We live under law, different kinds of law. The law of God, which is for our health, and the law we make for ourselves. We long to be masters of our future, and so we become the prisoners of our past. We long to take control of the world we’re in. And because we are who we are, and our histories have been what they have been, we dig ourselves deeper and deeper into unfreedom. The will that we want to use to conquer the world, is a will weakened and bruised by the legacy of self-love, going back to the very roots of the human race. The effects of that legacy work themselves out as relentlessly as any oriental karma. We want to take hold of our future and we are gripped, paralysed, by our past.
We find ourselves in that ‘waterless pit’ of which Zechariah speaks. Waterless pits – perhaps that should trigger a memory of one particular Old Testament story. Do you remember that when Joseph went in search of his brothers and they decided to kill him ”“ they threw him into a pit where there was no water. Remember Joseph? Joseph who was so unpopular with his brothers because he believed his future was in his hands. He knew he could foresee the day that his brothers and his father would bow down to him. But he finds himself in a waterless pit, sold into slavery. God’s future for him only begins to happen when he is stripped of his claim to be master of his own future. In a waterless pit the dreams fade away. There is only God over against the body of death.
So, reflecting on Joseph, we can perhaps turn back to our own moments of waterless perplexity, those times in our discipleship, individual and corporate, our discipleship as persons, our discipleship as a Church, to which we may turn back to those moments, as moments when ”“ if we will ”“ we can hear the Word, when ”“ if we will ”“ our dreams are overtaken by God’s future. And how very hard it is to let go of our claims upon our own future. How very hard to accept the waterlessness of the pit, how very hard to understand that we are there in the presence of God and of death.
A fine sermon, eloquent and graceful. But I do detect some self-justitifcation therein for inertia.
A fine sermon? hardly. It was empty and devoid of specifics. Anyone could come away from it feeling that it was preaching the truth..to someone else. Whom could it offend? No one. No one except perhaps the Author of Truth who offends many by His very being.
Chris, it sounds like you were offended by the Author of Truth.
I’ll take that as a compliment coming from a heretical fool.
sitting here…the day after synod ungraciously and treacherously denied every possible provision for those Christians who have refused to accept an unbiblical innovation…his words simply mean sod all. They are of no comfort whatsoever.
Hark how those who campaigned using the language of justice and inclusion turned the screw and banished their opponents to the fringes of the church. Leaving them a choice that they know is not acceptible. How inclusive and just they turned out to be once they held the reigns of power they so desperately wanted!
And all this foul behaviour from what claims to be the church? Today my church chose left me and stated quite clearly it has no wish for my ministry and beliefs..despite them being consistent with traditional Anglican practice and the theology of catholics and eastern orthodox alike. I have done nothing inconsistent with traditional faith and practice but I am to either become a social leper – ‘dealt’ with by those in authority – or else leave the church of my baptism. (My crime to have believed what it taught me)
I have wept today. I sit in my study– uncertain what to say to my parishioners- uncertain how to provide for my wife and child- and uncertain of my future. I am cast into the wilderness……….it is the lowest day of my priestly life.
The decisions of Synod will dominate this blog and much of the Anglican news for the next few days, understandably enough. But I hope this sermon will not be forgotten. I am as aware as anyone of ++Rowan’s shortcomings as leader, and I have often longed for him to act differently, or just to act. But his role that day, in that service, was not to set an ecclesiological direction, but rather to serve as a pastor to all present — all — and to open the Word of God to them.
He did so with great eloquence and wisdom, and brought a necessary word to all of us, if we are willing to hear it. I am convinced with all my heart and soul that the reasserters (if we must use them term) are right and the reappraisers desperately, tragically wrong. I believe that we reasserters are faithfully carrying the words of eternal life and that the reappraisers are carrying (though they do not know it) words that lead to death. But it is precisely because I am so convinced that the Gospel I follow is the true Gospel, and that it is being undermined by many of my fellow Anglicans, that I am prone to suffer under “the heavy yoke of self-justification.†It is precisely because of my frustration with passivity, inaction, and confusion — some of it, I would argue, perpetrated by ++Rowan himself! — that I so desperately need to hear the message ++Rowan brings, which is that Jesus alone is my hope and my comfort, that it is His yoke alone that is light, and that if I refuse that yoke, or chafe under it, my condition is dire and my hope dim.
Thanks be to God for the word that ++Rowan brings us here. Every one of us should take it to heart.
