‘The time is fulfilled’
Jesus came into Galilee proclaiming the good news of God and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven has come near; repent and believe in the good news’.
According to Mark, these are the very first words of Jesus our Lord at the beginning of his public ministry. They are certainly the first words spoken by Jesus in the first gospel to be written down. They deserve our time and attention this morning, and particularly the final phrase: ‘repent and believe in the good news’.
Strengthening commitments to safeguarding
We need to begin our Synod with the painful news of the publication eight days ago of the Makin review into the horrific abuse of John Smyth and all that has followed. We will all have a difficult mix of emotions: anger and shame; compassion for the victims and survivors; deep regret that more was not done to bring the abuse to light; concern for other victims of abuse whose suffering resurfaces; care for safeguarding in Church at this time.
It is the victims and survivors who need to be at the forefront of our minds, and in our prayers, as we read and digest the report and its recommendations. Many of us, including me, will have reflected on our own past failures and shortcomings. Tomorrow is Safeguarding Sunday. It is a vital day to strengthen our commitment to set safeguarding at the very heart of the culture and practice of our church in every possible way.
The publication of the review was followed on Tuesday by the resignation of Archbishop Justin. Justin writes in his resignation statement: “It is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility for the long and retraumatising period between 2013 and 2024” covered by the review. Again, this resignation and the ways in which it happened will evoke a complex and deep mix of emotion: sadness and regret; anger directed at different parties; compassion; questioning; perhaps fear for the church and for the future. There will be opportunity in the coming months, I hope, for a full and proper appreciation of Archbishop Justin’s ministry but in this moment we continue to hold our Archbishop and his family in our love and prayers.
Gentle and patient with one another
All of these thoughts and feelings are deeply disorientating and difficult to process. I would rather we were meeting in person this morning than virtually to give time for fellowship and care. Everyone not just in our Synod but in all our churches will need time and space to process the Makin review and what has happened. There will be extra demands in this season. So we will need to be gentle and patient with one another as always and on occasion with ourselves to navigate this time.
We will need to remember the journey we have been on as a Church in strengthening our safeguarding. The recent, positive report from our external audit measures that journey and confirms the very positive work being done by clergy and PSOs across the diocese, supported by our safeguarding team. Let’s not lose sight of this or let fear and anxiety take hold as we know this does not contribute to good safeguarding. At the heart of safeguarding is a call to build a church which is safe for all, which is grounded in hope and that is the vocation of the whole people of God.
What would Jesus say?
Over the last few days I’ve reflected on what Jesus would say to the Church of England at this time – not only in this moment but in this season of our long story. Like everyone else I am still processing what has happened and in some ways hesitant to offer anything, but I have returned again to these first words of Jesus in the gospels, the centre of Jesus proclamation to his church in every generation:
‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven has come near; repent and believe in the good news”
Jesus’ words need to be properly understood. We all bring baggage to our listening. Those words ‘repent and believe in the good news’ often play out in our minds in unhelpful ways. Perhaps we hear the strident voices of preachers in distant pulpits seeking to compel submission or obedience from our different theological traditions and assert their dominance over others. These profound misunderstandings lead directly to the kinds of abuse we have witnessed in different parts of the Church.
A fundamental change
The words of Jesus can only be understood through the person and character of Jesus in the gospels. These first and central words need to be heard through all of the chapters which follow. Jesus is gentle, humble, patient, kind and merciful. Jesus never seeks to coerce, to dominate, to abuse. Jesus sets the outcast and the vulnerable and the children at the heart of his ministry and at the heart of the church. Jesus is the gospel: God incarnate. Jesus is gentle, humble, kind and merciful because God is gentle and humble and patient and kind and merciful. This call to repentance and faith needs to be heard profoundly through this lens of mercy, not as a strident, coercive, dominating call to change but as an invitation, as good news.
The word translated ‘repentance’ is as many will know, the word ‘metanoia’: the Greek word means literally a change of mind and understanding. It is not wholly or mainly about saying sorry but about a fundamental change of perception, of worldview and then of life.
What is at the heart of this fundamental transformation? More than anything it is to understand that God is love, that God loves us and longs for us to understand that God loves us in ways which are deeper than we can imagine. That love is embodied in Jesus’ actions and death. That love is articulated in the story of Jesus’ baptism, which Mark tells in the few verses before Jesus speaks.
“And just as he was coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove on him. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased”.”
This is the fundamental shift embraced in the call to change our hearts and minds: from believing we are condemned to believing we can be forgiven; from believing we are insignificant to believing we are deeply valued by God; from believing God is our harsh judge to believing that God is our loving heavenly Father; from believing that we can never please God or do enough to knowing that God is well pleased because of God’s grace and because of Jesus.
