A bad day for the Church of England

So says the Independent and for those of us who work here I suspect it is not just today. I admit, I am more that just a little bit irritated about the disaster at General Synod and am really annoyed at the constant implication that I must be anti-gay because I am a priest – but I am not so disheartened by the news of the census results.
Why? Because if you work in the church you already know that is true. If you walk around in a dog collar you know that people ignore you when you say good morning and look away with either indifference or sheer embarrassment because, by their own estimation you are, at best, nothing to do with them and at worst are hostile to the things which they most value.
I was reading through the Ordination Service earlier and was reminded that priests are called  “to search for his children in the wilderness of this world’s temptations, and to guide them through its confusions.” This led to a somewhat sardonic snort on my part as the most confused institution which I currently have on the horizon of my life is the Church of England, in which I am a priest.
We have completely lost the plot somewhere. Is it that we are trying to be friends instead of the voice in the wilderness, is it that we value the power and privilege of the world, more than the power of God’s Spirit? Or perhaps we are all just a little bit too comfortable?
The census is not a shock, it is not bad news because news is something you do not know – this is something very obvious. People are sick and tired of an institution which cannot deal with real life and real people. Of course, day in, day out, we do deal with very real life in the parishes and too often we wear ourselves to a crisp doing it but as a facade of English spiritual life, as an institution, we are a clanging gong of mediocrity, compromise and vestige.
And the worst thing is, it is not up to us at all, we are simply supposed to be responding to God. We are nearly at Christmas, the news of the Incarnation of Christ is in danger of getting subsumed by our in-fighting. And sadly, the Incarnation is often news (is often new) for our nation and for our church – God made human, God entering in, God returning us to Godself.
It is not up to us to hold God in a small box of our own creation – remember that man in the Sanhedrin in Acts – Gamaliel – if it is of God, he says of the newly emerging church, it will survive. Perhaps we need a little more courage to trust that our God is really big enough to come as a child in a manger – in love and not fear and to trust ourselves to be that love for this nation – if we are of God, doing God’s will, proclaiming and living incarnation and love we do not need to worry about whether we will make it or not – we will be there already.