Sam Wells, formerly the Dean of Duke University Chapel and the current vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, responds to the failed legislation concerning women bishops.
If you look at the Apostles’ Creed, in between forgiveness and everlasting life, we have the resurrection of the body. Why? Jesus’s resurrection makes possible and embodies the forgiveness of sins. Jesus is betrayed during his passion three times by Peter; Jesus in his resurrection restores Peter three times. Here is Jesus, an embodied presence, inhabiting the same body as was crucified two days earlier. Jesus’s physical resurrection proves that the worst we can do is still not enough to determine the ultimate course of history, and certainly not enough to alter God’s decision to be with us in Christ. We can’t ruin God’s life, however hard we try. And we can’t even finally ruin our own.
Meanwhile Easter doesn’t just bring us the forgiveness of sins. Easter also proclaims the life everlasting. Death is no longer an insuperable barrier. In Jesus we’ve all been given a glimpse of restoration beyond obliteration. The body is not a prison to be escaped from or a ladder to be kicked away; it’s the shape of our future in Christ. Thus Jesus’s resurrection on Easter Day turns the past from dungeon into heritage and the future from fate into destiny.
But the resurrection of the body is about us as well as about Jesus. Remember where I began: there is no such thing as the present tense. Well, there isn’t any present tense if there is no forgiveness and no life everlasting. But if there is forgiveness - if the past is a gift - and if there is everlasting life - if the future is our friend - then we really can live, we really can exist, we really are a new creation. Every detail of our lives is then precious and meaningful, rather than passing and pitiful or feeble and futile.
This is our present - God’s present to us, God’s presence with us, now and forever. This is resurrection. This is Easter.
I wish Sam Wells was still at Duke and I could go talk with him again.
We all know that most beloved verse in the scripture, “God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” But we also know that, if it was that simple, we wouldn’t need the rest of the Bible. The poignancy of what Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego say to Nebuchadnezzar is finally not just what we say to a skeptic, or to a person in pain, or to ourselves, but what the members of the Trinity say to one another. When Jesus goes to the fire, when Jesus faces the flames of hell for us, when Jesus hangs on the cross, what does he say to the Father? Is it so different from the words of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego? “If you will to deliver me from the cross, O Father, then take this cup away from me. But even if not, be it known to you, O Father, that my love for you will hang on forever, and that those who somehow find that they have lost you can hang onto me.” Isn’t that what makes Jesus’ final words so wondrous? Jesus loves us so much that he goes to the cross even if there’s no certainty of resurrection. Jesus isn’t just keeping his side of the bargain. Jesus is loving even if not. That’s the definition of love.
We’ve come face to face with God. We’ve come to the foot of the cross, the heart of Jesus. We’ve come to the definition of love. It lies in those four little words: “But even if not.”
Those words are the heart of God. Make them the heart of your life. Make them the heart of your faith. Make them the heart of your love. Make them the whole of your vocation. In them you will find God. But even if not, in them, God will find you.
If you asked most American Christians, especially progressive Christians, who the enemy is, they’d most likely say the enemy is other Christians. And the internet makes it much worse, because there judgmental Christians using the shield of anonymity pass on hearsay and half-truth about apparently ghastly things alleged to be happening in formerly respectable churches - a practice that used to be called malicious and self-righteous gossip but is now called blogging.
So the question, does God heal? can only be asked alongside the question, does God save? And these are the answers. Does God heal me? Sometimes. Does God save me? Always. Always. Always.
Sam Wells, formerly the Dean of Duke University Chapel and the current vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London, responds to the failed legislation concerning women bishops.
When I heard that the legislation on women bishops had failed by 6 votes I sat down and wept. I hadn’t allowed myself to imagine that this could happen. I couldn’t comprehend the church I love ceasing to become part of the solution and actively voting to become part of the problem.
People at St Martin-in-the-Fields and beyond feel dismayed, bewildered, even betrayed. We can’t recall a moment when we felt so aghast at where we’ve come to and what we’re doing. God the Holy Trinity is three persons without subordination and without discrimination; to imitate God, human life must be the same. Isn’t that too obvious to need saying? It seems not. If the church rejects the glorious and abundant gifts God is giving us – and then feels impoverished and fragile – whose fault is that?
What do we find to hold onto in such a wilderness moment? Perhaps three things.
One, the wilderness is where the people of God have time and again rediscovered who they are and who God is. Maybe that’s what we have to do now.
Two, if a thing’s worth having, it’s worth waiting for. We can only work and pray that next time round we’ll have a House of Laity in General Synod that’s more representative of the church at large; it could be that if a simpler piece of legislation eventually emerges it’ll be easier and better to work with in the long run.
