the Parish of St thomas' Brampton, Chesterfield

St Thomas' Brampton and St Peter's Holymoorside, Chesterfield

Rector's Letter February 1982-January 1983

Our vision statement: Sharing the love of Jesus

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The Rector's letter is printed in each edition of the Church Magazine

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February/March 1982

As these words are being written the Church is preparing for the week of prayer for Christian Unity, which takes place annually from the 18th to the 25th January. Christ's earnest desire was that his people should be one - of that we can be certain, because it is the subject of his prayer which is given great prominence in the seventeenth chapter of St. John's Gospel. It was by their one-ness that believers would make it plain to the world that the way of Jesus was true.

Of course Jesus was concerned not with organisational unity but that his people should be at one with each other in truth and love. But, for practical purposes, this distinction is invalid. Christianity claims to hold the key to reconciliation in a world of conflict, but while in the eyes of the world Christians appear themselves to be divided, this appears to be an empty claim. Until Christians are seen to be united, the Church' s witness to Christ will be unconvincing.

During the last 30 years, the Churches have become increasingly aware of the scandal of Christian disunity.

First to take action to remedy this defect were Christians in India, who deeply deplored the divisions in the Church which had been exported to them by missionaries from this country. The Church of South India came into existence through a union between Anglicans and three other denominations. There followed the creation of the Church of North India, with which the still divided churches in Derbyshire now have a link.

Here in England, where the divisions began and where Christians are most deeply entrenched in their own denominational ground, the process of reconciliation and reunion has proved much more intractable. High hopes were pinned on a carefully prepared scheme for reunion between Anglican and Methodists. When it came to the vote, however, the Methodist Conference was in favour, but the Church of England rejected it.

The chief obstacle lay in conflicting ideas about the nature of the Ministry. Many Anglicans, in common with Roman Catholics, hold that the key to a valid Ministry is/to be found only in the historic succession of bishops, and that the only authentic 'priest' is the minister who has been ordained by the laying on of the hands of a bishop in the historic succession. This is a notion which is repudiated by Methodists. Since the scheme did not provide for the 're-ordination' of Methodist Ministers by Anglican bi-shops, the Anglican hardliners were not satisfied and their vote against the proposals carried the day.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the February 1982 edition of the magazine

April/May 1982

The only certain thing in life is death. That's a thought to reflect upon. Of course, it is possible to understand it negatively or cynically: "Don't worry, you'll soon be dead". Understood positively, however the thought helps us to get death in proper perspective.-The scientists tell us that death was in the world long before the appearance of man oh the earth: If we believe in God, it becomes appetent that death was therefore from the beginning part of God's loving purpose for the whole of creation.

The Christian revelation throws light upon this loving purpose. It declares that death is the only way to life. The death and resurrection of Jesus is the focal point of the Christian faith. The pre-requisite of life is a death.

That is not just religious dogma: it is the statement of a principle that is written into our common experience. Jesus himself pointed to the example of nature. Every gardener knows the value of seed. He values it not for what it is but for what it can become. While he is careful to preserve the life that is in the seed, it remains useless. Not until the protection of the jar or the packet is removed and the seed is abandoned to the ground and the wind and the rain and the sun can it begin to become what it is capable of being. Our modern understanding of ecology has opened up this principle; and we now see how the death of every living thing contributes to the life of something else; and the life of every living thing depends on the death of something else.

It is when we see this principle operating in human experience that the message of Jesus begins to have meaning for us. Growth into fulness of life is by way of a series of little deaths. Some psychologists tell us that the unborn infant experiences the descent into the birth-passage as a death: "I'll never survive this:" But beyond the death-experience is new life - the infant has been born into the world. The umbilical cord which connects it to the source of its life is cut, and it begins to live on a new plane.

The whole process of growing as a person consists of being born over and over again, through a series of little deaths - a cutting of the emotional umbilical cord which connects us with something on which we have depended for our selfhood. Some of the deaths are not so little. There is the separation from his parents which the child must achieve in adolescence if he is to be born as an autonomous adult. One of the saddest things to behold is the man or woman who never made that break and who in middle life is still incomplete, a function of an elderly parent.

Then there is the death which a girl undergoes when she marries. It has been observed that on the eve of her wedding a girl experiences emotions comparable to those of the person facing physical death as she contemplates the end of the life she knows and the step into the unknown she is about to take. She may be close to her mother, but she must not cling to mother; for only by letting go can she be born into that new quality of life to which she aspires.

'To dare to live is to be willing to die'. The person who feels beckoned towards the higher life must be willing to let go some thing on which he has relied for his comfort, his pleasure, his security. That was the path that Jesus took. The temptation to self preservation in one form or another was always present; but he saw it for the fraud it was. He knew that life was to be found in the acc-eptance of his Father's will, and was prepared to follow the way of obedience, whatever the cost, knowing that resurrection was always on the yonder side of suffering and death. He withheld nothing, but yielded up security, reputation, and finally his physical life. And.

God raised him from the dead.

