Being Disciples with Rowan Williams

good morning and uh good afternoon to you archbishop it's great to have you with us your grace and we welcome everyone who's joining us from the greenwich connecticut area and from far beyond we have folks who've been starting to watch our worship from texas and wyoming montana maine and many different places and and a number of folks from the uk who are family members of our staff members here so we thank you and for giving us your time to offer this uh talk about discipleship which is at the heart of all that we do and we are so grateful to have you as one of the world's leading theologians as the former archbishop of canterbury and a person of profound wisdom and holiness to talk to us about what it means to be disciples which is the essence of why our churches exist to shape lives into lives of discipleship so i turn it over to you and we look forward to hearing from you and i'll i'll just mention if i may if people have questions if they will go ahead and put them in the q a which is down at the bottom of their screen they should see a button that says q a you can post a question there and after the archbishop speaks we'll have a chance for some uh questions and answers with i will follow up on uh ones you post and some that i've uh have on my own i turn over you your archbishop your grace marek thank you very much indeed for that kind introduction thank you for the kind invitation to join you this morning and uh good morning to all the friends on the other side of the atlantic it's a privilege for me to be joining you for reflection and i hope a bit of prayer this morning and what i'll do is talk for maybe 40 45 minutes and after that over to you so let me begin with a fairly obvious point about the very word disciple it's a point that i i touched on in the little book on the subject that that i wrote and i think some of you may have read and that is that a disciple simply means a learner somebody under instruction and so for us to be disciples is for us to be learners it's often been said that one of the things that is most a mark of a living church is that it's a learning church that is that it's not a community which thinks it knows all the answers which thinks it's arrived but a community which is well just as jesus says in matthew's gospel hungry and thirsty for righteousness eager hungry to learn but if we're going to talk about ourselves as christian disciples in terms of being learners there's an obvious immediate question coming up there so what what exactly is it that jesus has to teach and perhaps even more importantly how does jesus teach you may think there's a fairly obvious answer to that the gospels in the new testament have teachings from jesus said matthew gives us the sermon on the mud said mark gives us some parables and so doesn't luke famously but i suspect that we wouldn't have the gospels in the shape they are if that were all there were to it the gospels are not just records of teaching instruction manuals in fact one of the big differences between the gospels we have in the new testament and some of the other so-called gospels that were around in the early church the gospels that attracted to themselves the names of other apostles or mary or mary magdalene the big difference is that nearly all of those other documents are just teaching but what really marks out the four gospels we have in the new testament what for many of us is the kind of guarantee of their authenticity and their spirit-led depth is that they're not just teaching they're introduces to a person and they invite us to walk in his company if you think of how the very first gospel the gospel of mark works there's actually not a great deal of teaching in that gospel there is some there are parables there are axioms and bits of advice and prophecies but what matters most in that gospel is jesus acting and the disciples being swept along to walk with him to see what he's doing as well as to hear what he's saying so you might say the picture of learning that's given us in this very first gospel is learning as witnessing being there seeing for ourselves absorbing what we see and hear some of you will know the techniques used in the spiritual exercises of saint ignatius in training members of the jesuit order and increasingly of course in training lay people in discipleship and prayer and in those exercises there's a very strong emphasis on precisely this putting yourself on the scene trying to be there with those who are described in the story so we begin it seems with this earliest of gospels we begin with the idea that being a disciple being a learner is being a witness being called to see to hear to absorb but what do we see in that first gospel what is it that jesus is doing but the disciples have to see well jesus heals jesus proclaims forgiveness jesus prays jesus dies and jesus rises and somehow our learning as christians as disciples is bound up with seeing and absorbing all of that which is quite a tall order certainly but you can see even within the gospel that that theme is underlined for us quite strongly you remember that of the twelve disciples there are three peter james and john who are in so many stories presented especially close to jesus as if they are the ones to whom he wants to teach most directly most effectively and these three in all three of the first gospels matthew mark and luke these three are the witnesses of three very distinctive events their witnesses when jesus goes to raise the daughter of jairus the synagogue leader from the dead there are witnesses when jesus goes to the top of the mountain and is transfigured in the light of heaven and their witnesses when jesus prays and struggles in the garden of gethsemane the night before his crucifixion and maybe it does no harm to think of the learning of those first disciples very much in terms of those three extraordinary moments these three especially close learners these three disciples witness jesus's gift of life to the young girl who is a death door they witness the light that comes from jesus's presence when as it were the clouds part just for a brief moment they see who he truly is and grasp his relationship to god his everlasting source and father and their witnesses to the harrowing excruciating suffering that jesus faces when he is rejected when he faces the agony of the cross all of these things it seems we have to witness we have to learn from we have to learn how to understand jesus as the source of life and of light but also to understand that that light and life breaks through at an immense cost and we'll come back to that cost a bit later just bear in mind for the moment that basic picture those three disciples being invited to learn by witnessing these three extraordinary events life and light and also cost and suffering it's as if in that earliest gospel the disciples might be described almost as apprentices now we all know there is a notorious television show called the apprentice which has had a certain amount of public exposure in recent years for various reasons and perhaps the word has not um acquired quite the positive connotation we might like but think of what apprenticeship really is somebody learning by being in the company of someone who knows what they're doing somebody learning by watching by absorbing almost without noticing it what somebody else is doing the apprentice you can say watches the hands of the expert how does that look how does it work what are they doing now and sometimes the teacher can't even articulate what she or he is teaching but they know how to do it and they know that if the apprentice faithfully sticks around they will somehow get into the rhythm somehow get into alignment with what's being done and oddly enough mark's gospel does give us some sense that there are moments when jesus himself can't entirely express what he has to