VICAR'S LETTER

17 Sundon Road     
Streatley      

April, 2005      

Dear All 

On Good Friday the schedules of the five terrestrial Television channels contained just half an hour of religious broadcasting. It is a telling comment on the extent to which Christianity has become pushed to one side in our times. The events leading up to Good Friday can help us to understand why this has happened.

What led to the crucifying of Jesus was blindness. It was the blindness of people who, though actually blind, thought they could see. The Pharisees were blinded by their certainties. They knew what religion was about. They had no need of further instruction. The followers of Jesus were blinded by their hopes. They were desperate for liberation from the Romans and thought that Jesus was the one sent to deliver them. The High Priests prided themselves on their grasp of political realities. They were blind to the value of ideals and principles.

What has led to the marginalisation of Christianity is that same blindness, albeit in different forms. Some are blinded be their certainties. The secularist is sure that the material world is all there is. Some are blinded by their hopes. The technophile sees in technology the answer to all the world's problems and the key to a longer, richer life. Some are blinded by pride in their own realism. Acting in conformity to market forces becomes tile first and over-riding principle of action.

Neither then nor now were these certainties totally wrong. The Pharisees were right to value the law given to Moses. The followers of Jesus were right to see him as a heaven-sent deliverer. The High Priests were right that effective action requires a grasp of political realities. The secularist is right that any understanding of man and the world must take account of the insights now being provided by science. The technophiles are right. Technology has delivered great benefits. The pragmatists are right. In an economic environment governed by market forces, it is important to understand and to exploit the operation of those forces.

Where they are wrong, however, is in claiming that their particular outlook is the whole truth.  The Pharisees were wrong to assume that obedience to the law represents the sum of religion. The followers of Jesus were wrong to think that he had come to deliver them from the Romans. He had come to deliver mankind from sin. The High Priests were wrong to allow political expediency to over-ride all considerations of justice. The secularist is wrong to insist that the materialistic account is the whole truth about man when so much of human experience points to the reality of a spiritual dimension. The technophile is wrong to see in technology the answer to all mankind's ills.  Unless contained within a moral and ethical framework it may equally prove the cause of man's destruction.  The pragmatist is wrong to suppose that market forces are the only or even the desirable way to manage human affairs.

The blindness that brought Jesus to the cross was the blindness of human pride. The blindness that marginalises him now is the same pride. Its antidote can be seen in the figure hanging on the cross - the figure who, in sacrificing himself on the cross, set before men's eyes, both then and now, a shining example of the humility they would need to embrace if ever the world is to be a place where the hungry are fed and where all men live in peace.

It is now our task as a church to challenge and to overcome that blindness and to put Christ back where he needs to be, not at the margins, but at the centre of our own lives and the life of our society.

All best wishes

Roger

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