Leeds Diocesan Synod

This is the text of my presidential address to the Leeds Diocesan Synod this morning.

There’s really not a lot to talk about at the moment, is there? The world is at peace, all is well with the UK economy, politics are predictable and boring, challenges are few, and, apart from England losing the footie and winning the cricket, nothing much changes.

Well, I know many people who wish it were so (apart from the football, that is). But, you’d have to live each day with your head deep in the sand, if you think that all is well. I only have to mention Ukraine and Russia, Afghanistan, the energy crisis, food banks, poverty, hungry children and families, the rising cost of living, questionable public ethics, and we know all is not well with the world. To add to the burden, the island of Ireland is worried about renewed tensions fuelled by political division and the unilateral breaking of international law; parliamentary sovereignty is being replaced by increasing moves toward executive sovereignty (decision by ministerial fiat); we export refugees to Rwanda, denying them human rights under the rule of law at a very basic level.

And the Church – bishops in particular – comes under the cosh of certain political and media interests for daring to have something to say.

I have thought a lot about this. Partly because I get communications that tell me to keep out of politics (despite sitting in Parliament and, therefore, holding particular – and sometimes uncomfortable – responsibilities). It’s also partly because I often think I might be wrong. It’s mainly because I would actually like a quiet life away from the constant storm of criticism, fire and fury, nastiness and debate.

But, there are two fundamental complicating problems here: the Bible and Christian vocation.

I keep having to explain to critics that politics is about people and the right ordering of society. This raises questions, then, about how we judge what a good society should look like … and why. It is not enough merely to assume this without questioning the moral basis of any particular political order and social arrangement. Politics involves creating spaces in which competing judgements about the values and ethics underlying social order and political commitment can be articulated and debated, with passion and seriousness. It can never simply be a power game; it involves and affects people’s lives and communities.

And this is where the Bible comes in. Some of the foundational texts from which our western democracies have derived their legitimacy and development – especially the particular settlement in the United Kingdom – are rooted in certain judgments and commitments. Notions of human rights and the rule of law did not drop from heaven and are not self-evidently right. If we claim that human beings matter and have value, or that truth and justice matter, we have to ask on what basis we make that claim. For Christians it is that every human being is made in the image of God. The creation narratives of the Old Testament lead into explorations of what it then means for human beings to live together. Notions of justice come into place, but the idea of justice itself is not self-evident or merely arbitrary.

The Old Testament tells a developing story of how particular communities took their vocation under God seriously and struggled to create social orders that enshrined justice and equity and generosity and mercy and love. I haven’t time to flesh this out here, but would be happy to do so elsewhere.

The point, therefore, is that to claim a separation between faith and politics is to do violence to what it means to be human in the first place. The moral basis of any political claims must be subject to scrutiny; otherwise, they must be suspect – assertions of power that are potentially so weak they cannot be challenged in the cold light of day. (Charges that the bishops who publicly oppose the exporting of refugees to Rwanda have no alternatives to propose – the windbag theory – are downright lazy and inaccurate. I invite those politicians and journalists to read the many contributions by Lords Spiritual to House of Lords debates on, for example, the Nationality & Borders Bill. Specious mantras don’t help further serious debate of important matters.)

It is not just bishops, though. No Christian can avoid the political implications of biblical ethics. And some of us cannot avoid – except for reasons of cowardice – articulating in the public square the political implications of ethical judgments derived from a serious reading of our foundational texts, the Bible. Compartmentalising faith and real life (including our responsibility for the right ordering of society according to justifiable ethical values) is not an option. Were it so, then we would not have a statue of Dietrich Bonhoeffer on the west front of Westminster Abbey and Archbishop Desmond Tutu would be an historically irrelevant nuisance.

This, then, is the context for the work we do today as a synod – literally, bringing together people – in our case, Anglican Christians – with differing perspectives and commitments and experiences in order that together we scrabble our way towards discerning the mind of God for the part of the world we live in. Our particular question, then, is: how do we, as the Diocese of Leeds, so shape our vocation and resources in such a way as to be consistent with our unique vocation? But, the dynamic has to be clear: we help shape the church and diocese in order that church and diocese help shape the world around us. The church is not the end; the end is the kingdom of God and, at every level, its claims on the world in which we live.

So, today we have an opportunity to consider the diocese’s annual report and accounts. These tell a story (or stories). Not everyone gets excited by words and numbers, but the important thing is to ask what these tell us about our common life, our priorities, our values and our real Christian convictions. Reports cannot always tell the vivid stories of how our organisation – the Diocese of Leeds – fulfils the vocation of the Church of England in this part of Yorkshire, but they summarise our commitments and pose the higher-level question of how faithful we are being in responding to that vocation.

Today we will spend time looking at what we are calling ‘Church Support and Deployment’. This represents a process that began before the pandemic, but which the pandemic and its fallout has expedited: what resources can we expect to deploy (money, people, buildings, etc.) in the future that enable us to fulfil our particular vocation as the Church of England in our part of the country? Like political commitments, this necessarily involves competing choices. Where we invest our limited resources is not always obvious; so, we need to understand the options available to us as we shape the future. But, what must be clear is this: if we do not shape the future, we will simply become victims of other factors, events or decisions … and that is not a healthy way to live.

As you know, the Archbishop of York recently led a process aimed at identifying and articulating a renewed vision for the Church of England. Those involved came up with a framing around three words: simpler, humbler, bolder. (I prefer Loving Living Learning, but you can’t win them all!) These words compel us to face up to who and how we are – for what and for whom we exist in the first place. So, as we continue to emerge from the irruption of a pandemic over the last couple of years, we try to simplify our mission, humbly address our challenges, and boldly embrace our opportunities for the sake of the Gospel.

This always hits me with particular force when each year I come to ordain new deacons and priests. They must make the Declaration of Assent and swear oaths. At the heart of the Declaration lies this claim and charge: “The Church … professes the faith uniquely revealed in the Holy Scriptures and set forth in the catholic creeds, which faith the Church is called to proclaim afresh in each generation.” Easy to say, but harder to reimagine in the heat of the day. But, the task of doing so much pushes us back into ‘keeping the main thing the main thing’. And at the heart of the main vocation of the Church is worship – principally the Eucharist.

