So runs the headline of Will Hutton's comment piece in today's Observer.
The byline continues: Political conversation has been drained of all vitality, fixated on a narrow set of targets. To breathe new life into it, our politicians should stop talking like accountants and rediscover moral purpose.
Hutton goes on discuss the way in which politicians of his parents' generation traded their competing visions and debated how they would achieve the common good. Our own generation is preoccupied with the all-consuming metric of national debt. He calls for an ecosystem of innovation and investment; for a state driven by values which has to organise itself so that it has the wherewithal to sustain improvements to education, health, infrastructure, housing and defence. He asks, 'where is the political vision?'
Illustration: briancains.com
The Observer: Sunday, 22nd October 2015
The question of vision is vitally important for us as members of the church, the body of Christ. Sometimes the narrative told about our worship and common life is one of decline or of maintaining buildings; sometimes our own internal dialogue is dominated by deficits and numbers; our viability rather than vitality.
We could so easily rewrite The Observer's headline: Enough of the dry ecclesiology of numbers.
We need to discuss values and vision. Is not our Christian discourse, our understanding of faith and the mission of the church drained of all vitality if it is fixated on a narrow set of targets? To breathe life into the church we too should stop talking like accountants and rediscover moral purpose.
As a priest, a theologian, a member of the body of Christ, I would suggest that the church is in a far more hopeful place than we sometimes think. We have an Archbishop who has set out three clear priorities - priorities which remind us that the church is not just another human interest group or a branch of social service. We are the body of Christ: that is our identity within which we discover our calling. Therefore, our first priority is to pray; to place worship at the heart of our life, individually and corporately. We are to make time for it and to invest in it - because in prayer we draw near to God and God reaches out to us.
In a sermon today, Archbishop Justin spoke about prayer as the most risky, the most dangerous thing you can do. It changes us. It roots us in God. His second priority flows from the first: as a church we are to be agents of reconciliation. God is the source of this forgiving and recreating activity. It demands trust; it demands that we speak of our core values; it means that we have to lay aside petty jealousies and personal agendas. It is undoubtedly a hard and costly path - as Bishop Andrew (Guildford) reminded us, we are called to take up our cross and walk to Jerusalem, in the hope of resurrection.
Our Archbishop's third priority is the call to witness. It is the calling of the whole people of God to share the good news of Jesus Christ. Witness is rooted in worship: our deep attention to God - in the beauty of holiness; in word and music; in sacrament and silence. Worship forms us as a holy people - our witness is bound up with the reflection of God's love in our life together as we learn to be patient and generous, forgiving and joyful. That is a compelling vision of our life together; but it needs nurturing. There will be times when we have to challenge one another about where we place our attention or how we engage with one another.
As a community of shaped by worship, there is a deep moral purpose to our witness. In the power of the Spirit we are called to witness to the love of God made manifest in Jesus Christ. Acts of service are a tangible expression of that; they are signs of God's Kingdom - God's values - breaking into the present. However, those acts of service only make sense if we also share the overarching story of God's creative, redemptive and sustaining love.
That is what Paul does in Romans - with tremendous rhetorical flourish! He is piling up imagery and poetic language to name both the fragility of our human condition and the extraordinary abundance of God's love. We are called to do the same. At Guildford Cathedral, we are on the cusp of embarking on a two year HLF project which will restore this building, and improve its facilities. However, The People's Cathedral project only makes sense within the retelling of God's story.
As we capture human memories through the oral history project, as we improve the interpretation material on offer to visitors, as we deepen our engagement with families, schools and neighbouring institutions we we will be witnessing to God's love for the world. The story of brick givers only makes sense in relation to why a new place of worship was built; our contribution to learning and dialogue only makes sense if we have a vision for the work of the Spirit as we seek wisdom. All this is an expression of the gift of God's grace in world longing for hope.
Our first lesson speaks of the way in which the exercise of human power can dehumanise and appear immune to the grace of God. Pharaoh demands that Aaron performs a sign or wonder. Yet in his court, this is to compete on the same terms of magicians, sorcerers and those immersed in secret arts. Even when Aaron's staff swallowed up theirs, Pharaoh's heart remained unmoved. We know, from our retelling of this story in Exodus, as it is remembered in the Psalms, as it is reenacted on stage and screen, that plagues come and go. Yet Pharaoh will not let God's people go free. It is only when confronted not just with the reality of mortality, but God's power over death, that Pharaoh let's them go.
Paul picks up on this theme of liberation and promise. His retelling is of grace and life on a cosmic scale; but he begins with confronting the reality of our human nature. It began with Adam: it begins with human kind - and our misuse of freedom; our propensity for our desires to be misdirected. God creates with perfect love and freedom; and the risk of that is that we do not always chose to obey his will and loving purpose for us.
Our sin is our separation from God and the way in which our in fragmented lives injure others. Paul writes of the way in which the law embodies the vision of God's command - to love and worship God; to love and serve each other. It is the reality of that law which reveals the weakness of our nature and the way in which we cross or transgress those lines. We get caught up in the little things: disappointments, grudges, failures & loss.
Our hope, says Paul, is in Christ. In him we see a bigger picture, within which our lives take on new purpose. Adam represents our frailty; Christ delivers us and gives us a new destiny in hope. We move from the trespass of death to the gift of grace; from disobedience to righteousness; from condemnation to forgiveness; from death to life. The impact of these layers of contrasts is cumulative: the impact of Christ's life and death and resurrection is cosmic. It is also radically particular to each on of us: loved, forgiven, transformed; living out of grace not human strength for we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves.
That is good news. The grace of God overflowed to the many; all have a share in that abundance of that love.
Enough of the dry preoccupation with numbers. We need to discuss values and vision
In prayer we are caught up in God's love for us.
As members of the body of Christ we are to reflect that reconciling love.
In the power of the Spirit, we are to witness to that abundance.
We do all this for the sake of the Kingdom of God. As Brian Cairns' illustration alongside Will Hutton's comment suggests - our political vision, our church and the Kingdom is to be a flourishing plant, not a withered stem.
© 2015 Julie Gittoes
