Go forth and tell!

Dear Friends,

Go forth and tell! The doors are open wide:

Share God’s good gifts – let no one be denied;

These are lines from the final hymn in an amazing service that I have just experienced. As they were sung, the huge west doors of St Paul’s Cathedral were opened. The summer sunshine flooded the building and lit up all those who were processing out.

At the heart of the procession were two women: the Bishop of London and the new Bishop of Crediton.

The service was the consecration and ordination of the new bishop, now the Rt Rev Moira Astin, conducted by her first female predecessor in that role, now translated to London, Rt Rev Sarah Mullally.

Those may just seem like a couple of factual sentences. They are, nevertheless, statements that mark something momentous and historic, which for some of us was deeply moving. Women have only been able to be bishops in the Church of England since legislation passed in 2014, so the sight of one woman ordaining another as bishop is very new in our church. When I talked to Bishop Sarah, she also commented that Crediton is the first place in which three bishops in succession have been women.

Our church is one which treasures the power of handing on the faith, handing on the gifts of God through successive generations, honouring unbroken connections with all who have gone before us in faith. For hundreds of years the visible and public handing-on rituals have been restricted to men only.

What happened at St Paul’s Cathedral today was one very visible and public demonstration and celebration of what has always been privately true: that women, too, are called to the handing on of faith, handing on the gifts of God through successive generations, honouring the unbroken connections with all who go before.

As such, it is a reminder us that God’s direction of travel, revealed in Jesus, is always the way of opening out, sharing more widely, extending the invitation to more people: the universal offering of a boundless love.

I wonder how each of us might join in God’s direction of travel?

In coming weeks, let’s think and work on how together we bring to reality the words of the hymn:

Go forth and tell! The doors are open wide:

Share God’s good gifts – let no one be denied;

God bless

Samantha