomb and to help us mark this occasion we have decided to spend some time reflecting on the patron saint of our church to see if there is anything we can learn from his life and work (spoiler alert: we can!)

Writing this material has been an exciting and challenging task. It is exciting because there’s such potential that this time reflecting together, through sermons and small group material, will change us as people of God; grow us as disciples of Jesus. It is challenging because that potential is reliant, in a small way, on how I construct and frame the material to encourage that growth.

Lent is a great chance to focus our attention on one aspect of our Christian life. It’s like an annual MOT for our discipleship, a fine tuning of certain places where we ‘fall short of the glory of God’. Although we must remind ourselves that it is God who grows and transforms us into the likeness of his Son, there is a small part we must play in this work. We must allow our wills to be in line with God’s. The season of preparation before the great feast of the resurrection is an intentional focussing of our attention on our obedience to God’s will.

Lent is not the excuse for not doing this kind of spiritual work throughout the year but is merely an annual focus on it. Like an MOT we shouldn’t treat this annual checkup as an excuse not to look after a car, not fill it with oil or petrol. My wife has gone through times when she doesn’t take her medicine or do her necessary exercise and then just before a doctor’s appointment has tried to catch up with herself. It is equally unhealthy to store up developing and growing in our discipleship for the forty days of Lent.

A monk’s life should always be like a Lenten observance.

During Lent, St. Benedict suggests the community,

…devote ourselves to tearful prayer, reading, contrition and abstinence.

I wonder whether ‘tearful’ is solely describing the kind of prayer we do or whether we are also to do tearful reading, tearful contrition and tearful abstinence. I don’t think it really matters but there is a sense that when we dedicate ourselves to intentional focussing on our failings it should make us tearful in all aspects of our life. I wonder if this is why we are unable to maintain a Lenten observance all year round.

The Lent material I have been writing is looking at how St. Aidan went about evangelism and mission. His approach seemed to be about establishing and sustaining a intentional community of disciples from which mission will happen. Mission, for St. Aidan, is a natural outworking of true discipleship. If a community is not engaged in mission then their discipleship is faulty; mission is the fruit of the tree of discipleship. There is no point in just forcing a community to ‘do mission’ and expect it to work. It would be better to go back to the basics of discipleship, correcting that and the fruit of mission will grow. You judge discipleship by the mission.

I have continued to be struck by the Alan Roxburgh quote about discipleship which I have used before here.

Discipleship emerges out of prayer, study, dialogue and worship by a community learning to ask the questions of obedience, as they are engaged directly in mission. (Alan Roxburgh, Missionary Congregation, Leadership and Liminality (Harrisburg: Trinity Press, 1997) p.66)

Here Roxburgh argues that discipleship comes out of mission but I would argue that mission comes out of discipleship as well; the one feeds the other and vice versa. This community ‘learning to ask questions of obedience’ should engage in ‘prayer, study, dialogue and worship’. These four things all lead disciples within community to engage in mission. Prayer must involve listening to the will of God and having our hearts tune into his heart and his heart is for people. Study must involve reading the Scriptures which clearly describe a God who is mission, sending his people to the world to proclaim his good news. Dialogue must involve us speaking to others as people of God about our life, lived out in relationship with God. Worship is any activity done with the intentional purpose of laying down control of our lives and allowing God to use us.

With this in mind I was struck when St. Benedict suggested that Lenten observances should be ‘tearful prayer, reading, contrition and abstinence.’ The first two clearly have a direct correlation with Roxburgh’s ethos (prayer and study). The second two actions (contrition and abstinence) may be less direct but I still see a connection with (dialogue and worship).

Contrition comes from the latin words ‘terere’ (to rub) and ‘com’ (together). Contrition is what occurs when two or more things are rubbed together. I see a connection with dialogue which requires two or more things to come together and impact each other. I’d guess that what St. Benedict had in mind, from a Roman Catholic perspective, is an engagement in the sacrament of confession where a person must face his sin with true sorrow and desire to repent. I see great worth in confessing sins in the presence of another and this form of dialogue leads me to acting out the amendments required for repentance.

Abstinence is the withholding from something, usually a great temptation for us. This is famously worked out during the season of Lent as many people give up chocolate or something that they enjoy which may be taking a focal point in their life rather than God. A disciple is encouraged to abstain from those things which are not God to move God back to the centre of our decision making. One could say that we can often worship something instead of God, idols such as money, sex, power, other humans. What we mean when we worship idols is we look to them to make decisions for us. Take a celebrity; if a person worships, say, Lady Gaga, we mean that someone allows Lady Gaga to be the model for how they live their life. If they want to make a decision as to how to act, dress, live, they must ask, “What would Lady Gaga do?”. If we say someone worships money then we mean that they’re end goal is to have more money, their thoughts are consumed with the being close to or attaining money. Abstaining from those things is a discipline because it must be an intentional rejection of a un-conscious behaviour. Abstinence is a deliberate denial of an inner desire to act in a certain way. Worship of God is always a form of abstinence because it is a deliberate action to place God at the centre of our lives and not another thing or concept.

Reflection

Any Christian community must be a centre of intentional discipleship. From this life of discipleship comes a heart for mission. The focus is not how to do mission better but how to do discipleship better. We can tell people about Jesus until the cows come home but it won’t mean anything unless we do it all in complete obedience to God under his guidance by the Holy Spirit stemming from a life of prayer and study. We must be rooted in a life solely focussed on God.

Mission has often failed because people have sought to talk about God when they have not yet talked enough to him. It must be seen that they enjoy the presence and the love of God. They must show God is real, to be met and to be enjoyed. (David Adam, ‘Aidan, Bede, Cuthbert: three inspirational saints’ (London: SPCK 2006) p.33)

In a world of binging I see some of our approaches to Lent as a spiritual binging/purging. We live the other three hundred and twenty-five days of the year living life with no deliberate focus on the work of growing as disciples and then for forty days we sprint the race. Our whole lives should be intentionally aimed at allowing God to grow us by his Holy Spirit.

Loving Father, Create in us new and contrite hearts, open to receive from you mercy and grace. Bind us together, Lord, to be lovers of your tender guidance and teaching and by the power of your Spirit complete the heavenly work of our rebirth through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Come, Lord Jesus