None of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.
When I saw these words in today’s Gospel I realized that the Lord with his wry humour had provided a reading for me today.
One of the themes of my preaching is that we have to listen to the Lord’s call to each of us and to answer it as best we can whatever the cost.
Over the last couple of years I have been discerning that the Lord is calling me to follow him in a new way and join the Roman Catholic Church. It is obviously not possible to pursue this journey with integrity as your priest and so this will be my last Sunday with you at St Peter’s.
You can see the personal relevance of the reading. Although Bishop John has kindly agreed to let me stay on in the Rectory for a brief period I am about to become unemployed and homeless, and at a time when we have just discovered that Caroline is pregnant again. A good sermon illustration, but I would ask for your prayers that we will be able to provide for our family over the coming months.
I’m sorry that I have not been able to give you advance warning of this – Bishop John asked me not to, and I have had to honour his instruction. I believe that his thought was that it would spare you the possible difficulty of feeling that you were being cared for by someone who had decided his future lay elsewhere. Also the timing of the announcement would give him the option of letting me briefly stay on in the Rectory while we try to find somewhere else to live.
When I went to see Bishop John he told me that he felt both sad that I would be going and joyful for me that I was pursuing the Lord’s call to me as best as I can discern.
That certainly sums up my own feelings at this time. In order to take any journey to a new home you not only set out to go to the new place, you leave one behind.
The Church of England has been my spiritual home for the whole of my life. It has been the place where I have met the Lord in word and sacrament and been given a wonderful vocation. In making this decision I do not want to denigrate our Church in any way. I do not set aside the faith we share together, but find what has been important to me as an Anglican in my own spiritual journey fulfilled in the Catholic Church.
Although I have of course been formed within the anglo-catholic tradition it never occurred to me that it would at any point require a choice from me, or that I would ever leave our Church. Indeed our two churches have been pursuing the possibility of coming back into communion with each for some time.
As I have preached about many times this journey towards real unity with the church from which our own was formed at the reformation is a biblical priority. I cannot read John 17 and believe that Our Lord’s will is anything other than the reunion of his broken body the Church.
My own reading of events is that that possibility is further away than ever and that the Church of England has decided to prioritize a more protestant and liberal view of scripture, ministry and ethics that has made such a journey into union impossible in my life time.
In conscience then I have come to the point where I cannot in good faith remain as your priest. I need to lay down the gift of my ministry here with you and pursue the path which I believe the Lord is leading me on.
It has been a great privilege to be your priest here for the last decade, to share in your lives and to do my best to lead and support you in your Christian faith.
I am grateful to you all for the love support you have given me, and especially in my transition to family life and the warmth with which you have embraced my family.
In his famous sermon on the parting of friends Newman reflected on the fact that our Lord chose to share the Eucharist with his disciples on the night before he left them in an earthly sense. There is nothing better we can do at this moment than to share the Eucharist together. This will be our final Eucharist together as your priest and I will be offering it not only for my own family intentions, but for the future and flourishing of the life of this parish which I continue to love. It is my hope that you will be able to continue to pray for me as I will for all of you as you seek to do the Lord’s will.
Please support your churchwardens as they lead you through this vacancy. The Archdeacon has already found a priest who will be able to take the main Sunday Eucharist every week for you until a new priest is appointed.
I will be praying that the Lord sends you a holy and prayerful priest as your next Rector and ask your prayers that the Lord will make clear the next part of my own vocation to serve him.
