THE ministry of Bishop John Baker (Obituary, 13
June) has shown to a wide public in Church and society what was
certainly life-changing for me when I knew him in my teens: his
witness that there is nothing worthier of anyone's intellectual
powers than the Christian gospel. And also, if, as was true for
John, you have a deep love of language and an outstanding capacity
to use it, then the service of that gospel lends itself, as almost
nothing else, to the exercise of that gift.
We shall want to give thanks for the weight and wisdom of John's
book The Foolishness of God (1970), surely destined to
retain its status as a classic of Anglican writing in our time. It
exhibits the same combination of scholarship, faith, and linguistic
ability as led Walther Eichrodt to admit that the original German
formulations of his Theology of the Old Testament (1961,
1967) were given "clarity and comprehensibility" by John's
translation.
But it is also true that we are gathered to praise God for
something far greater than intellect, scholarship, and the gift of
words. In a conversation I had with Tim Darton, the publisher of
The Foolishness of God, he said that part of its success
was that "You keep thinking he's about to throw in the towel, but
he doesn't."
Such was the seriousness with which John took the reasons for
doubt, and the book's testimony to faith gains its strength from
that.
But today is about the discipleship of a consecrated mind; and
that is shown in far more than one classic text. It is about
following the argument where it leads; listening to it even as you
speak it; and travelling with it wherever it goes, even if the
conclusion is neither what you set out expecting, nor a comfortable
place at which to have arrived.
I am not the only person here who experienced the remarkable AGM
of the Movement for the Ordination of Women at which John spoke.
There was tension in the movement between those advocating
patience, and those of a more urgent spirit; so it was decided to
summon a theologian (we know how good they are at sorting out our
problems!).
John was invited to give two lectures on kairos, God's
time. He gave the morning lecture, warning us that kairos
was not the time of our choosing or our
convenience. With hindsight, I think that that lecture was intended
to be more supportive to the thinking of those who were commending
patience than of those who were demanding urgency.
But we returned from lunch for the second lecture, only to hear
John say that he had decided not to give it as planned, because his
earlier reflections persuaded him that the time was now! Such is
the discipleship of the consecrated mind.
WE ARE here from the parishes of the diocese of Salisbury to
salute the memory of a bishop who cared deeply for clergy and
people, certainly including those with whom he had strong
disagreements, and including also as a diocesan initiative the
diocesan link with the Church in Sudan.
We are here from Ireland to honour a person who lent weight to
the movement towards peace, first by the lectures he arranged at St
Margaret's, Westminster, and his statement that the Irish were owed
an apology from Britain.
We are also here from a range of organisations concerned with
animal welfare.
Those who had long considered shameful the failure of the Church
of England to mount a critique of nuclear deterrence will have
memories of being deeply encouraged by The Church and the
Bomb (1982), the report of which John was principal author and
enabler.
Later, when John came to the conclusion that the arguments in
Issues in Human Sexuality (1991), the House of Bishops'
report of which he was also the main enabler and writer, were
unsustainable, he did not take the easy route of quiet
dissociation, but spoke plainly.
SO, WHEN we care too little to speak, we shall remember John,
and his following of the Christian argument to the enrichment of us
all. We shall remember someone who had no doubt that the Lord who
put a child in the midst of the disciples would not regard the
defence of the marginal - marginal human beings, creatures all - as
something merely optional for us who believe, but rather precisely
the divine foolishness to which we are called: the discipleship of
the consecrated mind.
Nor would this lover of the prophets of old wish us to forget to
say to those of a fearful heart - who are "too shy to speak" - "be
strong; fear not".
When the translator of a large theological work writes a
"translator's preface", we expect to find standard courtesies and
words of technical explanation. But, in this unlikely place, in the
translator's preface to the second volume of the work on which John
spent more of his academic life than any other, Eichrodt's
Theology of the Old Testament, there is a moment when his
deepest conviction comes to expression.
He is speaking of the place of covenant as a symbol of the kind
of God with whom we have to deal. Then comes this:
Believe in him, wrestle with him,
react against him - whatever they do, it is this kind of God, and
not some other, with whom they are involved, the transcendent Lord
who "spake and it was done", who gives life and the way of life to
every creature, who enters into fellowship with Man, seeking his
free response, and who guides all to its goal by his unconditional
and sovereign will.
FAR beyond any selection we might make of causes John espoused
that we agree with or do not; far beyond even the courage - or was
it innocence? - with which he spoke of these things; far beyond the
intellect and the style of utterance - far beyond all of that for
which we give thanks, those words from his preface represent the
conviction, the consecrated mind, from which it all came.
And, John, we know that this transcendent God, this
unconditional and sovereign will, was not for you one far off - we
can see it in your face. We also see it in the final words from the
hymn with which The Foolishness of God ends: "This is my
friend, In whose sweet praise I all my days Could gladly
spend."
May that promise be yours always, John, and pray with us that,
in God's good time, it will be the promise that we and all God's
creatures will share.
This is an edited extract from a sermon preached at a
memorial eucharist for Bishop John Baker, in Salisbury Cathedral,
earlier this month. The full text is at
salisburycathedral.org.uk/sermons-reflections.