Ant-wisdom and Bird-wisdom: Practically Human in Life and Ministry

Introduction

Many of you will know William Blake’s famous water colour of Babylon’s 6^th century king Nebuchadnezzar.  He has been reduced to the status of an animal prowling around on all fours, his face half human, half beast.  (In fact, this condition known as lycanthropy afflicted his son Nabonidus, but the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible attributes it to Nebuchadnezzar on account of his legendary arrogance.)  The message is that power, when it is driven by hubris, has a corroding effect on the character of the perpetrator.  In this condition of abasement, conscience and rationality are forfeited.  A person is driven by their appetites; or as we say, they are at the mercy of their animal instincts. In the church where I was an incumbent, there was a series of four corbels in the south aisle that charted the decay of a human soul, a kind of rake’s progress except that the besetting sin in his case was greed. A noble face in the first corbel began to be distorted and show animal features in the second. By the third grotesque it was clear where he was going, and by the fourth he had become fully pig-like. It was like a medieval version of The Picture of Dorian Gray with its secret picture that accurately depicts the erosion of a human soul. The message is: you become like the gods you worship, or as Seneca said, to honour the gods, it is enough to imitate them. ‘Human beings are like beasts that have no understanding’ says one of the wisdom psalms.

Let me jump a few centuries to the 21^st.  A few years ago in the Cathedral, we held a controversial exhibition of sculptures by the South African artist Jane Alexander. Her work is her response to apartheid and oppression, and it depicts human beings not in the nobility of fulfilling their humanity, but in the tragedy of failing to realise it: falling short, we could say in the language of the Letter to the Romans.  They were troubling pieces of human beings and animals in various states of disfigurement and distortion, and we were advised not to allow children into the exhibition unsupervised. The message was that the ‘dominion’ given to humanity in creation has become corrupted, so that all relationships are susceptible to being skewed, whether within societies and collectives, in the interpersonal sphere, or towards the natural order. 

Alexander talks about ‘humanimals’, partly in the good sense of wanting to place human beings within the created order of fauna (where animals as often as not judge us by their behaviour), but also in this debased sense of human ‘bestiality’ driven by the id, breaking the boundaries of civilised existence, wreaking havoc across a divinely-ordered world.  As a theologian, my take on her work was that it was an interpretation of the fall, rather in the tradition of Dante’s Divine Comedy where sin becomes visibly expressed in the bodies and bearing of its practitioners. In Jane Alexander’s masks and deceptions, like Dante, in the bizarre contortions of her figures we see not only how other people are but also how we ourselves are, both as oppressors and as victims.  Exhibiting these pieces in a sacred space pointedly raised questions about the nature of humanity, both in the state of destructiveness and collapse, and by implication as potentially redeemed by divine grace.

The theological issue here is what it means to be created as (or in?) the image of God. Whatever that is, and there is a large literature that discusses it, we can agree that becoming wise and therefore more fully human leads to the divine image in us being restored, those distortions and contortions imagined in art and sculpture being gently bent back (which is what the word ‘religion means’ into their proper human shape. So let us turn to the conference theme Being Human, Being Wise. I have been asked to give this address under the title ‘Practically Human in Life and Ministry’. I like the meanings cunningly elided in the word ‘practically’.  It partly means being practical about wisdom, asking how being wise makes a difference to ordinary life. But it also smuggles in the idea of an ‘almost’, of having potential and being on the way to realising it. The thing about wisdom in the Bible, as I am sure you have heard earlier in this conference, is that its scope is as wide and deep as human life. It plumbs the depths of the riddles of existence: why is there suffering, why are we mortal, what purpose exists in the universe? The great wisdom texts of Job, Ecclesiastes and some of the Psalms engage with these questions at a profound level, disturbingly so for some people who would prefer their faith not to be troubled by these complex and elusive dilemmas. But biblical wisdom also has as much to say about chronos as it does about kairos – ordinary time as well as the ecstasies and the agonies of human life. And it is aspects of our ordinary days that I want to focus on today.

In 2008 I wrote a little book called Wisdom and Ministry: the call to leadership. For those who have not read it, it tries to make links between the wisdom literature of the Hebrew Bible and Christian ministry today. It partly does this by exploring the ‘big’ themes in the classical wisdom writings such as Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Song of Songs and the wisdom psalms. But it also takes as exemplars key characters in the ‘narrated wisdom’ of the Old Testament: stories like Joseph, David, Solomon and Daniel that everyone agrees are among the best in the Bible.

Perhaps it’s worth saying why I wrote the book at all.  There is no limit to the books on ministry, and I did not want to add to them without having something distinctive to say.  That ‘something’ was to try and address a deficit I detected in the biblical models the church draws on in its discourse about ministry.  If you look at the Anglican ordinal, you will find its recommended readings from the Hebrew Bible peppered with the calls of prophets. Deacons get Samuel, Isaiah and Jeremiah. Priests get Second and Third Isaiah and Jeremiah. Bishops have Second and Third Isaiah and Ezekiel. I spoke in the General Synod debate about this when the new texts for ordinal were being discussed. Why is vocation to ordination in the Church of England presumed to be like being called as a Hebrew prophet? There is a lot to be said for prophets of course: ‘O that all the Lord’s people were prophets’ says Moses.  But I do not think Anglican parish ministry is very like being an Isaiah, a Jeremiah or an Ezekiel, at least most of the time.  If we model it on that presumption, I think we shall be misleading ordinands about what it is they undertaking.  Indeed, I think it raises expectations that are not helpful. 

However, there is another influential group of writers in the Hebrew Bible waiting in the wings for us to take them seriously in the context of ministry.  These are the wise of Israel who have left us such a rich deposit of texts.  Every ancient near eastern society had its wise. They seem to have had a special role in equipping young men for leadership, especially in the royal court. The Old Testament has even taken over a long section of an ancient Egyptian text called The Wisdom of Amenemope almost word for word in a passage in the Book of Proverbs. This illustrates how cosmopolitan wisdom was in antiquity. So I asked in the Synod: why has this tradition not been recognised as a source for ordination readings?  I decided to test the viability of this idea out for myself, as I was invited to give the ordination retreat addresses in Durham soon afterwards. The retreat was entirely based on wisdom texts from the Old Testament. That was the seed of my book. For me, coming to the end of my full-time ministerial career, if I have learned one thing since being ordained 38 years ago, it is that what is needed in the church’s leaders, in any leaders, but especially among the ordained, is wisdom.

