'A Sharp Song'?
The
Ministry Team letter, as published in the March 2016
issue of Newslink'
Dear
Friends in Christ
Last week, we had a PCC – my
penultimate PCC, and this is my penultimate ‘From the
Ministry Team’
letter. With
just 5 weeks to go, it is
swinging round to ‘last…’ and ‘second to last…’, until I
say farewell to you
all on 3rd April in what I hope will be a
joyful Paschal
Evensong.
Last week’s PCC was pretty much two
years to the day from my first PCC at the beginning of
2014. That
first meeting was a ‘baggy’ PCC – an
opportunity for you to ask me anything that you liked,
with a promise that I
would answer as fully and as honestly as I could – a
grilling, if you like;
rather appropriate, given the fate of our patron St
Faith!
I came as the Bishop’s appointment into
a Church hurt, divided, angry, bewildered and
disempowered. From
the moment just after Christmas 2013
when I got a phone call from the Archdeacon, I felt a
vocation to come to St
Faith’s and to put myself in the middle of it all. And if I could
go back to December 2013 and
that phone call knowing all I know now, and having
experienced all I have
experienced, I would still say yes – to the Archdeacon,
to St Faith’s – and
ultimately, to God.
One of the joys has been that, like all
Catholic parishes, you know how to love your priests. I
was clear from that very
first PCC that my role meant I had to honour what is
actually always true of
clergy – our canonical obedience to the Bishop – in a
very particular and
intense sort of way, whilst at the same time striving to
keep my independence
of mind and my heart open.
That’s not
always been an easy tightrope to walk, and I hope I’ve
done it well
enough. From
the first, I was touched
and encouraged that you were willing to offer me your
love, even though I’d effectively
been imposed on you.
I also think that
one of the tragic aspects of 2013 – for both you and for
Fr Simon – was
precisely that St Faith’s does know how to love its
priests. Love,
however, can be painful – and I’ve
sometimes thought of ‘all that’ as love gone wrong
rather as we all know it
can, sadly, in marriage breakdown. But I
rejoice now, and I hope you do as well, that Simon has
gone on to a fulfilling
role in a place where he can flourish – a role he just
began this week - and
there is a lovely card from him on the notice board
thanking St Faith’s for the
icon we gave him on his departure. Do
take the opportunity to read it if you haven’t already.
There’s been a lot of water under the
bridge since 2014, of course. What none
of us anticipated then was that a great deal of time,
energy, effort and money
would have to be devoted in 2014-15 to repairs after
significant metal theft
from the roof. I still don’t know quite what
significance all that had in the
grand scheme of things; I certainly don’t think of an
interventionist God that
works in that sort of way.
Nevertheless,
God’s presence or absence in events is not all or
nothing. The metal theft made
me think, and pray very hard, and question as to whether
my task was to help St
Faith’s to die with dignity. I honestly believed then,
and believe even more now
– that the answer is no.
God isn’t done
with St Faith’s yet!
There is a little rhyme about the
Easter Season that goes like this:
Fifty
days for our delight
For
Christ is risen as all things tell
Good
Christian, see ye rise as well.
What is striking about this is that
Resurrection life is something we choose.
Sometimes easier to stay asleep in the tomb.
We’re offered – thrust, if you like – into new
possibilities, if we can
engage with them. I
sense that its true
of St Faith’s at the moment.
Of course, we’ve not reached Easter yet
this year, we’re still in Lent. The day
before the PCC, Revd Stephen Gough led one of our
‘Wilderness’ sessions for
this Lent – a wonderful session on the Jesus prayer. If this is not
something you’ve tried, it is
worth engaging with – it is one of the simplest and yet
most powerful forms of
prayer. There
are instructions for how
to do so elsewhere in this Magazine.
Stephen shared with us his love of Russian
Orthodoxy – the Jesus prayer
emerged from the Orthodox Desert Fathers – and how it
reverses some of the
assumptions of Western Christianity, both Catholic and
Protestant, in ways that
cast a surprising, and often helpful light on some of
our presuppositions.
For example, whilst the ‘epiclesis,’ the
invocation of the Holy Spirit on the Gifts at the
Eucharist in the Western
Church makes them into the Body and Blood of Christ, in
the Eastern Tradition,
the Holy Spirit lifts us up throughout the whole Liturgy
from Earth to heaven,
where the bread and wine are always already the Body and
Blood of Christ. Hence,
a remark by the Orthodox theologian
Alexander Schmemann that Western Christians focus on the
Sacrament and forget about
the Liturgy!
