News Archive
Meeting the Queen
On Thursday, 22 July 2010, a party of SPCK representatives attended a Buckingham Palace garden party. This year, they had the additional privilege of being introduced to the Queen.
The party consisted of Clive Wright, OBE (former chair of SPCK's Governing Body), his wife Joy, Monica Capoferri (Design Manager) and Louise Clairmonte (Editorial Manager), whose own account follows.
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Clive, Joy, Monica and I arrived at Buckingham Palace at around three o'clock to join a very long but swiftly moving queue on Buckingham Palace Road. And what a queue it was: kilts, feathers, frills, top hats and various types of colourful national dress were evident; killer heels and brogues were highly polished; and people smiled at each other in anticipation of the afternoon ahead. Passing tourists stared as we chatted excitedly and waited patiently in our finery on London's grubby pavements for admittance to the palace.
When we eventually reached the gates, each of us had our identification checked by smiling policemen
Bound for the Palace
wearing stab vests. The policemen indicated the way we should go, over the red gravel, past two guardsmen standing outside their sentry boxes, silent and motionless, except for the breeze stirring a few hairs of their bearskins.
The four of us entered the palace with our fellow guests, walked a short distance through tall, grand corridors and then came out on to the West Terrace, which looked out over a well-watered green lawn. On the left of the lawn was the long main tea tent, topped by an elegant green-and-white-striped canopy; the bandstand and diplomatic and royal tea tents were all on the right. In front of the main tea tent were tables and directors chairs that were already mostly occupied. A vast area of lawn between the tea tents remained free of furniture, allowing people to mill about, or to saunter or march purposefully between the lake and the palace. The scene before us was a vibrant one, made particularly colourful by military uniforms, women's dresses and hats, and the national costumes of people from Commonwealth countries.
Once we'd taken everything in, Clive told us that we were to wait at the bottom of the steps leading down from the terrace. When we asked why, he said that we were to meet one of the Gentlemen Ushers, who might arrange for us to be introduced to the Queen. It took me a few moments to register Clive's words. Monica and I looked at each other, our eyes wide, each thinking: ‘We might be going to meet the Queen?!' The most either of us had expected was to see Her Majesty at a great distance through a bobbing raft of hats and epaulettes.
We took our place at the bottom of the steps and waited the military band played pieces from My Fair Lady. At one point, Monica looked up to a second floor window and saw the Queen and a young man looking out on to the garden. Monica alerted me and I saw Her Majesty, too. The sighting, however, was brief: the curtain the Queen was peering through suddenly swung smartly back into place.
Eventually, we met a Gentleman Usher holding a top hat and dressed in a morning suit. He was a jovial and charming man called Paddy, and he checked that he'd taken down our names correctly. By this time, the Queen's arrival was imminent. Paddy told us to join the crowd on the lawn and to wait about half way down the processional route that would be cleared by the Yeomen of the Guard (Beefeaters) for Her Majesty.
The Beefeaters appeared, marching two by two in their Tudor-style red uniforms, their ceremonial pikestaffs sloped over their shoulders. They cleared a way for the Queen through the crowd towards the royal tea tent. After a little while, I moved back to an empty area of the lawn and gazed at the palace waiting for the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh to come out. And then I saw them at the top of the terrace steps. The Queen wore a turquoise summer coat and a white hat with a turquoise trim. Even from a distance of two or three hundred yards I could see how elegant she looked. The band played the national anthem and a female soldier in front of me saluted while the rest of us stood a little more upright than usual. The national anthem ended and applause rippled through the crowd as the Queen and Prince Philip descended the steps.
As the Queen and the royal party moved down the processional route, a vanguard of Gentlemen Ushers 
pulled small, select groups of people out of the crowd to stand in the middle of the way, and prepped them about protocol ahead of meeting the Queen. Soon, it was going to be our turn. Paddy reappeared and told us what was going to happen. He began by saying it was a good thing that we were in a group of four. The Queen, it seems, likes to meet people in groups of four. He then told us that we would not be introduced to the Queen by him. Rather, he would introduce us to another Gentleman Usher named Hugh Rolfe. Hugh Rolfe would then introduce us to the Lord Chamberlain (the Earl Peel). And then, finally, the Lord Chamberlain would introduce us to the Queen.
