The Conversion of St.Paul

The Feast of the Conversion of St.Paul brings us back to that road to Damascus in which Saul (as he then was) comes face to face with the reality of the risen Christ. His life is changed. A man, who had been an expert in keeping the letter of the law, now finds new birth into the life of the Spirit. It is a matter of pure grace. The love of God is poured into his life, despite the fact that had mercilessly been persecuting the Church, and he is both saturated by that love and enmeshed in the ongoing work of Christ in the world.

In my preaching, I have always found the need to achieve a balance between presenting the possibility of such ‘moments of conversion’ as something we should all expect in our lives and the reassurance that those who have never had a ‘Damascus road experience’ are nonetheless authentic Christians. The first disciples simply accepted the invitation to follow Jesus. There are many Christians, who perhaps were brought up in the faith, who learnt of the love of God, revealed in Jesus, and just got on with the business of being disciples. Perhaps the most dramatic of conversion experiences will always come to those for whom the contrast is the greatest. One moment they do not know the presence of God (and perhaps lead godless lives) and the next moment they are overwhelmed by the reality of God in their lives. The change is powerfully transforming.

My own experience is of many moments of transforming change, almost all of which have come when I have stopped and opened myself to hearing afresh the voice of the Divine. There are certain performances of certain pieces of music which have touched my heart and changed me. There have been moments in liturgy that have opened my heart afresh to God. As a young man it was through joining a contemplative prayer group, led by Martin Israel, that I came to my own moment of Pentecost. What was it like? Well, being caught up in a hurricane and having my heart set on fire with love would be very good metaphors to use.

What change did that bring? It was the experience of being so intensely and deeply loved, despite my many faults, that brought healing, transformation and new life to me. It engendered in me a capacity to love that affected all my relationships. A deep sense of compassion was born in my heart in that moment, so that every perspective on life that I had was significantly and profoundly changed. To use another metaphor, it really was a new birth into a new world. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Throughout my ministry, the Church to which I belong has always had heated debates about sexuality, marriage, divorce, abortion, euthanasia, nuclear weapons, Christian unity and many other things. Passionate arguments have raged, and biblical texts have been used as missiles. Of all these issues, the question of Christian unity has been the one closest to my heart. So much effort has gone into finding common ground with those from whom we are separated by variant traditions and doctrines. Perhaps, one day, we will find an agreement on these things that will draw us to be united as one Church. Yet, for me, ecumenism is not really about such agreements. Unity is about a joy to be found in sharing what it means to be broken people, who have experienced what it means to be filled with the fire of God’s love. Unity is about discovering the shared capacity for a deep compassion, which draws us to together and compels us to go out in service to a broken world.  To put it another way, Christian unity is about the common experience of being ‘one in Christ’, accepted, forgiven and set free, which beings us together as one people, even though the paperwork of unifying our doctrine has a long way to go before it catches up. It is only as we accept the gift of such unity (despite our many disagreements) that the world will believe.

Auschwitz Remembered

We stand at the gates and look up at the sign - Arbeit macht frei (work sets you free). It is strange to stand in this place of barbarous cruelty and untold suffering and to cross under that sign into Auschwitz. There is a sense of impending horror as we enter this camp. Should we be here at all? Yet the horrors of this place did happen and to come here is to face the reality of a depravity that could overcome even this most civilized and Christian of nations. It is freezing cold, about -20C with wind-chill factor. Ours was the last plane in before they closed the airport. Many of the world leaders, expected later in the week to celebrate the 60^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, will never get here on time. We have come prepared, wrapped up warm with many layers of clothing. Yet there are others here, elderly people, who are walking about in flimsy striped costumes. They are survivors, for whom this bitter cold is nothing to what they experienced here over sixty years before. 

The camp has been preserved with its dormitory huts. As we wander through them, the faces of those who were sent here gaze at us from the black and white photographs on the walls. Different huts have different displays. Here we see a room stacked high with artificial limbs. Can there have been so many people coming through this place with artificial limbs? But then we remember that this was designed as a disposal unit for those seen less than perfect and a huge number of such people were processed through these camps. The majority were Jewish people, but disabled people, gay people, Romany people and people who were Jehovah’s Witnesses all perished in this place.

A particularly sombre room was the one which was piled high with suitcases. Many had names on them, sometimes just handwritten in chalk. Each one told a story. A person had once packed this case with their valuables and with something to sustain them on a journey into a place they could not yet imagine. On entering the camp, all their possessions had been removed from them, together with their hair, the gold in their teeth and their very names. Most had perished in this place. Deprived of everything that made them seem human, their captives could dispose of them as just so much garbage.

