Holy Communion 10:15 - April 26th 2009

Acts 3:12-19 & Luke 24:36b-48

Royal Society of Saint George

It’s there in both readings this morning—the idea of being a witness. To this we are witnesses. You are witnesses of these things. What are ‘These things’? that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins is to be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem.

Jesus leaves his disciples with a global message—a gospel for the world—for all nations. So how do we witness to Christ in today’s world?

Today we welcome the Society of St George to present the flag on this the closest Sunday to St George’ Day. And I’m left pondering about what it means to be part of this national culture—to be English.

Jeremy Paxman says we’re a right old mixed bag. Off the top of his head he lists the following:

village cricket and Elgar, Do-It-Yourself, irony, brass bands, Shakespeare, Cumberland sausages, double-decker buses, Vaughan Williams, Donne and Dickens, twitching net curtains, quizzes and crosswords, dry-stone walls, gardening, Monty Python, easy-going Church of England vicars, the Beatles, bad hotels, good beer, church bells, Constable, Women’s Institutes, fish and chips, curry, Christmas Eve at King’s College, Cambridge, fell-running, ugly caravan sites on beautiful clifftops, crumpets, Bentleys and Reliant Robins.

All, somehow as evocative of our culture, says Paxman, as the smell of a bonfire in the Autumn dusk.

I don’t know if you saw in the Guardian on Thursday—St George’s Day. Martin Wainwright argued that a recent study has claimed that Bradford is one of the three most “English” places in the country: only Scarborough and the Cornish district of Penwith beat us for traditional English activities per head of population. Surprised?

We have one of the highest ratios of fish and chip shops to people.

Now, there’s glory for you.

But more seriously, there’s a change of attitude afoot in the Council chambers too. A desire to affirm the traditional culture of this city. On Thursday, Howard Middleton, the mayor led the revival of a St George’s Day parade, yes, even with a dragon. Behind such moves is a hoped-for resurgence in confidence in Englishness. It resonates, doesn’t it, with the call by the Archbishop of York this week for the country ‘to recognize on St George’s Day the enormous treasure that sits in our cultural and spiritual vaults’. He said ‘the truth is that an all-embracing England, confident and hopeful in her own identity, is something to celebrate.’

It can be a difficult message to voice in today’s world. We’re good at reticence, us English. Good at not blowing our own trumpet. We good—on the whole—at a quiet sort of tolerance that muddles along. But the danger of that is the emergence of more strident voices that take centre stage. The BNP comes to mind. Some of the voices that advocate a particular form of multiculturalism. Roger Scruton has remarked that in the face of such assertiveness ‘the voice of English churches becomes ever weaker, ever more shy of doctrine, ever more conciliatory and ill at ease’. He comments, with a very English degree of irony, that ‘The Church is not there to propagate the Christian faith, but to forgive those who reject it’.

I’ve been reading Scruton a lot lately. That old bête noir of the old left wing—who has recently regained his religion and come back to worship regularly within the Anglican church. He’s not the only one. Madeleine Bunting mentioned a few weeks ago that A N Wilson, the historian, is no longer an atheist; that Andrew Motion keeps thinking about God and wonders where it will end. That many agnostics are sick of the fog horn voices of the New Atheists, and want the best values of religion to be appreciated, even if they cannot be wholeheartedly embraced. That faith be understood not as the intellectual assent to some crackbrained beliefs, but as a way of life—a way of life that is inextricably woven into the fabric of our society.

And so such social commentators are making interesting links between the church of England, as the established religion and the culture of England. That our cultural and spiritual formation belong together. As we read Shakespeare, or T.S.Eliot, or listen to Vaughan Williams, or sing choral evensong, we gain a cultural heritage that helps us to grow in moral and emotional knowledge. We understand better the world in which we live, we develop as good citizens, open and aware of culture—the best that has been thought and said, as Matthew Arnold defined it. We become cultured, and appreciate culture—not only our own, but that of others too. We are able to build relationships of trust and friendship across the widest differences because we are secure and open in who we are; we hold dear the cultural treasures that Archbishop Sentamu wants us to celebrate.

But it’s vulnerable—no longer to be taken for granted. Scruton describes an interesting phenomenon that I certainly recognise—something he calls stealing from churches. He says that so many visitors to churches today come for the atmosphere, the beauty. They come and take from the spiritual resources that have been sustained over generations. They come and they don’t put back. They don’t come to kneel where prayer has been valid; they come merely to verify, to inform curiosity, to carry report.

Scruton has returned to church not as he used to visit, as a thief, taking from the holiness, but now as a penitent. Wanting to contribute to the holiness, to make it a way of life. In the recognition that holiness is based upon a God who is offended by nothing and bears everything, even crucifixion; who loves humanity boundlessly …

And so the church should be: open, and expecting nothing in return. But it’s vulnerable.

We take it for granted that the church of England will always be there. Look around you. It’s built to last. This and countless other churches: they speak of continuity and ‘thereness’. But I don’t think we can—take all this for granted. The Church of England needs more people to make their religion a way of life; binding themselves into a corporate identity, praying week in and week out. Adding to, not just taking from, the holiness that is its wellspring.

Let us come before his presence with a song—today and everyday. Otherwise we may find ourselves coming before his absence with a sigh.

And that’s you and me. Unless, like the first disciples, we allow Christ to encounter us in his risen life, we lose touch with the heart beat of our English culture. A heartbeat that is rooted in Christ.

Like the first disciples, we need to be witnesses to these things. We need to witness - yes, to our families and the generations that come after us; to our neighbours; to our work colleagues. Our English culture can be our greatest treasure—through which Christ draws us into deeper holiness.

It’s a good and deep vault—to pick up on Sentamu’s image. Full of glorious works. This afternoon, for example—Handel—an adopted son of this Land—Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus—yes, come back to hear it; come back to celebrate the best that has been thought and said. Let’s be confident and secure in what England continues to offer the world. Through our culture, made holy because it’s rooted in Christ—let us witness to Christ, his dying and living again; let us witness to a way of life founded upon the truth of Christ.

Let us come before his presence with a song—today and everyday.