Village Shepherd

A renegade priest was recently convicted in court of stealing thousands of pounds from the PCC of his church. I was astonished that so much money could go missing without the PCC noticing! We're always so desperate to raise enough money just to pay the Parish Share let alone any extra bills that may turn up, that the PCC knows to the last penny how much money it has. But more seriously, I was horrified that a priest could systematically steal money. We may not expect higher standards from priests than from anyone else, but we do expect at least the accepted standards of decency that prevail in the rest of society. It turned out that this particular priest had already served a prison sentence for theft or fraud of some kind, but had been converted to Christianity in prison and subsequently ordained priest after the proper training. In the light of his present conviction, it seems that his conversion wasn't very genuine.

A similar, but in many ways worse, scenario is when priests abuse those who come to them for guidance or who are in their care. Far too much sexual abuse (often continuing over many years) has come to light during the last decade, when the social climate has been more willing to accept that sexual abuse does occur in almost all walks of life, including situations of trust such as the Church. But the same question arises: how could an ordained priest act in a way which is so far below the accepted standards of decency? Not only the Church but the whole of society feels betrayed when a priest acts so disgracefully, something which is reflected by the huge interest of the tabloid press in any Church scandal. But that interest isn't limited to the clergy. Any churchgoer is expected to adhere to certain high moral standards, and that's as it should be since Christianity has a great deal to say about behaviour.

The early Church was founded basically amongst gentiles, who had very different standards of behaviour from, for instance, orthodox Jews. These new gentile converts knew nothing of the Jewish faith, which was Jesus' own faith and which forms the background to Christianity. The new converts would have known nothing of the Old Testament, so they wouldn't have known even such fundamental laws as the Ten Commandments. There was no accepted basis from which to behave, for they quite simply knew nothing. Hence all the epistles have something to say about Christian behaviour, for Paul and the other New Testament writers were laying foundations on which the new Christians could build.

Corinth, for instance, was recognised as a hotbed of what Christians would consider to be corruption and vice, but which was an accepted way of life to the Corinthians. One of the first tasks of the early Church leaders was to instill into the new Christians standards of behaviour which the Jews had learned over many generations, and which were in keeping with God's law in the Old Testament.

Christianity had quite a poor reputation in the early years, partly because Christians were falsely accused but also partly because the Christians didn't behave particularly well and were criticised for it. In the early Church a lot of emphaisis was placed on conversion and baptism and receiving the Holy Spirit, but it soon became clear that such conversion needed to be accompanied by a great deal of teaching. It was a sharp learning curve for those early Christians, and especially for their teachers.

We start from a different position in 21st century Christianity. We have 2000 years of Christianity behind us, and we're steeped in Christian behaviour. All the laws of our country were founded on Christian principles, which are so ingrained in us that we rarely question them. We may no longer be considered by many to be a Christian country, but we've grown up knowing nothing but Christian principles and we continue to base our judgments of behaviour on them. The problem this has raised is that even non-Christians grow up equating Christianity with moral behaviour, so that many people believe it's enough to be a good person. Indeed, many people fail to see that Christianity is anything more than living a good, moral life.

So our problem is the reverse of the problem faced by the early Church. They were so fully into conversion and the gifts of the Spirit that they never thought much about appropriate behaviour. We think so much about appropriate behaviour that we tend to forget conversion and the gifts of the Spirit. Perhaps we have thrown the baby out with the bathwater by allowing ourselves to concentrate almost entirely on Christian behaviour to the exclusion of things of the Spirit.

So often we tend to start from the wrong end. As Christians, many of us work very hard at being good people, because we want to be as far as possible without sin, as we believe God wants us to be. But perhaps we should work much harder not at being good, but at being ourselves. Perhaps we should spend much less time on being good, and much more time on prayer, because prayer enables us to make a relationship with God. When we have a deep relationship with God, we don't have to worry about behaviour, because God himself changes us. We don't have to do anything, for God works within us through his Spirit and when that happens we can't help but become good.

The gifts of the Spirit are often (although not always) initially received through the laying-on of hands. A Christian lays his or her hands on the head of a would-be Christian, and prays for God's Holy Spirit to come upon the would-be Christian. At confirmation the Bishop lays his hand on the head of each confirmation candidate, and prays for the candidates to be confirmed in the Holy Spirit.

And all priests are ordained by the laying-on of hands of a bishop, so that the Holy Spirit is transmitted from God to the priest. It's a method of ordination which has been used since the days of the New Testament, and according to today's epistle reading from the second letter to Timothy, Timothy himself was ordained in exactly this way.

You would think that such a momentous event as receiving the Holy Spirit through the laying-on of hands, would be such a spiritual high that it would remain forever and that it would be impossible for any Christian, let alone a priest, to behave badly at any time afterwards. But the scandals involving Church people that we read in our newspapers make it clear that that's not the case. And it seems even Timothy himself reached a very low ebb at some point after his ordination.

The writer reminds Timothy of his sincere faith encouraged by his mother and his grandmother, then he says, "For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands." Perhaps Timothy had difficulty coping with the idea that a Christian leader could end up in prison, for the writer goes on to urge Timothy to be bold in his proclamation of the gospel and not to be ashamed to be counted as a Christian.

There's only one way to keep positive in the face of difficulty and suffering and ridicule and confusion of spirit, and that's through a genuine closeness to God through his Holy Spirit, the God within each of us. That's what the author told Timothy 2000 years ago, and it still holds good for us today, "Guard the good deposit that was entrusted to you--guard it with the help of the Holy Spirit who lives in us." If like Timothy we do that, we'll never again have to worry about being good, because we'll become holy without doing anything and without realising it.

That's how God has organised things for us, and that's how it works. Such is the love of God for us.