A few weeks ago I invited the Diocese of Oxford to dwell deeply in the Beatitudes in Matthew 5 in the coming year in many different ways.  As part of this dwelling deep we are holding a series of Area Days in different parts of the Diocese.  Around 240 people gathered on Saturday for the Dorchester Area Day at Marlborough School in Woodstock.  There were inputs from Bishop Colin on what is happening now across the Dorchester Area and from Maggie Scott, Deputy Chief Executive of Oxfordshire County Council, on the changing face of Oxfordshire.  We prayed together and worked around tables on a vision for the future.  There was a real sense of energy and purpose in the gathering.  This is the text of my opening address which I hope will be helpful for all those exploring the beatitudes this year.

Watch Bishop Steven’s Address or listen below

Thank you very much for gathering here today for the first of four Area Days across the Diocese of Oxford.

Exactly a year ago today I was installed as the 43^rd Bishop of Oxford in Christ Church.  Many of you were there. Thank you for your prayers and encouragement and support across the year.

I set out on a journey to discover the Diocese focussed around 29 deanery days.  Thank you for all your hospitality and time on those days.  We began in Abingdon in December and finished in Henley in July.

I met with clergy and ministers over lunch; visited community projects and schools in the afternoon; had dinner with a group of ten or so lay people and then had an open meeting.  More than 3,000 people came to those meetings.

I ate a lot of cake.  When people ask what did you gain, I sometimes say about half a stone.  The Chipping Norton Deanery was the Deanery with the best cake.  Chipping Norton and Henley built the most exercise into the day.  I was chased by a large black pig called Nuke in rural Buckinghamshire.  I went to factories and farms and community ventures aplenty.  And I did my best to listen.

Together we are the Church in the Diocese of Oxford across Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Milton Keynes.

Together we are living network of more than a thousand congregations and chaplaincies and schools.  Together we work with God’s mission in every city, town, and village across the world.

Together we have many strengths.  great people; our Area system; significant resources; our schools; excellence and expertise in many different places

Together we face many challenges.  We are sometimes anxious and inward looking.  We are overbusy.  We are not always good at teaching the faith to enquirers.  We are older and less diverse than our population.  We are sometimes fragmented.  Our resources are not always aligned with our goals.

But together we have many opportunities: we are a diocese of immense influence and potential at a crossroads of the world.

Together we are called to dream dreams and see visions of what could be.

And that is what this next year is about.  We have worked for some years with Living Faith.  That has borne immense fruit – especially in reshaping the life of the Diocese around God’s mission.  But this is a moment when we need to stop and think and listen and pray again and discern together God’s vision and direction for us as the Church in this Diocese.

We are asking two questions: What kind of Church are we called to be?

We are also beginning to ask: What should we, therefore, do together?

We have asked the whole Diocese to work on this first question to think and pray and reflect for a year.  That is the main focus of this day.

We have asked six working groups to listen to that reflection and then to think and plan around six themes:

• To make a bigger difference in the world
• To make disciples and grow the local church
• To plant new churches and congregations
• To serve every school in our community
• To put the discipleship of all at the heart of our common life
• To celebrate and bless our largest, fastest growing city: Milton Keynes

But we can only move forward together if we have a common understanding of what kind of Church God is calling us to be in this generation and in this place.

Which is why the first of our questions is by far the most important.  What kind of Church are we called to be?

I have observed processes of change in the Church over many years.  I have learned some lessons from that journey.  The first and the most important is that real change and renewal always begins as we catch together a fresh vision of Jesus Christ at the centre of who we are and who we are called to be.

Telling each other the story of our decline does not generate life and hope and change.  Setting each other unrealistic targets and demanding more with less resources does not generate life and hope and change.  Calling the Church back to Jesus Christ is the only way forward.  Seeing Christ anew, returning to our source and our centre, learning to speak of the Church again, the Body of Christ, with hope and joy and love – these things give life and energy and enable change to happen well.  So that is what we are going to do.

What kind of Church are we called to be?  A Christ-like Church.  A church which is more like Jesus.  I have a very simple ambition for the Church in this Diocese. It is that we become more Christian; that we set Christ at the centre; that we try and be like him; that we see Christ formed in us again as individuals and as communities.

How do we become more Christ-like?  By spending time with the risen Christ in scripture and sacrament; in prayer and fellowship; in mission and in service.

I am asking the whole Diocese in this coming year to dwell in one particular bible passage: the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew.  The most famous and beautiful beginning to the greatest sermon in the entire history of the world: the sermon on the mount.

