Escaping From The Tomb

We live in a time in the history of the Church when a great deal of entombed thinking, and its accompanying solidified structures, are being broken open by people who want to be free.

A photograph taken of the Auckland Synod in the 1950s, compared with a photograph of that body today, is remarkable for two things – the number of ties, and the total absence of women. Those were the days when old white men were in charge. Autocracy was the norm, paternalism was expected, and accountability was negligible. In many parts of Anglicanism, let alone other denominations or religions, this pattern continues. It is a pattern of oppression.

Since the 1970s in Aotearoa New Zealand we have been trying to exhibit a form of leadership where women and men, laity and clergy, form partnerships; where power is both transparent and accountable; and where those without power have avenues of redress. This is a journey. It doesn’t happen overnight. Mistakes are made. Systems can easily turn sour. But we have travelled a significant distance from the oppressive structures and thinking of the past.

I once told my children that it wasn’t so long ago that teachers caned pupils. They looked at me incredulously. ‘Oh Dad you’re making up stories again!’ My children have no experience of the violence that was endemic in New Zealand High Schools. Similarly when we come into contact with the hierarchies of the English or Central African Anglican churches we are incredulous. We can’t believe that ecclesiastical feudalism is still alive.

The walls of the tomb are solid rock. They have been there for generations and have the word ‘immovable’ scrawled upon them.

Of course the political and social structures affect, for better or for worse, the theology. Where the male is God, God is male. Where the hierarchy is God, God is hierarchical. Where the all-powerful are God, God is all-powerful. ‘Convention, comfort and civility’ disguise autocracy, sexism, and oppression.

On the other hand however where God is more below than above, more feminine than masculine, more dirty than clean, more uncontained and surprising than restrained and boring… there is hope, change, and justice to be found. The tomb-breaking God chooses the foolish, the weak, the rebels, and outsiders. Truth is not the sole preserve of powerful men, nor the wisdom of what’s always been.

Are our prayers, worship, preaching, and theology entombing us in yesteryear or inviting us to break free? Is worship emancipating? Or are we slowly being seduced by the formulas of old, pickled and placed with the other preserves on the shelf, there to collect dust and wait? Are we cementing convention or stimulating change?