I know it’s not quite Advent, and it’s certainly strange behaviour since, actually, I don’t really like Christmas carols very much, but around this time of year, and including this week, while driving around the diocese, I often turn to my Spotify Christmas Carols selection. And this week – again, not a carol I particularly like very much – See Amid the Winter’s Snow came up, and one line really struck me – the final line:
Teach us to resemble Thee,
In Thy sweet humility.
And as we look, or begin to look towards Christmas, as we look back on what has been a difficult, challenging, and tumultuous year for the Church of England and one that has impacted me personally in all kinds of wonderful, but also difficult and painful ways, these Advent words seem more important and relevant than ever.
Don’t worry, this address isn’t going to be a review of the year, but I do want to draw some conclusions about what has happened this year in the Church of England since the publication of the Makin Review and the resignation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, through to the happy news of Bishop Sarah’s nomination as the next Archbishop of Canterbury. And ‘Teach us to resemble Thee, in Thy sweet humility’ is not only a good place to start, but, I believe, an aspiration to reach for.
Indeed, I am the person most connected with those three words that summed up the Church of England’s vision and strategy for the 2020s: that God was calling us to be a simpler, humbler, and bolder Church.
Saying this, I am mindful that nowadays, if you want to find a precise location on the map, the most accurate method is to type three words into the relevant app.
These three words – simpler, humbler and bolder – take us straight to Jesus, particularly to his sweet humility, and the injunction of Paul, who says to the Church in Corinth: “Follow my example as I follow the example of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 11.1)
With our safeguarding failures, the Church of England has been humbled, and we need greater independence to ensure proper scrutiny and safety going forward. Work is being done on that, and I am pleased in my year as the one archbishop standing to have played a small part in bringing that forward. And here in the York Diocese, I’m hugely grateful for our safeguarding team, for the hundreds of Parish Safeguarding Officers, for the work of our DSA and their team. And I want to celebrate again our annual Safeguarding Week, which happened last week, because it is a hugely positive contribution to the life of the diocese.
But we also need humility and boldness in other areas of our lives. The processes around Living in Love and Faith have left us in a place where trust has been damaged, and where recent decisions about what would be required if we were to go forward have pleased and reassured some bits of our church, but deeply hurt and dismayed others. None of this gives me any joy. I am pleased that the Prayers of Love and Faith are commended and can be used in existing church services, and will be a blessing to faithful same sex couples in our church. But I am very mindful of the concerns and anxieties this causes some, and of the ways in which others who hoped for more feel, at the moment, very let down.
Humility, yes, but also boldness. This year, the Church of England grew numerically for the fourth year running in this diocese. We are seeing the number of young people and young adults being confirmed going up. This is very good news, and we need to take hold of it. Maybe even seeing the connection between a church that is humbler and now a church that is becoming, with that humility, bolder in sharing the gospel. And more people are responding.
Finally, one of the features of my ministry this year, has been a huge amount of ecumenical engagement on the world stage.
I attended the funeral of Pope Francis, the inauguration of Pope Leo, I accompanied His Majesty the King on that historic visit to Rome a few weeks ago, where I had the enormous, and not so many years ago unimagined, privilege of leading worship alongside Pope Leo in the Sistine Chapel and seeing our King, in the afternoon, installed again in the Church of Saint Paul’s Outside the Walls, reviving a tradition that was lost at the Reformation and is itself a powerful sign of what a reconciled universal church might begin to look like. Not one where all differences are erased, but where fundamental love for Christ and one another put all differences into proper perspective. A week later, I was back in Rome to see Saint John Henry Newman declared a Doctor of the Church – the 38th in 2000 years, and only the second Englishman, the other being Bede. In order to become a Doctor of the Church, everything Newman wrote was scrutinised and found to be consistent with the teaching of the Universal Church, that is, everything he wrote and every sermon he preached as an Anglican as well as a Roman Catholic.
And in September, I was in Mechelen to mark the Centenary of those historic talks between the Anglican and Roman Catholic Church, which were pioneered by the friendship of Lord Halifax, an Anglican layman from Yorkshire and Cardinal Mercia. And the current Lord Halifax was with me, as was the current Archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels who has already written to ask whether he can come and visit York.
