Future – Haydon Spenceley

I’m not big on resolutions for the start of a new calendar year. Over the last couple, I’ve promised to write on the Church of England lectionary reading every day (lasted a few months) and write a new song every month (managed one for half the months of the year) so it turns out I’m not too good at keeping to what I promise to do. That’s pretty difficult, humbling thing to admit to.

The end of one year and the beginning of another offers the opportunity for grandiose statements about how great/terrible/abominable the year just ending was and how much better/more hopeful and full of possibility the one to come is. This seems particularly so with 2016 in mind. The combination of seismic political upheaval, the sheer fact that there are myriad celebrities in our aspiration-obsessed culture and therefore more of said celebrities (very sadly) die in any given year (and this will only be more so in the coming years) and the way that we have access to news about virtually everything, all of the time, if we want it, even though we often miss the most important things happening both under our noses and in the forgotten far-reaches of the planet, all of that can combine to make it seem like it’s been a terrible year.

Allied to all of this, it seems to me that I am not a very resilient person. I don’t know about you. You might be. In which case, move on and ignore this paragraph. But the fact remains that, I at least, am learning that I need deeper and deeper wells of resilience that I did not realise would be necessary. How did previous generations deal with, say, the loss of entire families in war, or to diseases like TB, when I can’t cope with not being able to complete my work because my internet connection is intermittent? How are we, for whom, in the West, life expectancy and quality of life is, in the main, longer and better than ever, become so frightened of death, so scared of ‘the other’ that we keep both as far away as possible, when, so we’re told, we have it better than ever before in the whole of human history?

2017 will be a year of change for me. I’ve got a calendar year from midnight to find a new role within the Church of England. Changes of this nature don’t just affect me. They affect my long-suffering wife and our wider family. As I go through the process of applying, if this time is anything like other such junctures in my life, I would not be too surprised to find myself questioning my worth, value, suitability for roles, even though I am trained, qualified, experienced, called, equipped and sent exactly for the kind of roles that I might be looking at in the coming weeks and months. These doubts have assailed me many times and they boil down to two key things: I don’t trust myself, perhaps rightly and, more seriously, I often fail to truly trust God, thinking instead that if I just work harder, longer, better, more sacrificially (those two often seem to equate to the same thing in my head at least) then somehow God will be more pleased with me and therefore elevate me to some kind of ability or situation that would otherwise be beyond me. Working hard is important. Making the most of the gifts we are given is a key facet of the scriptural narrative, but the key, the absolute key, is to know that the heart of those gifts, the giver and effector of them, is God. I have gifts to share with the communities I live in and serve because God gives them to me. I can use or squander them, in partnership (hopefully) with him, but the gifts are given by him. God has brought me to the beginning of 2017 to be someone who points people to Him, who draws people into family and relationship with him, themselves and with other people. I do have to move, to be active, to do ‘the work’, but most of all I have to trust God that when he says he will be with me, when he says he will not leave me, when he says that he will send the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to support and encourage me, when he promises miracles, transformations, healings, mercy and grace and all of the other things that we’re told are the promises of God: that those things will come to pass if I walk with him, one step after another, faithfully, as faithfully as I can, day by day. It’s not cool, it’s not sexy, it might not win me a platform, or influence, but it will be what I am invited by God to do in this next year.

I’ve been thinking recently that all the words I can use about God, Church, Faith, and what all of those things are and mean (all of which change on a daily basis) pale into insignificance when placed next to the Word, the coming of Jesus, who was both God and man, into the world that first Christmas time. He is who we need to get to know, to follow, to mimic even, as 2017 dawns. Not just by learning about him, talking about him, what he might think about certain issues, political parties or societal changes, but actually take him at his word that when he said that he would be with us to the end of the age (this one we’re in now) if we asked him to be, that he actually would be and that one of the main tasks, if not the main one, of the Christian life is some form of commitment to actually working out what that relationship of closeness might mean for us, both individually, as Church families and as the whole Church. If we got to know Jesus, what might we see? What might he invite us to do? What might he actually want to do for us, give to us, so that we might pass on the gift to others this year?

So, don’t fall for slogans, or long paragraphs like mine, this new year. Don’t rely on blogs, books, memes, videos on Facebook or even the Huffington Post to tell you what to think this new year. Don’t mindlessly retweet. Even more, don’t beligerently retweet. If you have questions, doubts, fears, if you’re looking for a reason to be hopeful, a reason to be cheerful (part 2017) this new year, then you actually, actually, actually, you actually can do no better than to silence all the words, all the screens, all the arguments, and invite Jesus, the only Word truly worth hearing and listening to, to be live with you, in you, through you and for you this coming year.

You might think this blog, therefore, is a waste of time, shouting into a void, obsolete. Well, yes, maybe, but these are the kinds of words I needed to hear at the end of 2016 and the start of 2017. So I wrote them to myself. What would the Church be like if I, if we, chose to prioritise the things that Jesus chose to prioritise? He gave a priority to love (of God and people), a priority to the poor, a priority to prayer, a priority to telling people about the kingdom of God through sharing stories they could relate to and a priority to building teams of people who could partner with him in his work. Wouldn’t it be great if I lived with these priorities? What could change? What could happen? What mountains might be moved if we joined together in living this way?