We still had a some time to wait before the Queen reached us, so Paddy asked if we were all clear about protocol. We shook our heads.
He said: ‘When you first meet the Queen, curtsey or bow and call her "Your Majesty". Thereafter, you may call her "Ma'am", which rhymes with "ham". And don't worry about getting things wrong. She's used to people getting things wrong.'
We nodded and thanked him. We still had a little while to wait, so Paddy tried to help us relax by chatting to Monica, who's Italian, about his time as a naval attaché in Italy. It became evident that Paddy had taken a liking to Monica: after he'd left us in the hands of Hugh Rolfe, he called out mischievously over his shoulder: ‘Ciao, Bella!' We all laughed as Monica waved, grinned and responded: ‘Ciao!'
Then it happened: Hugh Rolfe introduced us to the Lord Chamberlain, who, in turn, introduced us to the Queen.
First, Clive shook her hand, bowed and answered her polite enquiries; he talked a little about who we were and he acknowledged that the Queen was already well acquainted with SPCK and its work. Her Majesty exchanged a few words with Joy and then asked Monica what she did at SPCK. I was asked a similar question. The Queen smiled and even laughed a little at our answers, and remarked that she believed the staff of SPCK was very dedicated. And then Her Majesty moved on.
Afterwards, Monica told me the thing that stuck in her memory was the intense, clear blue of the Queen's eyes, her lovely skin and the subtlety of her make-up. For me, it was her height; she was much smaller than I'd anticipated, although very upright. We were all struck by her graciousness and warmth. I had the impression that if any of us had been boorish enough to go on at length, she would have listened patiently and carefully to every word. She was with us for nearly five minutes, which in such circumstances is a llong time.
Once the royal party had passed on, we drifted off to the tea tent. We'd been at the palace for nearly two hours and, up to that point, we'd had nothing to eat or drink. The tea and cucumber sandwiches were very welcome, as was the fine selection of cakes - a staple beloved by all at SPCK.
We ended our visit to Buckingham Palace with a tour of the gardens. We'd been fortunate with the weather; heavy showers had been forecast but the rain held off. Joy quipped that wherever she went the sun shone, so I joked that we had been lucky with the weather because she was a sun goddess. Towards the end of the afternoon, though, Joy's sun-goddess mojo began to run out. Just as we were leaving the garden party, we felt a few spots of rain. But, all in all, we'd been blessed with the weather as well as hugely privileged to meet Her Majesty The Queen. The afternoon of Thursday, 22 July 2010, is one that none of the four of us shall readily forget.
Her Majesty The Queen is the Patron of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Book Awards
Justification by Tom Wright was shortlisted for the Christianity magazine Book-of-the-Year Award.
On the pastoral side, we were delighted to have no fewer than three Sheldon books commended in the prestigious Open Book Awards awarded by the Medical Journalists' Association (MJA): Janet Wright's Hysterectomy; Jim Pollard's The User's Guide to the Male Body; and David Delvin's Backache. The latter won two awards: the general readership section for self-help books, and the Tony Thistlethwaite Award, an overall prize for the best consumer health book by an MJA author, given for excellence in communicating medical and health information. In addition, When Someone You Love Has Dementia by Susan Elliot-Wright has been Highly Commended in the Popular Medicine category of the 2010 British Medical Association Awards and shortlisted for First Prize.
Former SPCK Trustee appointed Chaplain to the Commons
The Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin (former SPCK Trustee) has been appointed Speaker's Chaplain to the House of Commons.
Her appointment will begin in September, after the retirement of the present chaplain, the Revd Robert Wright, who has held the post for the past 12 years.
The Revd Rose Hudson-Wilkin
Rose is currently the vicar of the united benefice of Holy Trinity With St Philip, Dalston and All Saints Haggerston, in the diocese of London She will continue in this role, combining it with the position of Speaker's chaplain and as priest-vicar at Westminster Abbey.
Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, described Rose as a superb successor to Robert Wright. ‘She is one of the most prominent young black women priests in the Church of England ... already a chaplain to the Queen and I hope her new association with the House means we can build strong links with her parish ...'
The Speaker's chaplain is responsible for saying prayers in the House of Commons at the start of each day's business and is available to offer spiritual advice to staff and MPs in the Commons. Rose Hudson-Wilkin will also celebrate the Eucharist in the chapel of St Mary Undercroft, situated in the crypt of the Palace of Westminster.
