I am very glad to have this opportunity to gatecrash the Archdeacon's Visitation. I shall not make a habit of it, but it gives me the opportunity to offer some words of thanks and to reflect on being shaped by God for mission and on God's relentless "if".
I am grateful to Lucinda Wray-Wear who has carefully organised twice the usual number of Visitations this year so we could manage this with social distancing.
Thank you to my clergy colleagues in this Deanery. It has been an arduous 15 months and has left many of us anxious and exhausted as we have striven to live out our vocations and support the life of our churches amidst the uncertainties and restrictions of varying degrees of lockdown. Thank you for your faithfulness and grit and compassion when times have been tough.
But this evening let me offer a particular thank you to you as Churchwardens – for all that you have done to enable the mission and ministry of your churches and for the support you have given to clergy, officers of the PCC and to the wider congregation. Thank you especially to those wardens who have battled not only with being in a pandemic but also in a vacancy . Thank you to you all for the way you have carried the anxieties of the churches you serve whilst battling no doubt with your own worries and concerns for the future. I pray that that God will grant you refreshment and strength in his service.
By now, I hope many of you will be familiar with something called Shaping for Mission. Shaping for Mission is a deanery-based process launched across this Diocese as a response to the pandemic but seeking to address matters that pre-date Covid: What kind of church does God call us to be in these days? Are our resources in the right place and are they being used wisely? What must we keep and what must we let go? What is the Spirit saying to the churches?
Shaping for Mission encourages us to think on these things and plan accordingly. There is, of course, a natural suspicion that this is primarily a Diocesan cost-cutting exercise and there really is no point in pretending that our income as a Diocese has not been hit very hard indeed by the pandemic, because it has, but we are genuinely trying to think more creatively than simply planning where the axe is next to fall. We will be informed by the finances but not driven by them. We want to be led by a lively sense that God has a particular vocation for his people in this generation and especially in response to the disruption caused by the pandemic.
I am prepared to admit that this is absolutely the wrong time to be embarking on such a process of change because we are all tired and a little shell-shocked but I am equally convinced that this is the only time for such a process; partly because there is some urgency about living within our means but also because there is, to quote the Bard, "a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune" or, more Biblically, "Now is the time of God's favour, now is the day of salvation".
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
There is a tide to be caught. The pandemic is both the great challenge and the great opportunity for us to respond to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. We must not simply collapse back in to the way we used to do it under the nostalgic illusion that the way we used to do it was an overwhelming success.
Of course, knowing that change is needed, and is indeed inevitable, is not the same thing as knowing what kind of change is needed nor how it is to be done, hence the Shaping for Mission process, as we seek God's will together in the midst of the uncertainty.
And so we turn to the scriptures and the story of Jeremiah, told by God to go to the house of the potter where God has a word for him. It is a story about shaping. The clay is worked and shaped by the potter to produce an object that is useful or beautiful or both. The potter stands here for God, and the clay for God's people, and we note that when it comes to the shaping that matters, this is all God's work. If the pot is bodged then the potter starts again, reworking the clay "as seemed good to him". The clay does not shape itself. When it comes to Israel's life and future, it is God who does the shaping according to the divine will. If the pot spoils, God starts again. From the unpromising and ruined block of clay, God makes something quite new. It's the same clay but the potter makes of it a new pot.
When my children were at school, I was delighted to learn what I knew as woodwork, metal work and pottery were now known as Resistant Materials. Resistant materials that need pummelling, or shaping, or working, to get a use or a design from them. God's people are resistant materials – they were in Jeremiah's time and they are now. We are resistant to God's shaping because it offends our sense that we are the shapers of our own destinies. Our modern, autonomous selves object to being shaped by anything other than our own will. But it is God who shapes people, nations, churches, "as seemed good to him".
Perhaps it feels as though we are being worked on at the moment in this pandemic? Pummelled, spun on the wheel, twisted into (or out of) shape. But might it be the case that God is reworking his church in these days, casting us into a new shape that more fully reflects the Christ we serve? Because we are not in the driving seat, where we prefer to be, being re-shaped is not a comfortable process. We must rely not on our own capacities but instead trust in the grace and love of the Potter who has good plans for the clay.
So when we think about Shaping for Mission, we must first pray that we will be open to being Shaped for Mission. Pray that the Spirit of God who hovered over the formless void will shape us according to his will and kingdom. What kind of church is being cast? We are to be reshaped and the clay cannot shape itself. The potter does not give up on the clay but will reform it in such a way that is both beautiful and useful. God is faithful. We may be resistant materials but let's be open to being shaped by God anew. Some of us will have sung it a thousand times but I wonder whether we have stopped to consider the radical implications of the song:
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me.
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.
So is there nothing for us to do but sit back and allow God to work us into shape? Do we have no part to play in this? The story of Jeremiah in the house of the potter is more nuanced. This is actually a story about judgement and judgement implies a choice. Jeremiah is told that God's people have resisted God's will and the consequence is that God is "shaping evil" against them.