It is the faith of Christians that through the perfect obedience of Jesus, resurrection is an accomplished fact for all humanity, and that, as we dare to sub-mit our lives to him in his dying, so we may experience in ourselves something of the reality of resurrection. "The person who seeks to preserve his life shall lose it; but the person who lets go his life for my sake shall find it", said Jesus.

Being a Christian may be compared to being married. There is the 'death' of the initial commitment. But that must be followed by a daily 'dying' - that painful stripping off of the false self and progressive uncovering of the true self which makes for personal growth and by which the relationship grows between the partners.

Lent is a time when Christians apply themselves to this growth process. In this parish Jubilee year, a school of prayer has been attended by between 30 and 40 people. Together we have been learning to be open to God who comes to us in his crucified Son. And as we are united with him in his dying, so Easter may become a reality in our daily experience.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the April 1982 edition of the magazine

June/July 1982

In a recent broadcast of 'Any Questions' the panel was discussing the Falklands crisis, and one member was making the point that we must think very carefully before armed force was used against our fellow men. "It isn't enough just to fight for a flag", he declared.

Immediately, there were noisy interruptions from the floor. "There are some of us here who fought for that flag daring the '39 war" shouted an angry voice.

Whether the outburst was spontaneous or a planned heckle by members of the National Front we do not know; but the incident showed how a symbol can arouse emotion, and emotion uninformed by careful thought and moral responsibility can run amok.

At the time of writing some people, including government ministers, are getting very het up because journalists, broadcasters, and others whose job it is to lead public debate are having the temerity to show concern for the Argentinian casualties and (heresy of heresies) to acknowledge that there is an Argentinian point of view. I write as an ex-serviceman who chose to join the army to fight Hitler rather than to remain in a reserved occupation, and who has a son-in-law in the task force. I write as a Christian minister whose job it is to help Christians to think prayerfully and to act responsibly and not just to ride on the crest of a wave of nationalistic fervour.

Let us affirm two things, very loud and very clear (because there are some who cannot hear well for the sound of the martial music): the life of an Argentinian is as valuable as the life of an Englishman - or a Red Indian, a Russian, or an Australian Aboriginee, and national pride alone is not a sufficient cause for deliberately and unnecessarily destroying those lives.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the June 1982 edition of the magazine

August/September 1982

An Opportunity Missed

The announcement from Buckingham Palace which has just been made at the time of writing will fill with dismay the many thousands of parish priests who are striving to rescue infant baptism from the enfeebling climate of English folk religion and restore it to its rightful place as the initiation of a new member into the Community of Christ's Church.

Prince William of Wales is to be 'christened' at a private ceremony in the music room at Buckingham Palace; and the Archbishop of Canterbury is going to collude in this arrangement.

The Church is the company of people who know that they are accepted and forgiven by their loving father. They are children of God, brothers and sisters to each other, and in the Church of Christ there is no distinction of race, rank, or class. To be baptised is to be brought into this company within which the new relationship is proclaimed and, albeit imperfectly, experienced. A baptism is always therefore a public event, a celebration in the life of the church; it can never be merely a private event, restricted to family and friends.

The clergy of the Church of England find themselves in the position of being expected to administer baptism to the children of parents who want the ceremony but who reject its significance: who want their child 'christened' but who don't want commitment to Christ and his church. While ministers of other churches may refuse to be used in this way, the clergy of the Church of England must accept that parents are requesting baptism in good faith, even when there is no evidence to suggest a serious intention.

In this situation, the church is trying to do all it can to administer baptism in such a way that its true meaning is clearly expressed. it has always been a rule of the church that baptism should be performed in the presence of the assembled congregation: and so far as possible this rule is being observed.

The example of the Royal Family is alway significant in the life of the country. It would have been good if the Prince and Princess could have resisted the pressure to conform to the rituals of upper-class folk religion, with its private family-party christening' and courageously opted for Christian Baptism, conducted in a way that expresses the truth which it signifies. For example, in the presence of an ordinary congregation at Tetbury Parish Church, where the new little member would be among his brothers and sisters in Christ: royalty and nobility, yes; but also ordinary people from every walk of life. The security problems might have been great; but the benefit to the church and the encouragement to the clergy would have been great also.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the August 1982 edition of the magazine

October/November 1982

"Enjoy it" That was the encouraging advice of my doctor when I cringed at the verdict that I must have an operation and spend a fortnight in hospital followed by a longish convalescence. Well, now that it is over, I can report that it was rather like the curate's egg - enjoyable in parts. There were times of elation and times of depression; times when I could relate warmly to people, and times when I couldn't abide company.

Sometimes I could use the time constructively; more often I didn't want to do anything. Certainly it has been a valuable experience which has taught me a little more about living and loving.

Thank you for all you prayers; thank you for your cards and gifts (I began by conscientiously answering every one, but was soon overwhelmed); thank you for visiting me - and thanks also to those who didn't visit me because they knew that the amount of visiting which a sick 'person can tolerate is strictly limited. I had just the right number of visitors.

