The Bishop of Coventry's Presidential Address to the Diocesan Synod, Saturday 25th March 2022.
Dear Friends, you may have heard a delightful interview with Bishop Richard Harries on Radio 4’s Today programme yesterday morning. Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford, is well known to the Today team, and to its listeners, through Thought for the Day, to which he has been a regular contributor since 1971. The interview was about his recently published autobiography – The shaping of a soul: A life taken by surprise.
I have not yet read the book, but I am very much drawn to the title, both parts, the shaping of souls and lives taken by surprise. During the affectionate interview, it was clear that Justin Webb, Today presenter, saw in Richard Harries a soul that had been well shaped, and the joy of a life that had been taken by surprise, captivated by the goodness of God.
The book’s title set me thinking. How are souls of individual people shaped well? How are the souls of the communities of which we are part shaped in healthy, godly ways? How is the soul of the diocese to be shaped by the call of Christ? How is the soul of the Church of England shaped by the purposes of God? How is the country – our country and any country – shaped by the Spirit of God? And how do we safeguard our souls from being misshaped in times of stress and pressure, turbulence and trauma. How is my soul, your soul, protected in time of trouble: sickness, loss, temptation or whatever? How is the soul of the diocese sheltered when events happen that disrupt our relationships? How is the soul of the Church of England to be nurtured through the remaining – and, in my mind, most important – stage of the LLF process with so much uncertainty hanging over us? How is the soul of our nation to be safeguarded in the aftermath of Brexit and Covid, and in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, industrial unrest, the effects of war? And how is the soul of Ukraine to be preserved in the violence of vicious conflict and not hollowed out by hatred, not warped by war?
What would it mean in these situations to find our lives – our individual lives, the life of our Diocese, the life of the Church of England, the life of the United Kingdom, the life of Europe – to be taken by surprise by God? What would it mean for all these lives in which we have a share to be surprised by the grace and mercy, the humility and power, the wisdom and the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ?
I have recently had the opportunity to spend a few days in Milan, the city where the great and godly Ambrose was Bishop for 23 years in the latter quarter of the fourth century, the city where St Augustine was baptised by Ambrose in the baptistry recently unearthed where one can stand on the rock from which the large pool was hewn.
Ambrose was a doctor of the soul. I took his letters with me on my visit. ‘Let us, as far as we can’, he wrote, ‘direct our minds to that which is beautiful, seemly and good, let us be occupied therein, let us keep it in mind, that by its illumination and brightness our souls may become beautiful and our minds transparent’. And then he goes on to say wherein that beauty is truly to be found: ‘In [Jesus] therefore let us be and in Him abide, of Whom Isaiah says, How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publishes peace’.
Ambrose was a doctor of the souls of the people in his care and who came under his influence. He was a doctor of the soul of his diocese, ministering God’s word, building God’s Church. He was doctor of the soul of his city, the then capital of the Roman Empire. Through his ministry to the Emperor, whether kindly words to Emperor Gratian or severe words to Emperor Theodosius when he banned him from entering the Cathedral until he repent of his war crimes. His life was taken over by surprise: the surprise of baptising Augustine whose formidable mind and pleasure-seeking lifestyle had once been turned determinedly against Christianity. The surprise of seeing Christianity move from being persecuted by successive Emperors to be first tolerated by them as a legalised religion and then adopted by them as the faith of the Roman Empire.
Might the struggles of our own lives, the challenges the Diocese faces, the remaining work of LLF become moments of surprise for us: occasions for grace, manifestations of the powerful love of God that will not let us go, opportunities for God to act with mercy? And are there surprises to be found for a country, for our continent of Europe, for our world in times of multiple crises – cost-of-living, war and conflict, climate and environment?
Augustine finally came to the realisation that ‘The nub of the problem [of his soul] was to reject my own will and desire Christ’s’. Thereby, he said, ‘I submitted my neck to your easy yoke and my shoulders to your light burden’. ‘Suddenly’, he said, ‘it had become sweet to me to be without the sweets of folly’. He recounts how he sought Ambrose’s advice on what he should read from Scripture. ‘When the time came’, he said, ‘for me to give in my name for baptism, we left the country and returned to Milan’. There he entered the waters in the baptistry that can still be seen today and where Ambrose was waiting for him. During the days afterwards he tells how he ‘found an insatiable and amazing delight in considering the profundity of [God’s] purpose for the salvation of the human race’.
That is my hope and prayer for our diocese and for the whole Church of England: that, in times of joy and triumph, in times of stress and strain, our souls will be shaped by God’s word, our whole beings baptised in the renewing waters of the Spirit, our wills yoked to the kingdom-building work of Christ and that we will find ourselves continually surprised by ‘the profundity of God’s purpose for the salvation of the human race’ and by God’s willingness to give us our own part to play in the working out God’s purposes of salvation in our own time and place. And that, following Ambrose’s advice, we ‘abide in Christ’.
Dear Members of Synod, let me end by noting that we are fast approaching an important moment in our national history. King Charles will be crowned and anointed as our Monarch on May 6th. I know that this Synod will want to express to His Majesty our loyal greeting and the assurance of our prayers not only on the day of the coronation but throughout the King’s reign, long may it be. At the heart of this grand and historic event will be the spiritual shaping of the soul of the King, the Country, the Commonwealth and the Church.
So let us pray (and I use the prayer set for Day 8 in the newly published Daily Prayers for the Coronation of King Charles III):
Almighty God,
whose kingdom is everlasting, and power infinite:
have mercy upon the whole Church;
and so rule the heart of thy chosen servant Charles,
our King and Governor,
that he (knowing whose minister he is)
may above all things seek thy honour and glory:
and that we and all his subjects (duly considering whose authority he hath) may faithfully serve, honour,
and humbly obey him, in thee, and for thee,
according to thy blessed Word and ordinance;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
God save the King!