Judging the Media
SPCK's General Secretary, Simon Kingston, was present at the recent Awards ceremony for the 2010 Sandford St Martin Religious Broadcasting Awards, for which he had acted as a judge. The Prizegiving ceremony was held at Lambeth Palace, and helps to showcase the finest in religious broadcasting.
Jacobson with Nick Baines
Notable among the winners for 2010 was novelist Howard Jacobson for his programme about Genesis, The Bible: A History, Episode 1 - Creation (Pioneer productions for Channel 4). In it, he examines the importance of the Bible in what many call a godless age, focusing particularly on its creation story.
It is worth noting that on the same shortlist, though with a budget at a tiny fraction of the others was Paperless Christmas: The Adventures of Mary and Joseph - The Road Movie, The Christmas story told in nine 1-minute videos made available on the website http://www.paperlesschristmas.org.uk/. This was made by BRF in association with Jerusalem Productions, and we congratulate them too.
Jean Claude Bragard and Diarmaid MacCullough
Another popular winner, whose programme also gained the prize voted for by readers of Radio Times, was Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch, with the first programme from his brilliantly-structured series, A History of Christianity, which traces the origins, birth and expansion of Christianity. The programme was broadcast on BBC Four.
The whole series is a remarkable achievement, drawing a coherent narrative through the many twists and turns of the story of the Church and its multifarious adherents.
In the radio section, the main winner was Twin Sisters: Two Faiths (Ladbroke Productions for Radio 4) 
in which Anna Scott-Brown explored the relationship and beliefs of twin sisters brought up in an agnostic home who both became Christians at school. One rejected this belief but subsequently became a Muslim. During the year their agnostic mother, who has terminal cancer, finds a faith in God despite having declared she considered death-bed conversions a ‘cop-out'.
Another notable winner was The Understanding (BBC Radio 4), written to complement the medical ethics programme Inside The Ethics Committee, which explores the dilemma posed to a doctor performing an emergency caesarean section on a woman who is a Jehovah's Witness and cannot accept a blood transfusion.
Finally, a programme with reflection at its heart, a programme with an impeccable mix of thoughtful words and music, Something Understood: Hospitality (Loftus Audio for Radio 4), in which Jean Vanier, founder of the L'Arche Community for adults with learning disabilities, talks to Mark Tully about the spiritual meaning of hospitality.
These and other winners all demonstrate the great quality of current programme makers, though it was disappointing to learn how few entries come from what seems the very secular world of television commissioning. We must be grateful for the job done by the few, and special note must be made of Jean Claude Bragard, a BBC producer with no fewer than three winning programmes to his credit.
Roger Boulton, introducing the television awards, noted that when John Birt set about restructuring BBC news and current affairs:
" he correctly identified a real weakness in the coverage of finance and business. His solution was to create BBC Editors with real budgets and power at the heart of the news machine and with guaranteed access to the airwaves. Hence Jeff Randall and now Robert Preston, who have transformed the coverage.
I believe BBC News similarly requires a Religion Editor, able to appear on the networks to interpret the latest religious story at home and abroad, but more importantly to bring a religious perspective to the vast range of areas such as foreign affairs and medical dilemmas where that perspective is so often, and so bafflingly, absent, both on air AND behind the scenes in internal editorial discussions."
Thanks to The Sandford St Martin Trust, the efforts of the fine professionals who do manage to flourish in such an environment are rightly emphasized and showcased.
The Trust was set up to promote innovative, high quality religious programming. While a Church of England trust, the organisation presents awards to programmes which reflect on a wide range of beliefs and faith traditions.
Move for Dr Wright
Dr N. T. Wright, The Bishop of Durham, a prominent SPCK author, has announced that he will be retiring from the Diocese of Durham at the end of August.
Dr Wright is returning to the academic world and will take up a new appointment as Research Professor of New Testament and Early Christianity at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.
Bishop Tom said, ‘This has been the hardest decision of my life. It has been an indescribable privilege to be Bishop of the ancient Diocese of Durham . . . I have loved the people, the place, the heritage and the work. But my continuing vocation to be a writer, teacher and broadcaster, for the benefit (I hope) of the wider world and church, has been increasingly difficult to combine with the complex demands and duties of a diocesan bishop. I am very sad about this, but the choice has become increasingly clear.'
