“Now you are the Body of Christ and individually members of it.”
— 1 Cor. 12:27
From October it is possible to see in the fields those remarkable flocks (‘murmurations’) of starlings that are sometimes visible over the fields – great swirling congregations that arrange into beautiful geometric patterns, like a typhoon or some great, whirling spirit. By plotting clusters of dots on a computer screen and giving them various commands, scientists have discovered each starling finds its own way amid the flock by following three simple precepts: fly fast, follow another bird, don’t crash! Three starling commandments. These commands allow for a beautiful balance between individual expression, random interpretation and group formation – what we would call community. Fly fast, follow another bird, don’t crash.
Rules or morals for common life are essential for people attempting to live together. One of the challenges of life in Britain today is that society can be clearer on individual morals than on communal ones. Our most highly prized values – things like tolerance, self-expression and freedom – have brought us great rewards. But they don’t immediately help us know how to live in relationship with others, where our personal freedoms quickly end up crashing into each other. In our unsettled and increasingly frantic political discourse, in our gathered and online conversations, we are urgently in need of a new kind of consensus – a way to fly in formation.
Autumn and harvest are also times when churches might throw caution to the wind and hold a barn dance or ceilidh, which is a kind of Anglican murmuration… As, more profoundly, is the processional movement to take Holy Communion, always beautiful and moving to witness. How we move together is something to which we should pay careful attention if we are, as St Paul insists, not just a body, but the body of Christ, brought by baptism into a common life. As such we are to be a witness to the world, a colony of the new creation, rehearsing a hopeful and eternal way of life.
Friends, in these early weeks of my time with you, I have been so grateful for the signs of common life and hopeful imagination that I’ve already witnessed: in murmurations large and small. In last week’s licensing services in Hemel and Dunstable, in gatherings of lay ministers and new curates, in the exemplary work of the ministry teams at Holywell Lodge, in the DBF and Bishop’s Council. If I may say so (borrowing from George Harrison) there is something in the way you move!
And there needs to be, does there not. Not simply for the coordinated and well-oiled running of an institution, not to keep everything spinning and everybody happy, but because God calls us to live this way: for the sake of the world, and his coming kingdom. As politics and society are finally waking up to realise, religious belief has an extraordinary capacity to shape culture (to grow soil, one way or another) and so, as I put forward at my Installation sermon, we have the signal task of preparing the ground for God’s Kingdom here, along with others of good faith. And our table discussion this morning is designed to help us think about this vital connection between God, people and places that comes together in Jesus Christ, and which will be a theme in my ministry among you.
It is not our task to save the world by our own immense activity, but by the Holy Spirit’s power, to live and move in such a way that others will see God has already done so in the Lord Jesus.
The three starling commandments I have begun to commend in our governance meetings are these: charity, locality, integrity.
Our discussion, and perhaps especially our disagreement must have as its keynote that generous, adventurous love and charitable posture which is the character of the body of Christ. For no body just has parts: it has personality. And love is the Christian personality. It must be recognisable in every movement we make. So, I will not be slow in reminding us of that and, in return, will doubtless need to be reminded of it myself!
Our synodical life is a representative gathering of a church that is essentially local, so that our decisions and conversation are never in abstract, but must have an alertness to place, for God is in every place, whether people know it or not.
And integrity is the hallmark of this – so that, whatever we find ourselves discussing, the same personality is recognisable. We all know how hard it is to trust someone who appears to show up differently in different situations. We might hear reported speech and think ‘that doesn’t sound like them’… This can be exceedingly hard to do, but our aspiration must be for our common life as a diocese to be consistently recognisable at different scales and to different people.
We will therefore need occasionally – perhaps during today – to take a ‘charity check’, or a ‘locality check’, or an ‘integrity check’, to see whether we are being true to ourselves.
Today’s business contains significant items that seek to demonstrate these values, this common life. Our shared commitment to racial justice, or a balanced budget (to take two significant examples) are not truly separate but expressions of the same desire to move together, which we do in every season of challenge or celebration.
Thank you for the warmth of your welcome to Rebecca, myself and our family. We feel at home here, and among you, and that counts for a very great deal.
Thank you for your contribution to this Synod and to the local church in each deanery. I have remarked at a couple of gatherings recently that the deanery is in some senses the ‘middle child’ of diocesan governance: but that is, of course, its strength – close enough to the local truly to see and feel it, while also being close enough to diocesan structures to understand and translate, in both directions.
While I am expressing gratitude, at my first diocesan synod I want to record my particular thanks to David White, our Diocesan Secretary, whose capability and care – and that of the splendid staff he leads at Holywell Lodge – have steered such a steady course during the vacancy.
Thanks, too, for all those who shaped and served the vacancy-in-see process. That period required a very great deal from you, and the Church is extremely grateful for your service in this way.
It will be hard for Synod to imagine the Diocese of St Albans without Bishop Richard, who has overseen us with such pastoral wisdom during these 14 years. There will be opportunities in the coming month to cheer his ministry and pray him and Helen on their way but please know, Richard, how grateful this diocese is for you.
This being the Church of England, the process for considering his successor will not be especially speedy (‘fly fast’ is not generally one of our commandments – maybe not ‘don’t crash’, either…) but will begin at the next Bishop’s Council on 23rd November, with a proposal being made thereafter to the Dioceses Commission that makes the case for another Bishop of Bedford being a good and necessary thing. As you might imagine, I certainly believe that it is – and will keep you informed of progress.
The word ‘synod’ is not, it must be said, immediately attractive: having that damp, churchy quality that rarely quickens the pulse. But its literal meaning is to walk together, as in a dance or a murmuration.
So, sisters and brothers, let us then be synodical, let us live and move and have our being in Christ, and so find his eternal life filling our lungs, electrifying our limbs and our members, that the world may see him risen.
Amen.