I’m certain that most people walking into our church this evening would have no idea that the choir whose music we are enjoying is what we are calling a “scratch” choir – an ad hoc choir of amateurs rather than professionals. I’m sure we are all enjoying the contribution they bring to this liturgy.
We are very privileged in this church to enjoy the music provided by professionals, but this occasion of a scratch choir is perhaps the time to reflect on the importance, in all areas of the Church’s life, of what I like to call the “Christian vocation to godly amateurism”. That may sounds a bit bizarre or defeatist. Why shouldn’t Christians want to do things well? And in our culture to do things well means to do things professionally. It’s become shorthand for doing things to a high standard.
But there is something in the very nature of Christian discipleship that is resistant to the professionalization of Christian life and witness. We see something of that in this passage we’ve heard from the Acts of the Apostles. Here we have Paul (whose profession was that of tentmaker) and Barnabas (who owned land in Cyprus and so was probably a farmer) doing some extraordinary things that were very much outside of their sphere of professional competence. They healed a man who had been crippled from birth, something that was actually the professional responsibility of the religious hierarchy. And so at the end of this passage we hear that “the Jews” came and dragged Paul out of the city. Paul himself, of course, was a Jew and so what the term seems to mean here is that strand of the Jewish hierarchy that wanted to defend the containment of religious life and ministry (including the healing of the sick) within the traditional structures by which they had always been regulated. Sometimes in the New Testament that’s given the generalised term of “the Law”.
This takes us right back, of course, to the ministry of Jesus himself. Jesus’ attacks on the Pharisees, his affirmation of the sinful and outcast, and his direct criticism and even aggressive attacks on the work of the Temple in Jerusalem were all part of his core critique of the professionalization of the mechanisms of faith. You do not need the systems of sacrifice that are operated by the religious elite in the Temple to serve the living God. This is the Good News that Paul and Barnabas are bringing to the people in Lystra, that professionalised religious mechanisms actually become idols and all people are free to turn to God without payment to religious professionals or mediation by religious professionals. Christ alone is the mediation.
So religious professionals like myself have an ambiguous status within the life of the Church when we fully consider the teaching of Christ and the meaning of his death. My brother-in-law used to be the chaplain at a majority Jewish school in North London and one Easter a Jewish boy in his class asked him, “Sir, is it true that we killed Jesus?” And my bother-in-law standing in his dog collar said, “No, we killed Jesus, the priests, because he threatened our power.”
One of the things I have been reflecting about since I became a priest is that we who are “professional Christians” need to constantly struggle against the dangers of professionalised Christianity. Being an official representative of the Church in the world is an important role and a wonderful privilege. But it is exactly that – we represent you the Church. And we are here to lead, foster and develop your discipleship, not do things for you. No Christian needs a priest to pray, to read the Bible, or to follow the example of Christ. And even at the Eucharist what we do at the altar is represent the priesthood of the Christian people assembled around us.
Christian priesthood is an odd and ambiguous thing and it is most certainly not “professional Christianity”. I think the closest I am getting to its purpose is to say that Christian priests are needed to show Christians that they don’t need priests. But the paradox is that in that role, we still seem to remain indispensible!
So the message of the Christian faith is, have a go! Take a step out of the boat, as Jesus said to Peter, and you may be surprised to find yourself walking on water. For all the value I place on catholic order, I think it is the case that people throughout the history of the Church have been held back by their becoming pacified by the professionalization of discipleship. People sometimes say to me, I wish I had your faith. Well, there’s no secret to it and I think that the Protestant emphasis on the faith available to all believers has been a tremendous liberation from clerical control and dominance. My favourite passage from the writing of the Lutheran pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer is in his book on discipleship where he encourages Christians not to wait for a deeper faith or leave Christian life to the clergy:
Do the external works [of faith], let go of what binds you, give up what is separating you from God’s will! Do not say, I do not have faith for that.
All kinds of professional exclusivities (not just clericalism) can creep into the life of the Church. It’s a way of leaving things up to others. But that is a great pity because it’s in the course of this godly amateurism, this simple “getting on with” the life of discipleship that I have seen human beings really flourish. I remember an alcoholic woman in a church I used to attend for whom her weekly responsibility as a sidesperson was the only thing she managed to stay sober for and this small but important commitment gradually became the vehicle for her getting herself out of addiction. I think also of a married couple who are friends of mine who found that they could no longer attend the bible study group run in their parish so they decided to get up an hour early one morning a week to study the bible together on their own. And they found it so interesting and liberating and sustaining that that one morning a week soon because an almost daily activity through which they felt God was feeding them and shaping their lives.
So let’s allow this scratch choir to be a symbol for us of the godly amateurism of Christian discipleship – the amateurism of fishermen like Peter, and farmers and tentmakers like Barnabas and Paul, who went on to do amazing works of God. As they embraced Christ they challenged the professionalization of faith and went on to do things that they never would have thought themselves capable of. May it be true for us as it was for them.
Amen
Bonhoeffer 2001, p.66