A call for the whole Church
This fundamental shift is at the heart of Jesus call to change our hearts and minds. It is a call the whole Church needs to hear at this time. It is the best antidote to powerful feelings of shame, fear and doubt which imprison us. It is the best antidote to the distortions of our theology which lie at the heart of terrible abuse and can affect all of our traditions. It is a call which needs to be heard deeply by the Church and then offered to the nation we serve in humility and in gentleness by gracious communities of love, who know they are imperfect but also understand that this life is much more abundant when lived in fellowship with our maker and redeemer.
Belief and trust
The call is to repent, to change our hearts and minds, but also to believe. This word also needs to be re-understood. The root meaning of the Greek word is not as many think trying to screw up our faith to believe impossible things. The root meaning is to trust: to trust our lives to the promises of God; to trust our lives to the words of Jesus; to trust our lives and our identity to what has been revealed in Scripture and the Son of God: to trust the words spoken at Jesus baptism and spoken to each of us: you are my child, my beloved, with you I am well pleased.
We are invited to trust not because we are worthy but because God’s grace is sufficient for us in Jesus Christ and Christ’s death and resurrection. This is the good news, the beginning and the end of the gospel, the centre of our faith and understanding.
As a Church we stand in need of deep spiritual and theological renewal. We are in a desert place. That renewal will not come from strategy or therapy or additional resourcing or from engaging with the issues of the day. Our renewal and healing must be an act of grace, a gift of God, the work of the Spirit, and at the heart of that grace will be this call at the centre of the gospel offered by our merciful and gentle Lord, Jesus Christ:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”
Repentance and faith
We are approaching as a Church the season of Advent. Advent is one of two great penitential seasons of our year. At the heart of Advent is the call to repentance and faith. All too often that theme of penitence and lament has been minimised in our worship and liturgy. Our times of confession in daily prayer and in Sunday worship have become too brief or we omit them altogether. Daily prayer and Sunday worship embody at their best Jesus call to repent and believe: to transformation and to trust.
So can I suggest that in this kingdom season and in Advent we all take this call seriously: that we include for this season a rite of confession in our Daily Prayer; that we take care to read the commandments or a summary of the law; that we include full prayers of confession and of course absolution as the Church gathers; that we draw on the comfortable words and the prayer of humble access which have dropped out of our liturgy and that we seek to restore this call to repentance and faith, to transformation and trust at the heart of all we do.
Human life and dignity
I had intended to devote the whole of this Presidential Address to the question of assisted suicide, which is presently before Parliament. Such is the importance of the issue for public debate in the coming weeks, that it seems important still to say something. The same Christian understanding of human life and human dignity which is at the heart of the Christian gospel also underpins in my view our reasons for resisting the Terminally Ill Adults (end of life) Bill, which was published on Monday and which comes before the House of Commons on 29 November.
I do absolutely recognise that Christians and Parliamentarians will hold a variety of views on this hugely significant question: views which are held with integrity and often formed by harrowing and difficult experiences of the death of family and friends. I have no issues at all with colleagues across the diocese who feel they need to support this Bill in private conversation or public debate. It is important that we bring the best wisdom we can to a vital set of questions.
Nevertheless when opinion has been tested across the Church of England in recent years through debates in General Synod in 2012 and 2022 the Synod has voted overwhelmingly against what is now proposed in this legislation. I will be writing to our Members of Parliament across the diocese as they prepare for this key debate and setting out the reasons for resisting this Bill. You may want to do the same.
Protecting the vulnerable
I will be arguing for significant improvements and resourcing for better end of life and palliative care. Both of my parents and my parents in law were very fortunate to receive excellent care in the final stages of their lives, one through Macmillan, one through a local hospice and two through nursing homes. Many people simply do not have the right end of life care at present or that choice of that care. This is an urgent priority for the NHS and the charitable hospice sector, which requires much more tangible support.
I will be making arguments based on the inadequate safeguards proposed in the Bill to protect the vulnerable. I will be drawing attention to what has happened in jurisdictions which have agreed to this step as a first step: to Canada, to Holland, to Oregon, and to what seems the inevitable broadening of the criteria for legally assisted suicide. I will be talking about safeguarding and the risks of older or disabled or ill people feeling unwanted or a burden. I will be talking about the wider effects on the NHS and the medical profession of fundamental change this will represent for doctors and nurses.
But in this context it is also important to make the theological and Christian arguments. Life is a precious gift from God. Neither illness nor suffering diminish the value of a human life, nor can they diminish the image of God in which human beings are created. Something fundamental will change in our society in our attitude to death and therefore to life if this legislation goes forward. This needs deep and careful consideration and much greater scrutiny than will be possible through this Private Members Bill.
We must pray for our Members of Parliament, many of them newly elected, as they come to the second reading of this Bill. We must also be willing I think to engage our communities in conversations about death and dying and in our own pastoral care of the dying and of the bereaved.
Even in the face of death, especially in the face of death, we are as the Church imperfect bearers of good news for all the world. I end as I began with the words of Jesus, words of hope and life:
“The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven has come near; repent and believe in the good news.”
Bishop Steven addressed Diocesan Synod via Zoom on Saturday 16 November.
