Called to be Lay

I remember well a gathering of Ecumenical Officers in which the bishop chairing the event announced that not only was it his birthday, but also the anniversary of his ordination as a bishop. He went on to say that it was not the most significant anniversary for him, for that was the anniversary of his baptism. It was obvious that, for some of those present, the thought that his baptism had a greater significance than his ordination seemed distinctly odd. However I appreciated his statement. It brought to mind a conversation I had had some fifteen years before. I was talking to Sir Tom Lees and I said how much I had appreciated reading about his speech, at a recent meeting of General Synod, in which he had said that we must remember that the clergy are part of the laity too. I said I thought the theology behind that sentiment was excellent. Sir Tom replied that Synod had laughed at him; none of them believe it.

In 2016 we had a Diocesan Clergy Day at which the speaker was Bishop Graham Tomlin, whose topic was priesthood. He urged us to rediscover what it means to be a priest. In the group I was in, later in the day, we had to say what term best described us in our ministry. I was the only one who chose the word ‘priest’. If someone asks me what I do, I am likely to reply that I am a priest. That term defines my sense of vocation and who I am. And yet, if we had been allowed to choose a second word, I would have said that I am a lay person. That does not mean I feel uncomfortable in my priesthood, or somehow lacking in confidence. Rather, it means I have an even deeper sense of vocation of being part of the layos, by which I mean the assembly of God’s people. Priesthood is certainly a calling I have to serve that assembly in a certain way, but I have no sense of priesthood that can somehow be lifted out of the context of a pilgrim people, defined by Jesus our High Priest, into which we have been incorporated by baptism.

Last summer I retired. Under the rules of our diocese I have had to wait six months before receiving Permission to Officiate. I have embraced the freedom of retirement, but the last six months have also been a period of bereavement. Letting go of so many things I did for over three decades has been important. It has been a very creative time and one of waiting in openness and prayer was to where God is leading me next. That has not been without a great sense of loss. Yet it has also been a time to reconnect with what it means to be a lay person - someone who has been enticed into the assembly of God’s people and into a ministry that belongs to all of God’s people. 

Back in the days when I was an ecumenical officer the great point of celebration was the signing of the Porvoo agreement. Here, at last, we were finally going to formally move into communion with Christians of another denomination, in this case some of the Lutherans of Scandinavia. It would not only mean a mutual recognition of each other’s ministry, but also the possibility of a full interchange of ministry. Yet such an ecumenical achievement did not come without a long process of prayerful discussion. One sticking point had been our concern about the significance of an unbroken stream of Apostolic succession. We had seem this in terms of the unbroken line of bishops ordaining their successors down the ages. Yet not all of our potential partners could claim such an unbroken line. The answer, when it came, was a beautiful piece of theological thinking. Baptism is the primary rite, not ordination, and (we agreed) the passing on of faith down an unbroken line of succession from the Apostolic age is something that happens through the community of the baptised - the layos - whilst the line of the laying on of hands in the creation of bishops is an important symbol of that succession. A break in the succession of bishops does not necessarily invalidate the ongoing succession of a faith and a ministry that has been held and passed on by the People of God.

It seems to me that there is here a proper affirmation of the place of the layos as the very core of the Church. The ordained priest is not so much called out from the layos, as if somehow she is set apart as in some way separate from the community of the baptized. Rather, she is called into the centre of the layos so as to exercise a ministry of service that empowers the layos to be the very face of Christ for a broken world.  It seems to me that there is a huge power here, which should be the power of Christ made real in a Church broken in service for the world. Clericalism is the abuse of such power. It is the appropriation of power that sets a clergy class above and over the Church and in the process denigrates those who hold no such status into a subsidiary role as laity. Both sides can be complicit in such a situation. It is also a root to the kind of tribalism that seems to be rife in the Church, as groups find their sense of self identity in any issue other than what it means to be the Spirit-filled layos in which the presence of the risen Christ is made real in the communities that we serve.