The beatitudes are almost the first substantial words of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew.  Jesus has been baptised by John.  He has been tempted by the devil.  He has begun his ministry in Galilee. He has called Simon and Andrew and James and John with the simple invitation “Follow me”.  He has travelled and taught and healed the sick.

Now he draws apart up the mountain and his disciples come to him. These are words for the Church but they are also immense good news for the whole world.  Jesus speaks to this embryonic church, the people who will be his body, his bride, his own people.  Jesus speaks to us in words of joy.  Every beatitude begins with “Blessed” – happy, fulfilled, at peace. Jesus speaks to us first in words of hope. Every beatitude has a rich promise.  Each begins in blessing and ends in even more.  Jesus speaks to us in words of abundance and not scarcity.

Jesus speaks to us about himself.  He describes in these beautiful, well-crafted promises his own qualities, his own character.  One of the best ways to read the beatitudes is as a kind of self-portrait of Christ.  This is the Jesus Matthew, Mark, Luke and John will reveal to us through the gospel.

When Jesus says Blessed are the poor in spirit, we remember his prayer on the mountaintop and in the Garden of Gethsemane.  When Jesus says Blessed are those who mourn we remember the way he is deeply moved by the sick, the bereaved and his tears before Jerusalem. Blessed are the meek reminds us of the foot washing, his call to be a servant and his riding into Jerusalem on a donkey.  To be hungry and thirsty for righteousness reminds us of his care for the poor and those who have nothing and his rebuke to religious leaders.

Jesus words on mercy call to mind his gentleness with widows and with children and with tax collectors and sinners and prostitutes.  His words on peacemaking remind us of his death on the cross and his bringing reconciliation to the whole world, his casting out of demons.  His call to be pure in heart reminds us of his own authentic life, his call for inner purity, for secret disciplines.  Blessed are the persecuted takes us to the passion and his own example of bearing pain and hardship for the sake of the kingdom of God.

Jesus speaks to us about what it means to be human.  Jesus comes to show us what God is like.  But he comes also to show us what it means to live abundant life.  The most abundant and rich and fulfilling life is not the life of the rich and famous, the lives which fill Hello magazine, the lives young people grow up longing for.  The most abundant and rich and fulfilling life is indeed to know that you are poor in spirit and incomplete without God; that you have a heart of compassion to weep for the suffering in the world rather than building walls to shut it out. To live well is not to think you are the best, to get to the top of the pile but to see your place in the world with humility and meekness and therefore joy.  You were not made to be blind to what is wrong or to turn away but to fight it.

You were not made to be perfect but to be merciful: to forgive your own failings and imperfections and those of other people.  You are not called to be a victim of fear and anxiety and guilt.  You are called to keep your heart pure through the whole of your life and to see it restored in God’s image and take flight.  You were not made to spend your life angry and bitter and disappointed and at war with the world but you were made for peace and harmony with creation and with all people.  You are not designed to bend to every pressure, as simply as a consumer.  You were made to make your mark on the world: to be resilient and strong and bear the cost of your convictions.

Jesus speaks to us in the beatitudes about what it means to be the Church.  This is you plural not you singular.  This is how we are to be together.  These beatitudes describe what kind of Church we are called to be.

Eight qualities is a lot to ponder and remember.  I can hold them in my mind but I’ve had lots of practice.  For that reason, I want to focus the reflection and vision of the Diocese around three qualities which sum up what it means to be a Christ-like Church and sum up what it means to be the Church of the Beatitudes.

We are seeking to be a Church which is more contemplative, more compassionate and more courageous as we live out these words together.

To be contemplative means to spend time with.  We are called to be a Church which spends time with God, whose life flows from God’s life, from worship and prayer and stillness and reflection and loving God with all our heart and soul and mind and strength.  To be contemplative means to see the glory of God reflected in creation and to learn to live gently on the earth.

To be contemplative is to be poor in spirit, to be meek, to be pure in heart in order to see God.

The Church of England needs to learn to do God really well again.  We are in much of our life an anxious church in an anxious world.  An anxious church finds compassion very difficult.  We are worried about preserving our own life.  An anxious church finds courage very hard.  We want to stay with the familiar pathways.  An anxious church is easily distracted from what is really important, like the Martha of Luke’s gospel. An anxious church is likely to be far too busy to be good news to the world.  The antidote to anxiety is dwelling deep in God: in contemplation, stillness, reflection, a well-ordered life.