This is sobering, of course, but it is clear that that, whilst God's will must be done, God's creatures do have choices to make which brings us to a phrase coined by the OT scholar Walter Brueggemann, "God's relentless If". God sets out the possibilities for the people:
At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, .... turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.
If this choice is made then this happens. God responds to our response to God. It is not we are little claymation puppets forced to dance to one tune only. I am going to be kind to myself and to you and not get into predestination and free will here but please note God's relentless if. If this happens then "I will change my mind" but if this happens then I will change my mind in the other direction. We must not mistake God's change of mind for our own fickleness and indecisiveness . God is never arbitrary. God responds to the choices we make with consistency. Then the choices we make, make a difference in the real world. You will find this relentless "If" throughout the Scriptures. This in Deuteronomy:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today......then you shall live .... But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, .....I declare to you today that you shall perish ... (Deuteronomy 30:15-20)
Of course there is a warning in this divine "If" . Certain paths we might take do not lead to life but to death but the corollary of that is that we do have a choice and we can choose life. To this extent, we can be part of shaping our churches for mission when we choose to attentive to God's insistent If.
Now, when it comes to the future shape of the church we must admit that the particular choices to be made are not always clear cut. We are still discerning, I think, what kind of church God is shaping. After all, reports that this pandemic is over have been greatly exaggerated.
But for all our uncertainty, God's If is still insistent. If we are faithful to God's call to be disciples of Jesus in our homes, workplaces and communities then our churches will become places where people find abundant life. If we help one another discover our own distinct vocation as Christian people then we will be blessed and a blessing to others because we will be as we should be, formed by the hands of the Potter, made useful and beautiful for him. And if we are bold in spirit and convinced that Jesus alone brings everlasting life and hope to the world and we are ready to speak of him then we will be good news to a hurting and anxious world. If this choice is made then this happens!
So there we have it. God holds out a choice. In our passage from Jeremiah 18, the response of the people is not promising and in verse 12, we read:
But they say, “It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.”
It's useless! There's no point! We've been through this before! There's the warning against despair, cynicism, faithless self reliance and downright obstinacy. But there is always an alternative, always an insistent If, that God sets before us - an if that leads to life. Can we let God's Holy Spirit shape us for mission? If we can, then, in new ways perhaps we could never have imagined, we will be useful and beautiful in the service of Christ and of his kingdom.
I am grateful to Lucinda Wray-Wear who has carefully organised twice the usual number of Visitations this year so we could manage this with social distancing.
Thank you to my clergy colleagues in this Deanery. It has been an arduous 15 months and has left many of us anxious and exhausted as we have striven to live out our vocations and support the life of our churches amidst the uncertainties and restrictions of varying degrees of lockdown. Thank you for your faithfulness and grit and compassion when times have been tough.
But this evening let me offer a particular thank you to you as Churchwardens – for all that you have done to enable the mission and ministry of your churches and for the support you have given to clergy, officers of the PCC and to the wider congregation. Thank you especially to those wardens who have battled not only with being in a pandemic but also in a vacancy . Thank you to you all for the way you have carried the anxieties of the churches you serve whilst battling no doubt with your own worries and concerns for the future. I pray that that God will grant you refreshment and strength in his service.
By now, I hope many of you will be familiar with something called Shaping for Mission. Shaping for Mission is a deanery-based process launched across this Diocese as a response to the pandemic but seeking to address matters that pre-date Covid: What kind of church does God call us to be in these days? Are our resources in the right place and are they being used wisely? What must we keep and what must we let go? What is the Spirit saying to the churches?
Shaping for Mission encourages us to think on these things and plan accordingly. There is, of course, a natural suspicion that this is primarily a Diocesan cost-cutting exercise and there really is no point in pretending that our income as a Diocese has not been hit very hard indeed by the pandemic, because it has, but we are genuinely trying to think more creatively than simply planning where the axe is next to fall. We will be informed by the finances but not driven by them. We want to be led by a lively sense that God has a particular vocation for his people in this generation and especially in response to the disruption caused by the pandemic.
I am prepared to admit that this is absolutely the wrong time to be embarking on such a process of change because we are all tired and a little shell-shocked but I am equally convinced that this is the only time for such a process; partly because there is some urgency about living within our means but also because there is, to quote the Bard, "a tide in the affairs of men, which taken at the flood leads on to fortune" or, more Biblically, "Now is the time of God's favour, now is the day of salvation".
On such a full sea are we now afloat,
And we must take the current when it serves,
Or lose our ventures.
There is a tide to be caught. The pandemic is both the great challenge and the great opportunity for us to respond to what the Spirit is saying to the churches. We must not simply collapse back in to the way we used to do it under the nostalgic illusion that the way we used to do it was an overwhelming success.
Of course, knowing that change is needed, and is indeed inevitable, is not the same thing as knowing what kind of change is needed nor how it is to be done, hence the Shaping for Mission process, as we seek God's will together in the midst of the uncertainty.
