Broad beans and St Chad

ST CHAD'S DAY MARCH 2nd 2017:

WALKING IN A SAINT'S FOOTSTEPS

Did you know that, according to tradition, today is the best day to sow broad beans? The things you learn from Wikipedia! Perhaps you knew already, and have spent the day doing so..

Today is also the feast day for St Chad, who was the first bishop of Lichfield, and died on this day in the year 672 - 1,345 years ago. He was one of four Northumbrian brothers (including St Cedd) trained by St Aidan on Lindisfarne and who went on to serve the English church. Chad was a contemporary of St Hilda. 

Chad's diocese was vast, covering the whole of the ancient kingdoms of Mercia and Lindsey (Lincolnshire) - from Barton on Humber in the North East to Chester in the North West, Cirencester in the South West and the edge of East Anglia in the South East. Might it be fanciful to think he walked through the ancient woods that predate our Warley Woods? 

What is certain is that he traveled a great deal across the length and breadth of the West Midlands engaging in mission. He walked for miles encouraging faith, evangelising, training other disciples and building up the church. Aidan was known for teaching his monks to walk and pray, often reciting the psalms from beginning to end on a long journey. As a product of the Celtic church, Chad would have followed the same discipline of study and prayer while on the move. What psalm might you choose to learn off by heart to meditate upon as you walk today?

It is hard to know much about these incredible first missionaries to the English nation. But they were cross-cultural mission-minded barrier-breaking people of courage. In the days we now live in - and in the context we are now in with an incredibly diverse region - we find that the same approach, meeting people on foot, spending time creating networks of relationship beyond the walls of the church are part of our call. We are missionaries too. 

A new study, commissioned by the Bishop of Birmingham exploring the current provision and future needs for cross-cultural training as part of the global-local mission and ministry, has just reported. It begins with the following statement:

The landscape of post-Christendom has radically changed the relationship between mission and cultural engagement. Whereas formerly most western Christians assumed that world mission was what ‘we did’ to ‘them there’, our emerging era experiences mission as being ‘from everywhere, to everywhere’. Given cultural diversity, migration flows, changing urban demography and more, it is as likely that a conversation with your next door neighbour will require intercultural skills as much as a trip to a different continent. As David Bosch points out in his seminal work Transforming Mission, this ‘from everywhere to everywhere’ has broken down the distinction between mission as what we do in places abroad that are not yet Christian and evangelism as what we do at home among the no-longer Christian.Thus a cross-cultural approach is now appropriate everywhere, and sharing the gift of salvation a complex and exciting life requiring skill and thought. 

What is mission? This is the interesting conclusion of this latest report. It is something I think St Chad would recognize:

Mission is incarnational in that it requires a self-emptying and sacrificial immersion in the world with a servant heart which offers to all people the possibility of being set free from the consequences of sin. 

Mission is contextual in that it requires a listening and sensitive engagement with the diversity and needs of the context in which God’s people find themselves, so that they can express the good news of God’s love with language and lifestyle that connect appropriately. 

Mission is cross-cultural in that it requires God’s people to cross-cultural boundaries ready to learn from other cultures. It becomes intercultural as mutual relationships are formed in which there is respectful giving and receiving in honest dialogue through which witness to God’s saving love can be offered.

Mission is evangelistic in that it requires a clear announcement in word and deed of the good news of deliverance through Christ’s death and resurrection from every oppression, with the invitation to respond and accept Christ as Lord and Saviour. 

Mission is holistic in that it requires engagement with every dimension of the context which God wants to transform in a way which integrates the dimensions of mission. These dimensions are well summarised in the Anglican Five Marks of Mission.

I end with the collect for St Chad, whose character as a person of grace who was know for being peaceable, humble and prayerful:

Almighty God,
from the first fruits of the English nation who turned to Christ,
you called your servant Chad
to be an evangelist and bishop of his own people:
give us grace so to follow his peaceable nature,
      humble spirit and prayerful life,
that we may truly commend to others
the faith which we ourselves profess;
through Jesus Christ your Son our Lord,
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

And is it too late to sow broad beans tomorrow?