TIME FOR CHANGE

- the transcript of a talk given by Bishop David in Lent 2006

Back in the 1970s I had a boss who was always trying to stretch the minds and abilities of his staff. He pushed everyone to their capacity and expected us to give one hundred per cent. It was an exciting time, even though some of us went through stages where keeping up with the boss' vision was difficult. You see, his vision was always evolving.

Everyone who went into his office was confronted with a large print motto propped up on his desk: "CONSTANT CHANGE IS HERE TO STAY!" That set the tone for every conversation in that room and, indeed, right throughout the building.

All who are are old enough to think back over the period from the 1960s to the present agree that it was an era of rapid and constant change in just about every area of life. Many of the changes we lived through were good and well overdue; others, however, have not been so good, and for all the gains our society made during those years there have been conspicuous losses that have impoverished us individually and as a culture.

TO CHANGE . . . OR NOT TO CHANGE
It seems self evident that human beings need both security and growth - a sense of connectedness to or belonging in the flow of history that has formed us, as well as a sense of purpose and adventure that empowers us to face the future in a creative way.

In other words we have a deep seated need for some things to stay the same, and for other things to change.

If absolutely everything in our lives and our communities is changing all the time, we end up becoming prisoners of subjectivism, with our lives built on shifting sands. We end up with no landmarks, no means of measuring belief or behaviour, and no anchor in times of inner turmoil.

But when we resist necessary change, and regard everything about yesterday as automatically better than anything that is being created today (or that will be created tomorrow or the next day), we have begun to die on the inside. In order to grow we must change. It's as simple as that. Refusing to change is a recipe for spiritual, intellectual and emotional death.

Is there a Christian attitude towards change? Does our Faith inform our understanding of these issues? What are we to think about change for change's sake?

It seems to me that what we know about change in general applies to our life in Christ.

In other words, some things ought to stay the same, and other things ought to be changing all the time.

THINGS THAT DON'T CHANGE
On the front of the Sunday pew bulletin we always print those wonderful words from Hebrews 13:8: "Jesus Christ is the same: yesterday, today and forever." He does not change. That's why the Apostle Paul can say that Jesus is the only sure foundation for our lives (1 Corinthians 3:11).

God the Father doesn't change. In Malachi 3:6 he says: "I am the Lord, I change not," and James 1:17 says that with him "there is no variation or shadow due to change."

The Faith once delivered to the Saints doesn't change. The Word of God doesn't change. We can trust what God says in Scripture, and affirm with the Psalmist, "Forever, O Lord, your word is settled in heaven" (Psalm 119:89).

The promises Jesus gave to his Church do not change. "The gates of hell will not prevail against it" (Matthew 16:18), regardless of problems it might encounter along the way.

The desire of Jesus for the unity of his Church doesn't change (John 17). As our great High Priest he continues to pray for our unity "that the world might believe."

The power of the Holy Spirit doesn't change (Acts 1:8). He works in the Church and in the individual Christian - he anoints us with his power and love - in order that we might be effective witnesess to Jesus in a broken world, and achieve things that in our own strength would be impossible.

The seven Sacraments, the three-fold ministry of Bishop, Priest and Deacon - that apostolic chain stretching back 2000 years to Jesus himself -, the Church's worship and prayer as even here on earth a participation in the heavenly worship - all these are things that do not change. (Anglicans like us have suffered cruel persecution at the hands of so-called "liberal" theologians and bishops who think that they can change these "givens" of the Christian Faith. We stand with the Orthodox and Catholic Churches of East and West. We stand with Pope John Paul II who denied that even he as Successor of St Peter had the authority to alter these primordial gifts of God to the whole Church.)

The promise of God's guidance and protection in our personal lives doesn't change. We know that "in everything God works for good with those who love him, who are called according to his purpose" (Romans 8:28). That means that even our disasters, our failures, our pain, and our grief, are mysteriously used by him in fulfilling his loving plan for our lives. We can trust him. That is something that will never change.

Praise God for the things that do not change. Praise God for the way they anchor us in this storm-tossed world. Praise God for the confidence we can have in his promises in times of trauma and distress. To quote a saying that I love:

"God is still on the throne;
Jesus is still King of Glory;
Mary is still immaculate . . .
and it'll all work out in the end!"

Praise God!

WE LIVE FOR CHANGE
But sometimes we are so concerned to assert the things that do not change, that we become resistant to ALL change and we fail to notice that at the heart of our Faith, at the heart of our worship, at the heart of our lives as followers of Jesus is an amazing CELEBRATION OF CHANGE - the most dynamic and momentous change of all - when bread and wine become the Lord's Body and Blood. As St. Ignatius (35 - 107 AD), Bishop of Antioch says

"the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ, which suffered for our sins, and which the Father in His loving-kindness raised from the dead."