Another reversal is that, whilst in the
West, we tend to think of moving through Lent towards
Passiontide and the Cross
to the Resurrection beyond, the Eastern tradition is
that everything is in the
light of Easter and we live even our Lenten discipline,
even the Cross, in the
light of the Resurrection.
So it was that, when I first arrived, I
found myself quoting to many of you Mother Julian of
Norwich, ‘all shall be
well, and all manner of things shall be well.’
Easter was there, even in those dark and
difficult days, and even when
it was hard to discern.
God’s grace is
always present, though sometimes what happens to us, and
sometimes the hardness
of our own hearts makes it invisible. When
we are thrust out into the wilderness –we need to have
the discipline and
patience to learn to perceive Easter, and live it even
there, or, perhaps,
trust God to live Easter in us when we cannot.
I began my ministry here at the beginning of one
Lent, I am leaving at
Easter two years later; so perhaps the intervening time
has been one extended Lenten
journey.
I see my departure, its nature and its
timing, as Resurrection for you, and it’s quite
literally a new life in London
for me and my family. Back in September, when I knew I
had to move on, but it
was as yet unclear to what, the Old Testament passage
one day at Morning Prayer
leapt out at me. It
follows the passage
known as the Prayer of Hezekiah in 2 Kings 19.
It was not the prayer itself, but what
immediately followed it that
struck me:
And this shall be
the sign for you:
This year you shall eat what grows of itself, and in the
second year what
springs from that; then in the third year sow, reap,
plant vineyards, and eat
their fruit. The surviving remnant of the house of Judah
shall again take root
downwards, and bear fruit upwards; for from Jerusalem a
remnant shall go out,
and from Mount Zion a band of survivors. The zeal of the
Lord
of hosts will do this (2 Kings 19.29-31)
Well, at the time, I was puzzled. I did indeed
feel that in 2014, we ‘ate’ –
dealt with – what was.
And last year
unfolded from that – even the roof theft.
But the third year?
Well, of
course, I’m only just beginning a third year here – and
I do feel it’s begun
with planting a vineyard.
Vineyards were
– are – a luxury crop – they take a great deal of time
to do anything at
all. I
feel, with you, I’ve been able to
dig a bit and plant a bit.
And you are
certainly a band of survivors!
My hope then, is the future into which you are
called is something
to do with stability and yet renewal – with taking root
downwards and bearing
fruit upwards.
What does that mean? Well, at a very concrete
level, there
are the two processes going on parallel tracks – forming
a Team Ministry in
Waterloo, and the appointment process. Pete Spiers, our
new Archdeacon, came to
the PCC last week.
He has been to the Waterloo
Group Council, met the Wardens and Treasurer and in due
course will do an exit
interview with the Standing Committee. I
feel – but more importantly, I think our Parish Officers
feel, that he is
determined to make the process as open and as good as it
possibly can be for
all concerned. This
goes some way to
addressing the need to rebuild trust both with the
Diocesan authorities, and
with St Mary’s, with whom we’ve been working on this
both in the Waterloo Group
Council and at Standing Committee level.
Through the Group Council, four very different
Churches are learning to
get to know one another, to trust one another, to work
together for the good of
the Kingdom in this area, and to recognise that, even if
we worship in very
different ways, there is huge richness in that; it might
sometimes be a
challenge, but it is also a gift, and belonging to one
another doesn’t mean we
have to be the same!
Second, whilst we have lost some people through
death or
moving on, we have seen some new people – 7 new people
on the electoral roll at
the revision for the APCM, all of whom have become part
of our worshipping
community. Not
spectacular – but there
are some green shoots quietly sprouting here.
Third, at the PCC Away Day, some people expressed
the hope
of being ‘true to the foundation stone.’
I think this refers to the inscription above the
Choir that reads:
THIS CHURCH OF SAINT FAITH IS DEDICATED TO THE
GLORY OF GOD
AS A THANKOFFERING FOR THE
REVIVAL OF CATHOLIC
FAITH AND DOCTRINE IN THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND…
Of course, it goes
on to say ‘during
the reign of Queen Victoria.’ But what
would a revival of catholic faith and doctrine look
like in the 90th
birthday year of Queen Elizabeth II, in 2016? This is
something that has been
very much in my thoughts and prayers these two years,
and will continue to
be. I
think sometimes there is a
temptation to feel the Church of England is dominated
by evangelicals at the
moment. At
one level, I suppose, that’s
true – yet I continue to believe catholic faith and
witness are vital to the
health, flourishing and to the depth and breadth of
the Church of England; and
might it be part of St Faith’s vocation,
non-defensively, creatively to explore
that?
