PENTECOST 25     Year A, 2005 – 6 November 2005
The Ven. Dr. Sarah Macneil

Readings:    Joshua 24: 1-3a, 14-25        Psalm 70        Thessalonians 4: 9-18        Matthew 25: 1-13 

May God lead us in love and open our hearts to truth. Amen.  

[context: Affiliated Churches Ordinance 2005; industrial reform legislation – loss of sense of who we are and why we are where we are ] 

In 1558 Elizabeth 1 of England succeeded to the throne. In the decade or so since the death of her father, Henry VIII, the religious life of England had been nothing if not turbulent. That is not to say that Henry’s reign, had exactly been stable in this area. During the last 20 years of his reign the relationship with the church in Rome had been severed and Henry had been installed as supreme head of the church in England. Some Protestant reform of doctrine and liturgy had taken place and enormous financial and administrative restructuring had occurred, bringing the enormous wealth of the church into royal hands.  

But under his successor, the young King Edward VI, the pace of liturgical and doctrinal reform quickened and radical Protestantism was embraced, at least at an official level.  

Edward was, however, a sickly child, and died a mere six years later, in 1543. He was succeeded by his elder half-sister, Mary, daughter of Henry and his first wife, Catherine of Aragon. Mary was a devout Catholic and moved rapidly (a characteristic of all the Tudors) to restore England to the Catholic fold. The papal Legate, the Vatican’s representative in England, who had been unceremoniously dismissed some years before, was welcomed back, the mass, ritual worship and clerical celibacy were revived and Mary relinquished the title of Supreme Head of the English Church, a title her father and half-brother had assumed, much to the chagrin of the Vatican power brokers. Indeed, within a very short space of time, most of the changes that had taken place under Henry and Edward were undone and the previous 25 years might as well not have happened. 

Mary, however, was also not well and died on 17 November 1558. She was succeeded by her half-sister, Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn. Elizabeth was a Protestant sympathiser. The nation that she inherited had, however, been stretched by thirty tumultuous years of religious upheaval. Wide divisions of belief were apparent, not least within the increasingly powerful Parliament. Whatever her own beliefs, whatever her own religious inclinations, and these are still debated by scholars, it was in her strategic interests to attempt some path of religious reconciliation, crafting a religious settlement that was as broad as possible and creating a national church which could act as an instrument of social unity.  

And that is exactly what she did. One of the first things she did on coming to the throne was to undo Mary’s undoing of Edward and Henry’s changes and re-establish the church as a nationally-based church of Catholic origin with Protestant reforms. Under the Elizabethan Settlement, the Church of England paved a very broad middle path, with only extreme Protestants and extreme Catholics finding themselves unable to accept the minimal membership obligations imposed on them. By focussing on unity of practice, they were able to avoid confrontations on matters of belief. 

Elizabeth’s concern was not to regulate the beliefs of her subjects but to ensure their loyalty to their Queen and the cohesion of the nation.  

Now you may be asking, ‘why this excursion into history?’ And what can this possibly have to do with wise and foolish virgins – sorry, bridesmaids – or indeed any of today’s readings? Although Elizabeth, known as the Virgin Queen, surely qualifies as a wise virgin by anybody’s measure.  

The excursion into history is to give some sense of the genesis of the church to which we belong. The Anglican Church in Australia is a daughter of the English Church. Although we are utterly independent and have no formal linkage, there remain strong informal links through the Anglican Communion, the global network of churches whose historical roots lie in the Church of England. Culturally, we retain many of the hallmarks of our parent church, as children so often do reflect their families of origin. 

One of these hallmarks has been the holding together of diversity. This has happened, at least partly, through a focus on common practice rather than common doctrine. Another has been the careful balancing of the new and the old, of tradition and reform. 

This may sound rather crudely pragmatic   have these Anglicans no principles? Is this a wishy washy approach to faith which seeks to please the greatest number – or, even more insipidly, seeks to offend the fewest? 

The short answer to these questions is no. There is much greater depth to the Anglican approach than that and a much clearer insight into the nature of God and of God’s relationship with humanity. 

In diversity there is great richness and much to be learnt. To imagine that there is only one experience of God, only one genuine expression of Christianity, only one possible reading of Scripture is extraordinarily arrogant. To honour one another’s experience, learning and insights is, on the other hand, to seek to come closer to God. If our response to another Christian is not ‘well, she’s got that wrong’, but rather ‘what is there for me to learn in this?’ we are surely walking the more godly path. How can we be open to new understandings of God’s will for us and for the church if we are not open to each other? 

The careful balance of old and new, of tradition and reform, is closely linked to this. If we assume that the Bible is on to something when it tells us that God is the God of the past, the present and the future, then those who have gone before us have known and loved God, just as we do and just as those who follow us will. Their knowledge and wisdom are lamps for us on our path. But new paths open up. God reveals Godself to us across time. Old understandings endure and continue to have value, new insights come and lead us to re-evaluate some of our practices. Anglicanism allows this to happen - indeed assumes that it will.  

And here we come to the wise and the foolish virgins – sorry, bridesmaids – of the Gospel. The wise … women… looked at what was happening around them, used their experience and their reason to work out what to do and were ready to greet the bridegroom. The foolish, thoughtless ones, did not draw on these resources and so missed out.  

My prayer for the church is that we will be wise and use our experience and our reason to enable us always to be prepared to rejoice in the presence of God among us.  Amen.

 Sarah Macneil