Bishops' Blog

Cambridge: an appreciation

I want to say, right off, how grateful I am to EDOD and Ridley, Cambridge for these two weeks of study. The environs of the university are beautiful and green, the people most gracious, even if we had at times to strain to hear what we were saying to each other in the same language! Meanwhile, my prayer is that the walkabout is informative for the diocese, and as collegial as I remember it to have been.

My first observation is how we learn at times by hearing the same message in a new key. I reside in an evangelical Anglican theological college in a university setting- not unfamiliar to me. And the challenges of the C of E at present are familiar too. But we see ourselves different, at a slant, in listening to our cousins. Likewise I was invited to hear Bach’s St.John Passion in the Trinity College Chapel. To hear the familiar words in a lyrical lament in a foreign tongue provides the distance that allows really to hear- Pilate’s ‘was ist Wahrheit?’ (‘What is truth?’), or Jesus’ ‘Es ist vollbracht’ (‘it has been brought to fulfillment’).

Second, being here, as an American not quite in King Arthur’s court, makes one appreciate the witness of the old. It can of course mean the hidebound or sleepy. But we live in a culture addicted to change and speed (in regard to which I mean to read Hartmut Rosa’s book on the contemporary acceleration of time.) To attend a concert in Henry VIII’s chapel, eat breakfast in J.C.Ryle’s seminary, and take communion in Charles Simeon’s parish are invigorating for me, a Prayer Book Christian. In our world, standing still may be at times the most radical of witnesses.

(A small part of my nearly-complete pastoral letter on theology and technology was written in a coffee house looking out on King’s College where, 90 years ago, a young grad student named Alan Turing began a career that would lead to the birth of the computer.)

I do not cease to pray for you all, in spite an ocean in-between.

Peace,

+GRS

Cities

When I was living in Canada’s largest city I read in the paper of a survey in Alberta: how many hated Toronto? 70% said they did. When I mentioned this to a friend who was a Torontonian, hie replied ‘30%! Not bad?’ This feeling is not rare about big cities, and I would venture that not a few people in the more rural parts of our diocese share it!

In our recent clergy conference, Brian Brock, a theologian at Aberdeen, reflected on Jacques Ellul, a French theologian who was also a World War II resistance-fighter and early commentator on technology. In particular he was interested in Ellul’s The Meaning of the City. In that book Ellul first understood the city, and in particular Babel, as a rebellion against life in the garden, where God intended the human to live. By its very nature the city entailed pride and pretense. We see this theme in the Bible throughout, since close to its conclusion, in Revelation, we read of ‘Babylon the fallen’ (18:2), where John has in mind Rome. We need to note, historically, that great cities were throughout connected to empire, as well as slavery of one form or another. More recently T.S.Eliot in his poetic cry of modern despair speaks of

Falling towers

Jerusalem Athens Alexandria

Vienna London

Unreal

But Ellul, and we too, need to see how God in His redemptive mercy takes our own detours and puts them to a good use. Great cities were the places where faith in Jesus first flourished, so much so that Christians came to use the word for country folk (paganus) for those still caught up in the local gods. More generally, the grandeur of the imperial city with all the diverse subject peoples present and co-mingled, became a feature of the city of God itself, of ‘all nations and tongues.’ (Daniel 7:14), originally an Hellenistic vision taken captive to Christ especially as it redeemed the Roman imperium.

The hybris and corruption reaching back to Babylon is never lost sight of: these too describe us the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve. But the dynamism, diversity, and destination of the city are features of the goal toward which we move. And where we find these features in great worldly cities themselves, an example of which is contemporary Dallas, still by grace speak to us of the final city of God.

+GRS