It is tempting to stay with these marvellous texts. However, with this literature as our starting point, I want to go beyond them in reflecting with you on two aspects of practical wisdom today. I wish I could have explored ten more: the scope of wisdom is so all-embracing. In particular, I wish I could have explored how wisdom can inform our interpersonal pastoral practice, though some of this is in my book. I want to focus on these particular areas because both of them touch our lives all the time, yet the questions wisdom puts to them are not always as much noticed as they should be if we are to be ‘practically human’ in our ministerial roles and our personal lives. These two ‘wisdoms’ are themes distinctive to our modern world which I have been reflecting on recently and would like to share with you. Perhaps what I can offer are two worked examples of practical wisdom that may help us apply sound wisdom principles to other aspects of life so that we become wiser in our thinking, our practice and our behaviours.

So that you have the road map, here are my two themes: organisational wisdom and digital wisdom. Having begun this lecture on an animal theme, I’d like to offer two images to represent each of these, drawn straight out of the wisdom literature: the ant and the bird. They can be our non-human travelling companions, and help us, say our texts, learn about practical wisdom. There is ant-wisdom, and there is bird-wisdom. I doubt if these are very different: each may turn out to be an aspect of the other. So let’s look at them in turn. 

 

Organisational Wisdom: the Ant

The first is organisational wisdom. Perhaps I should explain why I have taken this as my first worked example. For 26 years my day job has been in cathedrals, and for 18 of those as a dean in two places. When you are directing and caring for the life of a cathedral, especially a large one like Durham, you find yourself searching for models to help you understand what kind of organisation you are leading.  A cathedral is of course a religious foundation.  But it is also an educational institution; a leisure destination; it is heritage and parkland; a concert hall and exhibition gallery; a museum; and not least, a retail and catering outlet. In all these, finance plays a large part. So we are a small to medium-sized enterprise, a business with a turnover of several million pounds. Now, I do not baulk at the thought that Durham Cathedral is a business. We have no choice about that. So the important question is: how do we make sure that it is a good business? And by ‘good’, I don’t only mean successful.  I mean a virtuous, ethical business which a Christian church can be proud of. And this is one place among many where organisational wisdom is not simply desirable but essential.

What do I mean by organisational wisdom? It certainly includes paying attention to the sound principles of ‘economy’, oikonomia, literally ‘household management’ about which proverbial wisdom has so much to say. The virtues of time-wisdom (as my colleague Stephen Cherry calls it in one of his books), leading and managing people well, keeping your word, using your resources prudently, planning for the future, responding with agility to crises: all of these are reckoned to be essential in the Hebrew Bible’s assessment of practical wisdom if your enterprise is going to flourish.

The locus classicus is the 6^th chapter of Proverbs with its admonition to the lazy to imitate the ant:

           Go to the ant, you sluggard. (NRSV has lazybones but that lets us off too jokily when the author is deadly serious; and anyway, the word sluggard is marvellously onomatopoeic of the idle man or woman who is an addict to somnolence and sleep, lying prostrate, bloated by lack of application and effort, turning on their bed like a door turns on its hinges as Proverbs says in another place.) Go to the ant; consider its ways and be wise. Without having any chief or officer or ruler, it prepares its food in summer, and gathers its sustenance in harvest.

And then the unforgettable portrait of the sluggard:

            How long will you lie there, O sluggard? When will you rise from your sleep? A little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to rest, and poverty will come upon you like a thief, and want, like an armed robber.

So ant-wisdom embodies the virtues of good organisation, planning for the future, working collaboratively and knowing how to read the signs of the times. The opposite is sluggard-folly, not just laziness but making everything vague and ambiguous, not to say pointing the finger when things go wrong which in the end will subvert the structure and bring it crashing down. This is a familiar theme of wisdom literature in its many manifestations: consider how well-ordered the natural world is. It is that way because a well-ordered God has made it. So emulate this well-ordered state, and you will find that it transforms your organisation.

Of course, reflective wisdom looked into the heart of creation and found it more complex, more elusive and more baffling than Proverbs seems to think. This is what makes Job and Ecclesiastes the masterpieces of Old Testament wisdom. But that is not to undermine the value of practical wisdom, any more than quantum theory undermines Einsteinian or even Newtonian physics. It depends what job you need them to do.  In one way, precepts like those in Proverbs simply state the obvious. But the obvious, stated in a larger context gives them a particular range and depth. The 6^th century Rule of St Benedict is another example of how the profound and the practical live easily side by side as they do in Proverbs. The most-read parts of the Rule focus on the Christian life, what obedience means, the various degrees or steps of humility, living the religious life together in community and so on. But much of it, given no less emphasis in the cyclical reading of the Rule in Benedictine communities, focuses on how to order the liturgy, when to say which psalms, managing the convent’s finances, stewardship of kitchen implements and garden tools, and looking after your clothes. What transfigures those workaday instructions is the context they are placed in which is wisdom, virtue and discipleship. ‘Who sweeps a room as for thy laws makes that and the action fine’ says George Herbert in the well-known words. The message is: calibrate your organisation according to wisdom and virtue, and it will change everything.

This is where I have concerns about the relentless ascendancy of organisational and management language and practice in the church. You cannot lead any organisation these days without finding yourself speaking about strategic objectives, KPIs (key performance indicators), USP (unique selling points), key messages and outputs for niche markets & target audiences and so on. As well as being a Cathedral dean, I am a governor of a school and a university, the president of a Durham charity, and the titular head of house of a Durham college. Whether the business is religion, education, arts and leisure or healthcare, the discourse is the same. And so is the tension, which sometimes feels like a widening gulf, between practitioners and administrators: those whose job it is to (jargon alert) deliver the core business and those tasked with resourcing and administering it.

I don’t want to make cheap jibes about people who work hard to keep the wheels on our sometimes fragile institutions. They need our respect and gratitude. However, I have a hunch that the processes we follow and the language we use to talk about them ought to be consistent with those institutions’ values. In the case of a Christian organisation like a cathedral, we should expect theology, religious practice and organisational behaviour to inform one another. In my shorthand, religious values should make an organisation wise, to the extent that its behaviours might be nuanced differently from those of other organisations. For example, in our governance and leadership roles as a Cathedral Chapter, it is tempting to map our functions on to those of a board of charity trustees with the Dean as Chair. In our management roles we might think of ourselves as a senior team with the Dean as CEO.  But the reality, both in Christian history and in the Cathedrals Measure that underlies our statutes, is that our roles don’t fall easily into either of those familiar organisational models. What a Chapter is required to exercise is oversight, what the tradition calls episcope, and that is shaped not just by systems theory or good organisational practice but by Christian theological reflection in an ecclesial context. 