The many different communities we serve need a contemplative church.  The people around us who are like sheep without a shepherd need a church which is willing to take God seriously.  We are really no earthly use without a heavenly dimension.  We are a poor social club.  We are not the society for the preservation of ancient buildings.  Without contemplation, we can easily become an empty group of do-gooders concerned more for our own survival than for the salvation of the world.

To be compassionate means to suffer or feel with.  We are called as a Church to grow communities of kindness and gentleness.  In the words of Isaac Pennington, the early Quaker:

“Our life is love and peace and tenderness and bearing with one another and forgiving one another and not laying accusations one against another, but praying for one another and helping one another up with a tender hand”.

2.35 million people live across the Diocese of Oxford in cities and towns and villages.  In every place God has called an often fragile community of people to bear witness to what it means to live abundantly: to be leaders in compassion; to love our neighbours as ourselves and to help make the world a better place.  That is our calling.  We are called to mourn: to take the suffering of the world seriously.  We are called to be merciful.

Finally to be courageous means to live with all our hearts – as individuals and as a Church.  It means to rediscover our passion and energy and conviction, to really go for it as the Church in this place in this generation, to play the game for all its worth, to leave everything out on the field.

Our world needs a church which is courageous in our work for justice; a church which is courageous in our work for peace; a church which is courageous in living against the grain of our culture and bearing the cost of that, whatever it may be.

Our world needs us to be and we so often are, thank God, a Church which walks towards the pain and difficulty and grief and sorrow in the world and embraces the difficult questions and the work which no-one else will do.  We need the courage to dream big dreams together and to cast big visions – visions which will call out the best gifts of our people and make an immense difference to the life of the world.

Courage comes from a restored heart.  Compassion comes from a restored heart.  The heart is restored and renewed through contemplation: through resting in Christ, the true vine, so that together we might bear much fruit.

It’s very good to have so many people here from so many different churches.  250 among the many thousands who worship and serve regularly in our churches.  Please would you be the yeast across the dough of the Dorchester Area.  Encourage your PCCs and your home groups and your ministry teams and congregations and schools to join in this great work of listening to God this year, of dwelling deep in the beatitudes, of catching a vision of what it means to be more contemplative, more compassionate and more courageous as a Church and to be part of God’s great work of renewal.

A few weeks ago I was invited to address the presbyteral session of the Methodist Conference meeting in Birmingham. The invitation came from my friend and former colleague, Roger Walton, the President of the Conference.  This is the text of the address.

The Burning Bush

“Moses was keeping the flock of his father in law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness and came to Horeb, the mountain of God”.

*

The old shepherd limped across the desert with his flock, sticking to familiar pathways wherever he could.  He’d spent most of his life avoiding responsibility and leadership.  There had been ambition, certainly, in his youth.  He’d tried to lead but it had all gone wrong.  He’d been fortunate to escape with his life.  He’d lived ever since far from his people, tending the flock of his father-in-law.  He’d heard things were bad, of course.  Some news reached him even in the desert.  He prayed from time to time.  But there was nothing he could do.

Until that day, on Horeb, when everything changed.  His eye was caught by a bush on fire.  He looked more closely.  The bush was blazing.  He saw the flames, heard the crackling of the wood, felt the warmth.  The bush was ablaze, yet it was not consumed.  Moses turned aside to see.  God called him out of the bush.

*

My intention this morning is to explore the themes of vocation and ministry and leadership through the story of the call of Moses as told in Exodus 3 and 4.

I have had a growing conviction over many years that as a Church we need to reconnect in a much deeper way with the Scriptures and the tradition in our reflection on leadership.  We have been distracted now for a generation by the bright lights of the business school and by all that the social sciences can teach us about the exercise of leadership in communities.  There are clearly things we can learn from that source.

But we have neglected to explore the deep mine of our own tradition for those lessons on how to lead.  We need to recover them for they contain vital lessons not only on the exercise of leadership in communities as ministers but lessons in leadership for headteachers and school governors; for politicians and business leaders; for vice chancellors and civil servants.  Every time we address a congregation, we are addressing a group of leaders: people of great influence.  One of our tasks as ministers of the word is to explore and expound this deep rich seam of reflection on leadership in the Old Testament and the New; in the early Father’s of the Church; in our history, our theology and our practice down the generations.  We are part of the longest continuous tradition of reflection on leadership in communities there has ever been in the entire history of human culture.  The entire story of Moses is a story of what it means to exercise leadership.  Exodus 3 and 4 are where that story begins.

