Random Thoughts
on Religion and Life
from The Rector and others

Clergy The Staff team at St Matthew's People Meet some of the people of God who worship with us at Bethnal Green

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James Riley led the intercessions on Sunday August 15, on the feast of the Blessed Virgin Mary. With his permission, they appear here:

Almighty Father, gathered here in the name of Christ, our redeemer, and empowered by your Holy Spirit, we pray to you.

We remember, Lord, that because of your love for us, you provided for our redemption by coming to live amongst us.

We remember that you chose an unremarkable virgin to bear your son. Therefore we pray that your Church makes your message known to all people, however grand or lowly, however rich or poor, so that those who are humble may be exalted and those who are hungry may be filled with good things.

Pray look upon all of us in our earthly pride and make us humble in your sight.

Lord in your mercy…

We remember, Lord, that faith in you cast out doubt and moved Mary to accept your will for her to become the mother of God.

So we pray that our faith may cause us never to doubt in your goodness.

We pray that you strengthen us to respond in faith when you call, and that your mercy may be upon us.

Lord in your mercy…

We remember, Lord, that pregnant and unmarried Mary would have suffered rejection according to the law. Yet we remember that Joseph wished to protect her from persecution; even moved by your call to marry her in spite of the law.

So lord we pray that you fix in us compassion for those who find themselves on the margins of our society;

we pray you teach us tolerance for those who act outside of the rules and bounds we know.

Keep us from judging, as Mary found herself not judged and open our hearts to your spirit that our faith in you is not limited by rules as you continue to reveal your glory in us through the Holy Spirit.

Lord in your mercy…

Almighty God, you came to us, born as Christ, born of woman, born under the law to set us free. As your servants, also born of woman, you gave us the gift of baptism that we might be born of water and of the Spirit.

We pray for Luke who is being baptised here today in your name.

We pray that you give him, and that you renew in all of us the grace to know you and to respond to your call as Mary did.

Help us to understand your will, so that through our baptism we too may count ourselves worthy to be your servants.

We pray that you may strengthen us and, especially, Luke’s family and friends to support him in faith as he grows up.

Lord in your mercy…

We remember parts of the world where your grace and love may seem a distant thing

For people in Pakistan affected by the floods and those in China hit by the landslides there.

May your spirit move amongst those who are suffering and those who have responded to the call to aid.

We pray too for stability and peace in countries where there is conflict and unrest, calling to mind Afghanistan, Iraq and the Holy Land.

We pray for those with special needs and intentions:here followed those who were remembered by name....

and those who needs are known in our own hearts and minds.

Lord in your mercy…

MAPS OF THE WORLD, MAPS OF THE MIND
- a sermon preached by the Rector on Sunday August 22, 2010

'But you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to the innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven….'(Hebrews12:22-23).

At the British Library there is a exhibition that has been running since April and comes to an end on the nineteenth of September, the day we have designated to celebrate the feast of our Patron, St Matthew.

The exhibition at the library is called Magnificent Maps and it comes with a subtitle – Power, Propaganda and Art. It is an entertaining and informative display of maps and how and what they say about those who commission them, make them and display them. And those of us who look at them.

Now, it may seem on one level that a map is a fairly non-controversial object. It shows where things are in relation to others. It can be used to get from point A to point B. It can delineate boundaries between states. It can even, depending on the kind of map, tell you how steep is the gradient on a hill that you are hoping to visit and climb.

All of which, as I say, is uncontroversial. But the exhibition, more through presentation than interpretation, shows just how false some of these ideas can be. To draw on perhaps the most recent advances in popular cartography, the Mercator projection, the way school atlases were put together when I was a boy – ah, yes, all the those bits of pink denoting the British Empire, with a big British Isles making the continent look paltry – this has been replaced by the Peters projection.

If you look at one and then the other you get the impression that England, Great Britain, has shrunk and other parts of the world, the colonies for heaven’s sake, seem to have got bigger. How can this be? There is a reason for this and it is a relatively simple one. The Peters projection is based on land mass. That is, it attempts to show on a map how big a country is by the amount of space it actually takes up on the globe. So it is argued that the map echoes what the world is like, not what how we think of ourselves.