share it's too big it's too much for human minds but still he can act and they can watch and that's how it happens it's something that comes up very very frequently in the history of the church it comes up for example in many of the stories of the early monks the desert fathers and mothers where when a young inexperienced novice comes to an older monk or none to say so what should i do and effectively say well just hang around and watch and that relationship that faithful stable relationship sticking with somebody else and watching what they're doing that's part of the learning and it's a theme which the gospels do underline more than once it comes up in the fourth gospel as well as the other three when there's a very bad day and lots of people are turning their backs on jesus and jesus says to the twelve so are you going as well and they say well where do we go you have the words of everlasting life peter says that and shows that he is a true disciple he's been learning and he wants to go on learning and frankly there's nowhere else to go to learn except being faithfully there with jesus looking listening sensing the environment around jesus and that that picture of sharing the environment around jesus is one of the things i want to underline this often this morning discipleship is about how you live here hear where jesus is what do you see from here here where jesus is and particularly in saint john's gospel there's a lot of emphasis on discipleship as coming to be where jesus is i mentioned again in the book that at the beginning of saint john's gospel when the two disciples of john the baptist decide to explore what jesus has to say they say to him where are you living and he says come and see and they go and they stay with him goodness knows what they talked about goodness says what went on in the few hours that followed but they make a decision not just to spend that afternoon with him but to stay to be faithful all the way through so perhaps being a disciple really starts by being quiet and watching now that doesn't mean of course that it's no part of discipleship to ask questions on the contrary the disciples and gospels certainly ask questions and especially in mark's gospel they frequently ask rather stupid questions which is very encouraging for the rest of us they ask questions they challenge they don't hold back peter famously even tells jesus off at one point you can't mean that lord be it far from the in the conventional translation we have to hear him saying you can't be serious so the disciples are not just sheep like and passive they do come back and they do ask questions they're not compliant but the first thing they're invited to do is to come and see to be witnesses to be witnesses of as we might put it what it is that's coming through or pushing up in the life of jesus something is happening something is beginning in the world where jesus is the soil is breaking open new plants are growing up something different is coming to birth slowly but inexorably and in the fourth chapter of saint mark's gospel we have all those parables of the kingdom which are so much focused on that idea of something growing pushing through coming to birth coming to visibility so when the disciples watch jesus healing forgiving praying dying rising jesus struggling jesus rejoicing what they're invited to see is not just another human being leading a certain kind of life they're invited to see a new world breaking through the soil the kingdom and so the gospels suggest spotting where the kingdom is breaking through is something that needs quite a lot of skill in being quiet and watching i've said quite often that it's a little bit like bird watching something wonderful is about to flash across your visual field you don't quite know when but the one thing that you can be sure won't help is if you're fidgeting fussing and making a noise hold though still and quiet an expectation quietly focus on the landscape and slowly you see something opening up watch and in the early gospels this kingdom which is breaking through can be thought of in at least three different ways the first thing that has to be said about the kingdom of god as it comes in the reign of god the authoritative rule of god the place where god is truly determining things what can be said about this is first of all it's the presence of jesus the kingdom is in jesus in this human life turned completely towards the source of divine giving to what jesus calls father where that is happening where the humanity of jesus is turning completely lovingly trustingly towards god the father there is the kingdom but because of that stage two the kingdom spills over from the life of jesus into the life around him he sees the father he trusts the father he lets the life of that everlasting generous source pour through him and so what happens is mercy and wholeness right at the start of mark's gospel we have the healing of someone with a skin disease a leper as they said in those days jesus reaching out to somebody suffering and excluded and saying not only you're healed but you're forgiven not only you're better but you're reconciled you're welcomed you're back in god's family so jesus's own deep intimacy spills over into being able to welcome others in the name of the power of god himself and it's that kind of freedom to welcome in the name of god that leads those close to jesus very early on to see in him the life of god as such not just a great human being but something unimaginably basic and creative pouring through [Music] and then of course the third thing is as a result of that overflow of the mercy and grace and welcome of god in jesus a new kind of network a new kind of connection comes into existence among the people whose lives are touched by this what we call the church which is not a word that immediately evokes for most of us lots of dynamism and freshness but what we call the church is precisely the new network the new connectedness between people that happens when god's welcome and god's mercy overflow from jesus when jesus is own inseparable closeness to god makes that kind of difference in the world calling people together and that's why being disciples is not just a matter of finding ways of being individually wonderful people nice as that would doubt be it's a matter of building that network that connection between people in the name of jesus drawing from the same well of intimate trust out of which jesus lives which we are privileged by sheer gift and grace to share well those are a few thoughts about where the new testament and the gospels in particular seem to start us off with being disciples we're called to witness to witness what jesus is doing and as we witness as we watch quietly and faithfully the landscape opens up we see something fresh breaking through we see how jesus's absolute givenness to the father his devotion his total concentration on the one he calls father how that spills over into what he does and says how he interacts with those immediately around and out of that comes the new community into which we're called we ourselves and it's a slightly frightening thought we ourselves become a place where something new is breaking through we ourselves are a place where the kingdom is just around the corner and our life together becomes a sign of that divine power of welcome restoration and reconciliation pushing its way through the heavy clay-like soil of our selfishness and our sin and our isolation from one another but let's turn for a moment to another aspect of this what about now how exactly do we look at jesus watch jesus know i think this works again in several different ways there's the very obvious one so blindingly obvious it hardly needs saying of course we go on watching jesus in the gospels we go on reading the story we don't read the bible every week just as a kind of exercise a kind of discipline we