*

The elderly shepherd stands on Horeb, the mountain of God.

“Then the angel of the Lord appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.  Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight and see why the bush is not burned up”.

Moses is living, as you will remember, in the place of exile and failure.  Forty years ago he attempted to assume a position of power and influence among his people both as their protector and as their judge.  He was rejected both by the Egyptians and by the Israelites.  He fled to Midian, far away.  He is living as an alien in the foreign land. The story of his call is a story of restoration as well as vocation.

When we first read the story and often when we interpret the story, we see the burning bush as a dramatic device.  This is the way that God attracts the attention of Moses.

There is a bush fire by the roadside which draws the eye.  Moses draws nearer.  The bush is blazing but not consumed.  It is this, not simply the fire, which causes Moses to turn aside long enough to hear the voice of God.

But down the years many of those who have gone before us have reflected deeply on this passage and they have found more in the burning bush than a dramatic device to hold Moses’ attention and curiosity.

We all know the principle of fire which needs fuel to feed it.  In our house we have a log burner.  It is at the very heart of our home.  When they come home our four adult children love to sit in front of it and to gather around a living flame.  But this fire will not work without fuel.  On a cold winter’s afternoon, we can easily burn two baskets of logs. The idea that we could put the logs in, enjoy the fire and then take the logs out again and put them back in the garage is absurd.  They are turned to ash.

But this fire in Exodus burns and is not consumed.  How is that?  Moses is curious and so draws near and hears the voice of God.  The burning bush is a narrative device.

But the saints who have pondered this down the years have seen more.  They have connected the burning bush with another fire which burns and does not consume: the fires of Pentecost, the flames which appear above the heads of each of the disciples.  The flames cause them to burn with passion – with love for God and for others – but not to be burned up.  The burning bush describes a profound mystery at the heart of the discipleship and ministry.

The burning bush and the flames at Pentecost are a picture of God’s love for us and for everyone God has made.  God’s love is disproportionately passionate, burning, but not overpowering or consuming the object of God’s love.  This is the love which sets our hearts on fire as we read the scriptures and celebrate the sacraments but which does not consume us.  This is the passion which burns with love for God’s people, which hears their cries, and brings God to answer their prayers in his dialogue with Moses.

Passion is one of those beautiful English words.  The meaning of passion combines strong love and and strong anger at injustice and suffering. There is a vital place for passion in our discipleship and in ministry.  If we live with our eyes open, we will be deeply moved, often, by the suffering in the world, by injustice and by the state of the Church.

In our call to be disciples we are invited daily into a relationship with this God who loves us deeply but whose love does not overpower us or swamp our will or wipe out our personality.  God is not the dominant husband or wife in whose shadow the other partner disappears.  God sets us on fire but does not consume us.  Christian discipleship is not about self negation of gifts or personality but about the flourishing of each individual.

God’s grace at the burning bush is a model too for our ministry. We are to be like that with others: to build them up to be the best they can be not to use them for our glory.

Passion in discipleship and ministry needs to imitate the burning bush.

In the words of an old ACCM selection document, one of the great signs of spiritual and personal maturity in a minister is to burn but not burn up – to burn but not to be consumed.  We are called to a long steady love and a long steady deep anger at injustice but held within a confident vision of the God of order, of creation, the God who has won the victory.

That is not an easy vision to articulate or live, but it is a powerful vision of God’s passion and passion in ministry.

*

The great Christian tradition on how to lead in communities is based on a single, powerful insight about leadership which is deeply countercultural.

Our tradition is based upon the simple and deep conviction that leadership in communities is very, very, very difficult.  That conviction is underscored more and more deeply for me the more I am called to exercise leadership and observe leadership in others.

The wisdom for leadership which has emerged in the last generation from the social sciences and from business can be very helpful.  But it is based on the premiss that leadership is basically very straightforward.  All you need to do is master a few basic disciplines and rules, usually all beginning with the same letter.  All you need to do is read my book, attend my seminar, take an MBA and you will be equipped to lead others.  The simpler we believe something to be, the more likely we are to fail.

Pope Francis gave a TED talk recently.  It is well worth watching if you haven’t seen it.  I found it very moving to listen to the Pope telling the TED community the story of the Good Samaritan as if they had never heard it before.

Francis best line is a quotation from an Argentinian proverb: “We have a saying in my country: the exercise of power without humility is like drinking gin on an empty stomach.  We damage others and we damage ourselves”.

