From an illustrated sermon preached by Ray Angelsea at Denewell Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead - 12-September-2010
Psalm 132
Ephesians 4 v1-6
John 17 v11b-23
The Daily Record, one of Scotland’s leading newspapers stated last month that a John Knox lookalike is to welcome the Pope on his state visit to Scotland this coming week. Apparently an actor has been hired by the Catholic Church to play the leader of Scotland's Protestant Reformation in a pageant of the country's historical figures. John Knox will be one of 25 characters including Mary Queen of Scots, Bonnie Prince Charlie, William Wallace, St Andrew, Robert the Bruce, Eric Liddell, St Ninian, St Margaret, St Columba and Alexander Fleming to parade in front of the pontiff's Pope-mobile on Princes Street, Edinburgh, during his state visit. You may remember from your history lessons that John Knox was a Scottish clergyman who led the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. The Reformation Parliament of 1560 repudiated the pope's authority, forbade the celebration of the Mass and approved a Protestant Confession of Faith. He is considered to be the father and founder of the Presbyterian denomination.
Given Knox’s background I find it odd and amusingly ironic that that a lookalike character should be paraded in front of Pope Benedict. It was not just that John Knox led the reforms that separated Scotland from Rome; John Knox did not have a lot of nice things to say about the Pontiff. This year is the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation. The changes which came about in sixteenth century Scotland were, of course, not isolated, but greatly influenced by what was happening in other countries, in England, and Luther’s Germany, and Calvin’s Geneva; nor were they purely religious changes, but intimately interwoven with political, economic, and personal ambitions and preferences, crucially the desire for alliance with a Protestant England in preference to an alliance, and possible union, with Catholic France. The reformation was therefore first and foremost about Scotland’s national religious settlement; it heralded a new era of peace and friendship with England; and it also guaranteed Scotland’s independence as a nation state.
Within Scotland’s political community today there have been accusations that this year's 450th anniversary has been ignored by the Scottish Government. Rumblings of discontent seem to range from sensitivity to the Pope’s visit to the seemingly secularization of the nation, consideration for other faith traditions, and just apathy to the anniversary. Or, as one writer stated “the Scottish Reformation left a trail of violence, vandalism and destruction from which Scotland’s heritage has never recovered, and which is possibly the real reason why authorities cannot touch the 450th anniversary of the Reformation with a rather long barge-pole.”
As we have seen on television and read in the press in the last few days there is in some quarter’s opposition to the Pope’s visit. Recent surveys suggest that 79% of the British public remain apathetic about the state tour. On the streets of Durham I have seen billboards in the Millennium Square and posters on lamp posts displaying anti-papal bigotry. A man wearing a purple T shirt with white letters which read "No Hope in the Pope" is to be seen handing out flyers to passerby's. Ireland’s Orange Order too has protested about the visit; the Free Presbyterian Scottish Church described the decision to bestow a state visit status on the occasion as "particularly offensive". Stonewall an organisation which works for justice for gay and lesbians also object to the pope’s visit. Not surprisingly the Pope is not the organisation’s best friend. Stonewall wish to bring to the attention of the public that Cardinal Newman, soon to be beatified, although not gay on the basis of sexual practice, had, allegedly, clear homosexual sensibilities. He insisted on being buried with his friend Ambrose St John. You can imagine the displeasure from the gay community when his body was exhumed some years ago after lying beside his friend for over 100 years.
But amongst the pope-mania there are some Catholics who view the impending visit also with some disquiet. Not all Catholics are exactly over the moon about having the hard-line Cardinal Ratzinger as the leader of their Church. Sexual abuse, women rights, HIV, IVF fertility treatment, promoting Latin masses, birth control are just some of the headline and breaking news issues facing the Catholic Church under his leadership. In a letter dated 8th September to The Times a Catholic correspondent stated that “the pronouncements of this papacy have been characterised by a depressing series of attempts to resuscitate a number of hopelessly anachronistic and irrelevant attitudes, which many of us had fondly imagined were long since securely interred in the mausoleum of Church embarrassments.” When the Cardinal succeeded Pope John Paul II one American Roman Catholic complained, “it is like electing Rumsfeld after George Bush".