don't read it to get our problems solved so sometimes thank god that happens above all we read it so that we can see again and again and again what this life is that we're talking about the life we're called to witness day by day and week by week we're called back to listen and look just keep reading the gospels and of course that great precious jewel setting for the gospels which is the whole of scripture hebrew scripture and christian scripture watching jesus against the background of the whole story of god's promise and god's commitment to human beings so we literally watch jesus at work like those first disciples we seek to be witnesses to a life of healing restoration but of course as christians we also believe that the jesus who is at work in the gospels is not simply a figure of the past the jesus who is the center of our lives in the christian community is a jesus who is not dead not someone who can be relegated to a distant history he's alive and active now and for us as christians the belief is that he is alive and active in welcoming and restoring people through the life of the community so we could say that a second way of watching jesus at work is watching baptism and holy communion watching not just a transaction between human beings one person pulls a bit of water over another one person gives a bit of bread to another but to understand that it is the living jesus who continues to do now what he did in palestine in the first century we see jesus at work when people are welcomed into the community and when people are nourished and allowed to grow in the community we see him in the sacraments and just as with the word apprentice it's a bit of a shame that the word sacrament has come to mean in many people's ears something a bit special a bit religious and a bit kind of formal and high church and specialist whereas actually what we're doing when people are baptized into the community what we're doing when people are fed with the bread and the wine of holy communion in the power of christ's life what that's about is simply recognizing jesus at work here and now and of course there's that third dimension of the action of jesus which is the fact that through all these ways and many others he continues to transform human lives we need to watch jesus at work in human lives now the church gives us lots of people to think about it gives us a calendar of saints that is people in whose lives the life of jesus has been rather especially visible but it can't be said too often but of course it's not just about the great saints it's not just about teresa of avila or augustine of hippo or our own saints in the anglican tradition michael ramsey's the desmond tutors among those still alive not just that there are lives in which this divine life is especially active but that we also learn to see jesus at work in the very ordinary and everyday contacts that we have with our fellow christians it does seem to me very often that most christians know that if they look hard at the lives of their fellow christians they will see some evidence of jesus at work and if they don't then there's a problem to be worked at it's always a good exercise to think what kind of life is it that i've seen which helps me to believe in god can i look at somebody's life and say you know that is one of the things that keeps me going if that's possible well i can just about manage it and that needn't be as i say some great famous figure it can be your cousin your neighbor the person you chance across in a moment of crisis somebody who helps you unexpectedly in times of stress and pain you're able to say looking back that was a moment when somehow faith made sense the world that the christian gospel describes is real after all so i think in those three ways attending to the stories of the gospels turning up again and again to witness people being welcomed nourished in the church through the sacraments and simply thinking about those human lives where jesus seems to be making a difference in all those ways we can be learners we can be disciples and for all these and more we school ourselves we prepare ourselves by trying to practice the attentive silence that will make us ready to receive what is shown we won't get much out of the bible if we bring to it too many anxieties too many questions we need to let it roll over us a bit we won't get much from the lives of the church the life of the church or the lives of the saints if we bring to watching that too much of our own preoccupation too many of the questions we want answered straight away and so we do need to practice that that quiet that receptivity that openness which somehow allows us to see what we might otherwise miss we need to take time to let go to be still and then let our gaze rest on jesus at work in the gospels in the community in the lives of those who've shown us that things might be different and it's at that point at that level that we can rightly talk about a degree of stillness and silence in our prayer and our life more generally being absolutely central to being a disciple some of you i guess will be school teachers like my own daughter we all know in one way or another and certainly teachers know more than most the extreme difficulty of communicating anything without some degree of stillness some degree of trust a slow and karma rhythm which allows things to come through we know that with a hyperactive group a group that's asking lots of noisy questions you won't immediately get much across the best questions come when there's been enough time and enough space for something to be seen for something to emerge and be engaged with and then moving on to one further dimension of all this we have of course to show what we've learned again in the processes of education we all know that at some point somebody is going to ask us to show that we have actually been listening that we have actually been learning and funnily enough that's something which comes right in the middle of that most familiar prayer the our father forgive us our sins we say as we forgive those who sin against us and i often hear that as god saying to me right you're asking me to forgive you show me a little bit about what you mean by forgiveness not as a condition but open your heart a bit show me how you might receive the gift of forgiveness and how you've been giving the gift of forgiveness like the parent of the child the teacher with the student we say go on you try show me and when i pray those words in the lord's prayer i hear something of that coming through from god you ask me for forgiveness well go on you try you show me because when you understand what it is to forgive your heart will open that much more to being forgiven we need to show what we've learned and to show not in the way of triumphantly solving problems winning battles but i think very much more in a way of saying to those we encounter you too can be in the neighborhood of jesus you too can be in a place where you can see witness watch and share what you've learned the church doesn't or shouldn't advance on the world with all guns blazing saying we are going to persuade you that we are right church says we've had this extraordinary bewildering unexpected privilege of being invited to stand in a place where we can see god at work in jesus and you wherever you are you too can stand in that place you too can see something of that life-giving mystery bursting through making a difference the soil breaking up the new world coming to birth and it's important to in this context that we recognize that the learning we're talking about doesn't just come to an end in this country and perhaps in the united states as well there's quite a lot of talk about lifelong learning as an aim for education it's a good slogan though very often it doesn't mean very much more than the availability of a certain number of leisure time courses