Francis takes us to one of the central reasons why the exercise of leadership is difficult.  The exercise of influence is not a neutral thing.  The exercise of power has an effect upon us: it touches and changes our inner being, our souls.  Our experiences of leadership affect us very deeply.

The Old Testament narratives of leadership by and large offer us scores of different ways in which leadership goes wrong.

The patristic tradition on leadership is based on exactly the same conviction.  There are four classical texts which carry the tradition.  Three of them are written on exactly the same pretext.  John Chrysostom writes On the Priesthood.  Gregory Nazianzen writes On his Flight to Pontus.  Pope Gregory the Great writes The Pastoral Rule, one of the most influential texts in shaping leadership in the western world.

All three write on this pretext: exercising leadership as a presbyter or bishop is so difficult, so very very difficult, so fraught with danger for your inner being and your soul, that it is much better to run away to a far country rather than be ordained to this ministry.  All three claim that they themselves ran away.

It is an insight preserved in the Orthodox ordination services where the candidates do not process in with honour but at an appropriate moment in the service are discovered at the back of the assembly, like Saul hiding among the baggage, and dragged before the bishop to be ordained.

The leadership we offer is hard in itself: we are confronted daily by intractable situations; scarce resources; resistant communities; impossible tasks.  We are confronted daily by our own fallibility.  The leadership we offer and the way we offer it will over time distort and shape our personalities and our lives if we allow it to do so.

It’s my habit to reflect often on the leadership I offer in four domains.  The leadership I offer in the world; the leadership I offer in the church; the way I work with individuals and teams; and the way I am watching over myself.

I have learned over many years that the place attention is most needed and the foundation of everything else is the diligence and wisdom to watch over myself, my inner journey, my character and disciplines for everything else will flow from that and the knots and problems of leadership will often but untangled in that deep inner dialogue.

*

Moses stands before the burning bush.  He hears the very voice of God speaking to him.  God introduces himself: I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob”.  God has observed the misery of his people.  He is coming to deliver them to bring them into a good and broad land.

Moses is invited into a profound and beautiful relationship of passion: for his heart to be set on fire again.  He hears God calling him: “So come, I will send you to Pharoah to bring my people out of Egypt”.

But here is the second mystery in the story.  Moses does not say yes to this call.

“But Moses said to God “Who am I that I should go to Pharoah and bring the Israelites out of Egypt”.

You know the passage at least a little.  For the remainder of Exodus 3 and most of Exodus 4 the dialogue continues.  Moses offers not one, not two, not three, not four but five excuses as he attempts to avoid God’s call.

One of the paradoxes of the story is that Moses never actually says yes in the narrative. He is a reluctant leader.  Moses offers the living God five different excuses.

I paraphrase.

Who am I? (verse 11)

God replies by simply saying I will be with you.

Who are you? (verse 13)

“But Moses said to God “If I come to the Israelites and say to them “The God of my ancestors has sent me to you and they ask me “What is his name”, what shall I say?

This passage links to the revelation of the divine name, the high point of the passage.

They won’t believe me (4.1)

I can’t speak very well (4.10)

O God please send someone else (4.13)

Moses debates and argues with the living God as he is to do many more times in the great narrative of the Exodus.  In this very dialogue there is a living illustration of the burning bush, the fire which does not consume.

What is Exodus teaching us here?

First that God invites Moses first and foremost into relationship, friendship.  This is not simply a servant and master relationship.  There is dialogue, debate, argument based on mutual respect, even though one of the partners is the living God.  God is patient, at least for the first four excuses.  One of the themes of the whole Book of Exodus is the patience of God.  God answers each of Moses’ questions.  God nurtures Moses calling.

Passion is debate and engagement with God and in prayer. Passion is full of life. The opposite of passion is acidie.  Spiritual listlessness neither being cold nor hot. The Psalms teach us to take our passion into our relationship with God. To lament, to be angry, to argue, to grieve.

One of the great privileges of ministry is inviting other people into this kind of service of this kind of living God.  Helping them to foster this rich inner dialogue and encounter.  One of the great privileges of Christian discipleship is this kind of debate with the living God as we wrestle to work out our salvation and our vocation.

The second lesson lies in the actual excuses themselves.  I have found throughout my ministry that the same deep inner questions of character emerge and re-emerge at each stage of life and responsibility.

The deep questions Moses asks have to be revisited in internal and external dialogue regularly.  They are not once and for all questions.  I think the narrative shows that Moses himself will go on visiting them as the story unfolds as we do.

