The Bishop of London, the Right Reverend Richard Chartres, has been an amazing communicator at key moments of pageantry in our nation during the last decade or so. In 2011 he was the Bishop who married Prince William and Kate, (then Middleton), and delivered a sermon which has been described as inspired, opening with the words “Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire” and going on to describe the generosity of God towards us.
So I was really interested to see how he would address the 2,000 assembled guests at St Paul’s, and a global TV audience of millions, for Lady Thatcher’s funeral. Once again, he focused on some of the essential values of the Christian faith, contrasting the value of human relationships and joy, against the ‘stuff’ of our material world which can sometimes seem more ‘real’ but in the end is probably not what we all think about most in our deepest moments of reflection, especially when considering life and death issues.
For me, some stand-out moments from Bishop Richard’s memorable sermon include “…the funeral service is a place for ordinary human compassion, not debate over legacy…” and “The storm of conflicting opinions centres on the Mrs Thatcher who became a symbolic figure – even an ‘ism’. Today the remains of the real Margaret Hilda Thatcher are here at her funeral service.”… “Lying here, she is one of us, subject to the common destiny of all human beings.” … “What, in the end, makes our lives seem valuable after the storm and the stress has passed away and there is a great calm?”… “The questions most frequently asked at such a time concern us all. How loving have I been? How faithful in personal relationships? Have I discovered joy within myself, or am I still looking for it in externals outside myself?”
I was interested in his statement about being ‘faithful in personal relationships’. This can be a real challenge to us all in today’s increasingly secular society. When somebody that we trust violates that trust, we are not only hurt, but we then have to find healing for that hurt. It can create mistrust in forging other committed relationships and sow seeds of bitterness. By grace, we can forgive, hopefully. But the consequences of any violation of trust may be just too hard to completely overcome, and lasting damage can occur.
Our society has so devalued faithful relationships that many people are wounded, hurting and withdrawn after multiple, short lived and broken encounters where they were not properly loved as they deserved. Yet they often have no understanding of why, no voice for their pain. The simple facts are that devaluing the most intimate of physical expressions, reducing them to a level of self-gratification in the here and now, has scarred many of our consciences and hindered many of our abilities to form lasting, nurturing bonds for the care and development of people who depend on us. In other words, family.
Separating sex from faithful love has produced some of the most destructive consequences within our society over the past few decades. It is these consequences that many church leaders find themselves trying to help people through. There is no judgment here, just a desire to heal ‘broken hearts’ and restore ‘good conscience’, which is the process of finding true peace and joy.
Faith can be defined as to ‘trust in, cling to and rely on’. Being faith-ful to each other is really important because when an individual isn’t faithful other people close to that person get hurt.
Faithfulness is the foundation the Bible says that leads through a process of hope to real love. When an individual allows God in Jesus Christ, through faith, to heal the ‘inner man’, then a human being can go through life with a healed and good conscience.
At the end of our physical lives, we will need a good conscience to face the next step of our journey.