Let’s find out in the year to come

What Are We Hoping For When We Show Up?

I’m supposed to write a roughly monthly column for Christians on the Left, but I’ve failed at that recently. Partly it’s because there’s so much noise at the moment, so much opinion, so little certainty, that I quite often think that the last thing anyone needs is me spouting off again. People talking about faith and politics seem so much more qualified, knowledgable and eloquent than me, i’ve silenced myself. If only some other people thought like that occasionally. That said, recently I’ve been reading Andy Flannagan’s fantastic book “Those Who Show Up” and it has rocked me to the core in the space of two chapters, so here I am again, writing about something I know very little about.

Andy’s book is a call for a both-and kind of approach to faith and politics. We can bring the prophetic voice calling for change, development, justice and progress from the sidelines. Sometimes that is needed. Sometimes it is the only course of action available. At other times, I would say mainly in Andy’s thesis, the real effect can be made by those who offer themselves within the system or the process. Are we willing to suffer endless meetings, bureaucracy, red tape, hold ups and so on? Are we willing to commit to a group of people, to foster community in an area, to seek justice and quality of life for all, not just the people who are like us? Are we willing to be frustrated continually, and yet remain faithful to the vision that we have and are working out? It sounds a lot like the Church of England to me.

I remember being intensely frustrated with the CofE as a firebrand-y unthinkingly conservative evangelical teenager. I was conservative because I was told to be. At least I stood for God’s ideals, I thought. I thought the CofE a hopelessly outmoded and outdated institution in which the Holy Spirit and its transforming power was not present or evident, and that it hadn’t been for some time. I thought this because I couldn’t work out what the CofE stood for. It never seemed to have a firm position on anything. It was boring, lifeless and so on and so on and boringly so on. Now, at the grand old age of 30 I find myself more excited about being part of an established Church than ever. “A Christian presence in every community” the streamline says. A sacramental presence in every community more like, as Christians embedded in the lives of their local communities show something of the light and life of Jesus to all, where all are prayed for, whether they be knowingly part of a church or not, where no-one is cast out, no-one is forgotten. Christians aren’t called to separate themselves from their communities. They are called to be at the heart of them. They’re called to set the agenda, not dogmatically or doctrinally, but in terms of the living of lives which infectiously, even contagiously, spread love, joy, peace, justice and hope. They do this by pointing to God, seeking the benefit of others over themselves. We can’t say, or sing, that we are seeking first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, or that we want to glorify, or lift him high on the one hand, and then put ourselves first on the other. What would our politics look like if we committed to putting others and God before ourselves?

Sometimes we need to get angry, to rant and rave. At other times, we need to lovingly coax things along, bringing light in to places of darkness, hope into places where it is lacking. Andy is quite right though, it’s all very well talking about it, but what are we actually willing to do? How much will we sacrifice? Will we think of the other or seek only health, wealth and happiness for ourselves? Is it all about prosperity and growth?

All I can say is, after two chapters, I’ve taken the plunge and joined my first political party.

Goodness knows what’ll happen when I read the rest of it.

So I suppose this is where I (finally) get to my (highly-opinionated) point. For those of us who say that we follow Jesus and put the agenda of the kingdom before everything else, there has to somewhere be the acceptance that eschatology, the end times and the age to come, play a huge role in the shaping of our faith. Christianity is a future-facing faith. As we are forgiven and freed for joyful obedience, we are freed not to look back, but to look forward, to a time when man’s inhumanity to man will be no more, when all our hopes will be realised, all our fears and sorrows will be no more, where the meek will have inherited the earth, where the last will have finished their race and come in first, where the riches we stored up for ourselves on Earth will have been eaten up and destroyed, and what we will be left with is the question, “what did you do to the least of this, my brothers? What did you therefore do to me?” We have a leader, a pattern maker for our lives who came not to be served, but to serve and to give his life as a ransom payment that we might have live, have it to the full, and share out of the abundance that we have with others.

As we show up this Thursday, let’s not leave it there. Let’s continually show up. Let’s offer our lives in the service of the voiceless, the marginalised, the dispossessed, those who are discriminated against. Let’s find ways to serve, rather than to seek to gain power, authority and to be served ourselves. Let’s cast off any sense of entitlement, clinging only to our one true birthright, to be called children and friends of God, because he chose to call us that, and because Jesus made it possible.

Who knows whether I’m right or not? More than likely at times we need to be on the sidelines too, or marching in the demonstrations, signing petitions, calling and holding elected representatives to account, but more than ever, it seems to me that it might just be the moment to look inside ourselves and ask the question of what God might be asking or encouraging of us in the places where we are? Where might we be being sent? Are we willing to go? What are we hoping for when we show up?