NT Wright
The bishop has been working on three main series of books - Christian Origins and the Question of God (at a scholarly level), The New Testament for Everyone (at a popular level) and a sequence of studies to introduce the Christian faith to the intelligent general reader, Simply Christian, Surprised by Hope and most recently Virtue Reborn. He hopes now to be able to complete these series, and engage in other research, while teaching in the Faculty of Divinity at St Andrews.
His book on Justification was recently shortlisted for the Christianity Magazine Book-of-the-Year Award.
Tom Wright is a much-loved author for SPCK Publishing.
Bray Day at Westminster Abbey
On 15th February, SPCK and USPG: Anglicans in World Mission came together at Westminster Abbey to commemorate their common founder, the Revd Dr Thomas Bray, on the 280th anniversary of his death. The Rt Revd John Pritchard, Bishop of Oxford, celebrated the Eucharist in St Margaret's Church, with a congregation of staff and trustees from both societies. The Revd Canon Dr Nicholas Sagovsky preached.
After the service a lunch reception was held in the Jerusalem Chamber.
It was a splendid occasion, greatly enjoyed by all. We extend our grateful thanks to the Dean and Chapter and to the Rector of St Margaret's for their hospitality.
Bray Day Sermon by Canon Nicholas Sagovsky
Thomas Bray was a remarkable man, an Anglican saint whose legacy lives on in an extraordinary way. As a parish priest, he served mainly in two parishes: from 1690, Sheldon in Warwickshire, and, from 1708, St Botolph, Aldgate in London. His life was opened to wider horizons when he was appointed the Commissary of the Bishop of London to the American colony of Maryland, which had been founded to be Roman Catholic, but then became open to Anglican ministry. In 1695, the Bishop of London gave Bray the task of developing Anglican church structures in Maryland. It was an inspired appointment.
At this time Bray was in his early forties. He had already shown his concern for Christian education by writing Catechetical Lectures which were based on his own teaching methods and were intended to help hard-pressed parish clergy. The book proved a huge success. Bray arranged for a number of clergy to go to Maryland before he himself visited. They were mostly poor and they could not afford to buy books for themselves. In 1695, he founded his first library in the United States at Annapolis, the capital of Maryland, to be a resource for parish clergy. By the time he died, he had founded 39 libraries in America, some with more than a thousand volumes.
Bray then began to do the same thing in England, where there was hardly less need. In his lifetime, he founded more than eighty libraries in all parts of the country. In so doing, he revived the life of the rural deaneries - Bray had the wit to see that care of a library would bring isolated clergy together to share their experiences and to work on common projects. He made strenuous efforts to persuade Parliament and the King to provide endowment but these came to nothing. On 6 March 1698, with the support of the Bishop of London, Bray founded The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. Its aim was to improve the quality of Christian teaching by encouraging the foundation of libraries, publishing and distributing books and other resources, supporting charity schools, and also providing missionaries who would serve settlers and natives in the colonies. After visits by Bray to Bridewell and Newgate prisons, SPCK became deeply involved in prison work. As a society, it supported the development of parish workhouses to provide employment for the destitute and voluntary hospitals to help those who could not afford heath care.
In 1701, with the mission of SPCK growing rapidly, Bray decided that its overseas work should be developed separately, and on a different model. On 16 June 1701, a Charter was granted by which The Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in foreign parts was established. This was not a voluntary society with a subscribing membership like SPCK but something more like an overseas mission agency of the Church of England. It held its first meeting in Lambeth Palace and the Archbishop of Canterbury became its first President. The aim of SPG was to enable the Church of England to send clergy to the English colonies ‘for the instruction of the King's loving subjects in the Christian religion' and to evangelize the native peoples there. It was supported by collections from the parishes of England. At a time when the Church of England had no national structures, SPG began to create bonds which united the bishops and the dioceses in support of mission.
