Michael Ingham preached his last synod sermon at the recent Diocese of New Westminster synod.
If reports on the diocesan website are to be believed, it was greeted with adulation:
When he finished his remarks, the prolonged standing ovation partly answered his challenge.
In the sermon he likened the court battles in which he participated and appeared to be only too eager to fight, to “crucifixion”:
I had never been trained in seminary to spend two days on a witness stand in the Supreme Court of British Columbia.
And yet now, twenty years later, many things have changed for the better. We know the word Indaba; we understand something of the depth and complexity of dialogue; we have with us a new friend and companion, Bishop Tengatenga, who has traveled all the way from Africa to build new bridges between the Church in the North and the Church in the South. Out of crucifixion is coming new life.
Having won the court battles and, therefore, not actually having to sacrifice any buildings, Ingham goes on to note that buildings are really not that important after all:
we have a great treasure: it is the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is a treasure worth far more than all the things we want to cling on to: our buildings, our properties
In spite of the mass exodus of conservatives from the diocese, it is apparent that not all malcontents have fled; murmurings of discontent at the diocese being little more than an ecclesiastical CRA must be rife since Ingham took the opportunity to deny it:
the Diocese” is all of us here. It’s not a group of people somewhere else. It’s not a taxation centre that robs us of our few remaining pennies.
It is only fair to give a departing bishop the last cliché sequence, so here it is; I trust it will move you as much as it moved me:
I realized how insightful and articulate I used to be! But it wasn’t just an exercise in nostalgia. I wanted to see how far we have come, and how much we have remained the same. It’s always a matter of both, not one or the other. We’ve come a long way, but there are miles to go.
The standing ovation must have been for his remarkable manipulation skills.
Snippets that stand out.
But thankfully no shouts of Encore, encore!
We need to pray for this poor man, who is about to have one of the worst experiences of his adult life. He will discover that, once he ceases to be a bishop, nobody will care what he thinks. The telephone will stop ringing. Nobody will report his opinions. Nobody will interview him. He won’t be able to sue anybody. The young timeservers who flattered him will now be flattering someone else.
Suddenly he will find himself sitting at home, day after day, doing … well, whatever people like him do before they die of old age.
In our anger at the injustice and wrongdoing in which he has gleefully taken part, let us remember that this man was only ever a pawn. He was a faithful servant of the world, a Herodian in biblical terms. But he who marries the spirit of the age soon finds himself discarded. Mr. Ingham is being discarded right now. He is, after all, no longer of any use to those whose politics he served, or to the evil power who used him for so long. He was only of value for their purposes so long as he held the post he did. Now he is nothing.
His masters turned him inside out. He ceased to be a man. Nothing that he said made any sense from any rational point of view, except as noises all meaning “bow down and worship my god”. His god has no further use for him.
Behind all the nonsense is one wretched human soul. He has done great wrong, from any point of view. He has done it, not for his own personal benefit, but at the bidding of a mightier intelligence that considered him nothing more than meat even as it pushed his buttons.
Ingham no longer matters. Let us, instead, think as our Lord would have thought of this wretched man. He has gone far into the night. His god has done its utmost to blind him, not merely to the gospel, but even to what every normal man sees. But who knows?
Let us pray for this poor, manipulated man. He has done great wrong. He has blasphemed against the Holy Spirit. But let us pray for his repentance and salvation. For so the Lord would have us do.
This makes me wonder if Ingham has an uncle, named Screwtape?
Well said