Three – and here I speak to those who are too angry to think straight at the moment – if the church isn’t working right now, try the kingdom. Throw yourself into life among the least, the last, and the lost and rediscover the church there. St Martin-in-the-Fields is committed to making the church look and become more like God’s kingdom every day. Sometimes when we feel furious with or hurt by the church, the only thing to do is to reinvest in the kingdom. Maybe, today, in this moment of despair, that’s where hope lies.
Revd Dr Sam Wells
Vicar, St Martin-in-the-Fields
Ben Myers recently wrote in Faith and Theology about his year without prayer:
And then there was the year without prayer. Or was it two years? Three? Or five? I guess I lost count. Anyway, all that time I could not pray.Don’t ask me why, don’t ask me to explain it. It’s not that I stopped believing: not exactly. It’s just that everything around me was a terrible silence, and any word, a shout or just a whisper, would only make the silence echo louder. It’s not that I had stopped loving: not completely. It’s just that my heart was cracked inside me, and all the words seemed stillborn, choked by sadness before they ever could get out. It’s not that I stopped trying: not quite. It’s just that I tried to pray instead of praying. It is the difference between trying to swim and swimming, between trying to remember someone’s name and remembering. You might come close, but in the end it makes no difference. In the end it is not a matter of degrees.
I have found that writing is the way I most easily pray.
This (pdf) is the first sermon I can find of Sam Wells, the former dean of Duke University Chapel, preaching at his new church, the famous (and beautiful!) St. Martin-in-the-Fields, in London. He was installed a couple of weeks ago.
All of us go through times of life where we lose the joy just a little bit; perhaps we lose it almost altogether. Maybe you’re in one of those seasons right now. Whether because of another’s cruelty or rejection, unexpected misfortune or disappointment, or our own failure, frustration, or foolishness, we can forget the taste of the release, freedom, and companionship of God. Ideally, this is when the church embraces us and we feel for ourselves a joy that goes beyond happiness or pleasure or entertainment.
The painful truth is, as I’m sure everyone here’s experienced, that sometimes the opposite is the case; and, far from being the conduit of joy, the church is the obstacle of release and freedom and companionship, and even the cause of pain and alienation. The amazing thing is that at these moments God continues to send us angels, invariably in the form of those worse off than ourselves, to shame the church and restore in us the joy.
And, later:
Is there a difference between saying Jesus is the source of joy and saying Christians are somehow better than other people? Is evangelism any more than self-assertion and boasting and intolerance of different views?
It’s a good question. Paul says, ‘Yes, there is a difference – because look, I’ve been given a thorn in my flesh; a constant reminder of the difference between joy and simple emotional and bodily comfort. I’ll boast of that thorn. I’ll tell the story of how God made something very beautiful out of the mess that I am.’ That’s at the heart of vocation. It’s the opposite of one-size-fits-all. It’s about how God makes something beautiful out of the unique story of your failures, disappointments, hurts and setbacks – otherwise known as your thorns.
I wonder what your thorns are. I wonder how the Holy Spirit is gently, slowly, twisting those thorns into a crown. Live the joy that God has made out of the particular shape of your story. That’s vocation. Strive to be what only you can be.
Towards the end of the sermon he discusses what his vision for the renewal of his church looks like.
Scholarship is its own kind of cloak. It’s a cloak of knowledge. It doesn’t matter whether it’s philosophy, medicine, theology, or aeronautical engineering, when we’ve read all the primary literature, and all the secondary literature, and every single scholarly article on a subject, we’ve built up a pretty impressive cloak. We know all there is to know. We can think of a thousand reasons not to leap to our feet and a hundred ways to deconstruct Jesus’ call. But where does that get us in facing Jesus’ question, “What do you want me to do for you?” The answer isn’t in a book. What are we going to say? “Make me a bigger library?
Scholarship is its own kind of cloak. It’s a cloak of knowledge. It doesn’t matter whether it’s philosophy, medicine, theology, or aeronautical engineering, when we’ve read all the primary literature, and all the secondary literature, and every single scholarly article on a subject, we’ve built up a pretty impressive cloak. We know all there is to know. We can think of a thousand reasons not to leap to our feet and a hundred ways to deconstruct Jesus’ call. But where does that get us in facing Jesus’ question, “What do you want me to do for you?” The answer isn’t in a book. What are we going to say? “Make me a bigger library?
Christianity is always out of fashion because it is always sane; and all fashions are mild insanities.
G.K. Chesterton in The Ball and the Cross (via gkchestertonquote)
One day I want to write about insanity and Christianity…
A time is coming, said St. Antony, when everyone will go mad. And when they meet someone who is not mad, they’ll say, “You’re mad: you’re not like us.
I have one simple prayer today. My prayer is that that person - that crazy person, the person who is not like us, that person who turns out to be like God; my prayer is that that person is you.
- Sam Wells
