'Just In': Inauguration Thoughts

So now he is ‘just in’ as Archbishop of Canterbury. Yesterday didn’t make him archbishop: he has legally held the office since early last month. But the grand ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral was his presentation, so to speak, to the world, his ecce homo at which a new leader of worldwide Anglicanism was launched on his public ministry.

When I trained ordinands more than 30 years ago, I used to say to them: the real rite of passage you need to think about is not ‘getting ordained’ one summer Sunday in a great cathedral.  It’s the next day, the first Monday of the rest of your life when you have to decide what you are actually going to be and do as a new deacon. For the first time, you will wear your clerical collar in the street, catch your reflection in shop windows, sign yourself ‘the Reverend’, realise that many people will treat you differently from now on, whether with respect, adoration, indifference or downright contempt. They will expect you to know about Levitical ordinances, vestment colours and why good people suffer.  That’s the day when it truly dawns on you that you’ve become what you weren’t before – clergy. And maybe you ask, however did I get here?

So I wonder what Justin’s first working day in ‘ordinary’ has been like. I’m not going to speculate.  I’m genuinely interested in how someone I’ve known since he was a curate and recently worked closely with, makes this huge transition. In St Paul’s language, he has shot from being unknown to being well-known, at least as far as his name and his face are concerned. And if we describe it as an ascent, how does he prevent an attack of the bends with such a rapid rise to fame?  That question answers itself, for it will be his modesty, charm, self-deprecatory style, lack of self-importance and above all spiritual integrity that will keep him safe. But he will be the first to say that we need to pray for him, just as Pope Francis did, not just now but far into the future. As I said in a previous blog, the Chair of St Augustine has in our time become a ‘siege perilous’. Who is sufficient for these things?   

I was glad to be at yesterday’s service at Canterbury. It was the last in a series of Justin-ceremonies that I had been present at over the years: his ordination as deacon and priest at Coventry, his consecration as bishop, his installation at Durham Cathedral, the great farewell service there, all too soon, the confirmation of his election at St Paul’s, and now his inauguration. At Canterbury I recognised many of the themes we had become familiar with in Durham. His fanfare arrival at the west door was followed by a dialogue in which he said with touching simplicity that he was Justin who had come to serve among us as a fellow-human being and disciple. There was an act of penitence that reminded us at the outset that we live in a broken world and serve in a broken and divided church. We sang upbeat hymns such as ‘In Christ alone’ and ‘And can it be’, both of which were sung at Durham. The preacher’s voice was unambiguously that of a man whose Christian hope and conviction are unshakeable. Only Christ, he said, can reach out and save us from being destroyed by the storms that threaten to overwhelm us.

So much, so familiar. But I sense a subtle change in some of Justin’s public utterances. To take the most contentious matter our church is facing, homosexual relations and gay marriage, he clearly seems to want to open up a space for dialogue with campaigners like Peter Tatchell.  He has said he wants to understand the issues better for himself.  He speaks of gay couples in civil unions who have a ‘stunning’ quality of relationship. Yes, he does affirm the ‘traditional’ Church position on heterosexual marriage.  But not in a way that closes doors to those who, for principled theological and pastoral reasons, believe that there is more to be said that simply to rehearse the tradition. 

High office can have the effect of shutting down a leader’s capacity for original thought and courageous risk-taking. Or it can affirm his or her individuality, the right - indeed the duty - to ask questions of his or her institution, retain and grow the capacity for reflection and honest criticism. This is all part of theological, emotional and spiritual intelligence.  I have a hunch that Justin will surprise us.  Maybe today, Day One of his public archiepiscopate, will have been the start of the next phase of that journey.

A little personal postscript. What touched me more than anything else in the service happened right at the start. After the great west doors had been flung open and Justin welcomed there, the procession made its way slowly up the nave aisle. The Durham contingent was standing, robed, just by the nave altar.  When Justin drew level with us, he stopped, turned and bowed gravely to us before continuing eastwards.  It was an echo of the times we had bowed him into his stall in Durham Cathedral. None of us were expecting this courtesy, this gentle act of recognition. It was heartwarming not to be forgotten.

An Open Letter to the next Archbishop of Canterbury

Dear Justin

So it’s official.  After weeks of speculation, and helped by Ladbrokes, we now know that you’re to be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. As your dean and colleague in Durham, I want to offer heartfelt congratulations and to promise my prayers as you begin this great journey.

I have fond memories of Coventry days when I was precentor at the Cathedral and oversaw your ordination.  You and I got to know each other a little then.  I thought at the time that you were someone with a remarkable story and rather special gifts.  You talked about your experience in the oil industry – but not much: you were too focused on being a deacon and then a priest, and too excited by the ministry that was opening up before you.

When you came to Durham last year, this was still true of you. It was moving to install you in the great bishop’s throne in our cathedral.  I almost wanted to say that I hoped its height and grandeur wouldn’t go to your head.  But I knew I had no need to tell you that. Your genuine modesty, your lack of self-importance, your wry take on the world and most of all your deep spirituality would take care of you. You were more interested in washing feet than living like a grandee as a successor of Durham’s prince-bishops. You were completely committed to being a bishop who would put God and people first.