And so we turn to the scriptures and the story of Jeremiah, told by God to go to the house of the potter where God has a word for him. It is a story about shaping. The clay is worked and shaped by the potter to produce an object that is useful or beautiful or both. The potter stands here for God, and the clay for God's people, and we note that when it comes to the shaping that matters, this is all God's work. If the pot is bodged then the potter starts again, reworking the clay "as seemed good to him". The clay does not shape itself. When it comes to Israel's life and future, it is God who does the shaping according to the divine will. If the pot spoils, God starts again. From the unpromising and ruined block of clay, God makes something quite new. It's the same clay but the potter makes of it a new pot.
When my children were at school, I was delighted to learn what I knew as woodwork, metal work and pottery were now known as Resistant Materials. Resistant materials that need pummelling, or shaping, or working, to get a use or a design from them. God's people are resistant materials – they were in Jeremiah's time and they are now. We are resistant to God's shaping because it offends our sense that we are the shapers of our own destinies. Our modern, autonomous selves object to being shaped by anything other than our own will. But it is God who shapes people, nations, churches, "as seemed good to him".
Perhaps it feels as though we are being worked on at the moment in this pandemic? Pummelled, spun on the wheel, twisted into (or out of) shape. But might it be the case that God is reworking his church in these days, casting us into a new shape that more fully reflects the Christ we serve? Because we are not in the driving seat, where we prefer to be, being re-shaped is not a comfortable process. We must rely not on our own capacities but instead trust in the grace and love of the Potter who has good plans for the clay.
So when we think about Shaping for Mission, we must first pray that we will be open to being Shaped for Mission. Pray that the Spirit of God who hovered over the formless void will shape us according to his will and kingdom. What kind of church is being cast? We are to be reshaped and the clay cannot shape itself. The potter does not give up on the clay but will reform it in such a way that is both beautiful and useful. God is faithful. We may be resistant materials but let's be open to being shaped by God anew. Some of us will have sung it a thousand times but I wonder whether we have stopped to consider the radical implications of the song:
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.
Break me, melt me, mould me, fill me.
Spirit of the Living God,
Fall afresh on me.
So is there nothing for us to do but sit back and allow God to work us into shape? Do we have no part to play in this? The story of Jeremiah in the house of the potter is more nuanced. This is actually a story about judgement and judgement implies a choice. Jeremiah is told that God's people have resisted God's will and the consequence is that God is "shaping evil" against them.
This is sobering, of course, but it is clear that that, whilst God's will must be done, God's creatures do have choices to make which brings us to a phrase coined by the OT scholar Walter Brueggemann, "God's relentless If". God sets out the possibilities for the people:
At one moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom, that I will pluck up and break down and destroy it, but if that nation, .... turns from its evil, I will change my mind about the disaster that I intended to bring on it. And at another moment I may declare concerning a nation or a kingdom that I will build and plant it, but if it does evil in my sight, not listening to my voice, then I will change my mind about the good that I had intended to do to it.
If this choice is made then this happens. God responds to our response to God. It is not we are little claymation puppets forced to dance to one tune only. I am going to be kind to myself and to you and not get into predestination and free will here but please note God's relentless if. If this happens then "I will change my mind" but if this happens then I will change my mind in the other direction. We must not mistake God's change of mind for our own fickleness and indecisiveness . God is never arbitrary. God responds to the choices we make with consistency. Then the choices we make, make a difference in the real world. You will find this relentless "If" throughout the Scriptures. This in Deuteronomy:
See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity. If you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I am commanding you today......then you shall live .... But if your heart turns away and you do not hear, .....I declare to you today that you shall perish ... (Deuteronomy 30:15-20)
Of course there is a warning in this divine "If" . Certain paths we might take do not lead to life but to death but the corollary of that is that we do have a choice and we can choose life. To this extent, we can be part of shaping our churches for mission when we choose to attentive to God's insistent If.
Now, when it comes to the future shape of the church we must admit that the particular choices to be made are not always clear cut. We are still discerning, I think, what kind of church God is shaping. After all, reports that this pandemic is over have been greatly exaggerated.
But for all our uncertainty, God's If is still insistent. If we are faithful to God's call to be disciples of Jesus in our homes, workplaces and communities then our churches will become places where people find abundant life. If we help one another discover our own distinct vocation as Christian people then we will be blessed and a blessing to others because we will be as we should be, formed by the hands of the Potter, made useful and beautiful for him. And if we are bold in spirit and convinced that Jesus alone brings everlasting life and hope to the world and we are ready to speak of him then we will be good news to a hurting and anxious world. If this choice is made then this happens!
So there we have it. God holds out a choice. In our passage from Jeremiah 18, the response of the people is not promising and in verse 12, we read:
But they say, “It is no use! We will follow our own plans, and each of us will act according to the stubbornness of our evil will.”
It's useless! There's no point! We've been through this before! There's the warning against despair, cynicism, faithless self reliance and downright obstinacy. But there is always an alternative, always an insistent If, that God sets before us - an if that leads to life. Can we let God's Holy Spirit shape us for mission? If we can, then, in new ways perhaps we could never have imagined, we will be useful and beautiful in the service of Christ and of his kingdom.