The idea behind the exhibition, caught aptly in the subtitle - Power, Propaganda and Art-  is that maps do not necessarily show what we think they do.

There are reasons for them looking like they do: perhaps to show off in a map of a hunting estate; to make a theological point, such as the map of the world that places Jerusalem, the place of the death of our Lord, right in the middle of it; or to make a point, like the wonderful Tea map, which shows that tea is drunk around the world in so many different places, by different people for different reasons. That map, by the way, was commissioned by the wonderfully named International Tea Market Expansion Board.

I want to look at elements at that subtitle in reverse, starting with art. Well, it looks good. It is impressive, it can inspire, it is beautiful. This has held true of art for centuries. Some people want to buy these for their aesthetic value. And aesthetics can have a real cash value. You may remember when the dean and chapter of Hereford Cathedral, facing a huge bill for repair work to the building, tried to sell their biggest treasure, the Mappa Mundi, a map of the world but they were met with a public outcry. ‘You can’t sell this’, they were told.’ If we don’t,’ the Dean and chapter responded, ‘the building will fall down and the map will be ruined.’ Somehow they both got their way: the building is still there and the Mappi Mundi is still in it. There is a copy of this map in the exhibition in London– a very good, digitally enhanced copy, but a copy nevertheless. Getting the real thing would have been a real coup.

Propaganda is now a dirty word, thanks to Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis, but it used to mean promotion. Trying to get one over your rivals by letting them know how important you were, or at least you think you were. One way of doing that was having a map. In that way the third aspect, Power, could be clearly read in what the world was like. And so, in a funny way, we are back to those vast tracts of pink in the school atlas.

What this all points to, of course, is that the way things look is not necessarily the way things are. Or, to put it another way, we want the things that are to look like what we say they do. Our views can affect our sense of reality.

This can be seen all too often about how we use the Bible, tradition and other aspects of our faith. Now, I am not going to rehearse my views on the latest machinations of power and changes to church polity – I have spoken publicly on this twice, and that is more than enough. But there is a salutary lesson in this. All Christians, no matter their stripe, have an inner map – it can be personal, group, or hierarchical – and we like to see our religious world follow it.

The Bible is a wonderful, perplexing, inspiring and controversial book. Claims to be Bible-based Christians are worthy. But to a greater and lesser extent we all choose bits of the Bible which shore up our views, be they pure bias, intellectually informed or just plain bonkers. One small example: the growing number of churches which claim to enshrine ‘New Testament teaching’ in only having men in leadership or as priests, seem perfectly happy to have women with their heads uncovered when they gather, not to mention not excluding or stoning those with tattoos or who have been remarried.

I have sat stunned hearing a fundamentalist point blank deny the truth that there are two creation stories in the opening chapters of Genesis. ‘No’, I was told, ‘they are the same’. No, they are not. Just read them. Or another minor point: did Saul die after falling on his own sword, as recorded in the last chapter of the first book of Samuel, or was he helped, killed by an Amalekite, as it is in the opening chapter of the second book of Samuel?

As I say, it is a small point, but one which tells us that sometimes it is not what is said, but what we want it to say, that matters. Acknowledging such a thing can seem, to some people, to diminish our faith, undermine the orthodoxy of church order. For instance, some will argue that a woman cannot be a proper priest and they will point to a number of reasons, including apostolic succession – that is, the apostles laid their hands on proper people who have repeated this process all through the centuries – and so we have a right succession to this day. Now, I am confident that Helen and I represent this in the Church of England. Others do not. But then, the pope says none of us in the CofE qualify anyway.

Have I strayed into those territories I said I was going to avoid? A bit. But the overall point is this. We need to look at ourselves, our scriptures, our traditions and our doctrines again and again. That is what study is. Looking at it and coming up with something like the American bumper sticker, ‘God said it; I believe it; that settles it!’ will just not do.

Reading, chewing over the Bible alone or in groups, praying, worshipping, meditating can all help us deepen our knowledge, faith and resolve to look at the maps of our mind and traditions and see how magnificent they are, even if they are touched by Power, Propaganda and Art.

