This Sunday of the Good Shepherd, Ruth Peel will be leading Sunday School. Her father was a shepherd, in two senses of the word. He was both a farmer and a priest. And I am sure what will be being learned downstairs will be more authentic than anything I can say about shepherds.
We hold in our prayers and thoughts, the new Pope, Leo XIV and the many millions across the world he serves, and in difficult days, to take this extraordinary role of world-wide shepherding. The speed and efficiency of the Papal election makes the process around that appointment of the Archbishop of Canterbury look ponderous. May that happen with comparable grace and charity.
For comments on the book and film Conclave, ask me afterwards, they would be too frivolous for a sermon.
On this Sunday after Easter, for centuries, the Church has prayed for vocations as it contemplates Jesus’ words in this morning’s Gospel “27My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: And 28I give unto them eternal life.”
You may know that part of what I do as a day job, is to oversee discernment of vocation for the Diocese in Europe.
It’s an extraordinary privilege, sometimes quite demanding, but extremely interesting. I hope you won’t mind if I do, to explain what I do and how it fits into the broader picture of discernment work in the Church of England.
The Diocese in Europe, first of all, is unlike all other dioceses of the Church of England. It sits outside England, it covers the landmass of continental Europe taking in Mongolia to the furthest East and Morocco to the furthest South. It includes Turkey, but not Syria, Morocco but not Algeria, Greece but not Cyprus. The earliest chaplaincies date from the middle of the 16th century, when British embassies had, as they still have, chaplains. From these communities were spawned other communities in English colonies, it not being a surprise that where there is sun and good food and often good wine, sherry, madeira or port you are likely to find an English church.
There are nearly 150 chaplaincies worshipping in a range of buildings, some purpose-built, in fine locations in great European capitals, others in borrowed halls in less exalted surroundings. Like any diocese, it has people coming forward exploring vocation, and the job of the Director of Ordinands, my role, is to discern whether this is the right thing or not for each person.
How do we discern vocation? And in Europe what are the issues that are specific to contemplating ordained ministry in a diocese which is a minority Church, sometimes as in Morocco and Turkey, a Church which sits in a majority Muslim setting?
Discernment is both personal and ecclesial, and these two journeys are shared.
One of the keys is for the ordinand to have a spiritual director, that is to say a dispassionate person, alongside them, but not in their life in any other way, listening, feeding back and offering observations.
There are three spiritual states, which we can get used to discerning in ourselves and intimate understanding them informs vocational discernment very particularly. The first is consolation. The second desolation, the third, neutrality or holy indifference.
Consolation is a time of comfort and assurance, of clarity and even insight. There is and can be an element of revelation about it. It may be short-lived it may last a little while, but there is something utter and absolute about it. Desolation is a spiritual state of dryness, of desert, sometimes even of the dereliction of the cross – it is not depression. St John of the Cross characterised it as “the dark night of the soul”.
Indifference or neutrality is not extreme in the way that the other two might be, but it is not an every day sensation of chogging along. It comes in the face of a decision, and needs to be sought. Faced with options it is the sensation of either option being possible and right – it coincides with our Lord’s words in his prayer and before his arrest “thy will be done.”
Tuning in to these spiritual states in discernment takes practice, stillness of heart, mind and soul, and the guidance of others.
For the individual, having sensed a call, the next question should be to what and why?
It is almost every day that I meet someone coming forward mistaking a call to discipleship for a call to ordination. And that is why the to what and why are important.
A Call to ministry needs to be signalled by some sense of irresistible impulsion towards the sacraments, and for reasons which defy adequate words, but something of the sincerity in the incoherence of the answer will often reveal its authenticity.
To what – to the sacraments. Then why?
Trying to help candidates unravel the different causes, the multiple reasons which might have prompted the call is one of the greatest privileges of all.
It is not hearing confession, but bears many similarities with it, as people explore their history, and make sense of how the Christian narrative has taken over and shaped their lives.
The answer to why is as multiple as there are people coming forward, there is no right answer, but again the quest for sincerity in the response is often characterised by the failure of adequate language in the face of the ineffable.
People in our churches in Europe can be there for many reasons, by no means the majority are British. It’s fascinating to see Anglicanism taking root in Europe, even if our aim as a Diocese there is not to proselytise, but to work alongside the host and majority Churches.
The whole Church needs ministers of the Gospel, it needs spiritual shepherds.
In the Bible shepherds begin Luke’s birth narrative. They are a point of connection, in Bethlehem, the City of David, the boy-shepherd who became the Great King David.
Moses before David was a shepherd and before him, Abel, who offered the righteous sacrifice of a lamb.
In John’s Gospel, from which today’s Gospel passage comes, the only shepherd referred to is Jesus, who is not only good, but is the one whose voice the sheep know and respond to uniquely. He calls us all, make no mistake. But his priestly shepherding needs icons in the world, priests and deacons to make manifest his love in word and sacrament.