Here are two more examples of organisational life. When it comes to setting objectives, we should not so lock ourselves into a rigid planning mentality that there is no space for the manoeuvrability, agility and spontaneity that are needed when circumstances change, or new opportunities arise, and we want to respond quickly to what God may be doing in an unforeseen way. Similarly in our employment practice, where we are subject to the law like any other employer, we should try to resist going straight into adversarial procedures – grievances, complaints, disciplinaries etc.) without first trying, as the gospel urges us to, to make friends with our adversary quickly, to resolve issues through face to face meeting and personal conversation. I am not being naïve here: often, informal personal  approaches will not work, and this is when we should not be afraid of formal processes as a way of caring for and protecting the interests of both employee and employer. We should not too quickly sacrifice the interpersonal for the structural. And this, it seems to me, is how theological wisdom-shaped values can make a difference, allowing what we do to be illuminated by how we do it.  

What am I saying here? Not at all that an institution, least of all a Christian one, should be inefficient, unprofessional, casual about financial discipline, careless about sound stewardship and planning. I like good institutions, and I like good organised religion precisely because at their best, organisations not only harness human energies, creativity and skills but also discipline them, give them shape so that they work for the betterment of us all.  This is what Proverbs admires in its ant-wisdom. But an ant colony is more than an organisation. It is a true organism with its own self-generating life and wholeness, a community of living things whose task is to express what Bonhoeffer called ‘life together’. There is a danger that organisations lose their grasp of this insight, mutate into impersonal, mechanistic principalities and powers, take on a kind of demonic persona which, unchecked, ends up by suppressing what is wise, humane and life-giving in communities and relationships. Honora O’Neill’s Reith Lectures of a decade ago offered timely warnings against micro-management and the culture of mistrust it creates. If I read the poetry of William Blake aright, this dehumanising tendency of institutions was the aspect of the industrial revolution he most hated. Its destructiveness is chillingly chronicled a generation later by Charles Dickens in his novel Dombey and Son where the construction of the railway becomes a metaphor of the suppression of love, intimacy and humanity in Dombey’s soul. In his late great work Bleak House, the dead hand of remorseless process, this time in the Court of Chancery, ends up with legal costs wiping out the entire value of the estate whose succession it has been engaged for generations trying to determine. I have sat in meetings that have felt like ‘Jarndyce versus Jarndyce’ and nearly lost the will to live.

You are all engaged in pastoral practice of various kinds, as am I. We can perhaps translate organisational wisdom into an important pastoral principle which perhaps does not get stated as often as it should.  It is this: that organisations and structures need and deserve pastoral care every bit as much as individual people. In particular, the tasks of caring for the whole church, or our local expression of it, cannot be made less of a priority than exercising pastoral ministry towards individuals. This is a familiar tension for anyone leading or managing in every organisation. When someone has to be disciplined, made redundant or dismissed, the cry goes up: ‘you only care about the organisation, not the people’.  So in the church and in other person-centered organisations, senior teams agonise about applying difficult processes to individuals in case that should appear (as it is often presented) as a lack of pastoral care for them personally. On the other hand, too many benign institutions, churches among them, refuse to take necessary action against employees because it may damage the organisation. And this is often a form of cowardice. How the church negotiates this difficult boundary between being over-forgiving and unduly rigorous is an important aspect of its wisdom, and its corporate mental and spiritual health.

Here is a current example. I am told that the Church of England is now going to require every candidate for the episcopate to answer a questionnaire on his (and one day her) sexual history. This exercise is to be supervised by a current bishop and reported to the Archbishop of the province. This is meant to ensure that bishops are monogamous, and if they are single, or are gay and in civil partnerships, that they are celibate. I am sure we all understand the anxieties that are driving this process, not all of them fuelled by debates in England.  But I want to ask whether this presumption of suspicion about clergy who will already be senior leaders in the church, and the intrusive way it sounds as though it will be enacted, is the way to raise confidence? I hardly think so. It worries me that the church is becoming such a low-trust organisation.

How much of accepted pastoral practice is transferrable from individual to collective pastoral care, I wonder?  I am thinking of client-led approaches to the talking therapies of counselling and psychotherapy, for example, where the primary task is to listen attentively, learn the person’s story, understand the context and try to offer interpretation that will help both the direction the narrative takes and the language used about it. How do we listen to the ‘story’ an institution tells and allow it to inform our pastoral response? In the words of our conference title, how does an organisation not only become wise but also more human? I have been struck by a book from the 1980s by James Hopewell, Congregation: Story and Structure. Informed by both social anthropology and theology, it argued that local churches have their own distinct narratives that need to be understood before any effective ministry can be offered in them. He linked this with the angels of the seven churches in the Apocalypse, which he took to mean that churches, like all organisations, have their own ‘personality types’ which we should not ignore, their own ‘grain’ that needs to be well-understood if effective ministry is to take place within them. Insofar as wisdom means insight, understanding, seeing into the life of things, this could be a question we could usefully discuss.

 

Digital Wisdom: the Bird

The second aspect of practical wisdom I want to explore is digital wisdom. Like the organisations we belong to, the digital world brings us into structures and networks that far transcend our own intimate relationships. The difference is that it does this without our always being fully conscious of it. There is a wisdom text in the 10^th chapter of Qoheleth that is made for the Twitter age. ‘Do not curse the king, even in your thoughts, or curse the rich, even in your bedroom; for a bird of the air may carry your voice, or some winged creature may tell the matter.’ So bird-wisdom means being careful what we disclose, where, and to whom. Even where I think I am most alone, most anonymous, reckon I am seen by no-one and leave no traces, some little creature with wings can exploit my laptop, my phone, my tablet and give me away.

Our need for digital wisdom is not simply important, but urgent. Ours is the first generation to be living with the real and complex changes that are happening to us as a result of almost universal electronic connectivity. That the invention of the internet has brought us huge benefits is something I do not need to argue today. Access to information on a scale undreamed-of to any previous generation is an asset without price. But neither do I need to remind you of its dark side. The well-publicised exploitation of the web to fuel ideological extremism, terrorism, violence and pornography is well known. We don’t need anyone to tell us not to venture into places with big red ‘keep out’ signs. If we go there and come to harm, we have only ourselves to blame.

But there are less visible hazards out there too. I am thinking of the threats posed to personal privacy and security through digital surveillance, something we have heard a lot about in recent weeks. Not only are smartphones sophisticated tracking devices, but we leave indelible traces in cyberspace through our emails, our visits to websites and the content we share through social networking sites. We are right to worry about the as-yet unforeseen consequences of this for politics and society in the 21^st century. And it should make us think very carefully about how we behave in a world where there are no secrets, where everything is in principle open, public and disclosed. This is where bird-wisdom comes in: be careful what you say when you think you are on your own. Someone is probably listening.