And this has also been the 1700th anniversary of the Council of Nicaea. At the beginning of the summer, I attended a conference in Chichester where Bartholomew the Ecumenical Patriarch spoke about the unity our credal definitions give us, and I was honoured to host him at a dinner in London, where he gifted me a pectoral cross of Constantinople, which I meant to put on this morning to show you, but forgot.
I also attended a conference organised by the World Council of Churches on the persecuted church in Nagorno-Karabakh, a region of Azerbaijan and I heard absolutely harrowing stories of ethnic cleansing. Just last week, I was in the Holy Land hearing traumatising testimonies of how Palestinian people, including Christian Palestinian people, have basic rights denied them and their lives and futures squeezed out of them.
And throughout this year, and despite all the other things that have come into my diary, I have managed to maintain something that the Lord laid on my heart a few years ago: what I’ve been calling a Lord’s Prayer tour. Over and over again, I’ve been giving the same talks about how these words, the words Jesus gave us, don’t just teach us how to pray, they teach us how to live, and particularly the enormous power and significance of the opening word, ‘Our’. Not my father or your father. Not my God or your God. Not my church, not your church, not my way of saying things or your way of saying things, but ours. And therefore, we belong to one another and must bear one another’s burdens and have mutual responsibilities one to another, and cannot say of others, I don’t need you. And we should give honour to the weaker parts, and should not tolerate anyone being left behind. We should seek out the lost. We should turn the other cheek, walk the extra mile. All the things we see in Jesus Christ, all the things we need to nurture in ourselves. “Teach us to resemble Thee, in Thy sweet humility.”
And this, dear friends, is so important for our life together in this great diocese, where with humility and boldness we must continue to pay attention to our own unity and mission.
I give thanks that following our successful roadshow earlier this year, the Free Will Offer for next year has gone up, and gone up above inflation. This is a huge encouragement. More, of course, is needed. Flourishing and better financially resourced parishes in some parts of the diocese do need to give generously to support parishes in less well-resourced and more challenging circumstances. We all need to examine our stewardship and give in response to God’s abundant generosity to us in Christ, holding fast to the biblical principle of what it means to be the church, a body where we belong together.
Quite simply, we cannot live Christ’s story on our own because it is a story that binds us to God, who is a trinity of persons, and a church, which is a diversity of people. It also means that in changing circumstances, our plans need to flex and shift, as we’ll hear more about later. It’s now apparent that we need to grow our way out of our financial challenge, holding on to our vision of ministry belonging to the whole people of God and of the urgent need for an increase in vocations. And yes, of course, all vocations, but particularly vocations to ordained ministry. This is a priority for the whole Church of England and a priority for us. And I’m really grateful for the work our fabulous new Diocesan Director of Ordinands, Sam Taylor, is pioneering and for the support she is receiving across the diocese. Again, more of that later. We need more priests so that the whole people of God can be nurtured and supported in their ministry.
So I continue to pray for a simpler, humbler and bolder church here in our Diocese of York and across the Church of England.
I continue to believe that we can find ways of living together with our disagreements over human sexuality and human identity, and I continue to long for us to be a church where everyone is counted in. I believe we must do better to be a safer church and submit to independent scrutiny.
I rejoice when there are opportunities to bring us closer together, and I despair when we turn on one another. I also want to say how very, very grateful I am in what has been a challenging year for me, for the prayers and support of this diocese, which I love very much. And I especially want to thank Bishop Flora, Bishop Eleanor and Bishop Barry for the additional burdens they’ve carried this year and also to Peter Warry and those who serve in the diocesan office, and for our fabulous team of archdeacons.
Sisters and brothers, it is together that we are called to live the story of Christ, to be like Christ, and to be simpler, humbler and bolder in our faith.
See, amid the winter snow. See, amid the horrors in Gaza, the privations in the West Bank, the persecution of Christians in many places across the world and other places of horror and conflict. See, amid the polarisation in our society, the denial of human rights, the shocking inequalities of wealth and opportunity, even the terrible abuses that too many people continue to suffer, see amid our own crises and challenges, our opportunities for mission, and the spiritual thirst in our society. See, amid all the difficulties of the world, the coming of Jesus Christ, the dawn of hope.
Sacred infant, all divine,
what a tender love was Thine,
thus to come from highest bliss
down to such a world as this.
Teach us to resemble thee.