Fifty years later, St. Justin said:

"We do not consume the Eucharistic bread and wine as if it were ordinary food and drink, for . . . as Jesus Christ our Saviour became a man of flesh and blood by the power of the Word of God, so also the food that our flesh and blood assimilates for its nourishment becomes the Flesh and Blood of the incarnate Jesus by the power of His own words contained in the prayer of thanksgiving."

One of the reasons for this change on the altar is that there might be a corresponding ongoing change in our lives. St Augustine of Hippo certainly taught this when he said to his faithful communicants,

"You are the Body of Christ, you are meant to be taken, blessed, broken and distributed that you may become the means of grace and vehicles of the eternal charity to all people."

There it is! God want us to become "the means of grace"; he wants us to be "vehicles of the eternal charity" - the grace-bearing sacramental signs by which his love can touch those around us. In other words, God doesn't want us just to passively receive Holy Communion. He wants us to allow what happens to the bread and wine of the Eucharist by his Word and the power of the Holy Spirit so that it becomes the Sacred Body and Blood of Jesus to go on happening to us. He wants Christ to be formed in us.

BEING CONVERTED
Another word for CHANGE is CONVERSION. Theologians, in fact, sometimes even talk of the conversion of Bread and Wine into the Lord's body and blood; we certainly speak of the conversion of our hearts and minds to the Lord when we surrender to him.

The problem for us is the idea that the only people who need conversion are those OUTSIDE the Christian community. Now, don't get me wrong. It's right that we should chersh the memory of our initial conversion if we didn't grow up knowing and loving the Lord Jesus. It is a precious memory, and we will always want to think about it, pray about it, sing about it and talk about it.

(In fact, you all know how I love hearing conversion stories - real ones, - stories of how people have come to Jesus and changed from being enemies of the Gospel to true disciples. Just recently I have been hearing about the increasing flow of Muslim people in Europe coming to Christ. Now that's really something! God is doing it through the love, care and evangelistic witness of nuns, priests and lay people all over the place from Bosnia to Italy, from Palestine to the UK.)

But according to the Catholic Faith conversion is not something that happens to us just once. Conversion must be an ongoing process in our lives. I'm not talking just about giving up a particular sin or bad habit - which can be mere cosmetic change. I'm talking about real conversion; I'm talking about a continuing change of heart, so that we are constantly hungry and ready for God. Every morning when we wake up we are called to this ongoing conversion, so that through us God is able to express his life and love to others, and by his grace we begin to make a real difference to the world around us.

Most of us know that in the ebb and flow of the Christian life there are crisis points which call for a really climactic fresh conversion to Jesus in terms of the depth and honesty of our relationship with him, significant change in some area of life that we had managed to keep from him, or an experience of guidance and renewed vocation requiring a costly response. These challenges to conversion keep on happening to us, not in spite of God's love, but because of his love.

ABANDONMENT TO GOD
So important is this insight that the Church has provided a whole season of forty days and forty nights during which we are encouraged to ongoing conversion, not just as individuals, but also as a people.

The Scripture readings for Lent indicate many aspects of our lives in which we should embrace fresh change. In my thinking and praying over the last few months, and as a result of conversations I've had with a number of Patmos House people, I have become convinced that this Lent the Holy Spirit is talking to us about being converted from a transactional relationship with God (which degerates into into a works-based approach to the Christian life) to an abandonment to God's love in faith and trust.

That is real conversion!

It is easier said than done, because many people - even from loving, caring families - have been trained from their earliest days to think that they are especially loved when they are good, and not so loved when they are bad. And you know as well as I do that it is not just parents who misguidedly punish children by withholding love and affection. Many husbands and wives do it to each other when they don't get their own way, even in otherwise really good marriages. As a result, even relationships in which true love exists can over time become transactional in character.

Add the growing proportion of totally dysfunctional families in today's relationship jungle in which children grow up uncertain as to who - if anyone - really loves them, and you should be able to see why it is that by adulthood so many are prone to making dreadful mistakes in their own relationships, as well as being completely unable to comprehend the kind of relationship that God seeks to establish with us.

Now, I don't for a moment want you to think I'm saying that God isn't interested in our being good. Of course he wants us to conform our lives to the teachings of Scripture and the Church so that Jesus may be glorified in everything we do. But this is supposed to FLOW FROM our relationship with God. It is impossible for us to establish that relationship by trying to be good, by suffering well, or by obeying his call. We cannot "earn" his love. He just loves us. That is amazing but true. It is totally incomprehensible. It is the mystery at the heart of the Gospel. And we see it supremely on the Cross. In the words of Charles Wesley:

Amazing love, how can it be
that thou, my God,
shouldst die for me!