And then there is the inevitable objection to the cost of the State visit. The Sun newspaper estimates the cost to the tax payer will be in excess of £12 million pounds.
How as Reformed people in a Reforming Church can we understand and value this complex history, the religious violence and imbalances of the past? How do we view the Pope’s visit this coming week? How do we look to the future of our own church in the third millennium? But most importantly how do we move towards that unity which Christ prayed for and which we heard about in our illustrated gospel reading this morning?
Let’s deal with our past history first.
In a service broadcast to mark the 450 anniversary of the Scottish Reformation on Radio 4 last month from St Giles’s Cathedral, Edinburgh, the preacher, the minister, the Very Reverend Gilleasbuig Macmillan, quoted the novelist L P Hartley who wrote, ‘The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.’ Alongside Hartley we may think of T S Eliot’s idea that “time future is contained in time past.” John Knox and his reformers in their day were looking to the past as they tried to chart a new future. John Knox looked back across almost exactly one thousand years from that other giant of Scottish Christianity, Columba; the same Bible was read, the same psalms sung, the same Creed confessed, and the same sacraments of Holy Baptism and Holy Communion celebrated and administered. More importantly, Columba and Knox both tried to be faithful disciples of Jesus Christ. Jesus too saw himself as being true to his people’s past, taking the insights of the Hebrew scriptures and letting them offer signals and guidance for the way forward; and when his followers wrote about his significance it is not surprising that they used ideas and imagery from centuries earlier to give verbal testimony to the impact of his life and death upon them.
So from our past this morning I should like to give thanks for the place of the Bible in our Reformed tradition, and in the life of the church - its poetry, its wisdom, the ways in which its language influenced the speaking, arguing, debating, writing of our reformed leaders, generations of sermon-tasters, rich symphonic imagery of the mind. Remembering the quote – the past is a foreign country they do things differently there – I would like to make a plea that any form of Christianity ought to have an element of the Catholic and an element of the Reformed or Protestant. For out of that pick and mix unity we can cherish the pre-Reformation church and its post-Reformation successor. Our response to our past is therefore not fixed, but mobile. That is the nature of living faith, organic religion.
How do we view the Pope’s visit to our nation this coming week?
Having read some of the soundings on the Pope’s visit in the press this week my view is that it is very important that church leaders in the Anglican, Catholic and Free Church tradition take the opportunity to show that their agreements are far more profound than their differences. We espouse a similar sort of theology: rooted in the legacy of Columbus, Augustine and the recovery of authentic Patristic, the High Medieval and Reformed traditions. The visit this coming week is, I believe, of crucial importance because Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular are under increasing attack in so-called secular Britain.
A Vatican spokesman, trying to set the stage for the papal visit, said that from Rome Britain seemed a very secular society. But is this true? The Medieval and Reformation periods are often characterised as ages of great faith. Certainly, individuals and communities did die for their beliefs. However, today’s general scale of apathy and antipathy should not be underestimated. After all the celebrated eleventh century monk, William of Malmesbury complained that the aristocracy rarely attended mass, and even the more pious heard it at home, ‘but in their bedchambers, lying in the arms of their wives’. At least they heard mass though; according to one scholar, ‘substantial sections of thirteenth century society - especially the poor – hardly attended church at all’. No change there then.