I didn’t read rugbyplayingpriest’s comment before posting, and I’m sorry for that. I know that his pain and that of many others is real and deep and very much warranted. I am sorry for it. I still do think that the word ++Rowan brought is a valid and powerful one, and I would even say one of special relevance to rugbyplayingpriest and those who share his pain. But if I had read his comment first I would have phrased by own comment more delicately.
“heretical fool”? I’ll also take that as a compliment. It sounds intriguing. It makes me think of the Grand Inquisitor….
For those of you praising his sermon, could you sumarize what he actually said that had a practical application that would be understood unambiguously by his audience? By this I mean a statement that would be understood the same by people who disagree on other issues. If it is a vague teaching that people on both sides of the spectrum can say “Exactly. That is so true”, and go on exactly as they had before is a teaching with no substance. It’s like saying, “Christians should strive to be good”, without doing anything to define what “good” means so that some would themselves as not measuring up to that goodness. Jesus was a little more specific than just “Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect”.
If ++Rowan wants to be a mystic and spiritual sounding but utterly opaque oracles he should step down now and join a monastery.
Chris, your assessment of the speech is correct. It is like a banana split, lots of flavors and pleasant on the tongue, but empty of nutrition – and mind you, this is a banana-boat aficionado speaking. LM
My heart goes out to you, Rugbyplayingpriest. I can’t imagine the pain and torment you’re going through. Please know you are in my prayers.
Let me try to answer Chris H as best I can: ++Rowan says, to all people who have strong convictions on the matters now facing Anglicans, that we should be wary of “the heavy yoke of self-justification.” That is, there is spiritual danger even in being [i]right[/i] in these matters, the danger that we will come to trust in and depend on our own theological correctness, rather than trusting in Jesus. Now, I’m someone who believes that it is vital to proclaim and to teach right doctrine, but it is not by my teaching and proclaiming that I am saved. Rather it is by grace. This is what ++Rowan is reminding us. Let us strive to be faithful to “the faith once delivered to the saints,” but let us also remember that it’s possible to hold true belief in uncharitable and self-aggrandizing ways, and that in the long run, if we become too focused on our own doctrinal correctness, that can itself become a “waterless pit.” Even if we are indeed correct, we can hold our views in ways that place a heavy yoke on ourselves and others. We can become proud of our correctness; and pride is a pit.
We don’t have the strength to dig ourselves out of that. Only Jesus can pull us out. We are utterly dependent on him. We need to put off the “heavy yoke of self-justification” that drags us down and return, again and again, to Jesus who offers us the light burden of following him — the Jesus who lifts us up, who wants us to have abundant life, and who (as ++Rowan says at the end) makes Himself known to us in the breaking of the bread.
In all of this mess that we’re suffering through, ++Rowan has no doubt seen and talked with many, many angry people — bitter people. And in this sermon he is trying to deal pastorally with that anger and bitterness. He is saying, “No matter how right you are, you still must look always to Jesus rather than your own rightness.” And nothing, it seems to me, could be more down-to-earth and practical — and challenging! — than that. Which is why I value it so highly.
OK, Alan, so what is the practical application of your interpretation? How should it change anyone’s position on a theological question be controverted? A pastor is supposed to give direction, not fortune cookie advice that leaves it to everyone else to figure out how to apply it. He’s the spiritual LEADER OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, speaking at a Synod debating one of the greatest, no, THE GREATEST change to the church since the Reformation and the best you can get out of his address is that we shouldn’t be too sure of our rightness? Would he have given this speach at Nicea? How about Chalcedon? How about London, say around 1559?
What a weak wet noodle of a leader.
Chris, a pastor certainly is supposed to give direction, but there’s more than one kind of spiritual direction, and more than one kind of venue. That was not an address given as part of the synodical debate, it was a sermon preached in a Eucharistic service. ++Rowan had plenty of opportunities to have his say in the actual debates, and in my judgment he failed to exercise proper leadership. But [i]in this sermon[/i] he spoke a word of real truth and power. The “practical application” is, clearly, this: In the midst of your arguments, debates, and contests, pause for prayer and repentance, and make sure you are placing Jesus at the center of your life and thought, make sure you are humbly accepting [i]his[/i] yoke, not weighing yourself down with your own.
[i]Nothing[/i] is more “practical” than striving to be humble and obedient in relation to our Lord, so that we can bear His love into the world. Because we know what we are if we have not love, right? And that’s the Gospel truth even if a “weak wet noodle of a leader” says it.
rugbyplayingpriest – my prayers are with you. Trust in God, my brother.