We entered the gas chamber. The fleeing Nazis had attempted the blow it up, but the roof has been put back on. We lit a candle by the adjacent cremators, and we prayed. This is what happens when we start to deny the humanity of others. This is not only what once happened, decades before, it is what has continued to happen at every successive genocide since. It is what could still happen, in our own society, as we demonize those who are different to us and therefore absolve ourselves of the need to relate to them as fellow human beings. It is what we do in our society, as we shout at each other, with hatred in our hearts, over Brexit. It is what we do in the Church, as we live out our faith in tribal units and talk of others as if they were somehow less Christian than ourselves, and therefore less human. The ‘radical inclusion’ promised by our Archbishops is nothing less than the heart of the Gospel message. Jesus came, he lived and he died, for ALL people and the beginnings of living the Christian life must include the ability to see the face of Christ in every person whose life crosses with our own.

Today there is, in the heart of Auschwitz, a huge cross, planted in a soil that is heavy with the ashes of the dead. What does it symbolize? Christ suffering alongside the victims of this hell? Certainly that must be the case. But the ambiguity of it all struck me like a thunderbolt. Could some take it as a sign of Christian culture crushing anything and anyone, who is in any way 'other'? As we fight to keep the purity of Christian doctrine and faith, the purity of being British, or whatever, can we find it in our hearts to live again the Christian message - that we are all children of God and that it is as we see the face of Christ in others, seeking both to respect their humanity and serve their deepest needs, that the Kingdom of God is revealed?

Celebrating Sexuality

Human sexuality is something to do with the person I am, at the very deepest level. I remember once reading comments from a geriatrician, who said that assessing an elderly person’s sense of their sexuality was a way of assessing whether, or not, they still had a sense of personhood. If my own sense of my sexuality is about my personhood, then accepting my own sexuality must go hand in hand with a sense that God accepts and loves me as I am. There is no moral question about who I am, but there will be moral questions to answer about how I treat others and whether my relationships with others are creative and affirming, or destructive and abusive.

Sex is not about what I do, to whom and with what, as if human sexuality can be stripped back to focus only on what I do with my dangly bits. Such a view of sex lacks any depth or understanding of human nature. Any teaching on sexuality needs to be wider and deeper and to focus on what it means to be human and therefore sexual. It follows that seeing the face of Christ in every person I meet must mean accepting their humanity, their personhood and their sexuality. Again, if we seek to proclaim a renewed creation, in terms of the Kingdom of Heaven, we will want to speak to what builds society and how our expressions of sexuality might be creatively person-building and not destructive either to ourselves or to others.

Without seeking to police the lives of others, as Christians we will want to share our joy in human sexuality and promote loving and stable relationships between those who seek to celebrate a deep and committed relationship with another. Without seeking to condemn, or even demonize, those growing towards mature and committed relationships (and often making mistakes on the way), Christians will want to point to the example of Christ and the transforming power of living in a relationship of sacrificial love towards another. What we point to, by way of illustrating an ideal, is important, just as how we do that. We need to hold up what is beautiful and what we celebrate, rather than denouncing the sexuality and relationships of others. Just as talking about sex, as if this is simply a matter of genitals, is narrow-minded and unhelpful, so using terms like ‘heterosexual-marriage’ really fails to do justice to a beauty we are seeking to celebrate. Marriage, between a man and a woman, is not beautiful, creative, person-building or Christlike, if the relationship is soured by power-games and abuse. A loving, creative, affirming and self-giving relationship, lived out over many years by two people of the same gender, may well reveal something of the love of God and be a place where true joy can be found. That is certainly something that has been thrown into sharp focus for me when conducting funerals and dealing with pastoral sensitivity to the surviving partner.

I recall the memorial service, in Salisbury Cathedral, for John Austin Baker, who was once our bishop. Bishop Peter Selby, speaking of Bishop John’s scholarly mind and open-minded search for truth, said that John had been the main writer of ‘Issues in Human Sexuality’, which (somehow) is still upheld as some kind of authoritative statement on human sexuality. Yet within a month, Bishop Peter said, Bishop John had declared that the arguments in this document are unsustainable. We cling to an unsustainable and joyless position, like a drowning person might cling to an inadequate lifebuoy. We could be proclaiming the joy of being fully human, in all the beauty of our God-given sexuality, and seeking to share what it means to find liberation and new life as people who know in our lives a love that will give all for us.