I am doing some work at the moment with a transition coach as part of my journey of letting go of my responsibilities and diocese in Sheffield and engaging with larger and different responsibilities as the Bishop of Oxford.  I’m only part way through that process.

But it is largely an inner journey not an outer journey.  It’s not primarily about learning new skills.  It’s an invitation to go deeper in my understanding of God and my understanding of myself.

In particular I’ve had to confront in a new way a struggle that has been present for me throughout my ministry: with a lack of courage and self doubt.  Who am I?  I can’t do this.  They won’t believe me.  I can’t speak very well.  O God please send someone else.

Naming and confronting my fears has been vital in that process of growing in leadership.  The answer to them is, I think, that gentle dialogue with the living flame of God’s presence which burns but which does not consume: the call to know God better as the heart of our ministries and the leadership we offer.

How that dialogue happens is vital to the fruitfulness of our ministries.

One of the regular things that happens in ministry is not so much that we resign or withdraw from what we are called to do – although that does happen from time to time.  It is rather than we resign or withdraw inwardly even through outwardly we continue to do the job.  There is an inner abdication of vocation.

Outwardly we are in office but we are not in power.  We disengage.  It’s as if we are in a game of baseball.  We stand on the batter’s diamond.  But again and again we let the ball sail past with no intention of striking it out of the ground.  Opportunities to do good come but we fail to respond.  There is an inner weariness of spirit, a paralysis caused by fear, a lack of hope and joy in our engagement.  We professionalise and bureaucratise our calling and the church.  Our sense of being on fire for God diminishes.  Our hearts are no longer strangely warmed.

*

If you find yourself in such a moment, individually and corporately, can I commend careful and prayerful engagement with the story of Moses in Exodus 3 and 4 and the two riddles it contains: the bush which burns but which is not consumed.  The call which is offered but which is not answered.

Again and again in our ministries, God recalls us to the fire in faith and love and gentleness – rarely in the same ways, often in new and creative ways.  We will be called to reflect on our own identity, on God’s nature and identity, upon our perception of the church, upon our perception of our own abilities, on the excuses we offer.

There is no way to engender passion for Christ, for the Scriptures, for justice in others unless you are first set alight by God and maintain that passion throughout your ministry.  If you are to set hearts and lives on fire for God, as I hope and pray you will, you must first be on fire again yourself.

I was privileged to be the Anglican fraternal delegate to the Synod of Bishops in Rome on Evangelisation in 2012.  It was a powerful experience and one that has stayed with me.  There were 400 cardinals, bishops and advisors from all over the world sharing with one another how difficult it is to pass on Christian faith in the contemporary world.  The most moving moment in the Synod came when one of the senior Vatican cardinals stood up and said: it is we who need evangelising.  We need ourselves a deeper experience of Christ.  It is out of that deeper experience of Christ in the Church that mission and ministry and good leadership will flow.

We end this session with the beautiful and powerful words of Charles Wesley which draw on this powerful image of the fire which burns but which does not consume and God’s gentle yet powerful call to service and to ministry:

O thou who camest from above
the fire celestial to impart,
kindle a flame of sacred love
on the mean altar of my heart.

There let it for thy glory burn
with inextinguishable blaze,
and trembling to its source return
in humble prayer and fervent praise.

Jesus, confirm my heart’s desire
to work and speak and think for thee;
still let me guard the holy fire
and still stir up the gift in me.

Still let me prove thy perfect will,
my acts of faith and love repeat,
till death thy endless mercies seal,
and make the sacrifice complete.

Address to the Presbyteral Session of the Methodist Conference

23^rd June 2017

The Seven acts of Mercy

Presidential Address to the Diocesan Synod

27^th February, 2016

“Blessed are the merciful” Matthew 5.7

Long ago, the church in England loved the number seven.  In 1281, the Archbishop of Canterbury called together the English bishops at Lambeth. Together they agreed a pattern of teaching for every parish in the land.  Four times a year, the clergy were asked to expound the faith.  The Bishops defined what was to be taught: the creed and the commandments.  Then a collection of sevens: the seven petitions of the Lord’s Prayer; seven vices and seven virtues (the seven deadly sins still survive in popular culture).  Then came the seven sacraments of the mediaeval church.  And finally the seven acts of mercy[1].

These seven acts of mercy are probably the least well known part of the way the faith was taught.  They are based on Jesus picture of the judgement of the nations in Matthew 25.  You will remember the passage:

The Lord says, “I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me”.