Which, of course, gets rooted in another of our agenda items today: Communion and the Common Cup. Whatever our churchmanship or liturgical preferences, it still remains the case that the only ‘service’ Jesus commanded us to celebrate is the Eucharist. This is where we strip everything back and remind ourselves – re-tell the story, if you like – of who God is, what God has done for the world in Jesus Christ, that we come with empty hands to receive the gifts of God’s grace afresh … together, as one body, broken-but-healed, unashamed of the wound marks that accompany resurrection, conscious anew of our need and God’s abundance. Here – in spoken word and simple sacramental action – we recover our story and renew our commitment to take out the life of Christ, in our very bodies that have been fortified by bread and wine, to those among whom we live.

Whatever else we discuss around the mechanics of this, we must not lose sight of its purpose and essence.

So, we pray that God will bless our deliberations together today. Pray also for the bishops of the Anglican Communion as we prepare to meet in Canterbury next month for the Lambeth Conference. Thank God for our own Bradford being named City of Culture for 2025, recognising that culture is about people, collective vision and practice, ritual and celebration, the arts that explore and colour our common life. Book tickets for the array of events at the Bradford Literature Festival at the end of this month. Pray for those being ordained deacon and priest in the next few weeks, and for the parishes they will serve.

Above all, as we face the challenges and opportunities for proclaiming the Gospel afresh in this generation, let us strive – joyfully and generously – to be faithful to God’s call to us at this time and in this place.

 

Platinum Jubilee

This is the basic text of the various sermons preached in Ripon, Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield at civic services for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee over the last weekend.

Did you notice the words in the reading from Proverbs 8: wisdom; understanding; prudence; intelligence; noble things; right; truth; righteous; and so on?

Virtue matters. Still. Knowing our need of grace and wisdom is a mark of strength, not of weakness.*

Legendary guitarist and musician Jimi Hendrix famously said “knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens”. Hermann Hesse, in his Siddharta, observed that wisdom cannot be imparted; he wrote: “Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, be fortified by it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.” Wisdom, then, has to with virtue and character, honed through experience and offered to those who listen and watch and learn and grow.

Today we celebrate how a young woman, surprised by events, face to face with mortality, accepted the role thrust upon her by circumstance and history. She is also the woman who, because of her awareness of her need to learn wisdom, grew in it over seven decades of commitment. Wisdom grows out of facing whatever the world throws at us – navigating the torments as well as enjoying the blessings of plane sailing.

The monarch whose platinum jubilee we mark today is the Princess Elizabeth who, on her twenty first birthday in 1947, made a speech in which she said this: “I declare before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.”

Yet, she could have no more idea than anyone else what might lie ahead for her.

It is a remarkable statement of personal commitment. But, it is more than a mere noble sentiment.

Having emerged from the Second World War and the devastation it wrought across the world – over 50 million people dead – the divisions between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies were already evident. Peace was not a given and there was little certainty about what the future might hold for an exhausted people. So, Princess Elizabeth’s commitment was made in ignorance of any political or economic developments that might occur.

In other words, she was ready to face whatever the world threw up, and to do so with one single aim: to serve not herself or her own interests, but, rather, her people and their best interests. This was not naïve; it was rooted in a clear understanding of virtue.

Of course, the years that followed saw considerable change and challenge. Just think of the creation of the Welfare State and the National Health Service – rooted in a radical vision of mutuality (for rebuilding a nation and state) which should never cease to draw admiration and never be taken for granted. Yet, this was also the beginning of the end of the British Empire (which she refers to in her statement); the intensification of the Cold War; the development of the nuclear threat (remember Mutual Assured Destruction – a nightmare with which many of us grew up as children or young people?); the swinging sixties, pop culture, drugs, American cultural hegemony; the eventual end of the Cold War, the growth of the European Union, and the hubris attached to the ‘monopolar world’ – the so-called New World Order; the optimism of the new millennium, and the rise of neoliberalism, followed swiftly by 9/11 and its response: invasions, war, the decline in public trust of institutions, regime change, terrorism, and so on; the digital revolution and its impact on communications, economics and politics; and then Brexit, the rise of the Far Right in Europe, a global pandemic, and challenges to the norms of public life and discourse. Afghanistan, Ukraine and the mass migration of humanity across the globe.

And I bet none of that was in the mind of the young princess when she made her personal commitment to service.

So, her accession to the throne in 1952, ahead of her coronation in June 1953, was not a predictable outworking of a series of convenient events that culminated in some fairytale “happy ever after” dream. Personal trauma, the shock of a different life irrupting into the stability of an emerging world. What matters is that, although not in control of events, her commitment to service proved through time and circumstance to be the leitmotif, the strong guiding hand that steered her and steeled her, come what may.

It seems to me that this is pertinent to us in our own lives as we navigate ever-changing circumstances and pressures. Through the Covid pandemic we have learned – rather rudely in some cases – that we are not in control of everything; that life can change in an instant; that “anything can happen”; that we are mortal and we all shall die; that we need to sort out what holds, roots and steers us through whatever the particular circumstances of our crazy world and our lives.

The Queen has been explicit about what this means for her – never fearing mortality or contingency. This is what she said in a broadcast following her coronation on 2 June 1953:

“When I spoke to you last, at Christmas, I asked you all, whatever your religion, to pray for me on the day of my Coronation – to pray that God would give me wisdom and strength to carry out the promises that I should then be making. Throughout this memorable day I have been uplifted and sustained by the knowledge that your thoughts and prayers were with me. I have been aware all the time that my peoples, spread far and wide throughout every continent and ocean in the world, were united to support me in the task to which I have now been dedicated with such solemnity.”

Note the passive tense there and what it suggests about dedication being mutual.

There is a slight irony with this. Until the then Bishop of Bradford set off the abdication crisis on 1 December 1936 with a narky dig at the uncrowned King’s lack of awareness of spiritual need, Elizabeth was set for a very different life as the niece of the monarch. Edward VIII’s abdication changed everything. And Elizabeth knew from the beginning God’s wisdom and strength and the support of disparate peoples. Humility is strength.

And it is this faith that has sustained her during the seven decades that she has reigned in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth.