for people but think of it in the christian context you're called to be a disciple for life you're called to learn all through your life and to learn in this way to learn by going on witnessing going on absorbing what you see and being changed by it and reflecting that in the world you never get to the point where you can say i think i've i've learned enough now i think there's no more to be discovered you talk to people who work in the arts to musicians actors and others you'll find without exception that they will say it's all right this is the 36th time i have publicly performed this particular mozart piano concerto or sung this particular aria and you know i don't think i've even started every time i perform something new comes up great actors give repeated performances of great parts on stage and they will say only now do i begin to see what it means to create on stage a cleopatra a blanche duboir a header gobbler or whatever i'm still at the beginning and that is a source i daresay of enormous joy we're not dealing with something that quickly comes to an end a skill we can master and put in our pockets on the contrary the more we do the more we learn the more we learn the more we're released to do and the doing goes on teaching you yet again you return to this inexhaustible thing the performance of a great work and you think one more try and i'll have learned something and then perhaps i might be able to start doing it again learning doing never coming to an end it's a theme which quite a few christian writers over the centuries have written about in the fourth century you get a great saint like gregory of nissa in asia minor talking about how the christian life is a constant stretching out into an unseen future there's always more and he says very boldly and even in heaven there's always more if you imagine arriving in heaven if you can begin to imagine what that would be it's not as though you'd then say i said this is it now i can sit back but here is something which i will never come to the end of however far i explore however deeply i go there will be more a never-ending expansion and enlargement of the heart moving forward moving inward moving more deeply so our discipleship is not only a witnessing but an expanding of our ability to witness without end constantly rediscovering something that is reborn and renewed every time we turn towards that mystery in all this as i think will probably be clear by now there's no big gulf between what the christian tradition calls contemplation and action no big gulf between prayer and activism of course we act so that the world will change into something slightly better reflecting the will of god of course we need to take the risks and accept the disciplines of transforming action and that is an intrinsic part of our christian discipleship but without the stillness without the dimension of careful watching that action can sadly become more and more anxious hectic and paradoxically at the end of the day self-serving we need to step back to see a situation for what it is a person for who they are before we rush in with our activist solution and that's very hard especially in a culture where instant reaction negative or positive usually on twitter is so much part of how we see our lives so i think it's quite important that we keep in mind the lasting significance of that balance between stillness and action and again coming right back to where we started that's what we see in jesus the jesus who spends long solitary nights simply breathing in the gift of his father and who then goes out to act in a way that makes an unexpected life-giving difference if we can ourselves enter into something of that eternal rhythm immersing ourselves in the silence and mystery of god's love being pushed further out by the very depth of that love into making a difference in the world then our discipleship will indeed be authentic and true there's a wonderful phrase used i think by a writer of the 12th century a monastic writer who said the love of the truth pushes us from the world to god but the truth of the love pushes us from god to the world and i love that balance i think it's about as beautifully put as it could be we love the truth we are in love with the mystery of the divine generosity and we want to gaze at it be immersed in it and yet the more we gaze and the more we are immersed the more something changes in us and we find the strength and the resource to act out to flesh out the truth of the love and make it real in our world i said earlier on that i just touched very briefly on the question of cost because it's around just around the corner of so much of what i've been saying but in chapters 8 to 10 of mark's gospel that is underlined repeatedly if you want to be a disciple if you want to be a learner pick up your cross and come along with me this is jesus a very shocking stark declaration for that age when the cross wasn't just a metaphor for vaguely religious ideals it was a real immediate horrifying risk it was the way criminals died if you want to be a learner says jesus you have to take a risk and that risk maybe that others won't understand that risk may be even worse that people not just not understand but hate all right don't panic stay faithful stay rooted because on the far side of all this what you're rooted in is the truth of god's love a truth which doesn't depend on majority votes which doesn't depend on fashion or success but is just there and so jesus calls us to be learners in his company he calls us into contact with a living contact with a reality which nothing can alter which is always a source of more and more life more and more imagination hope and transforming energy that is the heart of christian discipleship i believe thank you for listening patiently i look forward very much to any questions that you have or any comments you'd like to make great that was just terrific we appreciate it immensely and we do have some questions and i'd like to open up with a general question just about prayer and then turn to some that our parishioners have posted under the q and a and other listeners from beyond our parish first one is you refer to prayer sometimes as bird watching sitting still poised being alert not tense or fussy can you tell us a little bit about your own practice of prayer and what works best for you and how you've dealt with prayer in times of dryness and when it's been i'm always very reluctant to talk about my own pattern of prayer because i feel it's so much easier to talk about it than do it and you know you get you get stuck with that again and again so um i just have to preface all i say with a caveat um this is what i'd like to be doing as much as what i actually do do but what i try to do i suppose is to make sure that i i can keep a substantial time of physical stillness to sit or squat or kneel in a way which which settles me and i've learned quite a bit from some of my buddhist friends about how best to dispose the limbs how to settle yourself that your your breath comes in a column up and down doesn't become rasping and uneven how you listen to your heartbeat which slows down if you can breathe more slowly and so every morning that's where i start that's what i try to to do to orient myself for the day that's coming and like a lot of people i will use a simple phrase to hold my my mind to to what i'm doing like so many in the eastern orthodox church i i will say lord jesus christ have mercy on me and just say that as as i breathe out every time not necessarily saying it with my lips but thinking those words letting them come in a steady rhythm and sometimes of course it will be dry in the sense that nothing much is coming through you're certainly not having any interesting religious experiences and you're feeling a bit of a fraud you're bored you're distracted you're thinking of what lies ahead during the day