Stop, look, listen

This is an edited extract of the address by the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, to the 2003 National Evangelical Anglican Congress in Blackpool on Sunday 21 Septelnber.

Some 124 years ago in 1879 in his own introduction to his book Holiness John Charles Ryle wrote this: "I have had a deep conviction for many years that practical holiness and entire self-consecration to God are not sufficiently attended to by modem Christians in this country. Politics or controversy, or party spirit, or worldliness, have eaten out the heart of lively piety in too many of us".

Those words could easily have been written today - for they are just as relevant not simply for evangelicals but or each and every Christian person quite regardless of church or denomination.

There is very clear evidence that the evangelical forebears took Ryle's call very seriously indeed. William Grimshaw, an evangelical clergyman of the 18th century, one-time Vicar of Haworth in Yorkshire, described meditation as "the soul's chewing": a resonance surely of the Cranmerian Collect that we may "read, mark, learn and inwardly digest God's holy word".

And I just wonder how much soul's chewing is done by each one of us? Quite frankly when I read such accounts and I stop and think about myself I am put to shame at the paucity of my own commitment to such "soul's chewing" and even then often the begrudging nature of it.

The truth is that we have become altogether too busy and too noisy, too wordy and too chatty. Does our worship really have to be wall-to-wall words and music? Do our prayer meetings and Bible study groups have to be a series of monologues that the Lord will just do this, that or the other thing?

Where is the stiffness, the silence, the listening - what used to be termed among evangelicals the quiet time? Are we still capable of being still and quiet or have we become so conformed to the ways of this world that we are no longer able to hear the word of God?

And it's not just evangelicals, it is all of us who increasingly seem to be unable to carve out this quiet time so essential to our soul's health.

We rightly boast of our biblical inheritance, yet how seriously do we take not simply the reading of the Bible day by day - even if we take that seriously - but what the monastic tradition describes as "lectio divina" - the spiritual reading of the Bible?

You will recall that when fleeing from Pharaoh and the Israelites are being pursued by the overwhelming force of the Egyptian armies, and with the prospect of the Red Sea before them, Moses didn't call a conference or a meeting - a synod or a standing committee - what does he do? He says to the people: "Do not be afraid, stand still, stand firm and see the deliverance that the Lord will accomplish for you today ... the Lord will fight for you, you have only to be still".

Again in the mighty act of God in the birth of Jesus Christ, it was when all things were in quiet silence that the almighty word leapt down from heaven.

And in many of his own works of healing Jesus performs his miracles away from the multitude. Again the Gospel narratives are very clear that it is often when Christ himself is in the thick of it that he makes for the mountainside to pray, to stop, to look, to listen.

And of course it is the mightiest act of all - the raising of Jesus from the dead which is accomplished in the silence of the night.

Paul urges us at Colossians 3:16 "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly'. Well, how can it be at all possible for that word of Christ so to dwell in us richly if we make no time or opportunity for it so to do - so that we can in stillness and silence ponder more deeply upon the sacred text and what God is saying to us through it.

We certainly need to redress the imbalance between words and actions on the one hand and the lack of listening on the other - in the first place and quite crucially listening to God through his holy word - listening to each other and not least those who from the same basis of the same God's holy word may dirtier from us most sharply; listening, looking, being attentive to the world and its needs.

Yet this quiet time classically understood and practised was not a quiet time of withdrawal into some privatised world of spiritual comfort; it issued in a passionate fervour for social justice and reform. Where, for example, would Wilberforce and Shaftesbury have been without their Bibles?

And it wasn't only the names of the great, or for that matter, male persons either. As many if not more women were deeply involved in what alight be described as the social agenda.

The quiet time - the time to stop, to look and to listen amidst the cacophonous clamours in both church and world - is even more essential today than ever it has been. Furthermore, if people out there, the world beyond the church, are only able to perceive "church" in terms of "politics - controversy - party spirit", to use those words of Ryle, then what hope is there that the Gospel of reconciliation with which we have been entrusted is likely even to be heard let alone taken seriously?

And if the Gospel - the good news of that abundance of life for all given us in Jesus Christ becomes mired in our divisions and our fallings out, then we shall all stand condemned.

My hope and prayer for 'Fanning the Flame' is that the flame of the divine compassion, care and love bought so dearly on the cross for the salvation of the whole world may be kindled afresh in each of us. But that cannot happen, and it will not happen, unless we make the time to stop,'to look and to listen to God.

This is an edited extract of the address by the Archbishop of York, Dr David Hope, to the 2003 National Evangelical Anglican Congress in Blackpool on Sunday 21 Septelnber.