What is the Christian story today?

The essence of the Christian story is found in the core of the four gospels - the life and teaching of Jesus. In the Acts of the Apostles and the epistles that follow, the story of the Church begins to develop, the Church too soon becoming an institution. The texts of the stories of Christian history are all disputed territory, from the birth and resurrection narratives, profound myths of truth, to Luke’s account of Paul’s travels to later doctrinal developments to today’s disputes about Biblical truth and historical narratives focused on gender and sexuality.

These disputes about truth and historical accuracy are pursued today in the context of contemporary global culture – of fake news, blatant lies, print and broadcast media, often with little regard to truth and accuracy with social media magnifying fake news and spreading dangerous fantasies.

In this context how does the Church tell a Christian story that distinguishes itself by being not just transparently truthful but also genuinely creative and transformative, rooted in unconditional love, goodness, integrity,, wisdom and justice, the story of holiness in creation?

In my lifetime Christianity has lost the focus of its story, its core message. The focus now is on tradition, orthodoxy, the Bible as an unexamined, reliable text, on which sermons and teaching can expound any selected verse or passage from the Hebrew or Christian scriptures without reference to contemporary knowledge, morality and ethics, the context of the text, or what four centuries of exploration and wisdom have revealed.

I have been drawn to seek the essence of the story of Christian truth by focussing on the gospel accounts of Jesus’ ministry from baptism to crucifixion, trusting Mark’s gospel as the core, which Matthew and Luke both edited and extended with their own myths, John creating his own, unique account from mystical wisdom and vision.

This isn’t a back to basics exercise (though, of course, in part it is). It’s my attempt to find the core values of what makes me a Christian when so much time is spent today on arguments and disagreements in the institutional Church that divert attention from the essence, as I see it, of seeking life in all its fullness.

For the last two decades I have been struggling to find the focus of primary, Jesus-inspired Christian basics in my life. The focus I once had has been disturbed and compromised by the constant arguments about sexuality, gender, the sexual and gender identities of others and the place of women in the church, as well as by the deeply disturbing failure of the CofE to show any competence about or understanding of systemic failures relating to abuse, prejudice and discrimination..

In earlier decades I knew what the essence was because the Christian environment communicated it powerfully: the people I met in the Diocese of Southwark in the 1960s, Basingstoke Team Ministry in the early 70s, Westcott House in the late 70s, the Diocese of Southwark again in the 1980s and 90s, combined with experience of the national Lesbian and Gay Clergy Consultation and the Southwark Diocese Lesbian and Gay Support Network. These groups and the Church as a whole was endowed with so many people of deep integrity and vision. They created an energy of conviction, truth, love and faith. This felt, experiential environment has been in decline over the last two decades. Today, it is, for me rarely found.

My Christian story for today, its message and pattern of life, is focused on Jesus’ teaching. It shows people how to live in a healthy, creative, spiritual, life-enhancing way. It is the Way of Jesus through unconditional love to cross and resurrection, building relationships focused on love, truth, goodness justice and the fullness of life that flows from the innate energy we are born with. All of us are born with this gift, this potential. All the Church has to do is know this, focus on this, trust this energy and create communities that show us how to recognise it in ourselves and enhance it. We all have it, this deep love, truth and wisdom. It is incarnated in creation, in the universe, the cosmos, in evolution and in conscious life.

Resurrection marks the moment of significant transition in evolution when Homo sapiens becomes more conscious of life’s deepest truths and our human responsibility to leave magical thinking behind.