As a Sheep Before its Shearers is Silent

These words from Isaiah 53, taken as a prophecy of Jesus, were read as part of the Good Friday liturgy today at Swanvale Halt as I imagine they would have been in many other places. I find myself wishing, not for the first time, that Christians could be bloody well silent sometimes.

Part of the diet in these parts, as it was in Lamford, is an ecumenical 'Walk of Witness' following a wooden cross through the streets of Hornington. My ritual question during the planning as to why we don't have a Walk of Witness on Easter Day instead of Good Friday met with blank incomprehension as usual, so once again I was forced to wonder what this was all supposed to be about. At least in Lamford we were encouraged to walk quietly: we're supposed to be calling to mind the Via Dolorosa, for heaven's sake, not having a pleasant morning stroll, but this morning's walkers were full of vocal jollity and uplift while following an instrument of violent death through the streets (our curate, God love her, was properly sober in the final blessing). We blocked the traffic and apparently took great delight in doing so: after all, we're Christians, aren't we, showing the heathens what it's all about! Why shouldn't we get in the way? The homily at the end took up the theme. 'The cross is an everyday part of our culture,' cried a local vicar, 'What I suppose this Walk of Witness says is that we are the people who refuse to trivialise it'. So an act of witness to the sacrifice of Jesus becomes instead a witness to our own faith. It's not really about Jesus, it's about us, backslapping and congratulating ourselves for being better, deeper, more insightful, than the unbelievers out visiting the cafes and shops. The Cross of Christ is God's judgement on the world, but except for liturgical observances like this, the lives of all those Christians out walking are mostly indistinguishable from those of everyone else. Who is being judged? Where are the Pharisees here?

Some days ago a number of bishops and Lord Carey, the former incumbent of the Throne of St Augustine, issued a letter to the Sunday Telegraph complaining about Christians in Britain being persecuted. How Christians both love feeling persecuted (it creates a sense of interior legitimacy) and yet resent the sensation of being left out of the counsels of the powerful, or not being able to tell people what to do. On the other side of the Tiber, the Holy Father and his spokespeople seem to have spent most of Holy Week denouncing the criticism of Papa Benny for his role, such as it may have been, in the cover-up of the child abuse scandal. I've no doubt that some of the attacks on him, which are personal and vitriolic, are inspired by other considerations than a sense of justice. But all the abuse, legitimate or not, levelled at the Pope doesn't balance the rape of a single child. Can't he see that? Can't he understand how carping, self-centred and graceless this looks? I suppose it will be to the good, because it only undermines the position of the Papacy further.

There seems to be only one Christian voice of sanity. Is it any surprise that we find it in Lambeth Palace? In his Easter letter to other Church leaders Rowan Williams argues that whining on about being persecuted (not that he puts it like that, of course) trivialises the experience of those Christians who really are in danger around the world, as well as being simply disloyal to the Gospel itself:

We need to keep our own fears in perspective. It is all too easy to become consumed with anxiety about the future of the Church and society. We need to witness boldly and clearly but not with anger or fear; we need to show that we believe what we say about the Lordship of the Risen Christ and his faithfulness to the world he came to redeem.

This is being interpreted as an assault on Lord Carey's missive, which I'm not sure about, though Rowan has little enough reason to feel friendly towards his predecessor, whose mouth seems to have assumed a permanent cats-arse pout towards Lambeth and the world ever since he left office. I don't care really. He's right whatever the case.

There's nothing makes me want to throw the whole Jesus thing over so much as bloody Christians. Thank God for my church, and for Easter morning.