News from our Bishop -and for your prayers

Number 10 announced new bishops of Edmonton and Islington today. The Bishop of London announces the next Archdeacon of Hampstead. View it in your browser.

Dear friends Bishops of Edmonton and Islington; Archdeacon of Hampstead Downing Street announced this morning that the Queen has approved the nomination of the Reverend Rob Wickham to serve as Area Bishop of Edmonton and the Reverend Ric Thorpe to serve as the Bishop of the revived See of Islington. I am also delighted to announce that Prebendary John Hawkins has accepted my invitation to succeed Luke Miller as Archdeacon of Hampstead. I was grateful for the help of the Edmonton Advisory Group and more than a hundred correspondents in establishing that the most important challenge facing the next Bishop of Edmonton was making an energetic Christian response to rapid social and demographic change within the four boroughs and in particular in the areas identified for development. The consultations revealed a unanimous appreciation for Bishop Peter’s “gracious leadership and consistent pastoral care”. It is a tribute to Bishop Peter, assisted by Archdeacon Luke Miller, that unity has been on the whole preserved and the Area transformed during their partnership. In his eight years at St John’s, Rob Wickham has been in the forefront of re-energising the church and engaging with the local community to bring a distinctive Christian contribution to regeneration in Hackney. He is a missional Catholic with a record of fruitful cooperation with other strands of church life in the Diocese. As a former member of the Camden Town team he is sympathetic with those who maintain traditional catholic teaching and will work within the London Plan while rejoicing in the new opportunities which the ordination of women to priesthood and episcopate has opened up. He will be moving during the summer with Helen, Tom, Susannah and Harry. The Archbishop of Canterbury has confirmed that he will consecrate the new Bishop on September 23rd in Canterbury, alongside the Bishops of Kensington and Maidstone. Prebendary John Hawkins has already had experience of serving in an Archidiaconal role in the Area together with many years of parish work at St John’s, West Hendon and St Matthias, Colindale. He has a special concern for the church’s contribution to education. The new team will be operating from the autumn when the Bishop of Willesden, after holding the fort over the past months, will be able to return to his many other responsibilities with huge gratitude for what he has done in a time of transition and understandable anxiety. The new diocesan team is finally completed with the appointment of Ric Thorpe as the second Bishop of Islington. In Capital Vision 2020, we committed ourselves to promote the creation of a hundred new worshipping communities within the Diocese by 2020. In the past twenty years over sixty have been established and in direct response to Capital Vision we are already in double figures. It is clear that those ministering in such pioneering posts together with the existing cohort of church planters need knowledgeable support and mentoring in the early years. At the same time if the Diocese is to develop as a learning community then there must be ways of harvesting the experience, both positive and negative of those who have been called to re-imagine the church for the 21st century. The need has been made all the more urgent because of the recent grant by the Church Commissioners of a substantial sum of development funding to assist our 2020 strategy. The Reverend Ric Thorpe, as the Diocesan Adviser on Church Planting, has already done a great deal of work in this field both supporting those involved in new ventures and applying the lessons learnt for pioneers in training as well for the many people beyond the Diocese who are interested in the London experience. The population of London is increasing once again although not so explosively as it did in the 19th century. The population of Victorian London increased from just over a million in 1800 to seven million by 1900. The old structures of church life were not adequate to the missionary challenge of such rapid and explosive growth. At the same time there was a recovery of a more energetic style of episcopal leadership and a new vision of the diocese as an instrument of mission and this argued the case for an increase in the number of bishops. At first there was a revival of some of the Sees left vacant since the end of the Elizabethan experiment with suffragan bishops. Bedford was created under the Suffragan Bishops’ Act of 1534 but fell into abeyance between 1560 and 1879 when Walsham How was appointed to minister in East London. West London was the responsibility of the Bishop of Marlborough from 1888 – 1918. During this period some of the surviving Area Bishoprics with more appropriate titles were established, beginning with Stepney in 1895. From 1898 – 1923, a former Rector of St George in the East, Charles Henry Turner occupied the See of Islington. When he died however the See went into abeyance. Now in the vastly different circumstances of the 21st century the decision has been taken to revive Islington as a response to contemporary missionary challenges. A number of deanery pilots are planned as a response to the General Synod’s work on “Intentional Evangelism” and we shall be experimenting with “porous” boundaries within the selected deaneries. At the same time the further use of school buildings to house new congregations will be explored. It is abundantly clear that crucial to the success of these initiatives is a supply of highly motivated, specially equipped and properly supported pioneer ministers. The entrepreneurial talent necessary and the ability to work without the support of long established structures require more and not less encouragement and oversight. Mentoring and building up a cadre of “alongside coaches” who will work with Area Bishops and the Diocesan Bishop to support pioneers has become an urgent necessity. The Bishop of Willesden has had a special responsibility for the oversight of pioneer ministries of various kinds and with the growth of his national and pan-Diocesan work new arrangements are urgently needed. The revived Bishopric of Islington will be free from the increasing administrative demands on Area Bishops in London but working collaboratively with episcopal colleagues to address the agendas opened up by the developments described above. The Bishop of Islington will be available to harvest and share experience of church growth strategies. He will be available to the whole Church of England as a resource as the Church pursues its intentional evangelism programme but at the same time the new Bishop will have the credibility of being a practitioner actively involved in church planting and supervising the new School of Church Growth in association with the staff of St Mellitus both in London, Chelmsford and at its Merseyside campus. The role is inherently episcopal but like bishops in early Anglo-Saxon England it has an emphasis on the responsibility which all bishops share on missionary work and church extension. The work already being done in London and other dioceses has always issued from invitations and there is no intention to intrude uninvited into anyone else’s jurisdiction. The Archbishop of Canterbury has warmly welcomed the appointment and has confirmed that he will consecrate the new Bishop of Islington in St Paul’s Cathedral on September 29th. I hope that you will hold all the new members of the London team in your prayers over the summer. With thanks for our partnership in the Gospel The Rt Revd & Rt Hon Richard Chartres KCVO DD FSA

