2024-07-07
(2 Cor. 12:2-10; Mark 6:1-13)
The passage we have had today from Paul is what I think of as being stereotypically Pauline – he manages to be both moving, while at the same time slightly irritating. He says that he isn’t boasting, yet we all know perfectly well that this person in Christ who was caught up into the third heaven – who was permitted in Paradise to hear things that are not to be told – is actually Paul himself. Yet despite this, and despite his claim that it was these extraordinary experiences that made him an apostle – that made him, in his mind, the equal of Peter and all the others who had walked with Jesus in Galilee, Paul does manage to achieve something remarkable. He does, by and large, manage to convince that the message he is proclaiming is not about himself – it is always about God, and what he has revealed in his Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. Perhaps Paul does rather overdo it with his talk of this thorn in flesh, this tormentor from Satan that he has had to live with. Of course, we don’t know exactly what this is, but we do know from the Acts of the Apostles that Paul was repeatedly beaten and imprisoned for his witness to the risen Christ. Given the state of medicine, and the state of prisons, in the 1st century, this can only mean that he endured an awful lot of pain, which must have wrecked his health as he grew older. And, what he extrapolates from this should be true for all Christians – if we are following the crucified and risen One, then all we should be boasting about are our weaknesses.
As Paul claims, the Lord said to him, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.’ These words should apply to all of us – as Christians, in recognising our weaknesses, we should recognise that the power of Christ is able to dwell in us, as it should make us realise that all we can really trust in is the grace of Christ. I suppose this aspect of Paul’s message struck me this week, as on Thursday, Br Steven and I went down to Lambeth Palace. The Archbishop was having a reception in the Palace grounds for Anglican religious, and despite it being the day before General Synod began, Archbishop Welby did give us over three hours of his time. The Archbishop said at the beginning of his time in office, that among his priorities, if not the first, was to revive prayer in the Church, and for that to happen then there needed to be a revival of the religious life in the Church. While many of us may not have always quite agreed with him on what the religious life and life in community were, it has nonetheless been a welcome change to have an Archbishop of Canterbury who did want to explicitly find a place for religious communities in the Church. Again, even if one didn’t quite agree with him on how to do this.
In the afternoon, the Archbishop was asked how he felt that this priority was going after over a decade in the job, and perhaps refreshingly the Archbishop was very open with his disappointment that he had failed to seemingly get the Church interested in the religious life and this priority of his. It did seem to genuinely concern him that he had not been successful in getting the wider Church to try to reimagine the kind of Christian community, bound together by prayer and service, which monastic and other religious communities have always tried to represent throughout Christian history. He was not able to hide his disappointment that this priority had apparently just been ignored by many, despite what he had tried to say during his archiepiscopate. In fact, he even told the story of someone who had only recently gone to a DDO to discuss their sense of vocation. And when that person had tentatively suggested that they might have a call to the religious life, they were met with the response, ‘Why would you want to do that?’ Presumably, the answer to serve God had never occurred to this DDO.
Anyway, soon after this, the Bishop of Southwark, who was also at the meeting, spoke and in a way reminded us of what Paul had said the Lord had told him about grace. The Bishop repeated something his old training incumbent had said to him – ‘You may not see the harvest, but you do not know what seeds you have sown.’ I don’t think this was just a bit of episcopal back-slapping and commiseration, but probably one of the most important things that was said that day. It was a reminder that even when our weakness may seem total, God’s grace should be sufficient for us. A reminder that like Paul we should be content with weakness, insults, hardships and persecutions and calamities for the sake of Christ. This may have also been an important reminder for the Archbishop, as he also shared with us on Thursday, his disappointment, shall we say, with the way that General Synod conducts its business. I don’t think that you need to agree, theologically or otherwise, with Archbishop Welby, to accept that however Christians govern themselves, sending the email equivalent of poison pen letters, full of vituperation against those you disagree with, is really not how we should be conducting ourselves.
Apparently, meetings of Synod generate these things, even from members of that august body itself, and it did genuinely seem to weigh heavily on the Archbishop. As I’ve already indicated, I may not agree with Archbishop Welby on all manner of things, but by now it should be clear to any observer inside or outside the Church that his role has probably been an impossible job since at least the 1980s. There are now so many competing factions in the Church, that as Archbishop, you are damned if do, and damned if you don’t. Perhaps the only reassuring thing these days is the knowledge that whoever is unfortunate enough to succeed you as Archbishop, will find themselves in an even worse situation. But wherever one stands on any controversial matter – theological, ethical, social, political – surely in the Church hate should not find any place in your dealings with your fellow Christians, no matter how much you disagree with them? After all, our Lord did tell us to love our enemies and if someone smites us to turn the other cheek. The Church should be a place where we can find ways to disagree, without degenerating into the kind of rhetoric that demonises those you disagree with as being the spawn of Satan. If only because there is already far too much of that in the world outside the Church.
Turning to today’s Gospel, and Mark’s account of our Lord’s return to Nazareth, it would appear that some theme to do with weakness and rejection was in the minds of the compilers of the lectionary. Yet it is not the first part of today’s Gospel that really struck me, except that if prophets are not without honour, except in their home town; it would now appear that the Church of England finds itself in the situation that the Archbishop of Canterbury is not without honour, except in General Synod. But instead, what struck me is in the second half of today’s passage, where Jesus sends the disciples out to preach the Gospel two by two, taking nothing for their journey except for a staff, sandals and a tunic. He tells them that if any house will not welcome them, then they should ‘shake off the dust that is on (their) feet as a testimony against them.’
I can’t help but feel that this has got something to say about disagreement in the Church. If we are already in the same household of the Church, if we are already Christians, can we really shake off the dust as a testimony against people who are already, like us, sacramentally part of the Body of Christ? If we share a common baptism in the name of the triune God who creates, sustains and redeems us, how can we deal with our problems through hate and vituperation? This characterises as I said far too much political discourse in our world at this time. Should we not be doing all we can to change this? That is why Archbishop Welby’s call for the Church of England to try to rediscover what it means to be a people living in community is so important. While Jesus may have been able to send out the disciples two by two, our broken and confused world perhaps needs something else. It may respond to new and revitalised communities of Christians, who recognise their weakness as sinners, but who because of this will be able to withstand the insults, hardships, persecutions and calamities of this world, and so be able to find new ways to show the power of Christ that dwells within us. The Church in the 21st century is almost certainly going to be very different from anything we have known before. If we can reconnect with this power made perfect in the weakness of the Cross and the suffering of Christ, then we may be able to sow seeds of love and peace that will grow into another Church. A Church that can be a real sign of hope to our world, and which can help dispel some of the darkness that surrounds us, instead of adding to it as we have sadly done too many times before.