Towards the end of his life, Bray became increasingly concerned for the continuation of the work he had started. He formed other charities and trusts to push on with the work of founding and supporting libraries for the clergy at home and overseas. He also set up a foundation to support schools in North America for what were then called ‘negroes', and was thus an early supporter of education for African Americans. Six weeks before his death, appalled by the conditions in Whitechapel Prison, Bray suggested to General James Oglethorpe, one of his Associates, that there should be a new colony in America where ex-prisoners could have a fresh start. This led in 1732 to the foundation of Georgia, just two years after Bray's death.
Bray's was an extraordinary fruitful life. As a parish priest, he had an eye for the need of his day, and once he saw need, he dedicated himself to doing something about it, principally by working with others, and encouraging them to work together, but also by hugely generous giving on his own part.
Throughout his life, Bray was concerned with Christian education. Not quite as we might be, because a primary concern was to refute the errors of ‘Atheists, Deists and Socinians' as well as of ‘Papists, Dissenters ...and Quakers'! Bray's vision was that there should be an educated, thinking clergy - something we very much need today, in every part of the Anglican world.
He was consistently concerned with the plight of prisoners. He did all he could to provide comfort, education, and hope, and, on release, employment and a new start. Last week I was hearing some statistics about the UK prison population. In January 1995, the total prison population was 49,500. In January 2009, it was 82,100 an (increase of 65% in 14 years). Many of those in our prisons have problems with literacy, education and, in a falling jobs market, employment. Just as in Bray's day, the need is there. SPCK is currently developing attractive new literacy materials for use in prisons to help those who are seeking to improve their lives and their prospects for the future.
And overseas there is, of course, an ocean of need. USPG: Anglicans in World Mission has morphed from being an agency of the Church of England to being an agency of the Anglican Churches worldwide. It now works to meet a range of needs -
from education for laypeople in Myanmar and clergy in Peru, to providing food for prisoners in Zimbabwe and developing communications for the church in Botswana.
Both SPCK and USPG are also doing something else, something of vital importance at the present time. Through our work in partnership with Anglicans round the world, we are helping to bind together the Anglican Communion at a time of severe strain. Together we have a crucial role as we go on discovering what it is to belong to a worldwide network of churches, a communion for the twenty-first century.
Communion is one of the words that is used to translate the Greek New Testament work, koinonia - as in ‘the communion of the Holy Spirit'. Another word used in the Latin translations of the New Testament for koinonia is societas. This is why we heard the readings that were chosen for this morning. In the first, Paul writes to the argumentative Corinthians:
‘God is faithful; by him you were called into the fellowship of his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Now I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, by the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that all of you should be in agreement and that there should be no divisions among you, but that you should be united in the same mind and the same purpose.'
The Corinthians have been called into the fellowship, the communion, the society of the Lord, so he appeals to them to be united in the same mind and the same purpose. The words ‘fellowship' or ‘communion' are often used to suggest something intangible, not concrete. Our Gospel reading, though, suggests something very concrete: the business enterprise of Zebedee and Sons, fish merchants - with nets, boats, and a trade in fishes. We heard that James and John had gone into partnership with Simon, and that they had a bad night. If they did not remain united in the same mind and purpose, they weren't going to catch fish, let alone, when Jesus called them, to catch people.
Of course, there's a lesson here for the whole Church, but there's also a lesson for us. Thomas Bray had the wisdom to found societies, not to compete with the Church but to perform special tasks within the Church. He wanted small groups of Christians to share with him in a particular vision which had been formed out of compassion for human need. He must have been an inspiring leader, but he was not a one-man band. He managed to work with others with such extraordinary success that he transformed the life of the Church of England, and that of the Church worldwide. There is great wisdom in the ‘S' of SPCK and of USPG - wisdom for which we give thanks today. We are sister societies, we are united in mind and purpose, our aim is, in the best possible way, to ‘catch people' and to play our part within the wider communion of Anglicans, and of all Christians as we seek to build one another up in Christ. Today, as we think about the extraordinary legacy of Thomas Bray, and the contemporary challenges to which he would have responded with such compassion and practical wisdom, let us give thanks to his Lord and ours and pledge ourselves anew to the extraordinary work of the Societies which he founded.
The Revd Canon Dr Nicholas Sagovsky
For biographical information about Bray, I am much indebted to the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: University Press, 2004-10) by Leonard W. Cowie. There is a useful summary article by Arthur Middleton (2003) on the Project Canterbury website: http://anglicanhistory.org/essays/middleton/bray.pdf (accessed 14 February 2010).