In the history of ideas, it may turn out that whenever any new invention or discovery leads to an intellectual revolution and significantly shifts a culture into new ways of thought, the risks are greatest in the first and second generations. It was in the aftermath of the invention of nuclear weapons that the cold war posed a particular threat.  The mechanisation of labour that the industrial revolution ushered in is another example of the inevitable time-lag in realising the threats it brought as well as the opportunities. The inventions of printing and photography may other instances. Technology always accelerates away from our ability not only to use it responsibly and manage it safely, but even more importantly, to give it shape and discipline by placing it a landscape of values and ethics. 

Wisdom has a special emphasis on the care, nurture and protection of the vulnerable. Among these are the young. Their formation and upbringing is a major, perhaps the major preoccupation of this kind of reflective biblical literature. In the first few chapters of Proverbs, the writer develops the imagery of a young man walking along the street trying to find his way through life. From houses on either side, two ladies call out to him and attempt to entice him into their homes. The one is Lady Wisdom, who promises a life-giving banquet of bread and wine, an environment in which to flourish and grow as a human being. The other is Dame Folly.  She also offers a feast of a kind to delight the senses and promises immediate and easy rewards. But her way leads inevitably to corruption and death. The trouble is, they both sound plausible to a young man who is easily led. These chapters tell us what the purpose of Proverbs is: to educate the young by informing their hearts and consciences and minds. This it does partly by encouragement and promise, partly by warning.  How we protect young people in the largely ungoverned environment of the internet, how to steer them towards Lady Wisdom rather than Dame Folly, is already a very major concern to policy-makers and parents alike. At the same time as the web builds up and plants, it also destroys and overthrows.

I need to declare at this point that I am an enthusiastic user of social media, especially tweeting and blogging. The little tweeting bird Ecclesiastes warns us about is my symbol of the gifts and dangers of social media. I have been reading about a book I have not yet seen called The Psychodynamics of Social Media by Aaron Balick. He argues that a tweet is more like a thought than a statement, and yet, as we have seen when things de-rail in spectacularly public ways, it is also a statement that has legal existence and carries consequences, specifically libel; and if not that, then outcomes that can damage reputations, including your own, for good. We are not used to a world where thinking aloud can put us at risk; but as psychologists recognise, it is the way in which the instant feedback of social media acts as a kind of addictive intoxicant that raises the stakes alarmingly. It does this because it privileges the instant over the longer-term: this minute over the next half-hour let alone tomorrow or next week. Add to that the disinhibiting aspects of being, as we imagine, alone with our computer.  As Ecclesiastes says, a little bird is waiting to carry messages far and wide.

Earlier this year, I encountered this worrying aspect of social media for myself. Having married into a Sunderland-supporting family 40 years ago, I was concerned, with many others, about the appointment of their new manager Paolo di Canio. As you know, he had proclaimed himself as ‘not a racist but a fascist’, had given a notorious fascist salute at a match in Italy, and proudly wore a tattoo honouring Mussolini. I wrote an open letter on my blog asking him to clarify his position. I don’t say that the blog ‘went viral’ but it was picked up by the national and local media and evidently put him under some pressure. His helpful clarification came the next day. So in a sense, the story is over. All the nationals welcomed it, some of them making uncalled-for flattering comments such as ‘the Dean hitched up his cassock, took aim, and scored spectacular goal’. I had a lot of grateful emails and tweets from supporters. 

But the unpleasant surprise was how much digital vitriol was flung in my face, this too mainly from fans. How dare the church interfere in something it knows nothing about. How dare I take on the role of the North East’s thought-police. How dare I assume that the club’s fans weren’t able to think for themselves. And so on. If you read the blog, I dare say some of this stuff is still there in the comments. I didn’t respond to the abuse, but I did try to engage in dialogue with the more measured critics. I said that all I was doing was to point to what di Canio had said and done on the record and, given the vast influence football has on the young, this was a matter of public interest. I mentioned my own German-Jewish ancestry, with my particular awareness of the fascism poses to the world. Some of this has become an intelligent debate about football, politics and faith and of course I welcome this. If you follower The Secret Footballer in the Guardian, or have read the book, you will find that there is at least one thoughtful Premier League player somewhere who asks himself these kinds of questions, and this evidence of reflective football is most welcome.

I am telling you this because the boundary between the supposedly safe internet domains we tend to inhabit and the places of hatred, abuse, trolling and bullying is gossamer thin. Touch it, and it is as if the entire web trembles. I am not saying that sometimes, social responsibility may need to take us close to a dangerous edge: there are always risks in trying to do something good. ‘Evil happens when good men and women do nothing’ said Edmund Burke famously. But I have learned that even a relatively blunt tool like a personal blog can get caught in an undertow that can quickly drag you away from the safety of the shore into very turbulent waters indeed.

We need, says Balick, to become acutely self-aware in our use of social media, to retain our sense of individual responsibility and educate our consciences rather than lose our own identities to the digital black hole. The internet is very much a place where we are in danger of gaining the whole world and losing our own souls, our deepest selves. So where is digital wisdom to be found? Last year I wrote another blog called The Responsible Tweeter. This was an attempt to frame some basic principles of good tweeting, not only how to get the best out of 140 characters, but to draw proper boundaries around the use of a tool which, because it is so powerful, also poses significant risks. It seems to me that we simply have to know not only what is legal and what isn’t, and what is ethical and what isn’t, but what is wholesome, life-affirming and wise. I love Twitter for its elegant miniaturism, how so much can be said in so little.  This is wholly in the spirit of wisdom literature: most of Proverbs could be encapsulated in tweets, as could the Beatitudes and many other sayings of Jesus. Like photography, the discipline puts a frame round the content and powerfully focuses its point. But this can be for good or ill – and for interesting or boring. So I thought I would try my hand at twelve principles or commandments of Tweeting.  Others have offered good online guides to Twitter that contain many or all of these.  However I’ve encapsulated each principle in 140 characters or less so they can be lifted out of the blog and tweeted self-referentially in the very medium for which they are, not so much a set of imperatives as a series of hints and nudges. The emphasis is on the positive: mostly 'dos', a few 'don'ts'.  And while they were written for a particular form of social networking, most of the principles can I think be transferred to any other.

Here then are twelve precepts.