 

THE THREE ORDERS OF THE CHURCH

I am not given to blogging, despite an earlier career in journalism. Much of it, to my mind, is unconsidered and knee-jerkish. Too often, in my experience, it degenerates to abuse.

The General Synod of the Church of England, for all its faults, is not a place for unconsidered opinions. The lead up, the discussions and the aftermath of its deliberations are not off-the-cuff.

Delegates campaign, are elected by the broader church, are bombarded with paperwork before their gatherings at which there are a host of fringe events. To come to a decision is both a prolonged process and one, hopefully, that is done in a spirit of prayerful reflection.

It should come as no surprise that St Matthew’s is a place that welcomes the decision to elect women to the episcopacy. There is a history and an irony in this.

The history is simple: for the past ten years St Matthew’s has been served by a Rector who is a member of the Society of Catholic Priests. SCP has since its inception in 1994 been open in its constituency. Its statement on Membership says:

Membership is open to all bishops and priests who:

• believe that the churches of the Anglican Communion are part of the one holy and catholic and apostolic church;
• are in communion with the Archbishop of Canterbury;
• believe that as a witness to the universal nature of the priesthood of Christ the church should ordain to serve as deacons, priests and bishops in the church of God all those whom the church discerns as being called by God to such offices regardless of ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation;
• believe in the real presence of Christ in the Eucharist;
• use and practise the seven sacraments

That St Matthew’s is served by a priest of this Society might be considered an act of ironic grace. After all, Forward in Faith, a group which opposes women in the priesthood, was formed in the Rectory of St Matthew’s. It is almost ten years since the first woman in priest’s orders joined the altar party in concelebration of the mass. This continued the tradition of St Matthew’s.

Women have preached and ministered the sacraments here since 2001 and we thank God for it. We rejoice and pray that the Spirit will lead to the election of Bishops who will show us the loving power of God, whatever their gender.

- Kevin Scully

SOCIETY OF CATHOLIC PRIESTS' STATEMENT
ON THE GENERAL SYNOD DECISION

Paschal Candle 2010

Tom Dollard painted our Paschal Candle this year. Have a look and see what he has to say about it on our Photo Gallery page.

The following were part of the material that was put before our Annual Parochial Church Meeting on March 21, 2010. The Annual Report and Accounts were also received at that meeting. We publish them so everyone can see how we work at St Matthew's.

Reflections of the year ended December 31, 2009
presented to the Annual Parish Church Meeting of March 21, 2010

PCC SECRETARY'S REPORT
2009 has been an inspiring year for St Matthew’s Bethnal Green.

The PCC has comprised nine individuals who have brought with them a variety of skills and experiences. Amongst our number have been an accountant, a lawyer, a consultant, a student, parishioners who have served on the PCC for twenty years, others who have lived in the parish for as long, but who have become more active in St Matthew’s in recent times, as well as some who relatively are new arrivals in the parish.

Including our non-voting member and excluding our rector, the PCC has had a more or less even split of the sexes at five men and four women. These personalities have boasted a range of social and educational backgrounds as well as professions and lifestyles. The range of ages the council has attracted is equally as broad, with our youngest member at seventeen years old through to most-senior member – after whose ages we haven’t enquired. Most interluding decades are also represented.

It is true to say that this diversity is reflective of the congregation at large who in their difference are united in the body of Christ at St Matthew’s.

This reflection is especially encouraging for me, as I believe it will be for our rector and all PCC members. In 2008, we declared our allegiance to the Inclusive Church network which seeks to promote the universality of God’s love. It is fair to say that the diversity of St Matthew’s congregation was an impetus for the PCC to join Inclusive Church and it continues demonstrably to be a living trait of St Matthew’s character. This in itself and the nourishment it gives to our common life are something the church and its governing body should be thankful for.

An item which has been unfailing in its appearance amongst PCC meeting agenda in 2009, as in previous years, is buildings. The main building themes for 2009 have been the Parish Hall and the church tower.