Cartoonist extraordinaire
SPCK's own Sophie Dean has created a cartoon website on which she offers a light-hearted account of daily 
life in the world of publishing. Her site (BitBookish.com) has won praise from The Bookseller, the specialist journal for the world of books.
Describing Sophie as "über-talented", the article suggests her cartoon calendar could be the "till-point title of 2010."
Our congratulations to Sophie.
SPCK and the Lord Mayor's Show
SPCK featured once again in the Lord Mayor's Show, as we continued our tradition of giving a specially inscribed Bible or Prayer Book to the incoming Lord Mayor of the City of London. This year the request was for a King James Bible, which remains the favourite choice, although we have been asked for modern language editions and even - on occasion - for something else entirely, such as a Hebrew Old Testament for a Jewish Lord Mayor.
The Dean of St Paul's, the Rt Revd Graeme Knowles, makes the presentation outside the Cathedral where the procession stops for the Lord Mayor and Lady Mayoress to receive a blessing. They traditionally kneel at the foot of the steps but there was a departure from custom this year owing to bad weather. The ceremony took place in the portico instead.
Howling gales and pouring rain on 14 November did not deter crowds turning out for the Show, and it was a splendid occasion as always. SPCK received a mention in the television coverage, and we are very pleased to be part of this historic City of London event. The new Lord Mayor, Alderman Nick Anstee, has expressed his thanks to the Society for their generous gift.
Picture: Graham Lacdao
Design Manager's Success at Images Exhibition 2010
Each year, the very best in Illustration is selected for an exhibition and accompanying publication. Images is the showcase for the best of British illustration, this year including work by our own Monica Capoferri.
Now in its 34th year, Images is the only independent, jury-selected illustration annual, and is distributed to 4000 commissioners as well as forming a touring exhibition in the UK.
The jury consists of nine eminent industry figures including Penny Garrett - Art Director at The Economist, Angus Hyland Partner at Pentagram, Ben Norland - Executive Art Director Walker Books and Nol Davis - Head of Creative Services Department.
For the 2010 exhibition, work by SPCK's own Design Manager, Monica Capoferri, has been selected to appear, placing it among the best of the best.
The image shown (left) appears along with several other of Monica's powerful illustrations in David Adam's book Mirror Images: Seeing Yourself in Other People, a book about human encounters with love at the heart of its message.
The picture illustrates a chapter reflecting on the process of being still and quiet, with all the senses tuned to what is around - like a bird watcher.
Our congratulations to Monica, whose work has been selected for this prestigious exhibition before.
Frankfurt 2009
The Frankfurt Bookfair takes place each October, and 2009 saw SPCK in attendance as usual.
The Fair is a meeting place for the industry's experts. Publishers, booksellers, agents, film producers or authors - each year in October, they come together and aim to create something new.
We have meetings to sell Rights in new (and backlist) publications to publishers, digitisers and others in countries all over the world.
We also look at the latest and the best from publishers in other countries, to consider obtaining the Rights and producing our own editions.
The Bookfair is a huge event, and over two hundred countries are represented there.
Meetings take place two at a time within our stand (on different tables) at half-hour intervals throughout the day, and are further supplemented by evening and dinner meetings.
All this makes the Bookfair a very intensive and tiring process, though also a stimulating and invigorating one. Above all, it is a very efficient way of making contact with colleagues from all round the globe, and of selling Rights in our books for publication in countries round the globe. It also helps us to keep abreast of new developments of all kinds internationally.
Sermon preached at SPCK AGM, October 2009
Thomas Bray commemorative plaque
by The Rt Revd Martin Wharton, Bishop of Newcastle
It's a very great pleasure to be invited to preach on this annual occasion - it's the second time you have given me the privilege - as today I come to the end of my time on your Governing Body.
These last years have been turbulent ones for the Society - and I want to begin by paying tribute to the faithfulness, the devotion and the skill of all the staff here, under Simon's leadership and Pat's meticulous administration. All of you have done a marvellous job in the most difficult and trying of circumstances and that needs to be publicly acknowledged.