Statistical surveys continually support the thesis that Britain is a place where the vast majority of the population continues to affirm their belief in God, but then proceed to do little about it. Without doubt we live in a spiritually confused culture; the Bishop of Oxford writing in his new book “Living Jesus” quotes Liam Gallagher of the rock group Oasis who once said in an interview, “I don’t pray and I don’t go to church but I am intrigued by it, I’m into the idea that there could be a God and aliens and incarnation and some geezer years ago turned water into wine; I don’t believe when you die, you die.” I think many were be sympathetic to that statement. Church attendance figures remain stubbornly low and, as is likely, the attendance at the Pope’s masses. Secularism, I would want to suggest is not a modern malaise, but is rather a typical feature of western societies down the ages. Granted, there have been periods of revival when church attendance has peaked and that is perhaps none of the aims of the Pope’s visit, to boost the morale of the troops. But the basic and innate disposition is one of believing without belonging; of relating to the church, and valuing its presence and beliefs - yet without necessarily sharing them. Or, as one wit puts it, ‘I cannot consider myself to be a pillar of the church, for I never go. But I am a buttress – insofar as I support it from the outside’. - My view is that God hasn't gone away - he just isn't where we thought he was.
But it is heartening that there has been a show of solidarity from our leaders before the arrival of the Pope, albeit in the fight back against Stephen Hawking’s assertion that science leaves no role for God in the creation of the universe. Professor Hawking’s book The Grand Design was published a few days ago to coincide with the Pope’s visit to Britain.
I am happy to say that some of my dearest friends are Catholics; we enjoy our differences and our unity in our friendship. I also would wish to say and recognise too that Catholics play a very important role in British cultural and political life. And I hope in an odd sort of way that the Beatification of Cardinal Newman may be seen as a sign of unity; for now he belongs to both Catholic and Protestant Anglicanism.
Finally in our search for church unity how do we as a church and a denomination move forward in this 3 millennium?
I have just finished reading the Chief Rabbi, Jonathan Sacks new book “The Dignity of Difference.” In it he makes a plea for toleration in an age of religious extremism. He writes about the rising crescendo of ethnic tensions, and the use of religious justification for acts of terror. Allied to weapons of mass destruction, extremist religious attitudes threaten the very security of life on earth. The Chief Rabbi writes, “We must learn to feel enlarged, not threatened by difference.” As we have heard on the news a Florida evangelical pastor Terry Jones in an attitude that reeks of tribal religion has backed down from a mass torching of the Koran after international outrage and condemnation. The basic teachings of Christ enjoin us to love our enemies, to bless those who persecute us. Love alone transforms hatred. The kind of hatred Pastor Jones advocates never breeds anything but more hatred.
We as a small denomination, founded on the tradition of our reforming fathers and mothers would I am sure want to support Dr Sack’s view: and as reforming Christian people we would also wish to say, in line with our reforming fathers, that we believe that genuine faith is committed to the search for truth wherever it comes from. God invites us to do our believing in ways appropriate to the 21st century, reminding ourselves that we never have absolute certainty, only God is infallible. Any religion which imagines it has a monopoly of truth is dangerous – and as a non stipendiary minister working in the community as you have heard me say so many times – the Gospel is that God so loved the world, not that God so loved the church – we have to stop retreating from the giant social issues of the day into the pygmy world of private piety and the comfort zone and security of our denominational walls.
With the arrival of the Pope Benedict XVI this week let us remind ourselves as Christian people of three truths that John Knox and Pope Benedict have in common, truths which we share and which unite us – both men in different ages and different cultures claim a gospel mandate for their attitudes, though their proof texts are very different.
The three truths are taken from Ian C Bradley’s new book Grace, Order, Openness and Diversity – Reclaiming Liberal Theology.
- Together we affirm in Jesus’ life, teaching, death and resurrection God’s limitless love for all humanity in this life and the next.
- Together we affirm the dynamic action of God’s Holy Spirit in dispersing this divine love throughout the world
- Together we affirm the beneficial insights of biblical, literary and historical criticism for our understanding of Scripture and Tradition.
Finally, let us remind ourselves as Christians in this historic week is that the way we behave toward one another and toward other people is the fullest expression of what we believe.
God has given us only one world in which to live together.
Amen
Revd Ray Anglesea
