Trinity Sunday Mary Benson 19th June 2011

The doctrine of the Trinity, of three persons in one God, holds a creative tension between enthusiasm and sympathy that should infect us all.

We just read Our Lord’s enthusiastic call to Go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Belief in the Trinity isn’t something to be kept to yourself but something missionary, to be carried to others. Too often we fall short on this task, identifying with those who would condemn religious enthusiasts as lacking human sympathy.

Christian mission is enthusiastic and sympathetic. It reflects the sympathy God has within himself as Father, Son and Spirit as St Paul reminds us in the second reading where he uses Trinitarian doctrine to appeal for more sympathy among the Corinthian believers . Agree with one another, live in peace; and the God of love and peace will be with you. He says. The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Spirit be with all of you.

The creative tension between enthusiasm and sympathy, between love and truth is hidden in the mystery of God himself. As we draw closer to God we find enthusiasm, sympathy - and in that tension creativity.

All of this I found powerfully illuminated in a book just off the press of interest to all who live in Horsted Keynes and especially to members of St Giles in particular. This book - Rodney Bolt’s As Good as God, as Clever as the Devil - The Impossible Life of Mary Benson.

The book gives sight of religious enthusiasm, Victorian and Edwardian England, same sex friendship, country life in Sussex and leaves you wiser about the wellsprings of creativity.

Mary Benson was born in 1841 and lived at Tremans from 1900 to her death in 1918. She was wife then widow of Archbishop Edward Benson, and this book tells the tale of her loves, trials and family. Mrs Benson worshipped here, her family gave the nativity window in her memory and her son Arthur wrote the fulsome memorial tablet in the porch.

Though religious enthusiasts are notorious for their failure to sympathise where sympathetic gifts are allied to a force of conviction there is a true reflection of the God one in three and a creative dynamic emerges. This appears to have been the case in the extraordinary marriage of Edward and Mary though the force of conviction was at Edward’s end and the pastoral sympathy at Mary’s. Headstrong Edward, loving yet exacting, proposes to Mary when she is only twelve. His helpmate eagerly sympathises with him, his family and many others with such humour and wisdom as to make her a great subject for Rodney Bolt’s biography covering her life, loves and faith pilgrimage.

Edward’s career, founded in the muscular Christianity of Rugby and Wellington College, takes him to Lincoln Cathedral, then onward to be first Bishop of Truro and, as climax, to be Archbishop of Canterbury. His pioneering at Truro earns recognition for gifts of leadership that he carries, with a psychological downside, so that, 12 years older though he was than her, it was Mary who was destined to carry him through many a dark mood. Her support came from a series of same sex friendships compensating for the emotional shallowness of their marriage and helping her recover from the eventual loss of both Edward and the high social standing that fell from her at his death in 1896.

Mary’s same sex friendships, especially the one with Edward Benson’s predecessor, Archbishop Tait’s daughter, Lucy, that continued after Edward’s death, have been controversial. The biographer draws from Mary’s diaries the distinction she made between the love she held in mind and heart for these friends and the physical expression of that love which she fought off. Her underlining of certain passages in her copy of Thomas à Kempis The Imitation of Christ illustrates the struggle she had with, to quote, ‘carnal affection’. Her counsel against physical sex outside marriage to her children is recorded in the book. Rodney Bolt is careful to honour her stated faithfulness to traditional Christian ethics. This is somewhat unintelligible through the sexualising of friendship in post-Christian society.

Is this understatement? St Giles is a haven for all of us, straight or gay, married or single since God’s sympathetic love is utterly inclusive. At the same time, I myself counsel, when asked, marriage and celibacy as the two Christian vocations, with sexual activity outside of marriage as a shortcoming to be repented of.

Others say the Holy Spirit is at work opening up new institutions, including same sex unions. A century on from Mary Benson the Church of England is divided here. As in the matter of women’s ordination the jury is out. All of which means we need to hold in tension a sympathy for individuals, especially those cohabiting, gay or straight, and those who are pushing for a revised Christian ethic, a sympathy, as I say, that doesn’t avoid acknowledgement of the well trodden path of the faith of the church through the ages. Our Christian faith covers our shortcomings, if we repent of them, and challenges us to keep a distinctive standard in terms of sexual morality. It’s a standard that, given Our Lord’s teaching that looking at someone lustfully is already to commit adultery, puts us all on the bottom step!

Back to the Bensons who set us on this thinking. If Edward was head, Mary was heart of an extraordinarily creative family. Arthur wrote the words for Land of Hope and Glory and edited Queen Victoria’s papers. Fred became a highly successful author and ice skating champion and Maggie a famous Egyptologist. Roman Catholic convert, Hugh gained fame as preacher and writer. All made their mark and all suffered great frustrations which, as writers, they document both indirectly and directly. Some of them blame their mental instability on their extraordinary parents. It seems that their living with unfulfilled longings – none married – became a crucible for creative expression. In one of Arthur’s inspirational images life can feel as two lady birds might feel on the inside and outside of a window signalling to one another yet unable to find intimacy.

Arthur’s last word on his mother on her memorial in the porch speaks of Mary’s eager sympathy, wise counsel, abundant humour and far seeing love. These qualities are captured in Bolt’s very readable book that follows her life story whilst opening up the story of England past through many delightful anecdotes. I loved the absent-minded Truro priest whose sister had to secure him to the altar rail with a dog chain and padlock to prevent him wandering off before the service was over. Mary’s attempts to get Arthur to St Giles brings from him a similar image of the liturgy as people penned in rows like sheep intermittently crying out together like ducks in a pool. The book, like its subject, easily catches the imagination.

Let the Bensons be reminders of the creative tension between enthusiasm and sympathy that should infect us all as Trinitarian believers.

God who is three in one enfolds us in his enthusiastic love. The Lord God enfolds us, as in this eucharist, meeting us just where we are.

In his enthusiasm he can’t bear to leave us there. He challenges us, not least in our human relationships, to move forward, with his help, to be ever more perfect reflectors of him, to whom, Father, Son and Holy Spirit be praise now and forever. Amen.