Again, in 1992 in the wake of her children’s marital breakdowns and various scandals, she spoke openly of her ‘Annus Horribilis’, commenting that it was “not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure.” But, she thanked those who had prayed for her and her family, referring to those “whose prayers – fervent, I hope, but not too frequent – have sustained me through all these years.”

At Christmas 2014 she boldly stated that “For me, the life of Jesus Christ, the Prince of Peace, whose birth we celebrate today, is an inspiration and an anchor in my life. A role model of reconciliation and forgiveness, he stretched out his hands in love, acceptance and healing. Christ’s example has taught me to seek to respect and value all people of whatever faith or none.”

In her Christmas address of 2016 she was even more explicit about her personal faith: “Billions of people now follow Christ’s teaching and find in him the guiding light for their lives. I am one of them because Christ’s example helps me to see the value of doing small things with great love, whoever does them and whatever they themselves believe.”

At the covid-restricted inauguration of the General Synod in November 2021, the Queen was represented by Prince Edward who read her address. Commenting on the more than fifty years since she and her husband had attended the very first General Synod, she said this: “None of us can slow the passage of time; and while we often focus on all that has changed in the intervening years, much remains unchanged, including the Gospel of Christ and his teachings. The list of tasks facing that first General Synod may sound familiar to many of you — Christian education, Christian unity, the better distribution of the ordained ministry. … But one stands out supreme: ‘To bring the people of this country to the knowledge and the love of God.’“

Which brings us back to the point. From before her accession to the throne she knew her need of God, God’s grace and wisdom; of the support of those in her domain, especially by their prayers; of the need for humility in leadership; for love in the exercise of power. As the world has changed around her – for the better in the end of colonialism and Empire, for the worse in increasing conflict following the war that was supposed to end all wars – she has not moved from the central convictions and rooted humility that has sustained her for more than seventy years.

So, as we celebrate this remarkable and unprecedented – and probably never to be repeated milestone, we can rightly give thanks for her faith and witness, for her commitment to democracy and the rule of law, for her discipline and selfless service, for her resilience and humour, for her courage and constancy, for her character, virtue and dignity, for her love of God and world.

Joshua set out into the unknown territory of Canaan, confident only in the promise that he would never be forsaken. His people grew a culture of wisdom, hewn out of the rocks of change and adversity, of suffering and hope – learning through centuries that wisdom matters and that service must always be rooted in humility and faith.

Here in Yorkshire, whatever life throws at us or in our way – personally, socially, politically, economically, and so on – we, too, can be grasped in our imagination by an example of character and service that shines a light on how a good life can be lived.

May God bless and save the Queen.

Amen.

* In several of the five occasions I added observations about (a) Paddington Bear being about how an outsider/immigrant teaches Brits how to be better examples of civility and generosity, but is upstaged this time by the Queen; and (b) how in the House of Lords, when the Queen does her Speech, she sits before the three legs of parliamentary democracy (the Executive, the Legislation and the Judiciary) who do their work in the name of Her Majesty … and she does her work ”in the name of God”. While doing this, she looks up to see the statues of the barons of Magna Carta … and there you have the UK constitutional arrangement in a single chamber. However, the conventions that hold that arrangement are fragile and depend on trust, integrity, consistency and wisdom.

 

Words and Music

This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on the morning after the Inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris:

Why is it that the same words spoken by two different people can have such a different effect.

For example, listen to me read Shakespeare … and then listen to an actor use the same words. It’s the same with liturgy: one person grabs the attention of a congregation and they go through the words to a different place; someone else does it and it’s like having the telephone directory read out.

I say this because yesterday’s inauguration ceremony in Washington was pregnant with resonant language. For example, that we should be judged not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example. A truism? Maybe. But, the words create a space, suggesting a first word and not the final nail in a dogma. There is room to explore – as my own imagination did during the ceremony.

“Here we stand”, said the President. And I thought of Martin Luther, standing in front of the emperor five hundred years ago and articulating that all-too-human predicament: I hold to this conviction, but with vulnerability before the potential cost. We heard of St Augustine, often maligned as the original sinner when it comes to sex, but who couldn’t escape the depths of love and grace and mercy. We heard Amazing Grace – a familiar hymn which is dragged from the depths of a complex and conflicted man (John Newton) who knew that when all is stripped away, we are left with a human fragility that knows its need of unmerited generosity and mercy. As Jesus told his friends prior to his own death: if you are to live and give grace, you need first to recognise your own need of it and receive it.

The thing about yesterday was that, whether spoken or accompanied by music, words have the power to transcend mere pragmatism – policies and how to enact them in legislation, for instance; they inspire the imagination. This is language that resonates, that is spacious, that lifts our eyes and hearts to perceive an experience that might hitherto have eluded us.

I think this is what was being addressed yesterday. Not the language of settling scores. Not an articulation of pride or self-consciousness. Not an expression of dry dogma. But, as Amanda Gorman illustrated, a poetry that clears a way for hope.

Surely it’s the poets who penetrate the jungle of defended argument and debate. For the poet uses words to shine light from a different angle, surprising the imagination, subverting expectation, and opening our eyes to a new possibility.

In silent vigil for those who have died of Covid, Joe Biden said: “To heal, we must remember.” I would add: “ To heal, we must be surprised by subversive words of love.”

 

A Team of Rivals

This is the script of this morning’s Thought for the Day on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme as the uncertainty over the US presidential election continues.

A few years ago, while staying with friends near Philadelphia, we visited the place where the Constitution of the United States was signed on 17 September 1787. Famously, the Constitution opens with the words: “We the people…”. I remember standing in the chamber itself and wondering who the Founders had in mind when they used that phrase.

Well, in a sort of odd symmetry, tomorrow is the anniversary of the election of probably America’s most revered president, Abraham Lincoln, in 1860. And it was this simple-but-problematic phrase that posed Lincoln with his biggest challenge: does ‘the people’ include black people and slaves? The next few years saw civil war and the tearing apart of a country over precisely this question.

It’s not a question that has since gone away. What was remarkable about Lincoln, though, was the way he treated his political opponents. As Doris Kearns Goodwin demonstrates in her exceptional book A Team of Rivals, Lincoln brought into his close cabinet the very people who had run against him for the presidency and who variously undermined him, fought against him and tried to compromise his leadership. He knew that a country for all the people included his opponents and not just his supporters.

