Dry Bones

The fuss made over the alleged bones of Richard III took a new twist this week when prayers were said for the repose of his soul.  I certainly could not have said them

a) because of my Protestant theology

b) because I would not know what to say

c) I would have burst into a ceremonially destructive giggling fit in the middle of them.

I am not convinced that God is a Protestant as such, he always knows what to say but I think He might share with me (c) a fit of giggles  - always assuming he isn't offended by English ecclesiastical eccentricity.

OK, we all know that this is a City publicity stunt and one can only admire Leicester for managing to get so many of us to take the whole thing at all seriously.  I imagine the city fathers (sorry, parents) of Derby digging furiously under car parks to unearth some bones that can also put their neglected city and cathedral on the map.

But why the Church has to stick its mitre in is a matter of reflection.  Is this a reminder that although the Church is becoming less relevant by the day in this century it was really important 500 years ago?  That'll achieve what exactly?  Or is it a sign that as so many churches are surrounded by dry bones in the graveyard, dry bones are a Church specialty in a crowded marketplace where many other niches have gone secular?

I can't help noticing two things.

1.  As Crossrail digs its underground way through the old plague pits of London nobody is queuing up for the sight of the bones of the ordinary people, nor clergy praying for the repose of their long-gone souls.

2.  Dry bones in the Bible only have any meaning at all when, as Ezekiel saw it, they live.  It is hard to equate the ceremonies with the same set of beliefs really.  Whatever did those hundreds of worshippers grasp about life and living faith?

Days to Remember 10: Dem Bones

One memorable day the builders laying the foundations of the Church's new building downed tools and left the site.  They had found human remains.

 

A very detailed plan of the graveyard the Church had between 1845 and 1854 (after which it was closed) exists.  However it has no reference point, just lines of named graves.  If you could find Mrs Jones you could possibly find Mr Smith a few feet along but there was no way of fining either of them.  Tales were told of a line of headstones that once formed a kind of fence down the side of the property next to the car park.  The assumption was that they had been moved in some previous building enterprise.  They exist no longer.  Plainly Baptists are a lot less careful about the dead than the Church of England who seem to have graveyards of antiquity well-kept around many of their churches.

 

The coroner however did not question my predecessors' carelessness in respect of their predecessors remains.  Instead he declared me entirely trustworthy - 'as priest' - to judge the remains as old and to 'reinter them with suitable dignity'.  I suppose this conjured up the idea of the churchyard sexton doing the honours with a robed vicar overseeing with prayers.

 

Baptist Colleges, though useful in many ways, help little with the really scary things of church life like baptising people without drowning them, dedicating infants without dropping them or marrying people without embarrassing them. Failure in such common practicalities indicates the total unpreparedness most Baptist ministers would feel at standing on a building site with a builder in a suit holding a black bag full of unearthed bones of former members and the Church Administrator standing nearby watchfully.  I duly felt unprepared.  The coroner's trust weighed heavily on me as the builder turned the sack over and a pile of old bones fell at my feet.  This action did not lend itself to great dignity, any dignity really, though I was wearing a jacket and tie as a start.

 

The plot of land where Mrs Jones and Mr Smith and the others would end up would be hidden under the path and entry way of the new building.  The temptation (had I been alone) to leave the pile intact would have been strong.  A sort of old Baptist ballast.  My onlookers and the distant brooding instruction of the coroner ('due dignity') led me to attempt a certain dignified reconstruction. 

 

Suppressing the part of me that wanted to burst out in despairing laughter, I began the task of placing the parts of Mrs Jones and Mr Smith in reasonable order - two leg bones, two legs, two hips, the middle bit (if the reader is unfamiliar please rewatch the earlier YouTube).  I laid these ancient Baptist remains with admirable dignity given my internal sense of the bizarre.  But like any old jigsaw from before 1854 there were pieces missing - most alarmingly a shortage of skulls which created special problems as it was not a lack that could be hidden from the beady-eyed builder in a suit.  There were too many legs as well though that was easier to deal with by some clever positioning as I learned my new trade.

 

Quite what parts of Mrs Jones and Mr Smith ended up in what order I shall never know and I trust the Good Lord to sort matters out on the Great Day.  I reflected that it was the one experience of Christian Ministry when I had the most authority over Church Members and even then I couldn't get them into order  . . .

Ordination

Yesterday we had a fantastic service in which one of our young men was ordained into Christian ministry. Hundreds of people came, and the Word of God was preached from Exodus 3, drawing us to the greatness of God who calls us.  If anything made the day a little less golden for me personally it was the reflection that whenever I've come to such days marking my pilgrimage points I always seem to be given Scriptures that are at once deeply meaningful and somewhat, well, disconcerting.

It started at my Baptism when, being baptised as a believer, I was blessed with 'endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ'.  I suppose one unspoken practical advantage of the Baptism of Infants practised in other traditions is that you don't get to comprehend any ominous texts if they're spoken over you.

On to my Ordination. The speaker chose for his sermon Ezekiel chapter 2, here translated in The Message,

"Son of man, stand up. I have something to say to you." The moment I heard the voice, the Spirit entered me and put me on my feet. As he spoke to me, I listened. He said, "Son of man, I'm sending you to the family of Israel, a rebellious nation if there ever was one. They and their ancestors have fomented rebellion right up to the present. They're a hard case, these people to whom I'm sending you—hardened in their sin. Tell them, 'This is the Message of God, the Master.' They are a defiant bunch. Whether or not they listen, at least they'll know that a prophet's been here. But don't be afraid of them, son of man, and don't be afraid of anything they say. Don't be afraid when living among them is like stepping on thorns or finding scorpions in your bed. Don't be afraid of their mean words or their hard looks. They're a bunch of rebels. Your job is to speak to them. Whether they listen is not your concern. They're hardened rebels. Only take care, son of man, that you don't rebel like these rebels. Open your mouth and eat what I give you."

When I looked he had his hand stretched out to me, and in the hand a book, a scroll. He unrolled the scroll. On both sides, front and back, were written lamentations and mourning and doom.

My ordination speaker was a good preacher (in the technique sense) though as it happens I can't remember a thing he said - just the forbidding chapter and the preacher himself.  The preacher, who for internet purposes will remain anonymous, a few years later did that 10th/7th commandment thingy of coveting his neighbour's wife and then some.  Not so long after he did it again somewhere else after undergoing the restoration/repentence routine, thus unintentionally giving me a lifelong demonstration of the very characteristics God warned Ezekiel about.

If the Word of God sometimes tastes to the ear like unpalatable cold remedies, it's because God knows the preachers who preach it and the hearers who listen.  As he kind of said to Ezekiel, "Swallow that, it'll do you good".