or you're thinking back to the things that were on your mind yesterday or sometimes you're thinking back to things that were on your mind 25 years ago and the best advice that i've ever had on that has come from people who said well really don't panic just recognize that that's what's going on say okay i'm bored okay i'm distracted thinking about something from 25 years ago right so there it is it's going on keep breathing keep saying lord have mercy because you need it keep steady and if things get really really difficult try to find something very simple maybe another prayer a collect slightly longer prayer or perhaps turn your attention to a picture of the lord an icon or something like that just get something outside your head that you can latch onto and sometimes that just gives you enough to hang on to to tide you over as you seek to be to be still it's very helpful thank you very much and um i want to encourage people if they want to submit questions to please do so under the q a feature um down at the bottom of your screen one of our pressures has asked should we pray for specific results she's interested in knowing more about intercessory prayers should we pray for specific results how does it work why and how should we pray when situations seem to get worse and worse oh it's the question everybody wants to know the answer to isn't it and i wish i had a quick one um sometimes when i'm feeling really baffled by this all i know is well jesus tells us to do it so we better do it and say end of story but of course there's more to it than that and the more to it than that is something to do with with this i think god knows what's on our minds and hearts so let's not pretend that we don't want this particular outcome god knows we do so why not say so why not say to god yes i really do want this outcome i want this to happen i want this person to get better i want my daughter to do well in her exams i want sometimes i want selfish things like oh i want that interview tomorrow to go well all right say it no harm in saying it that's what i want god knows that god isn't shocked or disgusted that you're being so selfish but what god also says to you is something like this i think i think tell me what's on your heart tell me what you truly want let that flow into my action in the world and whatever you're asking that is in accord with in harmony with my action and my purpose your prayer becomes part of making that more possible so when i pray i think i'm trying to open a little bit more of a crack for the will of god to come through into the world like chipping away a small hole in the wall so that the water begins to leak through and when i say this is what i want this is what i long for if it's in accord with god's nature and god's purpose then somehow i'm giving that bit more space for god's action to come through and very often of course when we're faced with really unpromising situations when we've been praying for ages for something and no change is visible nothing appears to be happening it doesn't hurt for us to say well i've no idea how much worse this could be if i weren't trying to keep it open to god and the fact that i'm not immediately getting the global and total results that i'd like doesn't mean i should stop it may be that my prayer is part of what is preventing this collapsing still further i've got to believe that i'm still giving god an opportunity giving god an opportunity to put a stupid way of saying but you you know what i mean trying to make space make room for god's purpose to come a bit more fully into the world that's how i see the work of intercessory prayer making that bit more room for god's purpose to come through and trusting that because god can never not give himself trusting that whatever's going on in prayer something is coming through and i'm genuinely opening myself to that possibility thank you that's very helpful someone has asked that jesus is not is of course still present with us even as we cannot witness and practice the sacraments um of baptism and eucharist in this pandemic now we've been doing some baptisms we have not been administering communion to anyone in the parish and at least we're not doing this in a communal context as we've normally done the same way before so the person asks is jesus still within our longing for these sacraments oh absolutely absolutely same of course in this country we've we've had six months with some hardly any possibility of worshiping in person last sunday was the first time since march that i had actually been able to be in a church conducting a eucharist and it was a rather wonderful moment i have to say but what's going on of course in the eucharist is the action of the body of christ the community of christ's friends and christ is always and already present in the networks and the connections that hold us in that fellowship in the body of christ so i think it's a lovely way of putting it that christ is present in our longing for that fuller and richer sharing and it hadn't occurred to me before but i wonder if this makes any sense just as we long and yearn for a fuller more visible communion between the different bits of the christian world and it's very frustrating that it doesn't happen we still want to say that we that there's something holding us something unifying us because we all longed for the same the same thing we all longed to be at the same table sharing the same welcome and maybe something of what's going on in that that context of interchurch effort and prayer and frustration maybe that carries over into how we approach our lives as christian communities in the pandemic we we still long for one another in the body of christ and long to be more fully united and christ acts in and through that and christ's spirit moves in and through that thank you thank you one person has asked how do you distinguish between the jesus at work in the here and now and the holy spirit they are um one god of course but we use these different names to see together good question um and the short answer is i don't distinguish all that much because i think in in the new testament what the holy spirit typically does is to bring jesus alive in situations if jesus is still active as the risen everlasting word of god then jesus's action in any particular situation is something to do with the way the holy spirit builds the bridge between between the world and god builds the bridge between now and then and here and there so just as we say we read in the new testament jesus is raised to life in the power of the spirit so it's the spirit which is poured out by jesus in the cross in the resurrection and in pentecost so that his life will be opened up to believers into the whole world so i would say that where the holy spirit is at work the work is bringing jesus alive where jesus is alive and active in the world it's because the holy spirit is breathing and moving and i think that as the question rightly saw that is the implication of believing that father son and holy spirit are always inseparably doing the same thing at different levels from different angles different dimensions you um one parishioners asked did jesus know or was part of the design that he would be alive in all over the world two thousand years later how do you respond to that that's a very interesting thought um at one level i really don't know i i think that the traditional theology of the church says that jesus is completely human and completely divine and if jesus is completely human then i think his his mentality is that of a jewish person of the first century i don't think he would have been able to recite the nicene creed i don't think he knew the date of the battle of hastings or the declaration of independence and in one sense as a human being he doesn't know these things as you know bits of information in his mind but as a human as a human being