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2 minutes with the Archbishop of Canterbury… and a helium balloon

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“Archbishop of Canterbury is thoroughly nice bloke” – that’s the headline my husband suggested. But mine says what it is I want to tell you about…

Today was Back to Church Sunday.  Our church celebrated this not only by having Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury, there for the services in both of the parish churches (a formal service and a more freewheeling one), but also by all having lunch together.
I had something specific I wanted to ask the Archbishop, which I’ll tell you about in a minute.

The Archbishop did both a talk with the children, and a sermon today. The children all had a sheep to hold, and the Archbishop explained that the staff he had with him was a real old Kentish shepherd’s crook.  Given what happened later, I think this made a bit of an impression on the kids.  He answered questions about going to church when he was young, and what life had been like growing up (tin baths in front of the fire, apparently).
The really nice bit was that, as the children had all gathered on a mat at the front, he went and sat on the floor with them.  I noticed that, similarly, when doing communion, he bent down to each child’s level to do their blessings.  It was a great reminder that being head of the Anglican church nevertheless puts you on a level equivalent to a child in the eyes of God.

The sermon we heard (and apparently there was a different one at each service) was on the Rich Man and Lazarus (Luke 16, 19-31).  This is a great subject for any newcomers service (the other good one is Acts 8, Philip and the Ethiopian with it’s message “how can I know what its all about if no one explains it to me”?)  The story of the little girl who told her mum that the Optician of Wales had been to her school triggered a great sermon on helping people to see, to see time at church as honest time in which we confess our sins but also celebrate how God sees us, with unconditional love.

When the service ended, we all helped put up tables and move the chairs to make a dining hall.  A posse of helpers had baked potatoes, made bolognese, grated cheese and provided great vats of baked beans and coleslaw.  We had all also brought desserts to share.
The Archbishop did not spend his time just talking to our minister.  Instead, he made his way around the room, firstly meeting all the people who’d stayed for coffee but not staying for food, then round to each table, joining us and chatting with us.  This was done gently, without entourage (he brounght a “minder” with him, basically like a Minister bringing a private secretary – or a Camerlengo to the pope?), and without formality.  He moved around seemingly at random, but clearly trying to see everyone.
When he came to our table, we were all ready to talk to him, but right at that moment, our vicar and a woman in a pink jacket came over – the Archbishop’s visit had been filmed, not just to go on the church website (as I’d assumed) but for Back to Church Sunday, to be shown in other churches. As recent arrivals, would we mind talking about it?  Of course we were happy to do so, but part of me was thinking, well that’s our chance to talk to him gone.   And when we’d filmed our segment, the Archbishop was asked to go and film a segment.

Someone at the church had provided some large silver helium balloons for the service spelling out WELCOME.  After the meal, some of the children were playing with them, and somehow the L had become separated from its weight and had floated up to the high village hall ceiling.  The children tried to use the O balloon to lasso the string of the L but even though the O could reach it, there was not enough tension in the string to bring the balloon down.  The the vicar’s daughter had a bright idea – the Archbishop’s shepherd’s crook!
Although they tried and tried, standing on a chair, the kids couldn’t get the hook to twist around the string and rescue the balloon.  Then one of the church team arrived with sticky tape.  They coated the top of the crook with it, and on tiptoe on a chair, the balloon was finally rescued.  The whole room applauded.

I started to take some pictures – and in the last photo , I realised the Archbishop had sneaked into the background – he’d come to see what was happening and congratulated the kids – nothing wrong with the flock borrowing the crook and all working together to solve a problem.  I’m sure there’s a metaphor there somewhere…

Which meant that, thanks to wanting to record this for my blog, I actually got two minutes with the Archbishop of Canterbury.
 I talked about this blog and the other things I do online talking about faith issues and in particular the discussions I have with those of no faith.  I asked ths:  I talk about personal experience of God in our lives, and that if Jesus rose again then everything else is interesting but ultimately we need to take seriously what he said and live it… but what other message should I have for you?

The Archbishop said this: the incredible value of each individual.
This is what we learn from Jesus – how much we are loved by God, and the value we place on each human life.  There are and have already been people in this world who don’t value people this way, but we feel this is wrong. It is through seeing ourselves through God’s eyes that we understand why we feel it is wrong.