Lincoln summed up this approach when he said: “Do I not destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.” In another context he said of an opponent: “I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.”

Some would say this is politically naive. I think Lincoln understood something vital to a good society – that ‘the people’ has to include all the people and not just the winners in an election. And in this understanding Lincoln drew from a biblical tradition that explored how societies are built from mutual obligations, common commitments and the privileges of belonging.

In the Old Testament the liberated people of Israel take forty years in a desert learning not only the need for social order based on freedom and responsibility, but also for establishing common rituals that re-frame their story, remind them why people matter, and impose boundaries of value and behaviour within which their newly-found freedom can be enjoyed.

Lincoln also draws on Jesus seeing his enemies as people to be loved and not rejected or despised. Naive? In a world that worships power and glory and glamour? Maybe. Both Jesus and Lincoln paid a heavy price.

Whatever the ultimate outcome of the US election, Lincoln’s courage might have something to offer.

 

Trinity and the rest of life

Today is Trinity Sunday in the church’s calendar – part of Christians’ journey through the year, giving shape to the narrative of God’s engagement with people.

The Trinity is not merely a theological conundrum, dreamed up by weirdos for people with an interest in mathematical paradoxes, but rather relates to the whole of God and our common life in church and society. To put it simply (which, of course, begs a whole load of other questions), the mutuality of relationship between God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit depicts what has been referred to elsewhere as a network of mutual obligations that bind them together in a single, common life.

Mutuality is essential to our common life in the church. Why do we in the Church of England begin every act of worship with some form of repentance – holding up our hands and admitting publicly to hypocrisy, weakness and failure as individuals and as a community? Because we assume this relationship of obligation and compensation, and recognise that it imposes upon us responsibilities from which we cannot duck. We bring different gifts and contribute our unique limitations, too; but, together, we somehow hold together and serve the world we are in.

So far, so good. But, what does this say to a society that widely considers theological ideas to be esoteric, but of only private application to those who choose to be interested?

Without getting too complicated, I think the answer begins here. Human society in a contingent world can only thrive if the networks of mutual obligation are (a) recognised and (b) seen to transcend my individual preferences, needs and desires. The rest of the church’s year involves wrestling with the implications of this – not just for the church, but also for our public and political life nationally, and for the good of the world beyond our shores. That’s why we work through the Bible, being confronted by the difficult and discomfiting bits as well as those that reassure or comfort.

It is appropriate, then, to conclude this brief piece with an appreciation of a man who has challenged and encouraged both church and society to examine our assumptions and blind spots, to live out our common mutuality, and to live better together. The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, who retires today has inspired people to think bigger, to be encountered by the love and call of God, to take responsibility for our common political and ethical life, and to work hard for a better and more humane world. His personality, character and conviction will be missed – although I doubt it is about to disappear from our public life. We owe him a huge debt of gratitude and, as he would particularly want to affirm, give glory to God for all he has been and done in the name of Jesus in the power of the Spirit.

 

Driven out

It’s been an ‘interesting’ and revealing week.

And now in the Christian journey we move on from Ascensiontide to Pentecost.

See it from the perspective of Jesus’s friends. They put their hopes in the man from Galilee, beginning to look at God, the world and people differently. Then they watched him bleed into the dirt of Golgotha. And the big question: how did a man of God end up executed on a political charge?

And now they are alone, bereft, terrified – with no idea how to make sense of the past, hiding away in the present, and fearful of what might be coming their way next. After all, Jesus had warned them that they might end up suffering the same fate as he did, hadn’t he? Their encounters with the risen Jesus – who was somehow the same, but different; not cleaned up, but still bearing the wound marks of unjust human suffering – complicated their theology, but offered no enlightenment as to the future.

Then, Jesus commissions them on a hilltop. He leaves them – basically telling them that the time has come for them to get out of the audience and onto the stage. Commissioned, but not empowered; given responsibility, but no equipment. So, once again, they have to wait and wonder. No certainty, no assurance, no clue. No business plan, no strategy, and no resource audit.

And now we come to Pentecost when the Spirit comes upon these scared people and they are driven out into the streets. To do what? Explain theology? Build a sect? Recruit members of a closed society preoccupied with esoteric notions about the end of the world? No. What becomes clear as the story develops is that these people told the world that Jesus Christ is Lord.

Well, that’s OK then.

Except that it isn’t. To say that Jesus Christ is Lord was to say that Caesar isn’t. And that is a political statement. Their empowered conviction about God and the world drives them out to challenge the power structures of the world as they know it.

Of course, they were simply caught up in the tradition that runs through the Hebrew Scriptures and was picked up by Jesus in his manifesto sermon (Luke 4). It reflects the song Mary sang when she heard she was to give birth – the Magnificat. It assumes the Beatitudes are not mere spiritual sentiment. This tradition took the prophets seriously and didn’t reduce their warnings to the level of some spiritualised private piety.

Pentecost is not just another festival. It marks that point when the Christian Church owns its story and, despite the dangers, commits itself to speaking and living in the name of the Jesus about whom we read in the gospels.

Many, if not most, of these friends of Jesus ended up executed. Not because they were religious fanatics, but because they insisted that Jesus Christ was their ultimate authority in this world, not Caesar. It was for this that they were empowered at Pentecost.

The mandate hasn’t changed.

 

Betrayal

Wednesday of Holy Week. One of the friends of Jesus is Judas Iscariot. I have sympathy for him.

I grew up with the notion that Judas deserved what he got. He betrayed his friend with a kiss – death by intimacy. If he then went off and hanged himself, then it was only a measure of the depth of his lostness.

But, I never found this enough. Judas haunts the imagination as guilt lingers in the aftermath of pleasure. It can’t be as simple as this: Jesus good, Judas bad. Was he really the one bad apple that any group, any organisation, has?

Why did. Judas betray his friend? He had been the group’s treasurer, so knew what had kept Jesus and his friends going for those couple of years. He also had a deep political, moral concern for what we would now call social injustice – the fate of the poor under the jackboot of the military occupiers and the local collaborators. His heart beat for justice and and end to oppression.

So, why betray Jesus to the ‘powers’ he despised?

