Honest to God (1)
Given on on Sunday 15 June 2008 by the Vicar, Canon Eric Woods
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From this morning's Gospel, Jesus' commission to the twelve disciples: See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves … you will be hated by all because of my name. But the one who endures to the end will be saved. [Matthew 9: 16, 22].
So, Bishop Tim is to be the next Bishop of Truro. He will soon discover (although I suspect he knows it already) that the Cornish are an independently-minded race. From Romano-British times they had their own Church – part of what we loosely call the ‘Celtic Church' – and although when Aldhelm arrived at Sherborne as Bishop in 705 he tried to bring the British Church in the south west into line with Roman ecclesiastical discipline, it is doubtful that his one recorded visit to Cornwall achieved much. Certainly there were still Bishops in Cornwall a hundred years later who claimed to owe no allegiance to Canterbury: that did not happen until Bishop Kenstec submitted to the Archbishop in the mid-ninth century, and was confirmed as Bishop of Cornwall: the first dent in the See of Sherborne. Having taken so long to submit to Roman ways, the Cornish were perversely reluctant to abandon them when the 16 th century Reformation began. In 1549 they rose in rebellion rather than accept Archbishop Cranmer's new Book of Common Prayer in English, insisting ‘We will not receive the new service, because it is but like a Christmas game'. Then in 1688 their perversity reasserted itself when their Bishop, the Cornishman Jonathan Trelawney of Exeter, was one of the Seven Bishops committed to the Tower by the Romanising King James II. Rebellion threatened once more: A good sword
and a trusty hand, a merry heart and true! So it should be no surprise to learn that when John Wesley arrived in Cornwall, the Cornish turned round again to embrace Methodism with enthusiasm. To this day the dissenting tradition is still very much alive in the County. Bishop Tim has every reason to face his new appointment with trepidation! But then, every minister of Christ's Church should feel both trepidation and a profound sense of unworthiness as he or she responds to Christ's call to a fresh task and new responsibilities. I am quite sure that Graeme our curate is full of both fear and trembling as he contemplates his ordination to the priesthood in a fortnight's time. Shortly before I moved to Sherborne I had a period of acute fear lest I proved unequal to the task of steering this great ship of a church through what at the time were pretty choppy waters. But all clergy soon discover this, that we are able to work through all our feelings of being unworthy of and unprepared for our latest calling, provided that we face those fears and take them frankly and honestly to God, trusting in his mercy and his grace. And this is true for us all: emotions and feelings that aren't faced up to and worked through can create and store up a heap of trouble in the future. I can think of many in this parish who have found that out the hard way. There are those who never allowed themselves really to mourn following the death of someone close to them, or, even worse, have never been allowed really to mourn by family and friends, who out of a misplaced sense of helping have conspired to ensure that the person who has died is never mentioned again, let alone discussed with joy and with sadness, with grieving and with thanksgiving.I think of those who I know who are pushing down into the recesses of their minds some event in the past of which they are ashamed, and there it festers, unforgiving, and unforgotten, the past casting a bitter shadow over the present and the future. Or there are those who have been deeply hurt by someone, but won't admit it or try to work the hurt out with the other person, but simply plaster it over with a brave face and a stiff upper lip. I think especially of men who throughout their boyhood were told, whatever their grief – a grazed knee or a sick hamster or a dead brother – don't cry, be brave, big boys don't cry. Our pull-your-socks-up, best-foot-forward, shoulder-to-the-wheel culture has so much to answer for, and not least the tens of thousands of men and women who simply don't know how to express their anger or grief or fear or resentment or bitterness or guilt, because they have never really been allowed to express anything at all. |
And so it all gets driven inwards, to fester and spread until it comes out as breakdown, or real physical illness, or a final volcanic eruption that produces violence or brutality or even suicide. And I could go on, for so much sickness and pain, depression and illness, are caused in this way. But perhaps I have sketched enough of the picture for you to recognise the problem, and perhaps even to see yourself as a figure on the canvas, not sure what to do with your emotions and your feelings, your hurt and guilt, anger and bitterness. You know you are damaged, and are damaging others. Is there anything our Christian faith can do to help that ? Yes, there is. The essence of Christian living is to come to God as we are, and not as we think we ought to be. There ought to be no secrets between us and God. In any case, how can there be, when he knows us better than we know ourselves, when he sees right into what St Peter calls in one of his letters "the hidden man of the heart"? When we try to fool God we fool no-one but ourselves. Someone close to us is very ill, is dying, has died, and we feel angry and bitter, of course we do. All right then, if those around us can't take the anger and the bitterness, take it out on God, that's what he's there for. Stop treating God like an elderly parson at a Vicarage tea party. Treat him as a real friend who knows you through and through, warts and all. After all, we only make polite small-talk to people we don't know very well. God doesn't want polite small-talk; he wants you, just as you are, and all your hurt and pain and guilt and fear. Let him have it: he's bigger than you are and he can take it. Sometimes when things are tough I lock myself in this great Abbey church and tell God what I think of him and what he's dishing out to me and those around me. And he takes everything I can throw at him, holds it and redeems it. It doesn't matter what is standing between you and wholeness, it doesn't matter if it's guilt or greed, hate, anger, jealousy, bitterness: he can cope with it if you are being honest with him and if you are being honest with yourself. Just don't pretend: that's all. If you had TB, you'd want the drugs the doctor prescribed to work with the TB to produce healing and health. So, let God work with you as you are, to produce the healed and whole person he wants you to be. If you are battling with some inner turmoil, some bit of yourself you don't like, then don't battle alone; let God and his angels and archangels come and do battle by your side, to defeat the old dragon you have been trying to slay. Trust him: he will never let you down. If you are one of those amazing people who never suffer from doubt or fear, never recoil in horror from the anger or the bitterness or the sheer nastiness of which you are capable, have no emotional skeletons rattling around in the cupboard, have no deep inner guilt casting its long shadow over your present and your future, then you probably won't have had the first idea what I'm talking about today. You are either very lucky, or living in a world of illusion and delusion. But I suspect most of you could place yourself somewhere on the canvas I have painted, and you know that deep down that is why you don't always feel well and sometimes you feel downright ill with it all. And all I am saying to you is this: stop pretending, give it to God. Ask him to take you as you are, and then make you what he would have you be. Bishop Tim, I am sure, is daily taking to God his misgivings about the huge responsibilities he has to shoulder early next year. He knows there is no point in pretending with God. What he has to do, what Graeme has to do, what we all have to do, is to face up to our real self and our real needs, to be honest to God, and let him meet us at the true point of our need. And meet us he will, for that is his promise, and he will never let us down. |