1        Be judicious. Powerful tools need careful handling. You are on a public stage.  Apply the same criteria as you would to any public medium.
2        Be chaste. Promiscuous tweeting suggests addiction. Only press ‘send’ when you have something to say. If not stay silent.
3        Be courteous. Don’t disparage or insult others (you risk libel as in any print medium). In dissent, be questioning rather than assertive.
4        Be disciplined. 140 characters impose a verbal boundary. Stick to it and don't sprawl lazily across multiple tweets on the same topic.
5        Be conversational. The art of tweeting is to engage with others, not hurl speeches into the void. Invite responses and give them.
6        Be interesting. Life is not all information, observation, profundity or humour, but don’t bore followers with trivia. Try to be original. 
7        Be tentative. The question-mark is a great way of turning bald statement into an invitation to explore. Better to travel than stand still.
8        Be communitarian. Social media are at their best in creating online communities and relationships. It is good not to be alone. Join in.
9        Be discreet. Don't break confidences, substitute for meeting, hold private conversations publicly or disclose improperly. Keep boundaries.
10      Be self-aware. Twitter can raise awareness, affirm spiritual and humane values and inspire others. Serve wisdom, truth, goodness, justice and wholeness.
11      Be generous. Share your own good things: stories, photos, blogs etc., and others' too.  Retweet/favourite the best. But don't self-promote.
12      Be relaxed. Don't obsess about follower numbers (sins of pride or envy). Small communities are often the best. Learn, grow, chuckle, enjoy. 

 

Conclusion
 

I raised the question: are ant-wisdom and bird-wisdom different? Probably not. Both have to do with the practice of wisdom in life as it is lived in public, exposed, collective ways. The larger, ‘macro’ worlds we inhabit, both organisational and digital, need to be redeemed, and become wise and humane, something that can come about when they are populated by wise individuals. At the same time, we as persons inhabiting our ‘micro’ worlds can individually grow and flourish and become better human beings and better disciples as benign macro worlds help shape personal character and identity.

I have not given as much time to working out the exegesis of the relevant wisdom texts as I would have liked. However, I am sure it can be done, and indeed, if there is enough encouragement, I would love to develop some of these ideas in a future book. Today, I do not claim more than perhaps to have sown a few seeds that may bear fruit in our reflection and discussion. I am looking forward to hearing what you have to say in response, and hope that under God, we shall all become wiser for having been together here this week and tackled these elusive but vital aspects of being healthy, virtuous and wise within a healthy, virtuous and wise church.

At the Conference of the British and Irish Association for Practical Theology (BIAPT),
York University, July 2013

Naming a Loco 'Durham Cathedral'

I am one of those clergy who have loved trains since I was in a pushchair.  As a London kid, I used to stand in my anorak on the end of the platform at King's Cross, Ian Allan train-spotter's book in hand, and watch the Gresley Pacifics setting out on their long journeys  towards exotic places like Durham and Newcastle.  I dreamed one day of travelling to this undiscovered country of the North. Far too late in life, I finally made it, as you can see.
 
So it's wonderful to be here to name and bless an East Coast class 91 electric locomotive 91114 Durham Cathedral and to link it with the Lindisfarne Gospels at Durham.  We were always clear that we wanted to bring the Gospels to Durham for the whole of the North East, to bring them back to Northumbria the cradle of English Christianity and the place of northern saints where the Gospels lived for so many centuries. Our being here today in Newcastle the regional capital symbolises that this is a real North Eastern occasion.  Both the Gospel book and our Cathedral were created in honour of St Cuthbert, the saint who belongs to all the people of the North East both north and south of the Tyne.
 
This locomotive will speak about this region everywhere it goes. I hope it will encourage people to discover the wealth and pleasures of the North East, not least by visiting the Gospels exhibition and coming to see the Cathedral, rated last week by Trip Adviser review as the UK’s top landmark destination. And because County Durham was the birthplace of the railways and is as rich in industrial heritage as it is in its Christian past, it’s especially appropriate to have the name Durham on the side of a railway locomotive.
 
The Great Western GWR was affectionately known as ‘God’s Wonderful Railway’.  I don’t see why that quirky broad-gauge line should have the monopoly on divinity or greatness. It was on this East Coast Main Line 75 years ago this very day that Gresley's A4 Mallard achieved the world speed record for a steam locomotive.  East Coast Main Line, ECML, is surely the Excellent, Classic and Most Magnificent Line. We are proud of it in this region, and I take today as meaning that the railway is proud of the region too. As a working cathedral of today and tomorrow, it is good to be linked with the 21^st century railway system with all its positive messages about the part public transport plays in environmental responsibility and sustainability.
 
I’d like to end by thanking East Coast for their generosity in mounting this celebration today. A lot of hard work has gone into getting us to this point, and I want to express our deep gratitude to them for their wonderful hospitality this morning. They have been wonderful partners in this project.  I'd now like to ask the girl and boy head choristers, Patrin and Violet, to help me in this hugely enjoyable task of naming this locomotive DURHAM CATHEDRAL.

 

On the Lindisfarne Gospels

Letters of the alphabet are relevant today when we focus on a text and its writing. I like the letter ‘M’ (something no doubt not unconnected with my name).  It is one of those that are beautifully illuminated in the Lindisfarne Gospels: see the opening page of St Mark.  So you will forgive me for focusing on that letter in an alliterative way today.

We are here to celebrate a manuscript, a man and a message. 

 

Although it is the focus of this service, the manuscript itself is perhaps what I need say least about. The celebrated Lindisfarne Gospel Book, as we all know, is one of those landmark cultural artefacts that are universal in their value and their appeal. Perhaps there are not many books in the world that are so exquisite, that hold such huge appeal and evoke such strong loyalties. It belongs to the history of civilisation not only in this county but worldwide. Here in this part of England, we think of it as ‘ours’ in a special way because its identity seems so closely connected to the North East’s strong sense of place. It is part of our landscape of faith. And insofar as it once belonged to this Cathedral Priory and lived here from its Saxon beginnings in 995 throughout the rest of the middle ages, there is something truly symbolic about its being displayed here in Durham, in the shadow of these beloved ‘mixed and massive piles’ as Sir Walter Scott called the grey towers of Durham. If only the book could tell us its story and speak! But of course, that is precisely what it does do, even today: speak. We shall come back to that.

 

The man is of course St Cuthbert. The Gospel Book was written ‘in honour of God and St Cuthbert’ not much more than a decade after he died in 687. And this too is what gives this summer’s exhibition in Durham real intellectual and spiritual importance. For we cannot understand the Gospel Book unless we know something about Cuthbert, nor can we fully appreciate its significance in isolation from the Saxon Christian world both he and it belonged to. When Cuthbert’s community left the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, they took with them the objects they valued above everything else: the relics of Cuthbert and their other saints, and their precious gospel book. We heard how Symeon of Durham wove stories around that journey in the 12^th century. They perhaps did not know that in his coffin they were also carrying Cuthbert’s own Gospel of St John, that marvellous little Saxon book that has just been purchased for the nation and is also in the exhibition. I am saying that it would have seemed impossible to that community that the saint and the manuscript written in his honour could ever be separated. So on these occasions when they are brought together in one place, Cuthbert’s place, it is like a rare conjunction of planets in the sky.