Judas is known simply as the man who betrayed his friend with a kiss. I wonder if he did so because he himself felt betrayed by that friend. After all, he had heard Jesus talking about a new kingdom, he had witnessed sick people being made whole, lost people being found, despised people having their dignity and identity restored. He had caught the vision of a different world in which the ‘powers’ would serve the interests of the people under God and not dominate or exploit them for the sake of their own security or profit.

And, yet, here, today, as the people celebrate at Passover the foundational story of liberation, the Exodus, Jesus appears to be missing the point – or, at least, the moment. I wonder if, driven by his impatient sense that now has to be the time for Jesus to declare himself, show his hand, turn over the powers and bring in his messianic rule, Judas now tries to force his hand. The failure of Jesus to save himself, to overturn the times, leads Judas to the despair of a disillusionment rooted in a sense of betrayal.

This Judas whose feet Jesus knelt before and washed at their final meal together.

There is much to identify with in Judas. Amos Oz wrote a wonderful book simply called Judas and followed it up with a lecture (which I think is only available in German, but I might be wrong) called Jesus and Judas in which he explores these themes. I find myself having been committed to a way of seeing or acting, only later to see it in its wider context and contingency and feel embarrassed.

But, I look at Judas and hold a mirror up to my own convictions and commitments. Do I see Jesus as there to serve me and my ends? Is Jesus there to make my life fulfilled? Or to deliver my political views? Is he there to vindicate me and endorse convictions that arise elsewhere but get coloured with his words? Do I get impatient when the world doesn’t get reshaped in my direction at what I think is the right time?

Do I shape Jesus in my image, or, in following him in the company of others he has also called, do I allow myself, my convictions and commitments, my thinking and seeing, to be re-shaped in his image? That is the question.

 

EU (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill

This is the text of a speech in the House of Lords at Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Bill today. I was the sixth speaker of seventy four, with a speech limit of five minutes. I decided, therefore, to look at principles that go beyond the detail of the Bill.

My Lords,

I think it is important that old arguments are not re-run in this debate. Wherever one stands in relation to the 2016 referendum and subsequent debates, we are now where we are. I suspect, however, that it remains important for certain matters of principle to be re-articulated at this stage, as the record will need to be clear when the history comes to be written – not least regarding the wisdom of writing into law hard deadlines for an implementation period. Do we not have anything to learn from recent history?

I believe it is essential to refute the charge that Parliament stopped Brexit from happening. It did not. Parliament did its job and performed its democratic role, fulfilling its responsibility to question, scrutinise and hold the Executive to account. That might be inconvenient to “getting the job done”; but that phrase itself, widely propagated by people who know very well what they are doing, adds a lie to a lie. Countries where Parliament simply nods to the Executive’s will are not generally respected as paragons of democratic virtue or freedom.

This is the basic reason why amendments will be brought this week to the Bill as received by this House. The other place might well have the numbers to ignore this House, but it remains the responsibility of this House to make the points, raise the arguments and urge improvement to the text. I therefore attend to two matters of principle, rather than detail.

My Lords, if the point of Brexit was to restore parliamentary sovereignty (recalling that opponents were seen to be democratically suspect), then it seems odd at this stage to seek to limit parliamentary scrutiny of the process post-31 January. Asking the government to treat parliament with respect – informing, listening and consulting – must surely lie at the heart of any successful Brexit process. And making Brexit succeed for the good of all in this country must surely be the aim and commitment of all of us, regardless of whether we think Brexit was a wise or good move in the first place.

This, in turn, means that the government must assume the best of those who question and not simply write them off as saboteurs. I would be grateful if the minister in response would give this assurance. Failure to do so would risk feeding and fostering the sort of rhetoric and attitude that Brexit was supposed to protect us from as a sovereign nation.

Making Brexit work best for everyone and mitigating its negative impacts will require government to see questioning and debate as constructive and as a means to strengthen parliamentary support. Brexit will not be done by 31 January 2020. The process beyond then will demand more than just compliance or acquiescence.

Furthermore, my Lords, it is regrettable that this Bill now seeks to remove what will be universally seen as a touchstone of civilised society. How many children now live in poverty in this affluent country whose magic money tree has mysteriously started blossoming since the last general election campaign was launched? And how many children – surely the most vulnerable people on the planet – find themselves separated from their family through no fault of their own? How many exposed refugee children are now to be kept isolated from familial care and protection because this parliament appears to deem them incidental to how we do our politics? Their alienation will come at a price later.

I guess noble lords will hear their own maxims resonating in their conscience. Mine echo to the sounds of the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures, such as Amos, who, despite economic flourishing, religious revival and military security, warn those who “trample on the heads of the poor” that this will not be the end of the story.

My Lords, our integrity and honour will not be judged by whether we rule the world as ‘Global Britain’, but, rather, by how we order our society in order to ensure justice and the dignity of those most vulnerable. Restoring the Dubs provisions would go a long way to restore honour.

The Bill will go through. How it goes through matters. It will say something powerful about who we think we are.

 

Brexit debate in the House of Lords

This is the verbatim text of my speech in the debate in the House of Lords today on Brexit and the PM’s deal. There was a five minute speech limit and I was the sixth of 63 speakers. Speeches by previous and subsequent speakers can be read in Hansard.

My Lords, I have ditched the speech that I intended to give because of what I have heard. I particularly want to reinforce the speech of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Judge. His warnings are prescient, although his conclusion reminded me of that of the General Synod on writing liturgy. It was unanimous that there should be only one form of the Lord’s prayer in our new liturgies. Everyone agreed; we ended up with three. The “how” is a very difficult question.

From what we heard in the Statement earlier, it seems that the question at the root of all of this stuff is trust. Trust cannot be commanded, even by a Prime Minister; it has to be earned. We have had three years or more of either learning to trust or becoming suspicious about trust, and that goes across the country. We heard in the Statement that we have been half-hearted in our commitment to the EU. We have not just been half-hearted. We have been told lies and there has been gross misrepresentation, including from the current Prime Minister when he was a journalist in Brussels. Propagated through the media, these lies have been allowed to go on and have formed the way that we see and understand Europe, ourselves and our role. That raises a question about trust.