These are the seven acts of mercy of the Christian tradition: to give food to the hungry; drink to the thirsty; to welcome strangers; to clothe the naked; to care for the sick; to visit the prisoners and the seventh, added by the Church to this list, to bury the dead.

They are not meant to be an exhaustive list of works of mercy, of course.  They are not meant to be a way to earn salvation or to earn God’s favour.  These acts of kindness are a way of responding to God’s grace. They are a way of living out our faith in practical ways through our care for one another and for God’s world.  They are for all of us.

We perhaps take these acts of mercy too much for granted.  How is it that mercy and kindness have always been such a deep, integral part of Christian faith?  Our faith is not simply about what we believe or how we pray.  There have been religions which have nothing to do with how people behave.  The Christian faith is something we live through kindness and through mercy.

The Church is called to kindness, first of all, because we believe that the God who made the heavens and the earth is merciful and kind.

The world is not here by accident.  We are not subject to cruel or random chance or to the movements of the stars as the astrologers tell us.  The gods are not jealous or hardened to human suffering as were the pagan gods of ancient times.  Nor are we subject simply to random physical events as the new atheists believe.  God is love and mercy and kindness, and that kindness and gentleness should be the mark of God’s people.  As Psalm 136 tells us over and over again, 26 times, God’s steadfast love, God’s faithfulness, God’s mercy endures and endures for ever.

Second, we are called to mercy because of God’s gift to us in his Son, Jesus Christ.  “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son” (John 3.16).  Jesus shows us God.  The God Jesus reveals to us is mercy and compassion and love.  Jesus’ life and ministry are full of acts of mercy and more: food for the hungry, healing for the sick, freedom for the prisoners, new life for the dead.

In Jesus, God becomes a human person: the Word, God’s love, takes flesh.  In this immense event at the centre of our salvation, Jesus Christ gives such dignity and value to every human person in creation.  In the remarkable words of Matthew 25, Jesus says: “What you did to the least of these….you did to me”.

Kindness has not always been at the heart of human culture.  The Greek and Roman gods were cruel. The Orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart writes about how this one profound truth that God became a person has reshaped our view of every human person.

He writes:“…we came to see what formerly we could not: the autistic or Down’s Syndrome child, the derelict, the wretched or broken man or woman; the homeless, the diseased or mentally ill….To be able to see in them not only something of worth but indeed something potentially godlike, to be cherished and adored is the rarest and most ennoblingly unrealistic capacity ever bred within human souls”.[2]

Hart argues that this revolution in human kindness and mercy springs directly from the Christian faith, from Jesus.  He goes on to warn us that a culture which loses its hold on Christian faith will lose its hold on mercy.  A society which becomes post-Christian will ultimately become posthuman.  Kindness will begin to disappear from our institutions and our culture.

Third, as we look back through Christian history, the Church has returned again and again to the ideal of mercy. To be sure the Church has often and terribly fallen short of this ideal and does today.  We should be sorry and repent where that has happened.  But we should rejoice in the many stories down the ages and today of kindness and self-sacrifice, of women and men stirred up to acts of mercy in great multitudes of ways in every generation.

It is the kindness and mercy of God reflected in and through the Church which is the most powerful witness still to the truth of Christian faith.

The American historian and sociologist Rodney Stark describes how the Christian community expanded and grew to be the dominant religion of the Roman empire in less than three hundred years.  He describes how acts of mercy played such a significant role in the growth of the church in the first four centuries, particularly in times of plague and desolation.

Bishop Dionysius of Alexandria wrote these words in an Easter letter to his community around 260 AD following a great plague across the ancient world:

“Most our our fellow Christians showed unbounded love and loyalty, never sparing themselves and thinking only of one another.  Heedless of danger, they took charge of the sick, attending to their every need and ministering to them in Christ and with them departed this life serene and happy; for they were infected by others with the disease, drawing on themselves the sickness of their neighbours and cheerfully accepting their pains”[3]

The Christians stayed in the city and cared for the sick when everyone else fled.

God is love.  Jesus sets the pattern for our lives.  The Church in every generation has cherished mercy.  For all of these reasons, we need from time to time to remind each other that we are called individually and together to acts of mercy, not to earn God’s favour but in response to God’s love, and that these acts of mercy should be the hallmark of a Christ-like church, the kind of church we want to be.