Letting go and letting God - living by God's grace

On this 5^th Sunday of Trinity we are challenged to let go and let God and we are given two clear examples of those who have taken up the call of discipleship and all that it requires of them in terms of personal cost.

Ezekiel was called to be a prophet. Like many prophets before and after him it is a call that carried a price. It cost him dear and exposed him to real trouble, danger and persecution. God duly warns Ezekiel that he is giving him a mission particularly unpleasant to fulfill and one that some would say was impossible. “I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have rebelled against me;

Ezekiel is neither a flatterer nor a demagogue; he proclaims what God instructs him to say. Therefore he must not expect to be well received by all. God does not entertain any illusions. But neither does Ezekiel get discouraged. He is like the sower who throws his seed by the handful knowing that most of the seed will never produce a crop, some will fall on the path, some on rocky ground , some on thorny soil.

Is this wastefulness?

Is this a lack of realism?

Is this foolish and wasteful of time and energy?

                        NO

God wants everyone to have a chance. He cannot resign himself to seeing the least plot of ground lay fallow or denied the opportunity to produce a crop.

                        WHY

Because of his love for you and me and the whole of his creation. Gods love causes him and you and me to go on believing the unbelievable, go on hoping in the face of  hopelessness.

 

St Paul knew the truth of this. He who had been the leader of the persecution of the early church,

he who had taken part in the murder of St Stephen,

he who had arrested many who followed Jesus Christ, NOW becomes the greatest builder and defender of the church.

Paul knew trials and hardship and ultimately many years of imprisonment BUT he writes ¹⁰Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong.

Paul reveals that he asked God three times to remove the "thorn", whatever it might have been, but that on each occasion the response was, "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." Paul takes this so literally that he says he'll boast all the more gladly of his weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in him. He says that he's content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ, since through Christ, whenever he's weak, then paradoxically, he's strong.

It's one thing to say those words, but quite another to have the faith to live them.
Most of us live in our own strength and do everything we can to ensure that we are strong enough to withstand any of the rigours that life may unexpectedly throw at us.

Materially, we make sure that we have a house and enough income to pay for it and maintain it. We take out insurance against any physical calamities in life, and in recent years we have become more and more likely to lay blame for our accidents and incidents and to seek compensation for them from somebody else.

We're adult Christians and I'm sure God expects us to look after ourselves and our families properly, so I think we're right to take out insurance rather than to expect someone else to pick up the pieces if things go wrong for us.

But this "insurance attitude" does tend to spill over into every aspect of life. Many of us like to see where we're going in the future and to make plans for five or ten years ahead, and we're now encouraged to do that within our churches. But if our plans are too well laid we can become a victim of our own success, for there's little room for God to suddenly do a new thing if we have everything tied up.

When we take tight control of our own lives or the lives of our churches, we are strong. But God's strength is quite different to our own strength, and God's strength is made perfect in weakness. People and churches who are able to let go of control often appear to be weak, but God is able to work through them.

When Jesus sent out his disciples on their very first mission, he refused to allow them to take anything to ensure against danger. They were only to take the clothes they stood up in. They were not to take any money (imagine going anywhere without money, or at least a plastic card!) They were not to take any defensive weapons to guard against wild animals. They were to go just as they were, and to throw themselves on the mercy of others.

That takes a lot of humility and a lot of courage. But as well as being thrown on the mercy of other human beings, they had to learn to rely totally upon God.