We have been asked to reconcile competing instincts. Which ones? Do they include loyalty or integrity? It seems to me that our MPs and parliamentarians have been doing precisely what they are there to do in a parliamentary democracy. They are not delegates. They are there to use their judgment, with integrity, and to face the consequences of that at the ballot box. Of course, the consequences they face are usually through Twitter and other social media, where they and their families are threatened with violence or even death. Is this really acceptable? Is this what we have come to?

I have three questions about what we have learned from the last three years, because the question of trust is behind all the other issues that we are looking at. My three questions have to do with culture, language and character. The cultural question is: what has become of our political and public discourse, and our relationships with one another as we describe them in language and our behaviour towards one another? How will those go beyond today? What used to be called the conflict metaphor, in relation to science and faith, has gone beyond a metaphor in our political culture into a simple acceptance of divide and rule. It is all very well hearing now that we need to pull all the different parties and elements in both Houses together to find a way forward. Some of us were asking for that three years ago, two years ago and a year ago, and it was dismissed. It was a zero-sum game of winner takes all. Have we learned that the conflict metaphor, although effective, is actually disreputable?

On language, we have been subjected to repeated slogans and oversimplifications. We heard them again this morning but “Get Brexit done” is meaningless because we know that whatever happens today, Brexit will not be done. We will be on the starting blocks of Brexit. This was supposed to be the easy bit; well, I look forward to the difficult bit—or maybe not. This is not the end and we know that when we use this language, there are people in the populace beyond Westminster who believe it. We know, and I think we should learn, that slogans are more effective and powerful than reasoned fact or argument.

Briefly, on character, the UK’s global reputation is not exactly flying high as a result of Brexit. I will be in Hanover next week addressing parliamentarians, trying to explain Brexit and what has become of England—their question, not mine. I refer the House to Susan Neiman’s book, Learning from the Germans. What we learn from history is that we need humility instead of hubris. I await what that might look like in the culture of the future.

 

Freedom is Coming

Last night I did a lecture in South Creake, Norfolk, and addressed the theme of my new book ‘Freedom is Coming’, seeking to distil lessons for today from the wisdom of three thousand years ago. As I said at the beginning, I believe a lecture such as this is a first word rather than the last word. The lecture itself was then followed by a Q&A during which I was pressed on a number of points. The basic text follows here.

We need to remember that when the Chinese say “May you live in interesting times”, it is a curse and not a blessing. There is something to be said for routine or boring times when life is fairly predictable and nothing much out of the ordinary happens to disturb or disrupt. If any such times ever existed, that is.

My parents lived through the Second World War in Liverpool – the bombings, evacuation, privations and rationing. Yet, I remember my father telling me more than once how his generation had had all the best deals: healthy food during the war (lots of vegetables and no sweets), the best jobs with the best pensions in an era of construction and optimism. His generation of civil servants certainly got the best pensions. Yet, in saying all this, he left out the experiences of conflict and the fact that some of his generation never made it into peacetime, or that peace in 1945 soon gave way to Korea, the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the Berlin Wall, Middle Eastern terrorism, the Red Brigades, and so on and so on. OK, we also landed a man on the moon and England won the World Cup – once – but it is too easy to re-shape our history in order to tell a particular story.

I don’t need to tell you that all times are uncertain – every age is “interesting” in its own way. I think most of us would have thought it inconceivable three years ago that we would now be in a constitutional crisis, with the fundamental arms of our parliamentary democracy under threat and the future of the monarchy being questioned. Add to the mix Donald Trump in the United States, the rise of the AfD in Germany and the dominance of ‘illiberal democrats’ such as Orban, Bolsanaro and Putin, and it just isn’t clear what is going on. Here at home, if you are a Brexiteer the BBC is now the spawn of Satan, whereas if you are a Remainer, the BBC is now the spawn of Satan. What on earth is going on?

One conservative blogger makes the interesting claim that Nigel Farage is a modern-day British Martin Luther insofar as he challenges, disrupts and disturbs without any clear idea of what to do once the disruption has been achieved. I think this is an interesting idea (though Luther knew he might have to pay a personal price for his disruption). History and circumstances sometimes throw up a character who makes a massive difference and forces ‘normality’ to break up and reality be faced afresh. (But, I am not sure I would compare Farage with Luther … for lots of reasons.)

David Goodhart on BBC Radio 4 in ‘A Point of View’ on Sunday 26 May, rather than bemoaning the rise of populism in the UK, the challenges of Brexit and the breaking down of ‘normal’ politics, claimed that what we are witnessing now is actually robust democracy at work. He maintains that the limited appropriation of power by elites has been denuded by the clamour through the ballot box for ignored voices to be heard again. And, again, I think this notion of robust democracy merits serious consideration, even if I think it also raises questions about the content of disruption and who best exploits and benefits from chaos.

But, as this drama continues to unfold and the latest putative saviours of Brexit and political order enter the fray, Christians might well ask serious questions about how we are to understand the world in which we live, how we are to read the Scriptures in this context, and how we are to conduct ourselves – in language and behaviour, priorities and common life – as events unfold. I take it as read that Christians are called to engage in the whole of our common life, to argue politics, to help shape the future, and to get our hands dirty for the sake not of our own prosperity, but for the flourishing of God’s people in God’s world.

Now, this is a huge task. We cannot look at the UK in isolation from Europe – which, we must remember, is not coterminous with the European Union – and nor can we look at Europe in isolation from the wider world of Donald Trump, Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Xi Jinping, Iranian nuclear development, or political instability in Israel or Iran. Everything is connected. And, given the global climate crisis, there is no escaping the complexity of interconnectedness. (Always be deeply suspicious of politicians or preachers who suggest there are clean and easy solutions to complex problems – like getting Brexit “done”.)

Yet, we also cannot grasp – or pay attention to – everything that matters. So, I want to cut through a section of these phenomena and focus on one people in one place at one time in history and ask if there is wisdom for us to be found in their experience and reflections, their decision-making and actions.

What I have to say is not neutral, however. I have written a book (published in August this year) called ‘Freedom is Coming’ which comprises readings through Advent, Christmas and Epiphany on Isaiah 40-55. I’ll explain why.