There is always room to grow in love.  But the principal thing I want to say this morning is that as I look across this Diocese, in the Church of England and in the other churches, this is what we see: Christians engaged in acts of mercy, individually and together. I do not want us to boast or become proud.  But I do want to hold up a mirror and remind us all of the remarkable kindness and mercy which is shown by the people of God across this Diocese.

Together we are engaged in feeding the hungry and giving the thirsty something to drink, in welcoming strangers and clothing the naked, in caring for the sick and the prisoners and in burying the dead and caring for the bereaved.

We have recently done some fresh research.  We know that there are 50-60 Food Banks across the Diocese of Sheffield.  It would be excellent if none of them were needed but all of them are.  Most of them are connected to churches and to other faith communities who supply volunteers and donations of food.

People use foodbanks when they do not have enough to eat, when they cannot feed their children, when they are faced with a choice between being warm or going hungry.  Most people use them only a couple of times a year, in times of special need, when their benefits are sanctioned.  They represent practical acts of kindness, God’s mercy in action, feeding the hungry and giving the thirsty something to drink.

Together we are involved and active as the Church in this region in giving clothing to the naked and shelter to the homeless.  The Cathedral Archer project supports around 70 people each day in the centre of Sheffield.  In the last year it has provided 671 food parcels, 606 nurse appointments, 144 dentist appointments. On average it supports over 1000 people over the course of a year.  Mercy and love in action.

Together we are welcoming the stranger.  The Churches are active in their support of Assist, the charity which works with asylum seekers.  Assist is currently supporting 87 asylum seekers in Sheffield with weekly cash payments and bus passes.  These are mostly people who have nothing, whom no-one else is helping.  City of Sanctuary cares for refugees in a similar way.  Many local churches offer a warm welcome across the Diocese for those who are strangers in this land or new to this part of the world.  Project Paddington, started by a small group of Christian parents in Sheffield, has recently delivered 25,000 teddy bears to refugee children in Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan and has raised £40,000 for refugee projects.

Together we are visiting the sick.  We have over 27 ordained, licensed or accredited hospital chaplains in the Diocese together with over 90 volunteers working in hospital chaplaincy.  Scores of clergy and lay ministers are involved in visiting and taking Holy Communion to the housebound and supporting those in acute and long term illness within and outside the Church community.

Together we are visiting those in prison.  We have a prison population in this Diocese of more than 3,000 across four different prisons.  They are served by three Anglican chaplains, when at full strength, together with scores of volunteers who give their time to acts of mercy.

Together we offer love and care in funeral ministry and in caring for the bereaved.  Our clergy and lay ministers together take over 3,000 funerals each year, an average of around 30% of all funerals taken in the region.  This ministry is costly when exercised year by year.  Taking a funeral is about far more than officiating at a service.  It involves care for the bereaved, often involving other members of the church or congregation.

Through our church schools we are teaching kindness year by year to more than 8,000 children.  We are passing on to them not only the stories at the heart of our faith but a way to live in love of God and of our neighbour.

In some of these acts of mercy and kindness we act as the Church of England.  In many we act with our fellow Christians in other churches or with people of different faiths.  In many of the charities we act together with people of good will who may not share any faith.  In all of them we offer practical love and service in every community and congregation to people of all faiths and of none.

This morning I simply want to give thanks for these ministries and record them as a quiet, daily, ongoing miracle happening all around us.  As a Church we are doing our best to reflect the love and mercy of God, to increase the sum of human happiness, to pattern our lives around the life of Christ, to live as we are meant to live.

Of course there is much more that we could do.  Of course mercy alone is not enough.  We are called to proclaim the great message of salvation and the story of God’s love (and we do that).  We are called to transform the unjust structures of society, to challenge violence of every kind and pursue peace and reconciliation (and we do that).  We are called to care for God’s good earth and be stewards of creation (and we do that as well).

But it helps me from time to time to remember, and I hope it helps you and the wider community we serve, to give thanks that these seven acts of mercy still form a large part of our core business.   They stand at the heart of who we are, as we invite others in our community to come to know this God of mercy and love, the God of Jesus Christ and join in God’s great mission of love to our world.

One of my favourite windows in our Cathedral is visible from where I most often sit during services.  I’ve spend some time pondering its images.  It depicts six of the seven acts of mercy from Matthew 25.  Next time you visit the Cathedral, give thanks for all the mercy which is shown across this Diocese and ask God to show to you and to us all, the ways in which we can extend and deepen that mercy in the coming years.

“I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me” (Matthew 25.35-36).