Thinking about this more, this is like the argument that our morals and values must come from somewhere – why is it that, underneath our own interests, our greed, that we instinctively know that equality and fairness matters?  Why do we sometimes feel that the right thing to do is to lay down one’s life for one’s friends?
And all the psychological, biological, genetic, historical efforts going into trying to prove that altruism and ultimately self-sacrifice is not a betrayal of selfish genes but somehow good but without a God dimension… this pales into insignificance when you realise that we know this because. for a moment we see ourselves through God’s eyes and realise how life changing it is to see others in this way too.
How can you not give to the flood victims in Pakistan, send clothes for the deported Roma, visit your neighbour you’ve not seen around lately, buy a coffee for your collague that’s having a tough time when you realise that God sees them as just as important as the Archbishop of Canterbury?

Without that sense that each individual should be prized, we are no better than the rich man ignoring Lazarus starving at his gate. And as Jesus has the rich man in his parable say, if we don’t realise it now from all the words from everything that we’ve been told, then we won’t believe it no matter who tells us, not even if someone were to rise from the dead.

Her Excellency, at last

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Women bishops.  What exactly is the problem?

The arguments against seem essentially to be:


- Jesus didn’t have female disciples amongst the twelve.
Given he was so counter-cultural, if it mattered to him surely he would have done.

- Women were clearly excluded by Paul in his letters to the early church.
1 Corinthinans 14, 34-35 is the best known passage covering this.

- Tradition matters, women have never held these positions and why should we bow to modernity when we resist other secularist, relativist approaches.
After all, of the church had bent to every cultural change there would be church weddings for divorced people, gay marriage…

- Man has dominion over woman, and not the other way around.
This is clear from Adam and Eve, was the cultural norm of Old Testament society and is explicitly set out in Paul’s letters.

If you want to read some more about the arguments against, then Bibleprobe is probably the site for you.  If you are of a liberal disposition, you might want to bolt your computer to a table so you don’t accidentally throw it across the room.

What are the arguments in favour of women clergy?

Well, let’s start by attempting some redress of the antis argument. The Catholic website www.womenpriests.org sets out seven good reasons, but let’s focus in on a few…

- there were indeed no female disciples in the twelve – but Jesus was counter-cultural in his treatment of women.
(see this excellent article at www.freeminds.org and this one at the Sophia Network which sets out these arguments far more clearly than I could have done alone).
Jewish men did not speak to women in public as Jesus did (Samaritan woman by the well in John 4).  Jesus comforted the widow of Nain and had compassion on a prostitute.
Women did not take part in public prayer and were segregated within the Temple. But Jesus preached to women and men alike.
And look at the roles of women in Jesus’s life.
Without the artificial conflation of Mary Magdalene with a prostitute mentioned in preceding verses, and without the ridiculous over-interpretation of a “kiss on the mouth” in the gnostic gospel of Philip, we can see the importance and privilege of her role – and she was one of the first to see the resurrected Jesus.
Martha and Mary hosted Jesus equally to their brother Lazarus and studied at his feet.
Joanna and Susanna seem to have funded Jesus’s mission (Luke 8), and Phoebe and Priscilla were early church leaders, and the Freemind article lists further examples of both Biblical and early church history examples of women in senior ministry.
By the way, while none of the named twelve were women, it would have been odd indeed if women had not been present at the Last Supper – it was an all- family meal of religious significance!  Just because the medieval artists excluded them doesn’t mean that they weren’t there…

- Paul was writing to specific churches in specific circumstances
Leaving aside the idea that Paul is such an advocate of celibacy and the inferior status of women because he was himself divorced, what circumstances at the time would mean Paul would take a particularly strong line?
At Ephesus, the cult of Artemis, where women were understood to be superior to men, was the starting place for many of the new Christians.  Another possibility would be the bizarre Gnostic heresies at that time that the women were spreading false doctrines about.
In Corinth, the influence of the Oracle at Delphi was a problem – over-enthusiasm about speaking in tongues amongst the women in the congregation seemed to be linking them too closely with the way the women supported the high priest there.
So relegating women to a quiet, submissive role, allowing men trained in Christian theology to set the direction and not to make a “local version” incorporating rites from other religion.

- Tradition does not exist completely unchanged – why uphold some elements and abandon others?
There is evidence that women were church leaders in early Christian history.  The banning of women from leadership roles in the fifth century shows that they were leading prior to that – so why should we uphold a decision made by Fifth century men over previous decisions?
We also need to question why the word meaning “Deacon” was translated identically for Phoebe and male church leaders in some parts of the Bible, then translated as “servant” in other parts, and that it is the latter that is used to justify saying that she had a different status.