Now, I've been a fan of SPCK all my life, because of three things:
a) Because of the range and breadth and depth of the books we publish. I'm convinced there's still a huge market for intelligent, thoughtful Christians.
b) And secondly, because of the importance of the Bookshops, particularly for those of us who live at the geographical extremities of the country. Sadly, on-line bookselling amongst other pressures put paid to our shops, and the life of our church is the poorer with their passing.
c) And thirdly, the significant contribution we still make to our Christian partners overseas; to the ministry and mission of the Church overseas; to the astonishing number of theological and educational works we have given to the world wide church. The task of bringing the story of God and of God's people to successive generations has always been at the heart of the mission of SPCK. Indeed, it lies at the heart of all Christian ministry.
We believe, at least in part, because others have believed and recorded their journeys in faith so that people like us may follow too. Each successive generation leaving traces of God to light the way to those who follow.
That is one way of describing the mission of SPCK down the centuries as we seek to be faithful to the vision of our founder Thomas Bray.
In our scripture readings today - a letter to a young church and an evangelist's attempt to bridge Israel's history and future in the person of Jesus - these readings uphold the importance of the written word - the written record - and encourage us to add our own.
The scriptures inspired by God for our pilgrimage in faith, to enable us to stand in the presence of God's truth and love so that we might enter, become and continue the story.
We enter the lives of those who have gone before us and allow them to enter and illuminate our experiences. And in that coming together, that communion of story we feed and we are fed.
That's why the continued publishing of good quality theological works is so important - it is one of the gifts that SPCK offers to the church in its mission to the world.
Now, in an ideal world the story of the bookshops would have worked out very differently.
And in an ideal world we wouldn't be faced with such a gruesome set of accounts as we have before us today. Although there are, I hope, true and convincing explanations which we will hear about later.
But we don't live in an ideal world. Actually, Christians never have. And what I want to do is to think with you about how we behave and act when we find ourselves inhabiting that gap between the ideal and the actual in our lives. How do we cope with the gulf between the actual and the ideal?
One of the most notable things about us human beings is that we have ideals - hopes and dreams - standards of excellence for ourselves, our families, our communities.
We don't all have the same ideals, of course. And they are not all equally good ideals. But ideals we all have.
But it is also equally noticeable that human beings seldom realise their ideals. We seldom, if ever, grasp the things we reach for. Our ideal home life and our actual home life may be poles apart. Our ideal society and our actual society are often as different as night from day. Our ideal characters - the people we would like to be - and the people we actually are often seem to bear little resemblance to each other. Our ideal SPCK and the actual realities we struggle with. In other words, there's always a gap between the ideal and the actual. Always a discrepancy between what ought to be and what is.
And for the Christian, this gulf can be excruciatingly broad - for the obvious reason that the ideal is so high and the performance is often embarrassingly poor. If your ideal is to be as perfect as your Heavenly Father is perfect, the chance of anything but a poor performance isn't very great.
So what do we do when we reach the gulf that exists between the ideal and the actual in our own lives? How do we behave when it dawns on us that our marriage isn't the marriage we dreamed of? Or, when it becomes plain that the profession to which we looked forward with such high hopes isn't quite what we hoped. Or when it dawns on you that the church itself is not the perfect place you expected it to be, that the people in it aren't the models of the Christian life that you hoped they would be and the spirit in it isn't always the spirit you hoped to find? Even more, perhaps, how do we behave when we see for the first time that we ourselves are not the person we wanted to be, hoped to be, or as a matter of fact, thought we were?
What do we do then? Do we say to ourselves, well at last I've grown up? I've learned to leave my ideals behind. I've learned about life, that people aren't what I thought they were and I'll not get caught out again. Or do we try and withdraw and have as little to do with the realities of life as we can?
What do we do when we reach the gulf between the ideal and the actual in SPCK? When we become aware that we are living in a time and in a world when our ideals aren't going to be realised?
Now let's hold these questions for a moment and try to see Jesus. If anybody ever had an ideal, he did. And if we try to put his ideal into words, perhaps these might be the ones. His ideal was an order of society in which people trusted God and treated each other as children of God. Is that somewhere near it? His ideal was an order of society in which people trusted God implicitly and treated each other as children, sisters and brothers of the same Father.