In Advent we try to reimagine the longing of God’s people for resolution – or salvation. For God to come among his people again and reassure them of their identity as his chosen ones. Their security and destiny lie in this, that Messiah will come and restore to Israel all that has been lost in exile and occupation, subjugation and humiliation. Jesus of Nazareth is to come among a people who are crying out for the fulfilment of God’s promises and trying to spot the evidences of this new day, this new world. As we enter into their experience, looking through Advent for the light, longing for renewal and hope, we cannot rush the experience. We slow down and think and pray and make time. Only once we have taken this time, and lived this yearning experience, can we truly experience the staggering joy of Christmas – what John Bell calls “God surprising earth with heaven”. Yet, rather than ending the wondering and solving all the questions, Christmas only opens up a different world with new challenges and demands … which leads us to Epiphany, Magi who search for the truth, and people beginning to see in the babe of Bethlehem and the boy of Nazareth something unusual.

In other words, the resolution of one question only reveals a pile of new questions that hadn’t been faced before because the phenomena from which they arise had not occurred before. Or, to put it more crudely, endings only proved to be new beginnings – and these new beginnings weren’t always welcomed by people who just wanted everything sorted out once and for all. All of this I explore in the book which I have with me.

So, to Isaiah and a bit of background. The background to the background, of course, is that Isaiah is not a bit of ‘scripture’ that sits disembodied in a holy book, dislocated or disassociated from the real world. It is precisely located in a world of empires, military conflict, violence, political intrigue, and all the things with which we, too, are familiar. And while the big beasts fight for power and prestige, the ordinary people just have to live with the consequences and get on as best they can. (And they are easily swayed in their political affections.)

Anyway, Isaiah was a prophet, writing in the eighth century before Christ, warning his people that they couldn’t take their future for granted. Chapters 1-39 see the prophet reading the signs of the times and discerning what lies behind and beneath events and the choices people face, and warning that departure from God’s ways will have consequences. As individuals are part of society, so will the consequences be social, political, economic, military, and so on. But, you might ask, in what ways have the people deviated from what God expects of them and, indeed, has called them to and for?

The text speaks for itself: if you bear the name of God and claim to be his people, then you must look like him and his character. And what does this mean? Those who have been called must serve; those who have received mercy must give mercy; those who have been slaves (in their ancestry) must never treat others as slaves. And that’s just a starter. The point is: you must in your common life and your individual character resemble and reflect the character, priorities and claims of the God you claim to serve.

Denial of this vocation is not evidenced by mere impiety or religious/liturgical negligence. Rather, it is exposed by allowing a society that penalises poor people, marginalises weak people, shuts the door on people ‘not like us’, associates nation with God, ignores the moral planks in the eyes of the ‘faithful’ while condemning the speck in the eyes of others. For example. The prophet maintains that it is a mockery of God to trample on the poor or sing songs of praise to God whilst denying his character in the choices we make and the society we construct.

These people are warned that God will not be taken for granted and that the consequences of living a life of denial are serious: the loss of those things that speak to the people of their identity, their vocation and destiny, their future and their security. Remember that the defining narrative that gives meaning and direction to these people is the story of the Exodus. After more than four centuries of humiliating and inescapable subjugation in Egypt, the people are liberated – the Passover – and led towards freedom in a land of promise. Yet, liberation is not instant and is not an event; it is a process, a journey, a leaving from but without knowing where it was leading to. (Why do some Christian songs suggest they left Egypt one day and bounced up next day in a land flowing with milk and honey?)

The Exodus, however, is not a simple story. The annual remembrance of the Passover was also for the Jews a reminder of the human reality, the complex choices, the fear and dread, the romanticising of the past along with the struggling with potential futures, and so on. The people were led out of slavery by a leader who, once in the desert and not giving the people the satisfactions they wanted, found himself rejected, bemoaned, ridiculed and abandoned. That’s leadership for you!

These people spent forty years wandering through a desert before they reached their promised land. A whole generation had died on the journey, the leader died before getting to the land, and they were given a load of instructions about what a good society should look like when they got the chance to build one. Yet, these people had to enter a new land, with new questions about their identity and what this identity demanded of them. They could learn from the past, but they shouldn’t repeat it.

So, back to Isaiah. The people who had forgotten the substance of this story were destined to head into their own exile. The cataclysm of loss was probably the only way they would be jolted by reality into rebuilding their identity and meaning, re-appraising their history, losing their illusions – about God, the world and humanity. Sometimes loss is the only way to stop us.

Which brings us to Isaiah 40-55. Here the people are in exile and have been for decades. This means that some of the exiles have died, families have been reshaped, the memories of ‘home’ have been kept alive and yet will also have become fossilised, romanticised or re-shaped to justify the current narrative. So, the words of comfort addressed to these exiles are not just intended to make them feel happy about the future, but to prepare them for a new world with new questions and new challenges. Yes, their exile is coming to an end – this is the meaning of ‘forgiveness’ for them. Yes, their punishment will soon be over and they will return home. But, home will be different – and not simply a place of assurance and satisfaction, but of new responsibility and faithful innovation.

Why, I ask myself, have I never heard this spelled out in sermons or lectures? I have read (and possibly preached) about the comfort of coming home after exile, as if this return meant the end of complexity, the end of hard decisions, the end of pain and uncertainty. But, I have rarely, if ever, heard about the real stuff of real human life and society which the text represents. We are meant to read through the text, not just to read across it. If the prophet’s text has any value – to the exiles or to us – it must be because it accords with and addresses our own uncertainties and longings for resolution or escape. But, faith and escapism do not go together.

Consider this. What happens to the remainers when the leavers go into exile? (And I am not speaking about Brexit here.) We know from our own experience in West Yorkshire how emigration and immigration work. I am always amused by friends of Pakistani – Kashmiri – heritage who visit family ‘back home’ and discover that those who never left are sometimes less conservative culturally than those who emigrated to the UK. Why does this happen? I think it is primarily because expats confect a memory of home that gets fossilised and refuses to move on. So, ‘home’ becomes a fantasy of what we imagine it used to be. Fantasy because it rarely allows for any development in my absence. (Having lived abroad in several places, we see the same phenomenon with British expats who promote and preserve a memory of Britain that is almost Victorian in nature.)