 

That so much effort, investment and cost went into creating the Lindisfarne Gospels is of course a measure of how Cuthbert was remembered.  No other saint in England has had his capacity to foster not just reverence, not just affection, not just honour but, I want to say, love. We admire our saints but I am not sure that we love them in quite the way we do Cuthbert – or this simply the way Durham people and Lindisfarne people speak of him?  I believe that although he was a native Northumbrian, he like his book belongs to us all. In this respect, he is like St Francis, and perhaps for the same reason: his simplicity, his humility, his closeness to the created world, his love for people, his vision of how all of life is transfigured by God’s mercy and grace.  This was the man the Lindisfarne Gospels were created to honour, every page of this precious manuscript a community’s tribute to the man they remembered with such love. 

 

And this of course brings us to the point of it all, the message. ‘In honour of God and St Cuthbert’. God first, then Cuthbert. If we could ask Cuthbert what he thought about such an extraordinary book being created in his honour, he would I think have been horrified, just as he would be horrified to think he was buried within this great Norman shrine. We know that he wanted to rest in the obscurity and isolation of the Inner Farne, but acknowledged with a sigh that the monks on Holy Island would not let it be so. He would have said that what matters more than anything, more than everything, is the message that the Gospel Book and this Cathedral exist to bear witness to. He would have said, don’t let your eye linger on the piers and arcades of a magnificent building, don’t let it linger on the pages of a magnificent book. Let these things draw your eye upwards to the God they point to. And if you see anything to value in my own life (this is still Cuthbert speaking), then give God the praise for his wonderful words and works.

 

When I was speaking to the media about the Lindisfarne Gospels last week, they all asked me the same question: what is significance of the book today?  I replied that as well as appreciating its cultural, artistic and historical significance, it lay in discerning the gospel within the Gospels, the good news that God has come among us in Jesus Christ, and that because of this, we can know that we are loved, there is purpose in being alive, and we can find an anchor of hope amid the changes and chances of this fleeting world. The ‘spirituality’ of the book is, with that perspective, the secret of ‘reading’ it aright, because this was all along at the heart of its message. The gospel was the truth for which Cuthbert lived and died. As another English saint was to put it seven centuries later, ‘love was his meaning’.  We can admire the pages but not penetrate their surface. Then we have ‘had the experience but missed the meaning’, as T. S. Eliot says.  The same can be said about St Cuthbert’s life and career.  The same can be said about this Cathedral.  The sheer greatness of what we admire is, I think, a challenge not to remain on the surface but to probe deep, become explorers of the spirit, try to see into the life of things, glimpse God.

 

The manuscript, the man and the message all spoke once upon a time with great power and conviction. They still do today, and always will. This unique summer when we celebrate the rich heritage of North East England is an invitation to all of us to listen. We should be intellectually, artistically, spiritually curious. We should expect the rewards to be great, for those who seek will find, for as the Scottish 17^th century writer Samuel Rutherford said, ‘God always has more light and truth to shine forth from his holy word’. And at whatever level we find ourselves doing this, I know that whatever brings us to visit the exhibition and see the Gospel Book for ourselves, we shall find our lives immeasurably enriched by what we experience, discover and enjoy.

 

At a service to celebrate the arrival of the Lindisfarne Gospels in Durham

30 June 2013

On the Next Bishop of Durham

Tomorrow is St John the Baptist’s Day, the forerunner of Jesus. He did not know the name of the one who would be revealed as the saviour of the world.  But he was to look for the man ‘on whom you see the Spirit descend’.  This is what he recognised in Jesus. He spoke of him as the promised Lamb of God and people began to follow him.  They called him Rabbi, ‘teacher’.  St John the Evangelist who tells us this seems to be saying that four things mark Jesus out: his spiritual charism, his sacrificial vocation, his teaching, and his insight into human nature.  Four marks of messiahship.
 
And perhaps they are four marks of leadership in the church in any age, although we do not look for or need little messiahs. Next Saturday we shall ordain new priests here at the Cathedral. So what do we look for in the church’s leadership as we pray for them?  We also await the announcement of our next bishop.  The Commission which recommends the appointment has finished its work. We can expect a name within a few weeks. Whoever he will be (and I wish I could say that it might be a ‘she’), we have been praying for him long before he himself has realised that this is his destiny. But perhaps it will help our prayers if we think about those qualities John the Baptist saw in the Christ who was to come.  What kind of person should occupy the See of Cuthbert? What kind of men and women does the church need in its priests? Obviously, people who put the imitation of Christ above all, who will do what Jesus tells the healed demoniac in our gospel reading: tell everyone what great things God has done.
 
I don’t suppose our new bishop needs me to tell him what bishopping is about. But it may help us as we prepare to welcome him, we hope this time for a period of many years, to think about these marks of anointing that a spiritual leader should emulate.
 
First, charism.  ‘The one on whom you see the Spirit descend and rest.’  It goes without saying that we need a man of prayer, reflection and inwardness, whose vision is shaped by a deeply nurtured relationship with God.  Yet it needs affirming that this is fundamental to spiritual leadership.  There are plenty of good theologians, people who are well read, tough, financially shrewd, articulate, kind and caring, expert strategists, and passionate for justice.  These qualities are all important in a bishop.  But like patriotism, they are not enough.  What is remembered in great church leaders is the charism of spiritual wisdom born of a deep and rich inward life.  I wonder if it is becoming harder for senior appointments in the church to be made with regard to this sine qua non. We don’t know if the next bishop will be a well-known figure with a large following, or whether he comes to us as one unknown, not yet burdened by high office.  Whichever it is, we pray for this charism in him, for under the constant scrutiny of public gaze, only the Spirit of God will set his priorities in order, stop him from thinking of himself more highly than he ought to think, save him from burning out.  Only the Spirit will be his safeguard against the cult of celebrity that bedevils public life today. Only the Spirit can save him from himself. And this goes for priests too.
 
Secondly, vocation. John says: ‘Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.’  There is a kind of dying to oneself in leadership that is part of its vocation.  Priests and bishops know what it costs to bear public office in the church.  Sydney Smith, that sharpest of clerical wits two centuries ago, said that what bishops loved most about their role was a dropping-down deadness of manner in other people because bishops had favours to bestow.  I hope we shall have a bishop who is free of the need to receive deference or to give it. The truth about a privileged position is to that it can often mean being laid on the altar of relentless demand.  The new bishop will need to see through the glamour of the job to be a servant of the servants of God.  He will need to model to an often demoralised and discouraged church the real nature of vocation, how it is self-offering for the building up of Christ’s body and the service of the world.  He will be blamed for many of the church’s ills: its decline both in numbers and influence, its waning finances, its fragile morale. It would be unfair to blame anyone personally for these realities whose causes are complex and not always well-understood.  But leaders often find themselves cast into the role of sacrificial victims.  That requires patience and humility when a bishop’s leadership is strange and baffling to some, and marginal to almost everyone else. A strong sense of calling is necessary.  
 
