St Martin's & St Paul's
Parish Canterbury
St Martin's & St Paul's
Parish Canterbury
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If the Blessing of the Oils is anything to go by, there are still plenty of Anglican ordained people around. What is changing is the number of people who are stipendiary clergy: paid, full time, living for the most part in vicarages, rectories and curates' houses. That number is decreasing, and it's not really because of a lack of candidates, but because of the greater number of non-stipendiary or self-supporting clergy. As individual clergy look to their next move, they know when the time comes it will involve some sort of multiplicity of parishes and churches, and that even more might be added later on. So the style of working changes, and most of us develop in some form or another a team of people who want to come together to ensure not only that everything necessary is done to the maintenance of parish life, but that some new and forward thinking things can also happen. One of the reasons why we are interviewing a youth leader this weekend and next. But this I think, is entirely in keeping with the fact that no ministry can ever be set in stone: that everything we propose and enact to do the work of Christ in the world can only ever be provisional. The ministry of Christ is given to the Church as a whole and it is for the Church in every age and time to discern how to focus and represent, and therefore enable to happen the ministries of shepherd and of priest and of servant, bearing in mind that in eternal terms there is only one shepherd, one servant and one priest; and that is Christ. Christ the Good Shepherd of our Gospel today, Christ the servant washing his disciples' feet, Christ the high priest whose unique priesthood makes all who follow him into a Royal priesthood. These identities can be translated in an infinite number of ways into the need of the moment down the ages, where people gather, serve, intercede, and mediate in the name of Jesus Christ. Nor will any system we make confine or constrain the Holy Spirit who goes where he wills. Dying and rising, changing and evolving, new life rising out of the old, this is the character of things established by Christ; the vision being able to give things up for the greater glory of God.
And at the heart of the calling of any and every Christian is that challenging saying of Jesus: "Whoever would lose his life for my sake and the kingdom shall find it." It's what the Christian nurse Sheila Cassidy described as the blank cheque we write on our commitment. When she was arrested and tortured by the Chilean regime she knew - she said - that the time had come for the realisation of the promise of that cheque. There are many moments in our lives when suddenly we remember what we promised and we struggle with the realisation that there really is more to life than l ife. It is then that we ask ourselves: am I a shepherd who stays or a hireling that runs away? Am I with Christ or someone else? We might wait in vain for an answer from the world, but across the centuries we might hear the words of Jesus: "He who honours me, him shall I honour".
Amen
.