Easter 7 24th May 2009

As a traditionalist I am enjoying being your Rector.

Blessing a steam train, speaking at the Mayfayre, making the Angling awards – the list grows of things I’m getting involved in that are vibrant traditions in Horsted Keynes.

It jars with the traditionalist in me that on this Sunday before Pentecost we’re preparing for a feast that is increasingly in-house and unknown outside church doors in our land.

The second feast of Christianity, Pentecost or Whitsun, is no longer marked nationally. I lament tomorrow. Spring Bank Holiday is a poor substitute, though be certain I’ll take a break in any case!

In the 2001 census 70% of people said they were Christian. Today one in seven say they go to church, far more than in France. Yet our friends in Cahagnes will have a holiday with their holy day and enjoy next weekend as truly Whit weekend – for that’s what it’ll be - in a less evidently Christian country than our own.

In former days the ladies of Horsted Keynes went to church in new white dresses on Pentecost, hence White Sunday, to mark the Feast.

What a Feast we’re approaching! Without Pentecost we would not know about Easter. The Holy Spirit who came upon the apostles (Acts 2) made and makes Christ real to all who open their hearts to him.

I said I was a traditionalist. There is a right, Spirit-led traditionalism and the people who know best about it are those who seek the Holy Spirit’s leading and judgement.

We should yearn to have that sense of what’s most important in our lives, in the life of the church and in the life of the world and the cosmos, a sense that only the Holy Spirit can give us.

Human traditions come and go but the great tradition, the great ‘hander on’ of vitality is God the Holy Spirit whose feast we approach with penitence and faith next weekend. In Eastern orthodoxy the Holy Spirit is actually called Tradition. He is seen to hand Jesus on (Latin: traditio) to generation upon generation through ‘the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (Acts 2:42).

As a traditionalist I love and fear the Holy Spirit. He is true Tradition, guardian of the church’s faith, but also the great challenger of the empty traditions we get ensnared with as God’s church.

Look at that first reading which showed us how the first apostles chose Bishop Matthias by throwing dice or casting lots. Compare it with the process that’s been in flow for six months to choose the next Bishop of Horsham. I’m not comparing Bishop Lindsay with Bishop Judas Iscariot – don’t get me wrong!!

Choosing bishops by casting lots is a lesser tradition that can be used by the source of true Christian Tradition, the Holy Spirit. Something like it is still used to choose Popes.

The next Bishop of Horsham will emerge from committee recommendations refined by the judgement of the Bishop of Chichester.

We Anglicans are episcopally led but synodically governed by committees – we get through, just about!

How much, though, do we need the Holy Spirit to give life to the church! Come, Holy Spirit, fill the hearts of your faithful, and kindle in us the fire of your love!

Some years back a Syrian Bishop, addressing a convention of the World Council of Churches, made this remarkable assessment which we might apply to our life together at St Giles:

Without the Holy Spirit God is far away.
Christ stays in the past,
The Church is simply an organisation,
Authority is a matter of propaganda,
The Liturgy is no more than an evolution,
Christian loving a slave mentality.

But in the Holy Spirit
The cosmos is resurrected and grows with the
birth pangs of the kingdom.
The Risen Christ is there,
The Gospel is the power of life,
The Church shows forth the life of the Trinity,
Authority is a liberating science,
Mission is a Pentecost,
The Liturgy is both renewal and anticipation,
Human action is deified.


As Saint Giles looks forward we need courage to ask the Holy Spirit to bring more life into all we do and to help us sift what’s important to God from all the pressing concerns we have as a church.

We want our traditions to be more His and less our own for the good of Horsted Keynes.

It’s a case of traditions being checked against the mainstream Tradition. I quoted the passage from Acts 2 which summarised the life of the early church which held to these core traditions: ‘the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, the breaking of bread and the prayers’ (v42).

You don’t need a 1000 year old church and a beautiful spire pointing heavenwards to be traditionalists of the right kind, though I believe our church building largely helps us.