The Parish Hall has for the first time in many years been without any tenants, following the bankruptcy of Jemprint which had occupied the ground floor and the ending of the tenancy agreement with the artists who had occupied the first floor. This presented the PCC with the exciting opportunity of considering afresh how it would like to put the Hall to work in terms of both securing the financial viability of the St Matthew’s and realising our mission. As 2009 closed a subcommittee of three were investigating possibilities for the Hall, to be presented to the PCC in February. After years of it dominating meetings, the PCC are making signs, favourable to tendering the Hall for a commercial lease which would largely release the PCC from the burden it has placed upon us and which would bring in considerable revenue for St Matthew’s, freeing up the church to pursue its mission from a more-robust financial basis. I wish the next PCC every success in seeing this goal to fruition.

On the matter of the church tower, works done revealed it was in a worse condition than had been envisaged and that the cost to repair it would be substantial. This has understandably caused concern for the PCC, but has produced some positive outcomes and has been a matter that has engaged the PCC. The leadership of our rector has secured a grant from English Heritage which goes a long way to meeting the expected costs. However, under the terms of this grant we are expected to raise the remaining capital. Much enthusiasm has been shown by the PCC for this, resulting in a specific subcommittee which has committed to conduct an appeal to local businesses, residents and others who have a connexion to St Matthew’s.

A final reflection for 2009 concerns St Matthew’s social character. Our Sunday mass is, of course, the main occasion which brings us together. In 2009 we have had many other causes to spend time in each other’s company – as well as to associate with our brothers and sisters in Christ from neighbouring parishes. 2009 saw three pilgrimages: one to the Holy Land in January, one with the Cluster to Little Gidding and Cambridge in the summer and an excursion to Venice during Advent; a successful lecture on religious art at the National Gallery attracted participation from across the congregation, as well as walk of the parish boundary and a prayer day.

If, following what has been an active, engaging and rewarding year, we doubted the actions of God through us in 2009 we, as a PCC and a congregation, can draw assurance from the success of our second “Carols by Candlelight” service and a flattering Mystery Worshipper report.

As I stand down from the PCC after two years’ membership, the latter as secretary, I hope my successors may be inspired by the foundation they have to build on and that prayer and openness to God may guide them as they face the challenges which will inevitably present themselves in the next twelve months.
- James Riley

 

ELECTORAL ROLL OFFICER'S REPORT
There has been a revision of the electoral roll which took place from January 31 to February 28, 2010.

A total of four (4) names were removed from the roll and twenty (20) names were added, taking the total to seventy-six (76).

A copy of the roll is available for inspection on the table at the back of church. This was two weeks in advance of the scheduled Annual Parish Meeting on March 21, 2010.
- Adey Grummet

TREASURER’S REPORT
Carlo Flores will present the annual accounts and answer any questions at the APCM.

DEANERY SYNOD MEMBERS' REPORT
We do not have a Deanery Synod representative.

FABRIC REPORT
The Church. The Quinquennial Inspection works have moved on, especially in relation to pigeon defences, which cost just over £10,000. However, the sad fact is that our high level inspect of masonry revealed bigger problems than we expected. The good news is that our architect Jon Bolter led our efforts to secure an in-principle grant from English Heritage of £70,000 for this work. Our challenge is to raise £30,000.
The Parish Hall remains a time and resource consuming problem. A number of options papers have been presented to the PCC. The considerations are outright sale, a commercial or other brokered community and artistic ventures. Thanks to the sub-committee who worked on this. The new PCC will have to move forward on this.
The Parish Room remains in good repair, thanks to the improvement works carried out by the tenant, U-Turn. The PCC meets there and can report the high standard of finish is being well maintained.
The Watch House is still let out. We renewed the tenancy of the current tenant, Sebastian Sandys, in September on the same terms for 12 months. Some works have needed to be done but Sebastian has been particularly effective in getting some works done, e.g. the fence affected by tree roots, by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. We thank him for that.
- Kevin Scully on behalf of Jan Fox