And this ideal wasn't something he got out of an SPCK publication. Rather, it was the result of his own experience of God. He had known God as His Father, intimately His Father, uniquely His Father, but the Father also of all people. And the ideal was the result of that experience. He would never have called it an ‘ideal'. He would describe it as doing the will of His Father.
He had an ideal, but between the ideal and the actual facts of life, he saw a great gulf fixed. Like the gulf between Dives and Lazarus. People didn't trust God. Some of them did some of the time, but a great many put their trust in money, or their power, or their friends. And they didn't treat each other as the children of God. More often people were treated as a means to their own ends.
Wherever he looked he saw people selling themselves for money, or striving for prestige, or bursting with ambition. He saw people trying to become someone they were not. And he saw others pinning their hopes on the Roman Empire or the Jewish Temple. He saw people clinging to the past after it was long gone because they felt that in this was their only security.
He believed, you see, that people were potential sons and daughters of God, but often behaving like the opposite. Not only Pilate, mind you, but Peter and James, Judas and John. Jesus was in that deep gulf between the ideal and the actual and there he chose to remain.
He didn't have to stay there. He could have cleared off, gone to a quiet hill town with a few close friends to live a ‘spiritual life', free from the disturbances and distractions of the world.
Or, he could have scrapped his ideals and settled with the system, saying that the things he hoped for were impossible. After all, the Kingdom of Heaven is a great deal to expect among the nations of the earth. Too much.
He could have done either of those things, yet knowing him as we do - we know that he couldn't have done either and remain himself. After all, the world was His Father's world, imperfect though it be, and the people in it were those His Father made and loved. He couldn't go off and live in an ivory tower somewhere aloof from the needs and sorrows of humankind. And nor could he have scrapped his ideal. His ideal was his life and without it he was nothing.
He chose rather to remain in the world as it was and did so gladly, as though he believed that in this very gulf his ministry had the best chance. Believing that with these ordinary people he had the best chance of working out the purpose of God.
Notice that he didn't choose as his closest associates the authors, the academics or the intellectuals of the day. Rather he chose fishermen and tax gatherers - people with little discernment and no imagination. Not by any means the cream of the crop. As if to say that if God can't come into the world in these people, and for these people, he can't come into it at all.
In other words, he worked willingly with the circumstances and with the material he had. And most of it wasn't very good material. The people were rough diamonds at best, and some of them weren't anything like diamonds at all. Yet he worked with the material he had even though it was far from perfect.
He even knew - and this is one of the things that staggers me when I think about it - he even knew that his closest friends were capable of betrayal and denial. He knew that from the beginning, yet he worked with the material he had, believing that God can use imperfect materials as instruments of His purpose.
His accomplishments were almost negligible at the time. In Nazareth, he could do nothing. So he left . In Capernaum he aroused a good deal of interest and curiosity and gave people a new lease of life. In Jerusalem he made a futile attempt to reform the Temple. Eventually, he was executed by the state as a dangerous character. In one sense his ideal was never realised. The Kingdom of God never came. In another sense his ideal was surprisingly realised for the Kingdom of God came in him.
I don't know whether you can see that or not.
But, as Jesus was torn between the ideal and the actual, he was obedient, and in that moment of obedience, the Kingdom came. As he did God's will in this world, under these difficult circumstances, given this poor material to work with, God's will was done in him.
And what he says to us as we stand in this same gulf is something like this:
You are living in an imperfect world in which there will always be a gulf between the ideals you cherish and the actual facts you struggle with. You know this. You can't expect a perfect state of affairs. You can't look forward to a home that is perfect, or a country that is an ideal society, or to a profession that will be pure or an SPCK that will be perfect.
Nevertheless, he says to us, whatever the circumstances may be, you are a son or a daughter of God. Act like one. You will not always act in the same way and you will not always act as much like a son or daughter of God at some times as others.
But always remember who you are, whose daughter you are, whose son you are - and when you fail, as you will, acknowledge your failures, but don't grieve over them. Be faithful. Get up and get going. God will understand.
"And remember this," I think He would say to us, "The Kingdom of God comes not once and for all. It's not a static state of affairs."
The Kingdom comes whenever a woman or a man responds to a need or a challenge or an opportunity by acting as much like a daughter or a son of God as they can at that moment. Then the Kingdom comes.
And friends, this is the time, and this is the place and we are His people.
+Martin Newcastle
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