Thirdly, what I want to call  intelligence. When Jesus comes, he puts a question to those waiting for him: ‘What are you looking for?’  They say to him, Rabbi which means teacher.’  I don’t hesitate to say that the next bishop must be a good rabbi, literally in Hebrew a ‘great one’, like a guru, literally a ‘heavy one’, or as we might say, someone with gravitas. This means he must be a good theologian, that is, someone who constantly asks the question: how do we speak of God in the modern era?  How do we read the signs of his presence and activity?  What account do we give of Christian faith in a complex world of many faiths and meanings, and in particular, this secularised western society of ours?  What does God want for North East England and for this diocese? How can religion be offered as a credible and attractive path for scientists, philosophers, economists, historians, artists, politicians, thinking people in all walks of life?  It seems to me that these are inescapable tasks for a bishop today, and no less importantly, for priests in parishes too.  How the church engages in apologetics and evangelism in this climate will have far-reaching consequences for the intellectual survival of Christianity as public faith in this century.  Our leaders need finely nurtured Christian minds, be immersed in the Bible and Christian tradition yet also wear their learning lightly.  There must be simplicity in their depth.  That calls for real religious intelligence. It’s what it means to be a rabbi. 
 
Finally, insight.  St John says that one of Jesus’ first acts is to look at Simon and say, You are to be called Cephas: Peter, the Rock. Later in the gospel he records that Jesus ‘knew what was in the heart of everyone’. The gifts of insight, perceptiveness, discernment cannot be overrated in public life.  A bishop has to move among the great and powerful of the land without losing his integrity.  He sits at the apex of a complex, disparate institution and has to understand why it is what it is.  At times he must speak for a wider public, even the nation, if not in Durham, then in the House of Lords.  He will face difficult issues to do with the future of the establishment, relations with other faith communities, women bishops, gay marriage and human sexuality where he must hold the ring amid fractious disputes.  More intractably, he will be a senior public representative of religion at a time when many people see no place for faith, as I’ve said.  He will not be able to arrest the devastating slide in church attendance, but he may perhaps help the church not to despair.  He needs to be a ‘dealer in hope’ as Napoleon said about leaders. He will need to be a shrewd politician, know the art of the possible, temper vision with reality.  But he will also need not to be afraid of change, of taking risks, of thinking the unthinkable, of being a prophet for our times. And more intimately, he will need to have insight into the daily lives of parish clergy and the communities they serve, and this of course is the special task of our parish priests. To do this pastoral task priests and bishops must listen carefully to many disparate voices, be present to them, commit themselves to them without reserve. 
 
‘Who is sufficient for these things?’ asks Paul in one of his letters.  Who is sufficient to lead the church in telling what God has done, becoming the kind of society he speaks about in today’s epistle, living the transforming and transformed life where there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, for we are all one in Christ Jesus. It is an impossible job, of course. Anyone offered it would surely respond instantly by saying, as bishops of old used to when they were dragged off to be consecrated, nolo episcopari:: I do not want this. Only a fool would want it.  But to be a fool for Christ is also at the core of the job-description.  For our next bishop, and for our new priests, this may be food for thought and prayer in the days that lie ahead.
 
23 June 2013 (Trinity IV, the day before St John Baptist's Day)
Galatians 3.23-end; Luke 8.26-39
 

 

At St Chad's College Rector's Feast

Welcome to the St Chad’s College Rector’s Feast.

I’d like to join with the Principal and congratulate all of you for your outstanding achievements, not least in this year’s exam results.  It’s right to be celebrating success at this feast  as the year comes to an end. What I hope we all celebrate is success in the widest sense: the satisfaction of having travelled well for another year, having learned and grown in knowledge and our insight, deepened our relationships and enriched our lives.

This week, Palatinate is carrying a thought-provoking article ‘How to survive as a non-Christian at John’s’.  It speaks about our neighbours at St John’s being tucked in between ‘the supposed party animals at Cuth’s and the tiny semi-secret society that is Chad’s’. John’s people, says the author, seem to be the only ones who don’t seem to make much of an impression, reputation-wise, on the rest of the university apart from a vague sense of us being ‘religious types’.

John's people will no doubt be mulling over this intriguing piece. But what the article doesn't say is that Chad’s like John’s is a Christian foundation. As Rector, I don’t have many onerous jobs to do in the college: I give my name to this feast and attend all kinds of nice occasions dressed in this splendid gown.  But when I was invited to take up this honour as titular Head of House, it was as Dean in the Cathedral to help safeguard the historic Christian identity of this college. I hope we all do this in a way that is inclusive, generous and welcoming to everyone of all faiths and no faith at all.

But I also hope that even if you are not a religious person, you recognise the Christian values of our college. Here are some of them: a passion for justice, integrity in our collective and personal lives, collaboration in a trusting environment, the pursuit of truth not just academically but in all aspects of life; curiosity not simply about our own academic disciplines but everything; practising kindness, friendship and care; living out of courage, not fear. It’s about being not only clever and intelligent (which you all are), but humane and wise.  I like those words.

Every college has its USPs, its unique selling points.  But Chad’s are remarkable because they have a lot to do with those values and how we live them out.  Whatever they may think at St John’s about our being a ‘tiny semi-secret society’, perhaps it’s true that this is not a college that makes a big splash, even when we achieve spectacular results as we have done this year. We don’t need or want to parade our achievements. They speak for themselves in a way that is utterly convincing. There is a quiet pride in what we do, and even more, who we are.  I find this understated modesty is hugely attractive, somehow true to the ethos both of this northern city and of our Anglican founding fathers.

But I know that the passion is there. For example, you have been exercised lately about the new random allocation policy for admissions to Durham colleges and have asked that this be looked at again. I think you have gone about this in a way that does you credit: you want to preserve the values and ethos of the college, and to be fair to all who want to come here. I don’t know where this story will end, but you have had the courage to engage and provoke a debate. It’s much easier to be silent than to speak, as I found to my own cost recently when I wrote a blog about fascism and football and was amazed what hatred it drew down.

This is not a formal after-dinner speech, simply a few words of welcome to my Rector’s feast. So let me end by saying three things very simply: 

First, thank you for all that you put into this College.  Thank you if you are leaving, and thank you if you are returning. You receive a lot from your university education and from this college because you give a lot.  That needs recognising, and now is my chance to say so.