soaked through and shot through with the life of god what comes through him what is done in him in his life and death and resurrection is without limit without temporal limit without spatial limit it flows on without any any halting or any boundaries and therefore i'd want to say there must have been something in the mind of jesus as a human being which knew that what was happening in him was of cosmic significance he must have understood at some level that his unique openness to god the father would have unique effect and we get just hints of that in the gospel we almost get a picture in some of the gospel stories of jesus as it was sensing more than he knows how to express as i mentioned earlier there's something so immense pouring through him that he as a jewish person of the first century hasn't got the vocabulary for it but yet he knows he trusts that god is at work in him to turn the world on his axis so did jesus of nazareth as a human individual know that we'd still be talking about him two thousand years later well but in those terms and the answer's probably not did jesus of nazareth know that in him god was reconciling the world to himself at some level i'd have to say yes but to get that clear is well it's centuries worth of theological reflection i think nobody's ever quite got it straight one person asked with the church as the custodian of the long term questions what should we be proposing to the government to the culture right now with all the new with all that we are currently facing hmm well attempted to ask how long have you got for a reply to that because it's a really pertinent issue but the long-term questions i'd say the church ought to be saying to political power wherever it is whatever kind it is remember who's getting forgotten remember the people who are getting left behind because they are god's children and they are god's concern wherever you are and whatever you think you're doing ask yourself with as much brutal honesty as you can who's being forgotten here and then i think in the light of that there's the question how then do we together and government in particular how do we build a society where people can trust that they're not going to be forgotten because if there's one thing that's been really really kind of rubbed in for us in the last couple of years it's that huge proportions of our populations in the developed world don't trust that they are remembered or noticed or valued by society at large sometimes that leads to violence and resentment sometimes it just leads to grief disaster and tragedy but we all therefore need to be asking how do we build that kind of society where people can trust that they're not going to be ignored and i think all of that is burned up with fundamental belief that every human being is made in the divine image and therefore every human being has a gift that is absolutely necessary for the well-being of the human world just think of that think of the fact that injustice and violence and all the rest of it are actually preventing gifts that we all need from coming to fruition so i think that's that's how i begin thinking about the two big things we need to be pushing at ourselves at those in power who's being forgotten how do we build trust in your writing about the lord's prayer you note that in order to pray this prayer with integrity we need to be thinking about the various ways in which we defend ourselves against the need to open our hands we cannot you write fully and freely pray for our daily bread we are wedded inseparably to our own rightness and righteousness more than we can when we are wedded to our own security or prosperity and it's as you probably know is one of the if not the wealthiest community in the united states what can you tell us about the role of stewardship as it relates to the life of a disciple thank you for asking that well what do we mean by stewardship we sometimes use it in relation to how we manage the world we're in god has given us what he's given in trust and to be given something in trust is to know that we are given it to use for an interest and a concern that is more than just us that's the bottom line whether it's the whole of the natural environment we share as human beings whether it's individual wealth and security and prosperity for whom is this given not just for me not just for those closest to me stewardship is remembering this is given to be given it's given to be shared how we do that so it's a long job to learn it's not again a simple silver bullet question but that's what we ought to be asking ourselves how do i act with what i have in such a way that i show my recognition this is not just for me this is given to be given everything god gives is given so as to be given in turn so as to bring life rather than close it off and i suppose that's one interpretation a rather odd one perhaps but one interpretation of the the parable of the talents the servants who are commended by their lord are the ones who've who've multiplied what they've been given they haven't sat on it and perhaps one of the things that means is we have to make our resources work not for ourselves but for the kingdom for the sharing of life thank you one of our members asks uh can you speak a little more about reading and studying the bible and letting it wash over you a bit and i want to thank you again for your strong support from the get-go for the bible challenge and the center for spiritual uh for biblical studies now reached probably over a million people and you were enormously helpful uh launched so thank you so again if you could think more about reading and studying the bible and letting it wash over you yes i suppose what i mean by that is um reading the bible without too much concern to make it answer my questions here and now and that sometimes means reading a passage that we can't make very much sense of or even one that perhaps puts us off or baffles or even offends us what's going on in the bible is surely the spirit-led record of people's encounter with the holy god from the beginning and sometimes that encounter is an encounter of misunderstanding and disaster even within the bible you have the recognition that previous generations had not got it quite right um but what's happening is that we're shown how human beings are feel like thrown off course and challenged and changed by meeting god so as we read we think perhaps not how do i immediately apply this today or how do i apply to my own life but can i see here the kind of difference that an encounter with god makes to a person can i learn from that doesn't mean i have to reproduce it or imitate it but let's just listen to how the presence of god is pushing changing and enlarging and sometimes threatening a human life just let me stick with that and let it wash over don't let me be trapped in looking for short-term rational answers on this let it run thank you um someone's written i'd like you to expand on something you touched on at the end we live in a time of great polarization and this is you know personal relations some of the issues we are divided on go beyond mere politics into fundamental ethical questions try and act as witnesses how do we balance displaying the patients to be effective disciples while resisting a false moral equivalence and any firm in the face of wrong [Music] it's another difficult one because we we all quite like to be righteous and prophetic whether we're on the political left or the political right we we're all a bit prone are we to um to run for the moral high ground as fast as we can and i think in a very polarized environment we have two imperatives to think about the first is how how do i speak and act so as not simply to draw attention to myself and my unrighteousness but to the imperative inspiring vision i'm trying to serve so trying to point to what is positive dare i say beautiful about the values