Britain is a strange paradox. Immensely secular and suspicious of religion in its public life, it is also a place of renewed spiritual search. But how do we discern what is of the Spirit in ‘the spiritual’? That was one issue we wrestled with in our Athens meeting. In Luke’s Gospel the Spirit of the Lord is manifested in Jesus’ announcement of good news to the poor, sight for the blind, release for captives – the in-breaking of God’s domination-free kingdom. Yet many of our churches are still inward-looking. We do not ‘walk our talk’.
What people outside the household of faith are often implicitly saying to us is “don’t lecture me, show me.” It is the fruits of the Spirit which can transform the church into a community which witnesses through the attraction of how it lives, who it values and what it advocates.
At the same time, those fruits may reveal that people’s longing for a ‘consumer spirituality’ that provides comfort without transformation and therapy without ethical challenge is far too shallow to bring real healing and reconciliation in a divided world.
In Britain we are also moving into a post-Christendom situation. Many of the historic churches have for many years thought of themselves as part of some overriding ‘Christian culture’. But now we can no longer rely on the Christian institutions, symbols and words which were familiar even to those who lived outside the church. So we need ways of speaking and living which communicate the ancient-yet-ever-new Gospel in a fresh way. It is by deeply engaging with those who may be very different from ourselves that we hear the true breadth of “what the Spirit is saying to the churches”, and learn the skills of interpretation and translation which we desperately need.
3. In your opinion was the CWME a success and did the talks and workshops offer great insight to those attending and those watching around the globe on the web broadcasts?
The Gospel’s idea of success is faithfulness – even if that leads to the cross. My own culture’s idea of success is a master plan, an increased profit margin or an advertising coup. CWME was successful in calling us to seek the face of Christ in one another and to make that face known in deeds of peace, justice, mercy and healing. But it revealed no new ‘grand strategy’. In Christ, God questions the easy answers we are inclined to come up with, points us back to the hard road of discipleship, and promises to be with us on the journey.
So while the messages and workshops of CWME were full of hope and inspiration, they demanded nothing less than our lives. This is always the way with the Gospel, when it is proclaimed and received authentically.
To choose one example, we were challenged by Mennonites and others in situations of conflict to make the refusal of violence a key “identity marker” for the followers of Jesus. In the cross God absorbs and defeats violence and division. Yet we live in a world which says that such things are not only ‘necessary’ but may even be redemptive. In witnessing to the One who offers true healing and reconciliation, are we not called to live lives disarmed of those weapons which deny the safety of the Body?