Second, for those of you whose days at Durham are drawing to a close: I hope you don’t dwell too much on the word ‘leaving’. These Durham years have been part of a lifelong journey: your learning, your personal development, your membership of a wonderful community, your friendships, many of which will last a lifetime.  This college is a permanent part of that journey. It won’t simply become a glowing memory. You can take people out of St Chad’s when the time comes, but you can never take St Chad’s out the men and women who make up its worldwide family.  I hope you’re as proud as I am to belong to it. 

Third, come back often: you will always be welcome. Stay connected as alumni.  Let me wish you the very best for the future, wherever life leads you.  And I am going to add, may God bless you always.

St Chad’s College, June 2013

Power, Justice and Mercy: on the 60th anniversary of the Coronation

60 years ago today, Elizabeth the Second was crowned Queen. We are celebrating the diamond jubilee of this event at evensong this afternoon. Last year, at the time of the Accession, I explored the significance of the monarchy in the 21^st century. One insight, I said, is how monarchy is not only a symbol of who we are and how we understand ourselves as a nation state; at its best it points beyond itself and beyond ourselves to the rule of Christ the King and the celestial city whose builder and maker is God.  And if its exemplar is Christ whose throne is the cross and who washes his people’s feet, it follows that the essence of monarchy is consecration to the service of her people: ‘whoever would be great among you must be your servant, for I am among you as one who serves’.

This is part 2 of that sermon. And because this weekend’s commemoration focuses on the ceremony in Westminster Abbey in 1953, I want to draw out a further aspect of monarchy from one of the most important elements in the coronation service.

Coronation rites have a long and rich history. They reach back into pre-Christian times where in every society, the king was seen as the deity’s representative on earth, set apart to express divine sovereignty among human beings and to intercede for them in a priestly way before heaven. Ancient Israel learned kingship from her neighbours in a manner that was not altogether approved of by some prophets: ‘give us a king like all the nations’ was a plea that always threatened the faith of the wilderness where the Hebrews had learned that God alone was their king. But monarchy established itself soon after the Israelites settled in their land: first Saul, then David and finally Solomon, the last and grandest king to preside over the one nation before it fell apart in the reign of his successor.

The ceremonies that made Solomon king are told of in well-known words that we shall hear in Handel’s famous coronation anthem this afternoon: ‘Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anointed Solomon king. And all the people rejoiced and said: ‘God save the king!’ Today’s Old Testament reading takes us on into his reign, though it still belongs to its promising beginning, before corruption and decline set in. As a sacral king, Solomon is charged to defend the faith of his people. This he demonstrates by building the first temple in Jerusalem at God’s command. Today we heard part of his prayer of dedication. Solomon invokes the promises of which the temple will be the focus. It will be a symbol of mercy, kindness and generous love. The people are to ‘pray towards this house’, and see it as a source of life and forgiveness; even the foreigner, says the prayer. And these words echo the Deuteronomic view that what is true of the temple is true of the king himself. Both institutions, monarchy and church, will be signs of the covenant between God and his people: symbols of loyalty, justice, and enduring love.

The first English coronation ceremony for which we have a text dates back to Saxon times with the coronation of King Edgar in Bath Abbey in 973. Elements of the modern rite are drawn directly from Edgar’s, appropriately as he was the first king of all England. Here is his coronation oath:

 

These three things I promise in Christ’s name to the Christian people subject to me. First, that the church of God and the whole Christian people shall have true peace at all time by our judgment; second, that I will forbid extortion and all kinds of wrongdoing to all orders of men; third, that I will enjoin equity and mercy in all judgments, that God, who is kind and merciful, may vouchsafe his mercy to me and to you. 

60 years ago, Elizabeth took the oath answering ‘I will’ to questions put to her by the Archbishop of Canterbury, among them this which quotes words from King Edgar ten centuries earlier: ‘Will you to your power cause Law and Justice, in Mercy, to be executed in all your judgments?’  I will!  It must have reminded her forcibly of her marriage vows; indeed, coronation is nothing less than the marriage of the Sovereign to her people. But it also has echoes of ordination promises, and here again, and in the anointing, there is more than an echo of the ordination liturgy. Indeed, I think it is better not to speak of coronation so much as consecration, for the entire ceremony is the consecration of the monarch to royal service of which her crowning is the climactic event.

The words of the whole coronation oath are momentous.  They promise sound governance, fidelity to the laws of God, defence of the Christian faith, and as Supreme Governor of the Church of England, making a true profession of the gospel.  But to me this phrase about executing law and justice with mercy is especially revealing in what it says about leadership, for these words link royal power with the virtues of religion: ‘law and justice, in mercy’. This is what God himself is like, and this is how his servant the Sovereign is to be too. It is how Jesus is in today’s gospel reading. The centurion makes unquestioning authority the basis of his appeal to Jesus to heal his slave. Jesus is moved, and acts precisely by demonstrating power through an act of compassion.

There is a Prayer Book collect with a striking opening: ‘O Lord, who showeth thy almighty power most chiefly in showing mercy and pity’. That is an extraordinary claim to make when we think about it; and yet it is how our faith portrays him: a principled trustworthy ethical deity whose kindness is at the very core of his power and authority. God does not do coersive power; he only knows the cruciform power of mercy and pity: cross-shaped because Golgotha shows us what it looks like. And if God is like this, then monarchy and every other kind of leadership in state, church and society needs to emulate it too if it is to lead with integrity.

This is more difficult than it sounds in a world where everything is allowed and nothing is forgiven; where litigation makes the possibility of mercy practically impossible, where our lives are governed by compliance. How can anyone dare to be merciful in such an environment? In her Reith Lectures a decade ago, Honora O’Neill questioned whether such micro-management of human life was compatible with wise, noble, humane values, as if what matters is not what is good and virtuous but merely what is compliant and legal. If mercy and pity are at the heart of God’s exercise of power and are embedded in the Coronation Oath, then all leadership must embody the graces, virtues and character that belong to the greater authority to whom, whether we know it or not, we are accountable as citizens and subjects of the kingdom of God.

Portia in Merchant of Venice famously speaks about this. She says:  

The quality of mercy is not strained.

It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven
Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest:

It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.
Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes

The throned monarch better than his crown.
His sceptre shows the force of temporal power,

The attribute to awe and majesty,

Wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings.

But mercy is above this sceptered sway;
It is enthroned in the hearts of kings;

It is an attribute of God himself;

And earthly power doth then show like God's

When mercy seasons justice.

On this anniversary, we give thanks once again the faithfulness with which as a Christian queen, Elizabeth has consecrated herself to live her coronation vow. We celebrate her obedience to this vocation: unlooked for, unwanted, thrust upon her by history, yet lived out for 6 decades with dignity and wisdom. Leadership wedded to humane discipleship is a gift to any people. Today we honour it once more. 

(1 Kings 8.22-23, 41-43; Luke 7.1-10)