i'm trying to defend not just banging other people over the head with them or using to reinforce myself so that's one thing can i point beyond myself somehow and the other is i think the bear recognition that this world is a rather small place and when the decision has been taken however controversial we somehow have to find a way of living beyond it living on the other side of it what worries me about the way political rhetoric is going in your country and ours is that we're no longer looking at simply saying that my political opponent is wrong we want to say they're wicked corrupt and satanic so that if they win it's the worst thing imaginable actually very very few human issues are quite like that sometimes they are not very often and we ought i think to start from the assumption that somebody else may be wrong but in good faith that is to look for what it is they love what what positives they value i've been quite surprised at times in discussions about this sort of thing by how readily you can get people across quite large divides to say well you know of course we all want let's say to protect our children of course we all want x y and z but we're going at it very different ways and to take something really really neurologic especially i know at the moment in the united states debates about about abortion you know i do wish more people on one side would say look i really do want women to be safe and secure and i'd like people on the other side to be saying i really do want to take seriously the moral reality of the life of the unborn and how we then move on okay it's not easy it really isn't but just a recognition that the other person might conceivably might just possibly be seeing and loving something that i would see it love as well thank you that's most helpful one of our leaders has asked could you expand upon the trinity relationship you say that the relationship to jesus to the father is not episodic you do not receive an occasional bit of instruction from the father his relationship is sustained into the mystery of the father's love and he enacts it in heaven on earth i suppose behind that is also not the question about how can we model that that our relationship thank you again a large question but um i'd start by saying that believing in the trinity is fundamentally believing that the very nature of god from all eternity is both a giving and a receiving and sharing god pours out god loves in return god overflows in sharing that love and we label that the father the son of the holy spirit for convenience if you like but what that means is that the the loving returning to god that is the second level of divine life that mirroring back to god of what god gives what we call the life of the everlasting sun or the everlasting word that is the reality which shapes the whole of the life of jesus every single moment of his life body and soul is as i said earlier shot through with that reality god as it were holding up to god the loving reflection of god's own gift so if that is like sustaining underpinning the entire life of jesus and even when jesus is crying out in anguish and desolation on the cross that is still there and it helps us to know in our own moments of dereliction and loneliness that the promise god makes to us doesn't depend on how we're feeling god promises to be with us to be there even when we're not feeling it sensing it making much sense of it not to solve our problems like that but just so that we know there is a future there is a hope because god is not going away and that is something we god knows we cling to with our fingernails at times because it doesn't feel very credible and yet that is the truth of god's faithfulness in us which sustains our faithfulness to him lots and lots that could be said about that but i think that that's where i'd start thank you thank you one person asks how does liturgy specifically the daily office fit into being hmm wonderful question yes um for me very much in terms of bringing me back to the scriptural center um making me attend in the readings from the bible to what god does in the scriptural story and especially in jesus and very importantly giving me to speak or to sing the words which express the prayer and praise of god's people the psalms the hymn book of god's people the prayer book of jesus himself you might say so it's a long tradition in the church of seeing the psalms as essentially the prayers of jesus because they would have been literally his prayers so when we associate ourselves with the church saying or singing the psalms that's part of what's going on so for me the daily office is immersing myself in a prayer that's bigger than my own letting myself be carried by that and letting the daily round of that be yet another sign of the faithfulness i'm called to the witness i'm called to and the faithfulness of god in all his dealings with us we are blessed that you are a parent and uh and i believe a god our grandparent now and know what it is to serve in those roles and i remember visiting with you and staying up late and you said you were tired because you were cleaning up and mopping after your daughter's sweet 16 birthday party at lambeth palace tonight yes um so first you're asking a parenting question how and this probably all of us can relate to this how do you be a disciple to your lesson receptive adult offspring oh painful embarrassing question isn't it um i suppose it boils down to a couple of rather obvious but quite difficult things one is so obvious again it hardly needs saying but let's say it one is letting them know they're welcome for who they are and therefore recognizing that who they are isn't what you've scripted for them you could write much nicer stories and much nicer parts of them than they write for themselves you often think don't you but actually to coin a phrase it is what it is they are who they are so let's stick with the welcome and i think the other side of it certainly for me has been beyond a certain point it's important to try and see what it means to really to befriend children that is to know that you are receiving from them as well as giving that there's the possibility of as you would with a friend looking together that's something you've both learned to treasure and although you know shortcuts and easy solutions of that i think what i've most treasured in some ways about being a parent is those moments where without your stopping being a parent you can also be in some ways and for some purposes of friend too so welcome friendship and maybe above all patience a recognition that that you yourself have grown and changed and so do children for heaven's sake they grow and they change they don't stick at a particular point and although i guess quite a lot of us must have thought that it'd be quite nice if our children went to sleep somewhere around the age of 13 and woke up at about 20 22. sadly they don't but in in the middle of that in the throes of that just a recognition that god is continually giving into their lives giving something as the possibility of growth and even when there are moments of real effort alienation deep distances god is giving something years ago i came across a remark by one of the great saints of modern greece elder porphyrios of athens very remarkable clairvoyant saintly figure who said very eastern orthodox says now when when you're having trouble with your children just commend them to the mother of god because she knows about difficult mothering i thought yeah okay i'll give that a try but i think that's perhaps another way of saying there are there are gifts and there are protections that you do not know of that are still pouring into a child's life even when even when the gulf seems seems wide thank you you mentioned uh in mark's gospel the disciples learned by watching witnessing seeing hearing and being there in our world how can our