RECTOR'S REPORT
2009 could be considered the Year of Pilgrimage. In January four members of St Matthew’s were among the 27 pilgrims to the Holy Land for the trip led by Fr Jeremy Harris and myself. This ‘trip of a lifetime’ was also the subject of an illustrated sermon slot by Jan Fox and James Riley, a memorable initiative with images being projected on to the west wall of the church. In June about 20 people were among those who went to Little Gidding, Leighton Bromswold, finishing with Evensong in King’s College, Cambridge. 15 people made a private, prayerful walk of Westminster Abbey in November and a few weeks later, 8 people from St Matthew’s were among a group of 22 who travelled to Venice and Padua. In the finer weather we made a trip to the National Gallery for a guided tour – thanks to James Riley for organising this – and I led a Beating of the Bounds. This surprised many regular members of the church who later admitted that they did not quite realise the extent of the parish or its diversity.

This travelling in faith was also reflected of those coming to church, with many younger people joining us. We are still not providing anything for younger school age children, which we hope to address by providing special stand-alone child-friendly services in 2010.

Another innovation was a Friday night youth group, with up to seven young people taking part. They devised and led the liturgy of the word with a drama at Pentecost. A number of guest preachers – The Revds Rosy Fairhurst, Alan Wynne, Fiona Green, Rod Green and Sr Sue Makin SSM – joined us in Lent. Advent saw a change to the layout of the church for reflections on what stops us from recognising God in our world. We held our second Carols by Candlelight Service, with a congregation of more than 160. Again our Director of Music,  Chris Maxim, provided a new carol and recruited and rehearsed a choir drawn from church members, The Giltspur Singers and a number of extras. St Matthew’s has seen another relatively stable year in terms of membership.

We have held a number of groups in the year: Chewing Over the Bible, a Lent group for over the 60s, a young people’s confirmation group, the young people’s group and we offered Marriage Preparation. We also repeated the Prayer Partners exercise, in which church members were paired with two others to pray for each other.

Because of the credit crunch, we decided not to conduct a Stewardship Campaign but a small number of people both joined and stopped regular giving. We certainly bucked the trend with an increase both giving and collections. This was welcome but well short of the challenge created in our loss of hall tenants, Jemprint having gone into liquidation in 2008 and our decision not to offer the Paradise Row art gallery a tenancy in the upper hall. Rentals have kept the church afloat in the past and we currently face a shortfall, based on what was coming in, of almost £1500 a month. This is serious indeed. Thanks to Jayne Boys and others who have joined me in wrestling with what remains our biggest economic challenge. Not surprisingly, focus on such matters can sometimes distract us from mission.

Mission was the focus of our first two meetings of the PCC, one led by Fr Rob Wickham and the second by James Riley. This energised us and gave us a passion for mission, though it was decided not to proceed with the annual Mission Action Plan but to focus on our activities. This has been useful. More people have joined in worship to serve on welcomers readers and intercessors’ rotas. We are blessed with a team of capable and keen servers but they are both growing in age and slightly diminishing in number!
 
Our bereavement and funeral ministry continues. The parish clergy officiated at a total of 17 for the year – six in church - brought fee income of £1683 to the church. There is an ongoing trend, reflecting changes to the demographics of the parish, to publish more Banns of Marriage. This occurred eight times, with an attendant fee income of £272. Most of these fees are assigned to the diocese to support my stipend.

Once again, I must thank all of you who serve in public or hidden roles: Helen Loder, my fellow priest, servers, welcomers, PCC and committee members, those who do the glamorous, mundane and dirty jobs. It was also good to have a PCC Secretary again. As can be seen from the minutes of last year’s meeting, our Treasurer and Churchwarden, Chris Calder, stepped down from her post. She gave sterling service in both posts and will be missed. However, I am pleased that Carlo Flores, who works in the financial services sector, took on the post of Treasurer while Sebastian Sandys provided the bookkeeping and Sallyanne Faulkner as Stewardship Secretary. Naming names is always dangerous so if I have omitted anyone – you are all special – please forgive me.
- Kevin Scully

AN HONOURABLE ESTATE?
by Kevin Scully

Marriage in the Church of England is fast becoming a joke.