All we can really "do" with a God like that is surrender, allowing his love to reach every corner of our lives, trusting him with our past, our present and our future, letting his love forgive us, heal us and transform us from the inside out.

WISDOM FROM LISIEUX
I've told you many times how dear St. Therese of Lisieux is to me. (She is one of the saints whose icon is on my mitre.) A French Carmelite sister who entered heaven at the young age of 24 in 1897, after years of illness and spiritual struggle, Therese came to understand the entire Christian life as a response to God's love. It's what she called her "little way." Nourished by the Scriptures and the Sacraments, her personal relationship with Jesus was one of such love that even when her suffering and pain was at its height, and when her spiritual struggle was most intense, she was able to write letters of support and encouragement to Maurice Belliere, a stumbling young man preparing to be a missionary priest.

Maurice had experienced a moral failure, and couldn't quiet his conscience. There was a fair amount of gloom and guilt in the religion of the day - both Catholic and Protestant - and Maurice needed to hear what Therese told him. Do you know what she said? She said it is not God's will that our relationship with him be based on an obsessive fear of punishment. Neither, she said, does God want us to try and bargain for salvation by promising to do good works.

GRACE
With all who have begun to grasp the meaning of the grace-filled Gospel down through the Christian centuries, Therese knew that no amount of "good works" could purchase God's love. She knew that in our better moments we would always wonder if we had done enough. In fact she even said to Maurice that the best of our "good works" are blemished, anyway, and they make us displeasing to God if we rely on them!

Therese knew that Jesus bore our sins on the Cross to make us free. She reminded Maurice of St Augustine and St Mary Magdalene, both of whose sins "which were many" were forgiven. She wrote to him, "I love them. I love their repentance, and especially their loving boldness."

Therese knew that "perfect love casts out fear" (1 John 4:18). Indeed, she said, "How can I fear a God who is nothing but Mercy and Love?" "Confidence, nothing but confidence" in God's love was what she stressed.

To some in the catholic tradition I know this sounds like spiritual presumption. But it echoes the teaching of Hebrews 10:19-22:

"Therefore, brethren, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way which he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water."

No wonder Therese is the most quoted woman saint in the Catechism of the Catholic Church. No wonder Pope John Paul II proclaimed her a "Doctor of the Universal Church" in 1997, pointing out that she is the youngest Doctor of the Church and the one closest to our time. He said:

"As it was for the Church's saints in every age, so also for her, in her spiritual experience Christ is the centre and fullness of Revelation. Therese knew Jesus, loved him and made him loved with the passion of a bride. She penetrated the mysteries of his infancy, the words of his Gospel, the passion of the suffering Servant engraved on his holy Face, in the splendour of his glorious life, in his Eucharistic presence. She sang of all the expressions of Christ's divine love, as they are presented in the Gospel."

When you think about it, the same thing that prevents people who have been brought up in transactional relationships taking the risk of allowing themselves to be loved unconditionally by someone else, is what prevents us from moving to the kind of relationship with God that Therese spoke about. That is, a fear of losing control, of becoming vulnerable, of taking emotional risks, of being really hurt. And, going back to what I have already said, keeping our relationship with God strictly on a transactional basis appeals to our pride, because it is based on what we do.

THE LOBSTER
You may be a deeply principled person leading an exemplary life. You may be the model Anglican Catholic! But you may have realised just now that you need to be changed and converted from someone whose response to God is "measured", to someone who has abandoned themselves to his love - with all the real and imagined risks to your autonomy and security that this implies. What a great Lent this would be if it marked such a transition for you.

Did you know that when a lobster feels its shell to be getting a bit tight and restrictive, it retreats to a crevice in one of the underwater rock formations, sheds its shell and grows a new one. When it outgrows this shell, it repeats the process and continues doing so until it reaches its maximum size.

During the stage when it is without its shell, the lobster is in great danger. A predatory fish may eat it, or a strong current may dash it against a rock. In order to grow, the lobster must risk its very life.

In every area of life it is impossible to achieve success without risking failure. But because life consists of growth and progress, we have to learn to live with risk and change.

We know that people who are afraid of failure - in their jobs, in their relationships with others, and in their relationship with God - never try anything and therefore never grow. They don't see that the greatest failure of all is the failure to grow. They don't pause to consider the possibilities of change and conversion, of reaching our real potential, because they feel secure and in control, trudging along in their own strength as they have always done.

This Lent, however, I encourage you to hear God speak to you through the Scripture readings and when you pray. I encourage you to move from your transactional relationship with him to a fresh abandonment to his love. And during this process as you feel spiritually exposed and vulnerable to attack (like that lobster) I encourage you to remember just how much God loves you and how much he wants wants you to trust him completely in every circumstance and with every detail of your life, alowing him to draw you to himself, as you touch others with his love.