Who would have thought that a year later you would be leaving us? I won’t deny that I feel a personal sense of loss. You have begun to be a real champion of this part of England that feels remote from the centre of things, already a very needy place before it was hit hard hit by the financial crisis. In the statement of needs that I helped write for the diocese before your appointment, we said we wanted a bishop whose heart would be in the North East (we also said we hoped the next bishop – you – would stay for several years!). Well, your heart has been with us, even when you have been in London doing the business of church and state, or overseas pursuing reconciliation in divided societies like Nigeria. It is not your fault that you have been taken from us now.

The whole world will be giving you advice as you contemplate what kind of archbishop God wants you to be.  I’m not going to add much to that: it’s not words you need right now but the knowledge that you will have wise and caring people around you to help you discern the shape of this great and awful vocation, this siege perilous.

But I can’t resist saying just this. I hope you will take with you the memory of our northern saints as you learn what it means to inhabit this office. In Durham, you are the direct successor of Aidan, founder of our diocese, and of Cuthbert in whose shrine in the Cathedral you have often prayed. In a blog earlier this year I compared Rowan Williams with Cuthbert as ‘off-beat’ bishops.  I wanted to say that a Christian leader needs to be a bit elusive, not always saying or doing the expected thing, not afraid of being surprising and keeping people guessing.

 

Already the public wants to pigeon-hole you: evangelical rather than catholic, pro this and against that.  You are bigger than that, as anyone who knows you will confirm.  You know that it needs great self-awareness to resist these easy either-ors. It also takes resilience and courage to be your own man in leadership.  It depends on keeping the spiritual garden watered by long and regular spells of solitariness, meditation and prayer. I know how important this is to you, to go to the heart of faith and keep it alive and fresh. I hope the pressures of high office drive you more and more in the contemplative direction which is the source of wisdom. I believe they will because your personal authenticity is so important to you. And I believe that you will surprise, inspire and delight us too.

When Donald Coggan was installed as archbishop, his secretary mis-typed ‘enthronement as ‘enthornment’.  That gave him food for thought.  The role was daunting enough then. How much more complex and demanding it is today. Who knows what the next few years will bring for our world, for our church and for you personally.  To be a bishop or an archbishop feels to me like a kind of crucifixion.  Yet Jesus wore his crown of thorns not only with dignity but also with hope for the joy that was set before him. I pray that joy and hope will be yours at the spring equinox when you come to be seated on the throne of Augustine.

So take the cup that is given you in Canterbury, and as you wonder how on earth you find yourself there, smile a little at God’s strange work, be thankful, and discover in the doing of his work that all shall be well.  

And thank you.

With affection and prayers,

Michael

  

Going Slow: organisational time or God's time?

So the name of the next archbishop of Canterbury has not been announced this week after all.  It was promised, though I thought at the time it was ‘courageous’ (in Sir Humphrey speak) to think the appointment could be done and dusted so speedily. It seems that the Crown Nominations Commission (CNC) wasn’t able after all to agree on whom it wanted to recommend as its first choice and runner-up. That’s what been reported anyway.  Who knows how long it will take?

Predictably the airwaves and cyberspace were full of chatter.  A lot of it sounded frustrated in tone, raking over the flaws in the process, re-running pros and cons of the (putative) candidates.  Questions abounded.  Why haven’t they decided? What has gone wrong? Who is blocking whose candidacy? Who is still in the race? Who is not? 

In my counter-suggestible way, I thought (as my friend Stephen Cherry would put it) there has to be another angle.  What if this long wait was not a problem but an opportunity?

So I tweeted (a trifle disingenuously perhaps) that maybe the CNC simply needed time to say its prayers.  What if the realisation had suddenly struck its members that discernment of vocation won’t and can’t be hurried?  That too quick an announcement would smack more of appointing the chief executive of a bank than of recognising someone’s God-given call to occupy St Augustine’s chair? 

In a process-driven church, it shouldn’t surprise us if there sometimes turns out to be some dissonance between organisational time and God’s time. I have been ordained nearly 40 years, but I remember vividly (and thankfully) the painstaking journey of discernment by which the church tested my inward vocation to become a priest. It took years, not months let alone weeks.  My motives, needed to be scrutinised and understood, especially by me.  There needed to be theological and spiritual reflection with others making the same journey to elicit the meanings of ordination.  I needed skilled accompaniment and wise guidance.  And when I was ordained, this was only the beginning.  It takes a lifetime to inhabit a vocation, make it authentically your own under God, just as it takes a lifetime to inhabit a marriage.

So I’m not sure I altogether trust vocational processes that happen too quickly, that are driven by organisational time. God’s time happens at a different pace. Perhaps it is more like the hidden, barely perceptible processes like the leavening of dough or fermenting of must.  Jesus presumably chose the image of yeast for a reason.  The spiritual tradition teaches us that the Deity is more often a ‘three mile-an-hour god’ than a high-speed divinity.

Slow is good.  Its outcomes take time, but allow space for prayer, listening, discernment.  No doubt the job of being an archbishop of Canterbury is truly impossible.  If so, the discernment of the one who is called to carry its heavy burdens desperately needs not to be done in haste.  Or, in God’s time, festina lente. That way, the decision will carry proper integrity, and the next archbishop will have the reassurance he very much needs that he truly was and is not only the CNC’s man but God’s.