Women are now more educated, more likely to have jobs outside the home, can vote equally to men and are no longer the property of their fathers and passed to be their husband’s property on marriage.  They can own property and income in their own right and – like Joanna and Susanna – can dispose of that income as they wish.
Presumably there were many opponents, male and female, of each of those changes.
But no one outside the Taliban would now argue that as men have always been educated only men should be educated outside the home.

Is Christianity just misogynist?
Arguments about this sort of thing give succour to the theme that actually Christianity is just misogynist.

Radical 1970s feminists tried to reestablish the scared feminine (as indeed does Dan Brown) on the grounds that Christianity has been pursued over the centuries in such a way as to subjugate women.

God (the father) creates Adam (a man) and from Adam’s rib creates Eve (a woman), the only time in the history of humanity that woman has been born of man.(it does – who God chooses to speak for him is very important and we surely should not be narrowing our view of who is “acceptable” when the story of Christianity is that God doesn’t go for the big and obvious…)

Eve not only gives into temptation from the serpent, she also persuades Adam to do so too, and so he is punished for listening to her.

With women set up as the fall guy from the beginning, is it any wonder that church tradition – whether Judaism or Christianity- excluded women from official leadership roles?

If you read the comments added to newspaper websites on this story today, you’ll see a whole load of neoatheist sniping, saying who cares (fine) or that women must be allowed to “propagate lies” equally with men (not fine).

This suggests that this doesn’t matter, but it does.
The real argument to have is the battle against the world that believes what we believe to be at best lunacy and at worst dangerous lies.
The lesson of Christianity’s history is that who God chooses to speak for him is very important and we surely should not be narrowing our view of who is “acceptable” when it is clear that God doesn’t go for the big and obvious…

Churchquest 2010…

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Well, we’ve been here long enough and done enough unpacking that we can’t avoid it any longer…  we need to find a church.
There’s probably a lot of people that think – why bother?  Surely if you’ve done without one this long you’ve found there are plenty of other things you can do on a Sunday morning?
The truth is that both my husband and I are better people when we are going to church regularly.
We’re nicer to each other, which makes for a happier house, and we think more about other people in the comunity and beyond.
So we’ve started to try to find a church that we’ll like as much as St Mark’s Battersea.

The problem is that St Mark’s is a really amazing church.
It’s big, for a start.  It’s an urban church to which people are willing to travel.
It works in the community (running a kind of half-way house for young offenders, running Alpha at Wandsworth prison…) and people that are helped by the church often join the congregation.  The morning service that we used to go to was so popular that they actually had to split it in two, and even then there are enough children attending that the groups could be split by school year. The music – incorporating both band and organ – was  uplifting, and while primarily Graham Kendrick/ New Wine/ GreenBelt worship type songs, has more traditional hymns mixed in too.  The sermons were based on the reading of the day, really explaining the gospel helping you to go away are really read the bible for all its worth.

Ashford, for the size of its population has a phenomenal number of churches (something at work here, perhaps?), so there’s plenty of options to try.

There are a few things which influence the church we’re going to go to:
1)  we need the church to be a member of the Churches Together in Ashford partnership (this is important for primary school places);
2) we want it to be within about 15 minutes of home (means we get integrated into the local community, actions undertaken by the church for the community should be taking place where we can actually see the results, increases our chances of making friends in the local area, also means my husband can stay in bed later on a Sunday morning);
3) we’re looking for a service as similar to St Mark’s (and indeed my previous churches The Bible Talks at Christchurch Mayfair and Holy Trinity Brussels): liberal evangelical, encouraging thought, questioning, Bible-based preaching, catchy music…
4) we’re looking for a welcoming, friendly, mixed age service, with good children’s groups;
5) I’m looking for a homegroup that is on a day I can attend and where my son is also welcome… or where I have the possibility of setting one up that runs like that…

Two further thoughts.
Firstly , we heard this morning (more of which in a seperate post) that churches preaching to unbelievers need really good sermons, and churches preaching to believers need really good prayers.  My problem is that I still need both, not because I’m an unbeliever, but because I still pray for help with my unbelief…
Secondly, CS Lewis in the Screwtape letters and in setting out the fundamentals of Mere Christianity really goes to town on the idea that you should go to the nearest church of whatever domination and congregation, and not seek a church full of people like you.
Well, possibly. But it’s easier to get my husband to come to church at all when he feels like he belongs.

So off we go on Churchquest 2010.  I’ll keep you posted…