The Long Drive Home Matthew 22:34-46 When I was a newly ordained deacon, all those years ago,

the annual clergy conference set aside a full day for sessions about retirement planning. Being aged 24 at the time, I slept in and went to the pub for lunch instead. Apparently this was not the correct thing to do or so I was told by my beloved Archdeacon when I arrived for dinner. My response, while polite, was to scoff at the idea that someone in their early twenties should be wasting time thinking about superannuation and retirement villages especially if it cut into good drinking time. Needless to say, as I move into the second third of life, the tedious and complex issues of clergy retirement planning now need to be faced so naturally Im burying my head in the sand and trying not to think about it. Most of us are bad at long-range planning. There are the odd people who buck the trend I know one person who has ten-year household budget projections and another who has the next thirty years of university education mapped out in detail. But most of us plan somewhere between a day and a year in advance, depending on personality type. In my observation, and I should emphasise that this is anecdotal, parish churches tend to attract people with a relatively short-range approach to planning. So, when six weeks notice is given of a function or event, the typical Anglican parishioner tends to ignore it because its so far in the future. Likewise, the typical Anglican parishioner finds it strange to plan for Easter when Christmas hasnt even happened yet. In my experience, the average Anglican parish has no clear plan for the next five years, let alone ten or twenty or thirty years. This has an effect on things like building maintenance and planned giving but its our core business where we seem to drop the ball most often. Most parishes: dont have a plan for what to do if musicians move, die or want a break; dont have a plan for who will replace the current crop of leaders - no succession planning; dont have a plan for ongoing faith formation of the people of God; dont have a plan for how to proclaim good news and form new believers. Nowhere is this weakness more evident than in ministry with people in the first third of life. I dont mean the absence of 68 page strategic planning document. What I mean is this. When an infant is baptised, do we have a picture in our heads of what we expect or hope for this child when they are twenty? Or thirty? Or fifty? I imagine that most of us could come up with a description if pressed, but its certainly not in Anglican parish DNA to have a long-range plan to form, nurture, train, include and inspire the child who is baptised. The reason, of course, is to do with our history as the state religion, where vision for the society and the church were one and the same. Anglicans dont have a corporate memory of being a marginalised minority like, say, Wesleyans or Roman Catholics. When the church/empire collaboration died in the sixties, we completely lost our mojo. The old plan didnt work anymore, but were yet to come up with a new one. And the outcome is self-evident. I have met exactly ONE active, committed Christian in their twenties in a mainstream Anglican parish in the diocese of Perth. Yet there are active, committed twenty-somethings who are evangelical, Pentecostal, Orthodox, Roman Catholic, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, wiccan, humanist and militant atheist. Theres no shortage of passion or spirituality amongst people born in the eighties and nineties, yet despite our fine school system, open baptism policy and the

vibrancy of programs like CEBS and GFS, there is now in this parish, and every neighbouring parish not one single person in their twenties that one could point to as a role model or example of mature Anglican Christianity. The end result is that Anglican Christianity is perceived, within and without, as a church for babies and old women. We cant fix what we broke years ago it may be that God calls a significant number of twenty-somethings to the Christian faith in the Anglican tradition over the next few years, and wouldnt that be great. But what would also be great, is if we had a vision and plan for our current crop of under-thirteens, who are already here. A vision of mature young adults committed to their faith, a plan for how we will form these children into thoughtful, passionate young adults who dont just sort-of believe in God, but whose Christian faith informs every aspect of their lives, and is a source of life and wholeness for them and for others. Now, because long-range planning and long-term visions are foreign to our culture, its like learning a whole new language. Since the collapse of Christendom, weve been like immigrants or refugees in a new country clinging to the old ways. Its hard for us, even those of us who think were progressive and broad-minded, to learn the new grammar, syntax and vocabulary of this new place. Were going to keep working at it though whats a year or three in the great unfolding of Gods dream for humanity? In order to learn this new language, Id like to suggest that there will be two key disciplines. The first is to recover tradition, and the second is to recover from tradition. Tradition is such loaded term, it basically ceases to have meaning after a while. When, for example, someone says to me I like traditional Anglican worship I am sorely tempted to give it to them. The hotch-potch of practices that merit the term traditional in Anglican circles would be utterly foreign to the founders and heroes of our movement. Im tempted in such circumstances to don a surplice, move the communion table to the centre of the building, sit on the north side, conduct a service in which the few congregational parts are repeated after the preacher like in kindergarten, and to have the churchwardens patrolling with their wands at the ready to belt the inattentive around the head. Or perhaps we could back even further, and the wealthiest members of the congregation could host love-feasts in their homes to which all comers are invited for a free feed, and we could all go the synagogue on Friday and Saturday as well. When I talk about recovering tradition, I dont mean sentimentally re-enacting antique religion. I mean finding the heart of what the Christ movement has been about, regardless of context, era and culture. When I speak of recovering from tradition, I mean freeing ourselves from the need to react to the past. During this tense and uncertain era as Christianity realigns itself, just as a teenager feels the need to rebel against their parents many of the practices which have developed have been in reaction to perceived traditionalism. For example, the idea that faith formation for children ought, primarily, to be fun. Its not a biblical concept, its never been a key aspect of Christian faith formation. Yet, because there is a corporate memory of being forced to sit through boring church services the reaction has been to try to jazz up and jolly along every activity associated with faith development. Rote learning of, say, scriptures which we think is marvellous if its to do with times tables or musical scales is frowned upon in
2

churches, largely in reaction to the perceived strictness of a previous generation. The idea that we might actively seek to instill in our children a set of values and ideals, or even that we might deliberately shape their understanding of God, is put aside because we want our children to have choices that previous generations thought they were denied. To be clear, Im not commending any of these particular practices but I am inviting us to sufficiently recover from tradition that we can make objective decisions not controlled by the shadows from our own past. So thats the plan. A long-range approach for our children not imaginary ones, the ones weve actually got. A long range plan which slots our kids in amongst the countless other people of faith from before recorded history. One which recovers the heart of the good news, and believes in its ongoing proclamation, and which escapes from the failed bad news that afflicted the church in times past. Lets take as our case in point, todays small but complex portion of Matthews gospel the summary of the law and the teaching about the Messiah. It begins with reference to the defining Jewish narrative of the exodus and the giving of the law through Moses. It is situated in first century Judea, with warring Jewish factions. It is a seminal moment when Jesus cracks the open the moral and ethical code of the Jews, and universalises it for the whole of humanity. It speaks of the yearning for a Davidic King who would free the Israelites from Roman oppression, and of the universal savior whom God sends instead to redeem the whole world and transform the whole of creation. It is into this teaching of infinite compassion and deep spirituality that we baptise children. It is the future foreshadowed in this story which is our future and that of our children. Our long-range plan, which must be Gods long-range plan, is to form more and more disciples to who love God with all their heart, soul and mind, and love their neighbor. And who will recognise the messiah as he returns. The Lord be with you.

The Reverend Chris Bedding is an Anglican priest in the Diocese of Perth, Western Australia. He is also an actor, director, musician and comedian. His passions are ministry amongst people in the first third of life, dynamic liturgy and advocacy for the oppressed. twitter.com/frchrisbedding facebook.com/frchrisbedding Email: rector.darlington@live.com.au