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SOHAM
Soham will soon return to the headlines, and then, as insinuations begin to
be made about responsibility and blame, the fragile sense of community and
respect may well be at risk from undermining rumour and suspicion. The local
church will again find itself part of all this - in pastoral mode, as wounds
are re-opened in a way that will inevitably be disruptive of the natural
rhythms of mourning; in more ‘prophetic’ mode, seeking to challenge perhaps
some of the privately devised recipes for justice that are likely to be on
offer. The already accumulated reserves of respect for the church in Soham
will hopefully give it a certain right to speak plainly, and to caution
opinion.
The Local Church
A parochial form of Church, which sits more loosely to belonging and
orthodoxy than some, which seeks integration with the wider community as
part of its mission, must try to be on the side of those most afflicted by
suffering, whilst remaining detached from particular opinions about justice
and meaning. It must try to explain about a resilient God whose justice is
always communicated with mercy, and with a redeeming voice. And anyone
reading church history with a sensitive eye will realise that ministry in a
Church interested in the long haul will always be more akin to gardening
than mathematics.
But how might the dynamics of the Soham tragedy have been different if the
murders had happened in central London, or in a place where the local church
was a gathered congregation? Much of what was good and fruitful in Soham’s
case was a function of a very traditional, Anglican theology of ‘church’ - a
building open for prayer and expressions of grief, ministers available for
counselling and at the heart of events, a churchyard focusing the post-Diana
routines of mourning, a cathedral offering a liturgical context for grief
not simply because of its seating capacity. This is precisely the model of
‘church’ which now seems vulnerable, faced as we are by financial pressures,
reductions in clergy numbers, and a society which no longer absorbs from the
prevailing culture the language of worship and tradition. For many others,
it is simply redundant, and, in its encouragement of sentimentality, is now
a barrier to mission. And yet, it seemed natural that the local Vicar should
be alongside the Police spokesmen as the tragedy unfolded. Here was a model
of ‘church’ more akin, say, to a Public Library or a Doctor’s surgery than
to a private golf or social club, with a list of members. In what ways would
a gathered church have reacted differently to these events, and what might
have been lost or gained as a result, both for the community and the church?
Theology and Theodicy
Soham also forced us to think seriously about how we understand and teach a
doctrine of God. How can the Church set questions about the meaning of
suffering in the context of a God whose purchase upon his world is absolute,
yet not always controlling of detail ? For the question, ‘Why ?’ assumes,
consciously or not, some form of doctrine of God, and so any Church
interested in mission must surely try to build on that. Yet it is remarkable
how little the present day Church speaks, not so much about God, but about
the mechanics or structure of his providence. In my work with ordinands and
the newly ordained I continue to be struck by the cavalier way in which
theodicy is often addressed, and so glibly explained.
Any wise doctrine of God should not be entirely embarrassed by devastating
tragedy, but it is important to signal that we, like the Psalmist, see that
there is a problem about detail. Suffering in this context is usually called
‘unfair’ and a ‘mystery’. (We pass over the question of what form of
suffering could possibly be ‘fair’ to the God of our Lord Jesus Christ).
But we discover that suffering is a ‘mystery’ only because God holds the key
to it. It is not a ‘mystery’ simply because we are mentally too lazy, or
careless about setting out clearly what can and cannot be said. A God who
seems to find parking spaces for Christians purely because they pray hard
and feel they deserve it, has to be held over against the God of the Psalms,
Ecclesiastes and Job, and indeed the God of Jesus Christ whose own
limitations of time and energy left thousands of deserving people unhealed.
Jesus became incarnate in a world no more or less ‘fair’ than ours. We are
allowed to catch only glimpses of how we may begin to penetrate the meaning
of human suffering under God through encountering the suffering of Christ’s
divine life lived as human. There is no easy calculus by which we may hold
together human deserving and the incidence of pain. These things need to be
said.
Freedom and Risk
Our God is a redeeming, ‘recycling’ God, precisely because he has given us
the freedom to mess everything up. And even then, there remains the sheer
arbitrariness of a world full of risk and mistake, a world that is still
being made. Soham and its aftermath is a ‘mission opportunity’, then, in the
sense that God’s relation to our all-too-tragic world must be explained with
clarity. The issue is not whether God is involved or not, but how exactly he
acts in a world full of his providence, yet vulnerable to that risk which
freedom implies. And although Christians will choose different narratives to
set out the details of God’s providential action, it is important when
teaching and preaching about these tragic events to move beyond routine
denunciations of sin and its consequences, towards a profound honesty; a
straightforwardness about why these things are not just humanly distressing,
but sometimes costly and disruptive of our theological securities. To put it
more starkly, we need to teach more willingly than we sometimes do that
suffering, and an image of human life cut short, is woven into the very
fabric of God’s being.
If Soham has taught us anything as a Church, then, it is that ministry and
mission, modelled as best we can on that of Jesus Christ, is partly about
being with people in their moments of greatest need, and sometimes on their
terms, and that when we feel it is right to speak, what God wants us to say
must always be said clearly, and honestly, and with an un-constraining
voice.
Ven John Beer
Archdeacon of Huntingdon
and acting Archdeacon of Wisbech
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