discipleship manifest itself in being there what are the things that we can do to be present [Music] people know that you're present when they know that you're attending presence is not just being around it's also somehow conveying that you care for the specifics that you are actually attending what's really going on so if for example a church has a feeding program or a night shelter program a homeless program it needs to be that little bit more doesn't it than just the provision of a service it's also the provision of a listening ear and an open heart so that that being there is not intrusive or overactive or fussy but it is seriously attentive it is it is paying attention it's watching what's really there and i think sometimes we hear the language of being there and we think oh well that's just a bit passive a bit empty but i'd say i'd say no no if we know how to how to convey that real attention we're noticing you know perhaps that's it thank you um how do you suggest we develop a sensible positive balance between the demands and attractions of the surrounding material world families of jobs and demands of the spiritual goals that propose but for us by jesus i think it's important to bear in mind that god asks us to be ourselves and that means that some of the things that really feed our humanity that give us joy that give us a kind of eager energy these are these are good and important things and some of what we think of as the things of this world whether it's art or sport or whatever it's not wrong to think of those as capable of being part of our discipleship we're not called on to be some instant permits and ascetics but rather as we were saying a little while ago about stewardship the key question is so is this actually enlarging my sympathy enlarging my understanding feeding my willingness to love so by all means go to the theater by all means go to the ball game or whatever don't think that god requires you to be a sort of monocular focus on the things of the spirit because that may make you less than you're meant to be but if you are growing into your full humanity with all the riches that this world has to offer the riches of culture and leisure and human joy all the rest of it fine but ask is this really opening you more or closing you up thank you what about um for as a disciple is it possible to know god or are the prophets the only ones who truly know god moses believed a manifestation of god will there be other manifestations over the next 1 000 years interesting set of questions there as christians we believe we know god in and through jesus and that's really a way of saying whatever else we think we know or think we're discovering we have to test it against that that touchstone so any claim to a revelation from god that just didn't sit with the gospels would be a very strange thing and i don't think we should take it too seriously but that being said jesus goes on revealing god revealing himself in every new human life so in that sense yes there's a constant set of new images new insights with every new person who comes along that that we don't look forward to let's say a third a third testament an even newer testament or something like that isn't a way of saying well it's all it's all wrapped up is all done nothing more to be said it is though to say there is something about the way god has dealt with god's people in hebrew scripture and how god has dealt with us in jesus which simply shows us what key we sing in from now on in order to be in tune with god and just as in music there are any number of things that can weave around that that melody but that is the melody two final questions one is as you know we've been through a lot of social unrest in the united states this is the killing of george floyd and protests have erupted across our nation you write for the christian disciple human dignity and therefore any notion of human rights depends upon recognition that every person is related to god before they are related to anything or anyone else the reverence that i owe to every human person is connected to the reverence i o god who brings them into being keeps them into being i stand on holy ground when i encounter another person finally you add there are no superfluous people no spare people in the human world everyone is needed for the good of all i suspect that that is at the heart of our challenges with racism and political division um the history of injustice the history of racial division other kinds of division injustice he is very much bound up with that subtle pervasive rather elusive suspicion that maybe that person doesn't stand on quite the same ground that i do sometimes that's absolutely blatant as with the history of slavery sometimes it's more subtle we just have to work and work and work at making sure that we are opening ourselves to see the image the divine image wherever we turn and that's what i meant by saying that everybody is related to god before they're related to me the worth the dignity the depth of any and every human being isn't something i confer on them it's there before i look at them and that's why um people sometimes said when i engage with another human being i really am standing on holy ground i put the shoes off from my feet because this is holy ground um and that's very hard because to sense that i'm on holy ground when i'm faced with a stranger or an incomprehensible stranger a threatening stranger even yeah that's hard but unfortunately that's that's true though you know the bad news that is that is just how it is and the good news is that it is actually wonderful for the possibilities of human reconciliation i was so struck by what you wrote in your book about that uh you also note that praying the lord's prayer essentially forbids us to be anxious about tomorrow many people suffer from anxiety and panic attacks yes yes well the first thing i'd say at the moment is since we are facing a house move in the next couple of days i have a lot of sympathy with those who are anxious about tomorrow and i don't want to make light of that sense of fearfulness and insecurity which afflicts so many people in our world at the moment but it's crucial to be brought back again and again to the here and now is god real now well yes obviously oh he's not real at all okay if god's real now god is real tomorrow and the day after i have no idea how i'm going to cope with the challenges that will come tomorrow and the day after how we are as a human race as your society or ours i have no idea or rather i've got a few ideas but they're certainly not very authoritative but if god is god today god is god tomorrow when we bless the easter candle in the wonderful paschal vigil we say that christ is the same yesterday today and tomorrow all times belong to him at all the ages and when i'm shaken with anxiety fear about myself my family my society my world my country it really matters to be able to say but nothing falls out of his hand and to try to come back to this moment and say this is a moment when i can actually listen to and encounter that real god and that possibility will be there tomorrow and the day after as well whatever else thank you you're moving to wales this week we'll keep you in our prayers as you go through that big transition with jane and pray for safety and a wonderful start to uh your life in the cardiff area god bless you we cannot thank you enough for the wisdom and grace you've shared with us this day thank you very much for your welcome it's been a real privilege to be with you and thank you for all those wonderful questions which made me work so hard quite properly thank you and god bless you all blessings thank you all for joining us today

Channel: Christ Church Greenwich

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Id: 7zt2XKFAmzw

Length: 86min 41sec (5201 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 21 2020