In my reflections last month on the thought of Cardinal Newman, I didn’t refer to the line that was perhaps most often quoted by commentators during the papal visit: ‘to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’ Of itself, however, it has little obvious meaning. It was I suspect used largely to suggest a kind of liberal detachment from what is assumed to be dogmatism, a pragmatic adaptation to whatever seems to make sense in the present. But that of course is not what Newman meant. The quotation comes from his Essay on Development of Christian Doctrine, in which he wrestles with the question of development in Christian belief and the way in which the continuity of an essentially unchanging idea might survive through centuries of changed circumstances, experience and historic dissimilarity.
Great ideas cannot be embalmed, or carried through time like precious bone china. They have to risk misunderstanding or corruption from the world around. And if they are indeed great ideas they take time as Newman says to be ‘fully exhibited’. Their strength has to be tested. Can Christian truth survive collision with different social, geographic and economic settings. Can it become more vigorous as its years increase? Can its capabilities and its scope be expanded through time?
‘At first no one knows what it is, or what it is worth. It remains perhaps for a time quiescent; it tries, as it were, its limbs, and proves the ground under it, and feels its way. From time to time it makes essays which fail, and are in consequence abandoned. It seems in suspense which way to go; it wavers, and at length strikes out in one definite direction. In time it enters upon strange territory; points of controversy alter their bearing; parties rise and around it; dangers and hopes appear in new relations; and old principles reappear under new forms. It changes with them in order to remain the same. In a higher world it is otherwise, but here below to live is to change, and to be perfect is to have changed often.’
What challenges us most in that extended quotation is the suggestion that the Christian idea changes in order to remain the same. We can only test that truth by trying to live the idea and test its reality in the changing circumstances of our lives. That is the challenge to the individual Christian, to a parish church, to the national institution of a church. And that challenge is at its greatest when something in which we have invested emotional energy and in which we find reassurance and stability is seriously questioned. Over the years people have experienced such challenges in the changing language of the liturgy, in the changing appearance of their churches, in the ordination of women to the priesthood, in new Christian music and art, in the impact of other faith communities moving in next door, in scholarship which questions our way of reading the Bible and understanding the Creed. And such challenges never come to an end.
Looking at ourselves we might find our experience of change at St John’s to be a little less dramatic; change comes to us in the different personalities of our clergy, in the disappearance of familiar faces from the pews, in the numbers of children in our Junior Church, in the appearance of our service booklets, and in the simple fact of our own aging. But this takes place against the background of regularity in the shape of the Christian year which does not change. And yet all around us society is changing in ways that may be superficially obvious, though the real, deep and long term consequences may be harder to read. The extraordinary radio 4 series, ‘The History of the World in a hundred objects’ has just come to an end. It showed a history of extraordinary change and development and yet for its author, Neil MacGregor, it demonstrated the power of things to connect us to other lives across time and place; he hoped to have shown that the notion of the human family is not an empty metaphor and that however dysfunctional that family often is we nevertheless share the same needs and preoccupations, the same fears and hopes.
The history of an object is in many ways easier to trace than the history of an idea, especially if the idea is as complex as a religious faith. When Newman spoke of the development of the idea of Christianity he made it clear that the content of that idea could not easily or completely be described. At its heart, however, is the incarnation – the mystery of God’s substance manifest in a human being, God’s self identification with the world he has made and more especially with the humanity he puts at the heart of the world. The idea that Newman talks of has presented itself through numerous buildings, symbolic objects and rituals, through art and music; but each of these things must lead back to the human story, to human relationship an action. No object, however precious can carry the idea – that way lies idolatry – in fact the least precious or complex the object the nearer it can be to God as in bread and wine, in water and flame.
And so, as we ponder the fact of change we come nearer to the recognition that its manifestation and its progress is most properly facilitated by those things which realise our humanity more completely, in relationship, in self awareness, in prayer and contemplation, in service, worship and reflection on the words of those who have gone this way before us. And we have always to be alert to the ways in which the changing world around us makes it harder to concentrate on these things.
As we approach Advent we prepare to initiate that season through the service of confirmation in which adults and young people affirm their faith and their membership of the Christian community. It is a good way to begin Advent which should be a season for the strengthening of relationships and of self awareness in contemplation. Our stewardship month focussed on our community’s need for material things and I am grateful to all those of you who have responded so generously. As we pass on our way towards Advent we reflect on the saints and the lives of those we have loved, on the sacrifice people have made in war and the things that make humankind such a dysfunctional family. We focus too, during what is called the kingdom season and the possibilities of salvation for the dysfunctional human family, and the ways in which we might better live together. But in the end we come back again and again to God’s call to us to change, to respond to the call of God more deeply as individuals and in groups and as a community. The idea of Christianity flows on through history but we must often change in order to keep up with it.
With my love and prayers,
The Vicar Writes
Stephen Tucker