Elucidations

‘Can Jesus be preached in the whole world without the institutional church? Can molten gold be carried from place to place in anything but crucibles of iron and steel? (Naumann)’ This image of the Church as a crucible transporting molten gold captures its secondary role in Christianity alongside its service of love, truth and empowerment in Jesus Christ. Charismatics like Naumann are in that flow of the Spirit alongside feminists whose courageous action has challenged male dominance within the institutional crucible in recent years. The crucible analogy captures something of why Christianity is content to retain antiquated institutions as its main concern is not on the carrier but on its effective instrumentality. Crucibles are of not so sightly, tough iron and when in use our eyes are drawn not to them but to the splendour of what they carry. When they crack, though, they prove useless. This analogy may help explain the best aspect of resistance to the ordination of women in the great...

Shortly after I was ordained priest I had a crisis of faith. I went back to where I had trained. It was a chance to work out what should happen next since I hardly believed in the reality of God anymore. While there I was taken under the wing of Fr. Daniel, one of the Mirfield monks. He gave me this advice: ‘Maybe, John, it is not God who's gone but your vision of him. Why not pray an honest prayer, like, ‘God, if you're there, show yourself. Give me a vision of yourself that's to your dimensions and not mine’. With nothing to lose I prayed Fr. Daniel’s prayer over two cliff-hanging days. Then God answered. He chose a leaf on a tree in the monastery garden. I was walking along with no particular thought in my head when my eyes fell on the leaf and it was as if it spoke to me. ‘He made you’, the leaf seemed to say. I was bowled over. As I moved forward I saw the great Crucifix that stands in the garden. ‘I made you. I love you’, the figure of Jesus seemed to say. ‘Father, So...

  Working recently as a School Chaplain helped me see things in a fresh light. The term ‘sinner’ can be an insult among young people. When we start the eucharist confessing our sins I explain that when we say we are sinners we are recognising all of us do wrong things sometimes. Elucidating sin is a perilous business because no one speaking of it can be distanced from its pervasive influence. There is one extreme downplaying its nature. The people the world might fear most are those claiming innocence from sin. Another extreme, taking Christ’s teaching in Matthew 5:28 literally, sees a lustful thought as the end of the road with God. I remember a friend at university convinced that as he could not stop the thoughts he might as well act on them and have sexual intercourse with his girl friend. It was great to meet him years later back in church attendance, a happily married man. The association of sex with sin impacts the understanding of both. I recall preaching an altar call in th...

  Years back I had a charismatic experience of the Holy Spirit in a Leeds Church. I came late to the service and as I came through the door heard loud harmonious singing without intelligible words. I fell to my knees awed by something so out of this world with hundreds of worshippers going with the flow of a holy humming successively rising and falling then dying down to silence. After that silence I heard one or two voices speaking words of consolation as if from God to the gathered worshippers along the lines ‘I love you… I have a way forward for you… trust in Me’. It left an impression deep in my soul sowing the seed of being open to the Holy Spirit’s gifts of tongues and prophecy mentioned in scripture. By contrast in terms of charismatic experience a young couple came to see me who had fallen in love at their workplace. Both were already married and one of their existing partners was awaiting the birth of their first child. As Christians they insisted their relationship was fr...

Jesus Christ will come to judge the living and the dead’ says the Apostles’ Creed so that God who is truth sees the ultimate triumph of truth over falsehood. It is Christian faith that we live in hope of that moment of judgement to come individually and generally. The doctrine of judgement extrapolates from those of creation and redemption linked to the person of Jesus Christ seen as having won the right to assert the definitive triumph of good over evil and truth over falsehood. ‘Nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known’ (Luke 12:2). Christ himself demonstrated such unveiling of truth throughout his earthly ministry and encouraged people to face up to their shortfalls offering forgiveness and healing. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ (John 8:32). Facing the truth is a great human problem addressed by Christianity. That we humans find it hard to own our shortcomings is linked to bad experiences in our pas...

  Why so many faiths? I come across people who believe in God but will not sign up to a religion either due to the hypocrisy they read of or to confusion about which of many religions is most credible. People today are more aware of the variety of faiths across the world than their parents or grandparents through the revolution in global communications over the last half century. With so many faiths to choose from, they rightly ask, how do you decide which one is right? Elucidating, shedding light on the variety of faiths, risks being patronising towards faiths I have not known from the inside. I am impelled to do so by a conviction that the instinct for meaning, and hence religion, is in every human heart. This surely is why our species is called ‘homo sapiens’, translated ‘man who is wise’. I sense God’s love and holiness at work in believers from other faiths than my own, let alone unbelievers, and see how they contribute to the common good of society. They do so by upholding va...