I think part of it
is that, in an
age of austerity, catholic Christianity is, before all
else, a proclamation of
abundant life. In
two senses: God gives
us too much – look at the stories of the Wedding at
Cana, the feeding of the
5,000 and Moses encountering the living God on Sinai. God pours
out the riches of his grace – and,
like Moses, who could not bear to look on God, and who
covered his face, the
sheer generosity of God can be too much for us.
Yet what catholic Christianity gives us is a
series of spiritual
disciplines – regularly feeding on Christ in the
Sacrament, regularly reading
scripture and the psalms prayerfully in the Office,
unfolding the story of
God’s salvation in the rhythm of the liturgical year,
that allow us to receive
the energy of God’s excess. In another
sense, God gives us enough; the sacraments give us
enough to incorporate us
into Christ, to feed us for the journey, to repent
when things go wrong, to
belong to one another in marriage, to comfort us in
sickness and to prepare us
for death and resurrection life. What
more do we need?
And a properly catholic
understanding of mission is that the world becomes
Eucharist, and so lives the
generosity of God.
Plenty of ‘missional
ambition’ there!
Is that what St Faith’s
is called to do and be?
I
have long been
fascinated by the relationship between living in
religious community and parish
life – in some ways they are very similar, in some very
different. The
Community of the Resurrection, with which
this Church has a long relationship is one example of a
catholic community that
has seen renewal. It
is true that they
don’t have the 70 or so brethren they once had;
nevertheless, in the last
decade, they have undertaken a multi-million pound
re-ordering of their Church,
raised the money to do it, and are thinking about the
next phase of their building
project; opened what is fast becoming a very successful
B and B; have some
younger brethren in the community, including a novice
under 30, and have
reimagined their relationship with the College of the
Resurrection, the
Yorkshire Ministry Course, and with clergy and lay
formation in the new Diocese
of Yorkshire and the Dales; and they have a properly
catholic, very correct,
reverent and beautiful, but simple and unfussy
liturgical style, entirely based
around Anglican liturgy.
Are there
lessons to be learned from that about how St Faith’s is
to live its vocation?
There are challenges of course – and the building
is one of
them. It is
a Grade II listed Victorian
building, and as such, maintenance needs to done
regularly and pro-actively,
using proper contractors. Further, even the most
proactive and regular
maintenance will probably never entirely eliminate
surprises! Planned giving is
down from its highest point in 2012 after the last
Stewardship Campaign.
It’s a regret that we haven’t managed to do
another one – one is long overdue – in my time, but I
presented a paper on
Stewardship to the PCC and there is no reason not to run
a campaign in an
interregnum. There
has been an
over-reliance on fundraising at St Faith’s – very
effective in the past, but
with a smaller and older congregation, fundraising
becomes more of a pressure
rather than being fun.
There is also perhaps a tendency to ‘sweat the
small stuff,’
to get worked up too quickly about things, when we
sometimes need just to wait
and do nothing. There
is a bit of a tendency
to struggle with boundaries and authority.
And there’s a bit of a
tendency to ‘doing things St Faith’s way,’ and to see
any criticism – even
friendly critique – as disloyal.
None of this is insurmountable – and all of it
first needs
to be reflected on and prayed about. I
found the session on the Jesus prayer most powerful when
we were invited to
pray it sitting in different places around the Church. It felt as
though the fourteen or so people
there were calling on God’s grace for the building
itself and for the life of
God’s people here.
Not a bad place to
start.
And at last week’s PCC, we had an extra member. A little robin
had got in to Church, and
chirruped its way around the place, happily hopping
around the pews, with no
apparent shyness or anxiety, and seeming to know exactly
what it wanted. Eventually,
our little visitor sniffed the
fresh air and made its own way out, thank you.
I’m sure it knew what it was doing and it looked
at us with great
intelligence and quizzical wit. And it
made me think of R S Thomas’ poem, Song,
which features a robin as an image of Christ:
Robin,
that is a fire
To
warm by and like Christ
Comes
to us in his weakness
But
with a sharp song.
God, in Christ, comes to us in weakness; but for
us to
accept the use he wishes to make of our weakness and
suffering, we need to
learn to accept ‘a sharp song.’ It’s a
very unsentimental, down-to-earth image of redemption
and resurrection. Not
a bad image as we come to the end of my
time here, and as Easter and the Resurrection
approaches.
With my love and prayers
Sue
February, 2016
Here is
Sue's
earlier bulletin, written in November, 2015, soon
after her appointment to her new East London
parish
Here is the
announcement of her appointment from her new
parish