My treatment was at the Claremont nursing home where I was under the care of the Roman Catholic nuns. I was therefore taking advantage of "private medicine", which many people condemn. My old friend Stanley Booth-Clibborn, now Bishop of Manchester, a great socialist, has recently declared that "private medicine" should be abolished because it gives those who can pay an unfair advantage over those who cannot and takes resources away from the National Health Service. Whether it is a proven fact that independent medical practice is harmful to the N.H.S. I am unconvinced - it may be that as I.T.V. is good for the B.B.C. so it is beneficial that all doctors and hospitals are not shut up by law within the one state-controlled system.

Be that as it may, I go along with the Bishop in his insistence that excellent and comprehensive medical care should be available to all. The National Health Service has been described by Lord Soper as 'the most Christian thing that has happened this century'.

The fact is that at the time of my operation this care was not available. The health workers were taking 'industrial action'; and under the NHS as a non emergency case, it is more than likely that my treatment would not have happened and that I would not have been called to hospital until some unpredictable date when I might or might not have felt able to leave work.

The health service dispute is one of the saddest in recent years. It is the right of all workers to be free to withdraw their labour as a last resort when they feel they are not being treated justly. There are some occupations, however, in which strike action is wholly inappropriate, and a few in which it would never be contemplated. My own calling is one such. Some years ago, when clergy stipends were much lower than they now are, a discussion arose in deanery synod about the need for the laity to ensure that the clergy had adequate pay. One young layman got up and asked, "What has this got to'do with us? The pay of the clergy is their own affair; if it's not enough, it's up to them to take action."

It frightened me to realise that some lay people held that view; and I wondered what action that young man expected the clergy to take: ban on overtime, no evening meetings? Work to rule - only the obligatory bits of the service, cutting out all hymns and sermons? Picket the cemetery and crematorium? - loudly pro-testing all the time, of course, that emergency services would be maintained and that no one would suffer hardship. If every church member had the same views as that synod member, the clergy would all be living at subsistence level on supplementary benefit (some of them do so now) . I hope that that young man came to understand that the motivation and the attitudes of the genuine clergy-man are incompatible with what has come to be known as 'industrial action' of any sort, and that others must take responsibility for ensuring that he is adeqately paid.

The same is true of other occupations; the health service is one. No member of the health service wants to strike, a course of action which is in conflict with his caring vocation. Some (such as members of the Royal College of Nursing) have renounced the right to strike. Certainly we, the public, view with dismay the spectacle of hospital wards and ambulance service out of action.

So what are these workers supposed to do when they feel that they are unjustly treated and can get no satisfaction through the normal negotiating process if they are not to go on strike? In the long term, another way must be found to ensure that the pay of these workers, whom we need so badly but value so cheaply, is maintained at a proper level, in return for a voluntary undertaking from them to renounce the strike weapon. It can be done, and is being done by the highest paid members of the same health service.

In the short term, Mr. Norman Fowler will have to admit that he's driven up a cul-de-sac and must retreat and offer at least the lowest paid workers some more money. I have found money to contribute to a private health insurance scheme; and I would not be unwilling to pay my share of this bill.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the October 1982 edition of the magazine

December 1982/January 1983

The Church and the Bomb

The horrors of war are well known to many of our readers who served in the Armed Forces or who were engaged in Civil Defence between 1939 and 1945. As I write we are preparing for the Annual Commemoration of the dead of two world wars, and several smaller ones, to whose number we must now add those who perished in the Falklands operation. In this imperfect world the right course of action is always a choice between two evils, and sometimes we judge that it is better to fight; but war in its nature is always horrible and obscene. The undoubted fact that it can bring out some of, the best qualities in man in no way modify this judgment.

During the last World War we were at least spared one horror: the use of poison gas. Hitlers forces never used it even in the hour of their greatest extremity. Those of us who were in the forces were convinced that there was one simple reason: our side was prepared and well stocked with chemical weapons, which were available for use at short notice. You might say that we were saved from the horror of gas by the balance of terror
.
That, in its simplest terms, is what is being said today by people who believe that we must retain the nuclear bomb. The fact that our allies and we are prepared to retaliate in kind is why our enemies have refrained from making a nuclear attack - a policy which, it is claimed, has kept the peace for 37 years. Undoubtedly the nuclear bomb, with its capacity indiscriminately to kill and horribly injure millions of human beings, is a wicked thing, and its use by any nation would be immoral. But if (say the advocates of this case) by retaining our nuclear arsenal we can prevent any use of these weapons through a balance of terror, then it is morally right to keep them.

There is, on the other hand, a growing body of opinion that takes the opposite view. People who hold this opinion have two arguments: the 'balance of terror' theory is a dangerous illusion, and in any event the use of these weapons is absolutely unacceptable. There could be no winners in any sort of nuclear exchange, strategic or tactical. The danger of setting off one of these devices, in response to a false alarm or by sheer accident, is great; on the principle that what can go wrong will do so sooner or later, some disaster is inevitable. But even if there were some substance in the balance of terror theory (say its opponents), the use of nuclear weapons cannot be contemplated on moral grounds. To kill some soldiers is one thing, to kill men, women and children is quite another: and against a determined nuclear attack there is no defence.

Vyvyan Watts-Jones

From the December 1982 edition of the magazine

Rector's Letters 1983