Winchester Cathedral Sunday July 4th 2004

Welcome, Commissioning and Installation of the Rt Revd Paul Butler, Bishop of Southampton

“Joshua and Caleb said to the Israelites, “If the Lord is pleased with us, he will bring us into this land and give it to us.......only do not rebel against the Lord, and do not fear the people of the land......for the Lord is with us”” (Numbers 14:8,9)

I once met a very new Bishop whose name was Caleb. 

Canon Robert Teare and I were with Bishop David, the Bishop of Myitkina, the northernmost Diocese of the Church of Myanmar, a good 600 miles north of Yangon. He took us out for fifteen hours, that day, to meet the churches along forty miles or so of the road to the west of Myitkina; and in Mogaung he introduced us to his Assistant Bishop Caleb, consecrated only a week or two earlier and still in the parish of which he was the priest. Bishop David told us that as the day of the consecration approached they had reflected with the Archbishop on the fact that the bishop-to-be had no Christian name; invited by Archbishop Samuel to choose one, he had chosen Caleb, Caleb who said “Let us go up at once and occupy the land...”; because the name, and that marvellous story that we have had read for us, so vividly expressed his calling and that of the Church in Myanmar to “occupy the land for Christ” - where on the face of it Christians have every reason for saying “To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them” – whether “them” is the Government,or the Buddhists, or both at once!

Now you know, Paul, whose photo it is that I have pinned to your Commission – it’s a photo of our colleague Caleb; because I find that God speaks just as clearly and strongly to us here, and to you, Paul at the start of your ministry as a bishop, through that story as Caleb and those who consecrated him Bishop recognised him speaking to them and to their fellow-Christians in Myanmar.

For here in England I sense that for most people, including for most of those who influence opinion through the media, it is an unexamined assumption that the Churches are over the hill, that lack of Faith is and will continue to be the norm, and that the future does not lie with God as he has called us to know him in Jesus Christ - or indeed with God as worshipped within the tradition of any other Faith either; and for such people it is another sign of the backwardness of most of the rest of the world, that there Christianity, and other Faiths too, are growing in influence and vitality. And even in our churches, and not surprisingly, very many are infected with this attitude – “Accept” they say, “Accept and budget for the decline, the downsizing, the retreat which is clearly our future in this country!”. “To ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them”! It’s so easy, because so fashionable, to look around and see only Amalekites if not those fairy-story giants, the Nephilim – and to forget the fate of their descendent Goliath!

I’m not denying that the Amalekites, as it were, are there around us. The “high ground” of our culture, our politics and our media prides itself in being firmly in secularist hands. Even though there are many Christians at the highest and at every other level of public and intellectual life, so many of them seem to keep their convictions and values largely out of sight; it is not fashionable, to give just two examples, to question the fantasy that each of us can and should run our own lives with no reference to external standards or to moral – still less religious – points of reference, or to argue that the State has a responsibility to sustain and to defend Marriage. It can seem hard for Christian Faith, un-modern, to many self-evidently outmoded, to gain a hearing in today’s market-place of values and ideas.

And once we get used to “seeming to ourselves like grass-hoppers”, it’s only too easy to gag ourselves by airbrushing out of our conversation Christian language, and references to the Church as an integral part of our lives. Christians lie low, remain incognito, in the workplace or in the pub. If we’re arguing an ethical or a political case at least in part out of our Christian convictions, we hesitate to be explicit about that part of its basis. Like Caleb’s companions we say: “we are not able to go up against this people, for they are stronger than we are”; so we live increasingly under restrictions that we impose upon ourselves, under a kind of intellectual curfew, forgetting (as they did in our Reading) about the pomegranates and the figs, and especially forgetting the cluster of grapes so rich and large that it needed two men to carry it slung from a pole.

Perhaps, Paul, you and I and Trevor should have called our Pastoral Letter, on which we are asking all our churches to reflect in the autumn, “the Cluster of Grapes”, because it starts by encouraging all our people to recognise how richly God has equipped us to live for him as Christians! It would be fun now to give each of you an outline drawing of such a cluster slung on its pole, with the grapes big enough for us all to write in them what we think they might be, and then to share our sheet with our neighbours! 

Among my grapes I’d note, first of all, Christian Faith itself and God’s equipping us, through his Holy Spirit, with every gift we need for living as attractive, effective Christians whatever the climate around us. I’d note our range of partners, ecumenical and Anglican Communion, and how they encourage us (“Be of good courage”, Moses charged Caleb and Joshua and their company) - so many of them faithful, thriving churches in the face of acute hardship and danger. And I’d note our developing friendships with people of other Faiths, too – and I’m grateful that you are represented here today; whatever the difficulties between us in some parts of the world and the intractable mystery of our mutually differing existence, I’m convinced that God calls us to respect and value each other, and to learn to collaborate with each other for the sake of his Name, and of his creation and of humankind. I’d note the evidence in all our churches, and in many of them the great deal of evidence, of explicit, attractive Christian witness that God is blessing with growth, and the range within them of fresh thinking, fruitful experiment of ways of “being church” ; and the number and the character of those we’ve been given to ordain over this weekend and next Thursday in Jersey; and the quality, and the still-increasing Christian confidence, of our Church Schools – and this list would be only the beginning, with most of the great cluster of the grapes of God’s provision still not named! 

And today, Paul, we include among the grapes you and Rosemary and your family! We warmly welcome you among us with your gifts and your experience; and we look forward very much to having you among our leaders, with that photo of Caleb in one of your Bibles, as we seek God’s grace together to persevere in the fear of God and to claim this land for Christ.

“Joshua and Caleb said to the Israelites, “do not fear the people of the land......for the Lord is with us””