The disciples on their mission and Paul in his life found that God's grace was sufficient for them.
The question for us today is this: 
Is Gods grace sufficient for us too?
Is God's grace sufficient for our church?
When we look at these questions the events in that small town of Nazareth speak to us with renewed vigour.

Jesus faces rejection in his home town. Not surprising you may say after all envy and jealousy have a way of destroying relationships. Anger, resentment and jealousy cause disharmony within a person, cause dis-ease. They are underlying currents that act as blocks to God's love and healing power. And so Jesus found that even he was unable to perform many miracles in his own country among his own kin.

The church to day in our own time is faced with ridicule and rejection in her “home town”. For the church in the west and so called developed world is often in decline compared with the massive growth in Africa and Asia.

In our own country the voice of the church is seemingly sidelined by internal debate and concern over money, doctrine or scriptural interpretation. The church is often silenced by the agenda of the press or is victim to the desire to destroy or pull down anything or anyone who stands for authority.

Our 21st century Western life is so cushioned, seemingly technologically advanced that perhaps there is little room for God to manoeuvre. Perhaps we too should take more risks for God, so that his strength can become perfect in our weakness.

A touching place

I guess there are many ways of talking about a church and maybe the poetry of John Bell from the Iona community is as good as it gets – the church should be, can be, must be a touching place where Christ shows his face and gives his embrace.

We give thanks for our churches, St John is celebrating its feast of Dedication this morning,  which stands as a sign to those whose faith and love of God led them to this place and here to create a touching place with God.

St John's and St Matthias are truly places where people come and touch:

Lovers old and young told hands and make vows

Bishops have come and with gentle hands  baptized and confirmed, the faith of God’s children and the life Jesus calls us into and ordained those willing to serve as priests.

Those who have shed the shackles of this life have been brought into this church, often carried by their loved ones at the end of their life’s journey

Here Heaven and earth touch and Gods life is released in to the world and

all of us can open our hands and touch the living God in the sacrament of his body and blood.

Yes the Church is truly a touching place

A place of memory and love : a place for forgiveness and peace.

And how appropriate to have for our thoughts and inspiration this morning a story of touch and encounter in our gospel reading

In this story, two people come to Jesus with their needs.  They are very different people.  Jairus is an important man.  Mark 5v22 says ‘a synagogue ruler’.  He’s a man, he’s a ruler, he has a family, he’s religious and very respectable in the community.

The woman is not even named.  Jesus calls her ‘Daughter’ in v34, which is even better than telling us her name.  But as the story begins she is an unnamed and unclean woman.  She has an unstoppable flow of blood which made her perpetually, ceremonially unclean, untouchable even in her home for 12 long years.  This woman is unnamed, unclean, sick and now in despair.

 So this woman has had 12 years of great suffering. 

She is very different to Jairus.  Jairus, we can imagine, has had 12 years of joy with his 12 year old daughter.  But now with his daughter on death’s door, Jairus and the women are driven by the same need to touch God.  They are both needy beggars coming to Jesus. Both take a journey to reach out and touch the only one who can give them their hearts desire.

In verse 22 this respectable man falls at Jesus’ feet in a public place and pleads earnestly with Him.  This was very dangerous for Jairus to do.  We know from chapter 3 verse 6 that the religious authorities have been plotting to kill Jesus.  So for this synagogue ruler to fall at Jesus’ feet could well have cost him his job and his reputation.  But what’s that compared to your 12 year old girl?

So Jairus and the woman are very different, both come to Jesus in their need.

 And both of them think they know how Jesus is going to help them.  They both have very particular expectations of Jesus – one's he will not meet but change!

Jairus thinks Jesus ought to come and lay hands on his sick daughter, he practically tells Jesus what to do and expects him to act immediately. He probably does this because Jesus had performed other healings where that’s what He did – He laid hands on people. 

The woman also thinks she knows how to get a healing.  She thinks if she just touches Jesus’ clothes she’ll be healed. 

But for both of them Jesus frustrates their plans and responds in ways that they were not expecting.

For Jarius –It is now too late, there was too much delay the girl is now dead. There is no point. He has made the journey for nothing, he has risked everything only to fail – or so it would seem when Jesus finally enters the house

For the nameless woman she is not allowed to get away with the  anonymity  she desires, touching Jesus means that she is now in a very public place, a central place within the crowd in which she hoped to remain hidden, a skill she had no doubt developed over the last 12 years.

Jairus’s story is our story. 

The Nameless womans experience is ours

Every one of us either has had or will have moments like this in our Christian lives.  We have come to Jesus.  We have real needs.  We are sure we know the best way He can help us.  But Jesus doesn’t always  do what we’d thought would happen or planed to occur.

