Tag Archive for 'baptism'

Common Worship Ordination

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Published
by
bcg
on 9 April 2008
in Church, Life and Theology
. 3 Comments

I have to confess that there are many parts of the Church of England's new Common Worship services that I don't like.  The Baptism service, for example, is hugely long, overly complicated and (I think) theologically wrong.  (For more on that you might want to read my essay on baptism.)  The pattern of daily prayer changes every day, and there are so many options that it is difficult to see what is 'Common' about the new services.

Despite all this, my wife and I spent the day in Durham Cathedral yesterday - where we will be ordained in June - going through the ordination service, both practically and theologically.  As the last part of Common Worship to be published, there has been a lot of time and effort put into the service, and I think it has paid off.  The prayers are good, there is a focus on the call to preach and to serve, and even on the importance of the Bible!

The ordination itself, where the Bishop lays his hands on each candidate, takes place within the context of the main prayers in the service.  From the service booklet we were given yesterday (all forty pages of it!) it really does seem like the transition between prayers - ordination - prayers is seemless.

The centrality of prayer in the service caught me by surprise, but actually I think is absolutely right.  It means that our life as ordained ministers begins firmly within the context of family, friends and the wider church praying for us, and it means that we ourselves begin on our knees.  This all acknowledges just how important it is that God enables us to perform our various ministries (ordained and non-ordained), that we can't do any of it in our own strength.

I was looking forward to the service before - now I can't wait!

‘The Love of God’ or the Cross?

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Published
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bcg
on 22 April 2007
in Bible, Church, Quotations and Theology
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Susie and I visited our local church today for a baptism communion service. In some respects it was my ideal service (over in just under an hour and a quarter, very friendly, lots of families and kids), but I was deeply disappointed with the sermon.

The preacher had two passages, from Acts and John. In Acts, Saul was struck blind and spoken to by Jesus. In John, Jesus told the disciples how to catch a load of fish and then asked Peter if he loved him.

The preacher began by talking about the debate between nature and nurture, relating it to the child about to be baptised, and to his own recently baptised granddaughter, as the family and friends of each wonder about the child's future.

He wanted to offer a 'third way'. This 'third way' was above, beneath and beyond nature and nurture. The 'third way' was the love of God. This love is the foundation of life, given equally to all, unchanging no matter what kind of person we are, no matter what our nature is, or how we are nurtured.

It was a short sermon (5-10 minutes), and mentioned Jesus once. The two Bible passages were simply 'illustrations' of the love of God in action (we weren't told how, or in what way), and mentioned in a maximum of five sentences towards the end of the sermon.

I was left wondering what in fact was Christian about it. It seems to me that many people could have spoken about love as a third way, between nature and nurture, and found a couple of illustrations in the Bible, or in some novels. The rather nebulous phrase 'the love of God' occured many times.

Many people appear to use this phrase as a way of not offending anyone, of saying something without really saying anything at all. After all, what is this 'love of God'? Is it acceptance? Is it a gift of something? Is it simply 'being there'? Is it all three? Or something else? I couldn't help but wonder if the sermon wouldn't have been a whole lot better if the preacher had talked about Jesus instead of 'the love of God'.

Richard Hays writes this: 'the content of the word "love" is given fully and exclusively in the death of Jesus on the cross.' (Richard Hays, The Moral Vision of the New Testament, Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997, p.202)

If we follow Hays, the main reason the preacher told us very little in his sermon, is because he never thought to give real content to 'the love of God'. He could have given us, from the passages he had, a blinder of a sermon about discipleship and life following Jesus, how difficult it is, following the way of the cross, yet how possible it is, in the power of the cross. What a sermon for a baptism! To say nothing of the baptismal symbolism of dying and rising with Christ, or of Jesus' call to follow him (in both passages).

As you can tell, I was left extremely unsatisfied by the sermon. Christian leaders and preachers need to be teaching and demonstrating to their congregations a Christian way of understanding and living in the world. Otherwise, what is the point of being a Christian? And, at the deepest leve, that Christian understanding, that Christian way of living, is in fact the way of 'the love of God', but that way has a real, concrete and historical (and human) definition: the way of the cross.

Mark 8.34.