This is not a why-oh-why outburst – really – but one based on a prolonged reflection of the pointless cul-de-sac that offering a marriage ceremony in church is.

I should also point out that it would be a shame for me personally because, like many clergy, I don’t often get the chance to officiate at such an occasion. When I do I usually enjoy it but, given the state of affairs we are in, maybe that should not be counted as a plus. I should also add I deal with more enquiries than services that occur.

How did we get to the state we’re in? The first response is easy: we confuse the social with theological and then pretend we are being ‘pastoral’, using the bald tyre of ‘meeting people where they are’. We aspire to doing good instead of admitting that we are continuing what was always a cashing in on the sub-legal and cultural aspects of times past. We further disorient ourselves in that by doing this we are somehow traditional and worthy.

Attempts to keep a toe in the water by the General Synod of the Church of England are often portrayed as keeping the church in touch with people’s needs. To see the full horror of this, go to the church’s own official website. Its opening on marriage in the Life Events section should sound alarm bells for parish clergy:

‘Congratulations! You're welcome to marry in church whatever your beliefs, whether or not you are baptised and whether or not you go to church. And, marrying in church has never been easier thanks to a change in the law which means you now have more churches to choose from.’

It gets worse. The page then refers the web enquirer to another specific website, http://www.yourchurchwedding.org. It seems to suggest that there is an open market for couples to choose where they would like to wed. If only that were true, we might not be in the mess we are in.

The most recent changes allowing Qualifying Connections for marriage services in church are frankly ridiculous. There may still be pockets of England where someone will recall whether the grandparents or parents of one of the couple seeking to marry in a church were active worshippers, but they are far from the norm. It would seem from my parochial experience it is now a softer, and arguably more honest, way of the old pretence that one of the couple still resides at their parents’ house. Why bother to qualify at all? Why not just have a set price for all this? Let people get married where they want, if the clergy will officiate. That is the veiled truth in some parts of the country.

After all, what the church wants is cash. That is the only justification for the calling of banns. Any pretence otherwise should be dismissed. Does anybody really believe anyone inside the gathered worshipping congregation knows the relationship history behind the names being called on three consecutive Sundays? Who keeps the precious pieces of paper that are produced anyway?

One good is coming out of all this, at least in the parish I serve. I find many couples wanting to take up the offer of a series of meetings to prepare them for marriage, not just the wedding service. The three sessions involved aim to get the couple to consider some of the practicalities of marriage and why a religious service may have importance. It surprises me how many couples are still willing to sail into a service – two of which I know recently cost almost £20,000 – without considering the life that follows it. That is only overshadowed by the number of parish clergy who seem content with not offering any preparation before taking the cash, having the joyful event recorded in their registers and never seeing the couple again.

There are also the complications of foreign nationals wanting to wed in church. This is confused by contradictory advice. Good practice in the London diocese has been to ask those involved to sort out their matters with the Home Office. But the loophole in the law which allows church weddings to take place without such bureaucracy is well known. It is up to individual clergy to rule on the matter. That regular churchgoers get preferential treatment is probably the worst solution.

The same can be applied to second and third weddings. Clergy have the right as registrars to waive church teaching on this. It is one that should not be exercised lightly. After all, the only consistent teaching of Jesus on sexuality was that those marrying if their first spouses are still alive are entering into adulterous liaisons.

This also glosses over an even a bigger problem. The church really has no worked out theology on the marriage event. From our source book, admittedly from someone who does not consider himself a Biblical scholar, the ‘solemnisation’ of such a rite is untenable: penile penetration of a virgin female (no such requirement on the masculine of the species) seems to be the only marking of marriage. The celebrations before the initial sex act (if one looks at the Ian McEwan’s wonderful novella On Chesil Beach, we get a particularly useful English angle on this) are thus more than religious and bacchanalian prurience.

How can we solve these dilemmas? Simple. Stop all church weddings that involve registration. Adopt something like the French model where all the legal preliminaries and officialdom are dealt with by the local authority. Then, if people want a religious aspect to their partnership the church can respond to them: be it the first time, a resurrection moment after a failed relationship, foreigners or even people of the same sex. Now that really would be pastoral.