So, the problem is that the exiles return to what they expect to be the home they left generations before … and find themselves trying to make space among people who have continued to shape ‘home’ and resent this intrusion by people who want to impose their conservatism on the society that never left home in the first place. Do you see the problem? And doesn’t it sound familiar?

These communities – the remainers and the returning exiles – then have to negotiate the space and the priorities as they shape a new place together. A place that might have been simpler without the demand for generosity and the hard work of imagination. Yet, the questions they face and the choices to be made are precisely those that these people have not had to face before. The situation is new – is unique. So, what is to guide them as they adjust and adapt and face the challenges of creating one society out of the competing (or conflicting) imaginations and priorities of two sets of experience and two groups of people who can’t understand why the others don’t see the world (or the task) in the same way as they do?

Now, this should be setting off associations with the world in which we live today. Just like the returning exiles and the host communities into which they would now intrude (or assimilate), we cannot simply resurrect from the past some template of how to ‘do’ post-Brexit Britain or Trumpian America or a post-Brexit Europe. We have to face these questions anew, learning from the experience of the past and drawing on the wisdom of our texts, but having the determined imagination to face honestly and courageously these new challenges. We cannot go back. We cannot simply pretend that the world should have stood still fifty years ago.

So, what might Isaiah, from his particular political, cultural and historical situation, have to say to us – particularly us Christians who read these texts and call them “the word of the Lord” – in ours nearly three thousand years later? I will make several proposals by way of response.

First, read scripture properly. It is no good quoting comfortable (or comforting) verses or passages from the Bible without seeing them in the context of the bigger picture being addressed. One serious element of that bigger picture is that, to put it simply, empires come and go. History is never understood in the moment, but after time and distance that allow more objective reflection on the events experienced. Brexit, Europe, Trump and the rise of China and India (the end of the West?) cannot be fully understood while we are going through them. But, what looks powerful – invincible even – now will surely look different in the future in retrospect. When I worked at GCHQ in the early 1980s the bipolar world of USA vs USSR looked like a fixture. India and China were dysfunctional and backward oddities, both the subject of imperial occupation not so long before. And now? How invincible was the Roman Empire? Read Shashi Tharoor and ask how secure the British Empire really was?

In other words, today’s reality might not be as fixed as we like to think. What looks to be right and expedient now will certainly be questioned in the future. Will our children and grandchildren bless us or curse us for the choices we make today? Is our perspective informed by the narrative of Scripture that asks us to think longer-term?

This should lead us, secondly, to think, choose and act with what I often call a confident humility. I consider reality, bring to bear the wisdom gleaned from perusal of the past and the wisdom of our texts (and the story they tell), and then, together, make decisions that I recognise might turn out in the future to be wrong. These decisions will be made with confidence, but the humility of acknowledging my inherent limitations will temper the arrogance of certainty.

Yes, we must argue vigorously and test our assumptions and assertions, but, in the end, we must choose and know we might be wrong. And this is helped enormously if we face the failures of our past and don’t just romanticise our successes. For example, it is not a weakness to recognise the power of the British Empire whilst accepting that, although we can now see through a different lens, British gains came at the expense of subjugated people. (Read Shashi Tharoor’s Inglorious Empire and see that India had around 30% of world trade pre-Empire and only 3% post-Empire. Who benefitted and where did all the wealth go to?)

This is rooted, thirdly, in a commitment to hear and tell the truth. One of my problems with the whole Brexit process has been the rejection of truth-telling and the loss of truth-hearing. I have spoken of the “corruption of the public discourse” and this includes the unwillingness on the part of many politicians to face and tell the truth. For example, I asked a question in the House of Lords about the cost of Brexit. I suggested that if the prize is worth it (leaving the EU and “regaining sovereignty”, etc.), then tell us straight and we might all vote for it despite the cost. Tell us that we might suffer economically for fifteen years in order to gain the prize, and we might well vote for it. But don’t lie and tell us that leaving the EU will be easy or simple or cost-free. This has always been the problem for prophets: they tell the truth and pay the price. But, someone has to.

All this assumes, fourthly, that we are committed to the world as it is and not just as it might be. Israel’s calling – articulated by Isaiah and others, was always for the sake of the world. The blessing Abraham and the patriarchs were promised was to be a blessing to the world – even at the expense of those through whom the blessing would ultimately come. The blessing was not for the sake of Abraham and co. In fact, their vocation was to lay down their life in order that the world might see who and how God – Yahweh – actually is. People should look at the people of Israel and see the character of God worked out in real time, real place, real life, the ordering of society and the relating of peoples in the business of politics.

The prophets call their people back to this commitment and vocation.

Jesus embodies – incarnates – this vocation and lays down his life for the sake of the world that is God’s. The Church – the followers of this Jesus – are called to embody in their common life the life of this Jesus who embodies and fulfils the vocation of God’s people to lay down their life for the sake of the world. Christmas is about this: God opting into the world and committing to it in all its messy complexity and complex politics. And this with humility.

This demands, fifthly, that God’s people learn to compromise and commend such compromise in their own common life. But, isn’t ‘compromise’ a dirty word? It shouldn’t be. Compromise is essential to politics and to common life in a community. It is an art and a good, not a problem or a failure. Like the word ‘discrimination’, it needs to be recovered and re-valued. Compromise assumes that we are grown up enough to look through the eyes of ‘the other’ – my neighbour – and dare to see the world differently. This is a work of imagination. Imagination is not the same as fantasy. Imagination involves the capacity to imagine (a) how the world looks when seen through different eyes rooted in different experiences and assumptions, and (b) to envisage how, in the light of bringing my experience, assumptions and vision together with those of others, the compromise might be constructive and positive in creating a common life together. And, of course, this demands confidence, humility and maturity – a commitment to learn and grow.

Perhaps this is where I should conclude these ruminations; the recovery of imagination.

Freedom is coming. That is the plea and the promise of God to his people and to his world. But, this promise necessarily implies and involves the committed engagement of these people in addressing, from the wisdom of the past, the new questions of the present in order to create or shape the society and world of the future. We can only do our bit. But, if we are to learn from and be consistent with those who have gone before us, we must be prepared to sacrifice our own interests in order to serve the common good and be obedient to the God who calls us in the first place.