As we saw in the calming of the storm last week – Jesus does not always act or react in a way that we expect, or to a timetable we determine. We will go through storms and Jesus won’t calm them right away.  It will get to the point where we say “I’m dying here and you don’t care do you?”. . 

And as we see when a women reaches out to touch Jesus and when He reaches out to touch a small child something miraculous does occur – life is given, is strengthened, is healed, is renewed.

And at the end of the story Jesus has saved both daughters. Everyone thought the bleeding woman could wait while Jesus healed the dying girl.  But no – Jesus  saved the woman with the flow of blood and He’s saved the dying girl.  He calls the one ‘daughter’, He calls the other ‘Talitha’ – both terms of great affection.  He does care, He is powerful and He does know how to bring things to a happily ever after that far outstrips anything we expected. 

So as we give thanks for those who first build and dedicated St John's church to the glory of God, As we give thanks and work to preserve the vision and mission of those who went before us in every church, let us also continue to care for this touching place and never limit the love and power of God by closing its doors to those who would seek refuge 

Jesus calms the stormy waters of life

“Alone, alone, all, all alone,

Alone on a wide wide sea!

And never a saint took pity on

My soul in agony.”

― Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

The ups and downs, the hardships and pain of life have often been compared to stormy seas.

They come upon us whether we like it or not. They terrify us. They reduce us and like sea sickness itself our lives are turned inside out with retching pain.

The stormy sea is a powerful metaphor for all that threatens to destroy our stability and security. We don’t know whether we can survive their turbulent waters and depths that can swallow us whole. And we don’t know how long such storms will last.

As Mark tells the story, the disciples were terrified that the boat was going to break up and everyone would die. But Jesus was asleep, on a cushion no less, Mark notes, adding to the contrast between Jesus’ tranquility and the disciples’ panic, apparently oblivious to their pending doom. They wake him and cry, "Teacher, don’t you care if we drown?" (v. 38). Of course, Jesus quiets the storm with a word, but then he chides the disciples: "Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?" (v. 40).

Some of the lessons in the story are obvious. Jesus has power over the storms of life, experiences them alongside us, loves us, saves us from them and wants us to trust him more than we do.

But there is more for us to take from this episode than the illustration of a simple truth that Jesus will rescue us when we are in danger. Indeed this is the meaning we give to his dying on the cross an action in which Jesus saves us from our sin!

In the face of those who make the allegation that God does not care, that we are alone in this universe and have been left alone to make the best of things on our own, there is nothing in this episode to suggest that Jesus is absent. He is with the disciples, it is his silence that they struggle to understand. He is silent, apart from his content snoring on a cushion, his silence is not the same as absence.

The counterpoint of Jesus, who is calm and asleep not least, and his disciples, who are frantic with fear, is one that is all too familiar for us in our lives.

Just like the disciples we too wonder at those times in our lives when we find ourselves in the midst of a storm, whether or not Jesus is there, whether or not he cares about out struggles and fears. Indeed there are times when we like the disciples cry out in fear and wonder why he seems so slow to come to our aid?

But the truth that Mark in recounting this episode of Jesus’ life might be pointing to is that Jesus is not just in control at the end of the story when he bids the waves to cease and the wind to be calm, Jesus is in control as he is present throughout the whole episode.

The criticism that Jesus has for his disciples is that they doubted this, that they thought they were in peril when in fact this cannot be the case because their Lord and master is right there with them.

The psalmist shares our concern, that God does indeed seems asleep and uninterested in our plight:

Rise up ! Why Sleep, O Lord

Awake and do not reject us for ever

why do you hide your face and forget our grief and oppression? Psalm 45:  24-25

Maybe that’s why Mark included this story. The not-so-obvious lesson is that Jesus was just as much in control, and the disciples were just as safe in his hands, while he was asleep as while he was awake.  Most of the time, life seems like a relentless voyage from one storm to the next. Faith in God will not immunize us from the storms of life, it is not a lucky charm that will keep us pain free and emotionally secure.

The lesson to trust in God at all times is brilliantly illustrated in the story of David and Goliath. Once again it clear that in the midst of the crisis facing King Saul and all his soldiers their faith in God wavers. Their fear paralyses them and they cannot respond to the defiant challenge of Goliath. That is until David appears, David who knows a thing or two about trust in God as he looks after his father’s sheep and when necessary wrestles with lions to keep them safe.

David, true of heart confronts the giant Goliath and proclaims his faith in the unseen God of Israel and brings him down with a small smooth pebble from the brook.

God is our refuge and strength

a very present help in trouble

therefore we will not fear, thought the earth be moved

and though the mountains tremble in the heart of the sea

thought the waters rage and swell

and though the mountains quake at the towering sea

         Psalm 46 :1-3