LENT I, Year B: March 1 2009

Preacher: Rev Christian Heycocks– Chaplain at Great St Mary's

God Amongst Us: Chaplaincy in the University and Armed Forces

May I speak in the Name of Almighty God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.

Whenever I hear the story of Noah I always think of a prayer that is traditionally said by Breton fishermen before they leave port:

Dear God, be good to me. The sea is so large and my boat is so small. Amen.

I have spent most of my ordained ministry working in Chaplaincy. Following my ordination I worked for three years in the Parish of Rhyl in North Wales, in my home diocese of St Asaph. Rhyl is a busy seaside town, urban in nature and afflicted by transient homelessness, drugs and increasingly by organised crime. However, and at the same time, it was and still is a fantastic place, full of vitality and hope, filled with lovely people who do more charitable work than anywhere I have seen before or since. It was a privilege to serve my Curacy there. Ministry was full-on, it involved up to 18 funerals a week, 5 or 6 weddings every Saturday in the summer and at least 5 baptisms every Sunday throughout the year with 7 services taking place around the 4 churches of the parish Sunday by Sunday. We had approximately 35,000 people within the parish boundaries. A team of three ministered to 64 organisations through 'a network of Chaplaincies' and in so many ways it set the tone for my future ministry.

Upon leaving Rhyl, I fulfilled a long-standing vocation that I had held since the age of twelve, to become a Royal Navy Chaplain. After completing Officer training at Britannia Royal Naval College, Dartmouth I then went on to complete my Commando course at Commando Training Centre Royal Marines, Lympstone. I went straight to a Commando Unit to be their Chaplain and straight to the frontline in Afghanistan. I completed my Commando course just after the 9/11 atrocities. More wars followed, including being part of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and being involved in many special operations around the world. I don't believe I will ever 'top' that period of ministry in my whole life. The privilege of ministering to a 'Band of Brothers' who were brave to a fault and who fought at all times believing in and committed to a greater world peace; the privilege of baptising them on the battlefield under fire, officiating at their weddings upon our return home, baptising their children and having to bury some of them, mostly killed in action; it may sound strange to say so, but those six years with the Armed Forces were a truly 'holy time' in my life and helped me to truly understand my place as a priest in this world.

Following a medical discharge due to injuries received on the battlefield, I arrived back in Cambridge as Associate Vicar of Great St Mary's and to fulfil my new primary task of being the Chaplain to University Staff at the University of Cambridge. I came back to the city in January 2006, having previously trained for ordained ministry at Westcott House in the early 1990's. I had spent 7 years at university as a younger man and had always been interested in the possibility of University Chaplaincy at some point. By 2006 my chance had arrived and the last three years have been very enjoyable and challenging as I have sought to establish a central 'University Chaplaincy', offering spiritual and pastoral support to staff and students in an ecumenical and multi-faith context, working alongside the traditional college chapels. I have also opened 'our doors' purposefully to people of no faith at all and offered them a place within the overall Chaplaincy programme and structures. Through dialogue and action; through teaching programmes and providing opportunities for people to meet together as friends (first and foremost), I hope that my legacy will be that I provided the opportunity for people to encounter God through communal and personal exploration of faith in an atmosphere of friendship and trust.

In only two weeks time I leave my post to be the Vicar of Sheringham in North Norfolk. The call of the sea has won through again and with a young family priorities have to change! I look forward to my future ministry in the Diocese of Norwich and to the people of the beautiful fishing and tourist town that is Sheringham.

'Lord, your sea is so great, my boat is so small...' During almost a decade and a half of public ministry I have increasingly realised how small my boat is and how vast the sea continues to be. During this series of Lenten sermons I know that you will be exploring together how God is discerned in many different situations and particularly within workplaces. Today, I want to explore with you my thoughts on the Church we belong to. I hope to make you think again about how it is perceived by the world and what we need to be doing to illuminate the 'Glories of God' in our workplaces and in the places we inhabit on a day to day basis. I believe that how people perceive us has a major bearing on how those same people then interact with what we seek to offer. In my experience, allowing people the opportunity to encounter God or explore faith is almost impossible without first meeting them where they are, recognising all that they are, and gaining their trust through friendship above all else.

A friend of mine was talking to me the other day about Churchmanship, and afterwards I found myself meditating once again upon all the varied sorts of Churchmanship that we have in the Church of England — High, Low, Evangelical, Traditional, Charismatic, Liberal, Broad — and wondering why it was that all these labels were so important to so many people and so unimportant to me. During my ministry I have worked in and for a kaleidoscope of different traditions and this has been possible partly because of who I am and what I believe, but mainly because of my experience of military and university Chaplaincy. The great thing about Chaplaincy is that, on the whole, you are working with and for people who have no real allegiance to a church or even a faith and often because of that, because they carry no historical or theological baggage with them, they ask the deep and meaningful questions that I haven't heard asked in many churches for years... Chaplaincy has continually made me reassess my ministry and the ministry of the Church and religious communities the world over. At the same time that I was thinking about the Church and its many traditions, I also found myself remembering the Breton fisherman's prayer...

And as I mulled over my Chaplaincy experiences, it occurred to me that our churches — whatever kind of church or Chaplaincy they may be — they are boats, in which we travel towards God. They may be small boats, leaky boats, however proud their name, and they are blown off course by just about every wind that comes; they are all too often hampered by having far too many Captains and often a squabbling crew — but the boat is ours, the one we happen to find ourselves travelling in, and the important thing about them is, that they are just boats — and not our destination.

And I remembered the question that almost everyone asks when I talk about one of my hobbies — photography. They never ask, "What kind of picture are you trying to make?" Their question is, "What kind of camera do you use?" At one time I was keen on astronomy too. I used to borrow a friend's telescope and use it in my garden in Rhyl. The neighbours would come around to look at the planets through it and were quite excited when they could see Saturn's Rings or the moons of Jupiter. But when a fellow enthusiast came to see me their talk was always of 'focal lengths' and 'motorized drives'. For people are so often seduced away from the object of their study by the technicalities of the means; they spend their time looking at their equipment rather than looking through it. On the whole this cannot be said of my experiences of Chaplaincy with the Navy, Marines or at the University, whereas it brings back many memories of ministry in the parish and institutional Church. I have found that the people I have met through my Chaplaincy ministry almost always want to explore and discover God in a way that the Church often seems to have forgotten about...

As people of faith, our study is God, but our vision often takes us no further than the church, the mosque or temple. To be sure, our places of worship, our communities, are important; as important as a lifeboat is to a shipwrecked sailor. But the sailor's real goal is the land, and his task is to sail the boat to the land, however leaky, frail and ill equipped that boat may be. As I prepare to return to parish ministry I believe that ministry away from the traditional institution of 'The Church' has undoubtedly kept my spirituality fresh and kept me on my toes as I have journeyed towards God.

It is true to say that the majority of my peers at Westcott House have stayed in parish ministry since ordination and now over a decade on, they are leaving the Church in their droves through frustration with the institutional 'dotting of i's and crossing of t's', because they feel shackled by the constraints rather than released and encouraged by the freedoms and graces bestowed upon us. On the other hand, I am about to dive back into the breach, hopefully fresh and encouraged in the ministry and calling that God has entrusted to me! I find this fascinating but also quite telling.

In my experience the history and traditions of the Church or any other religious communities are very important. They tell a story of who we are, where we come from, how we got here, our successes and more importantly our many failures, our good times and the bad ones, our faith, and how we have lived that faith out, or whether we have actually lived it out at all? But our communities, our institutions are not our destination. Sometimes they can get in the way of ministry; they can get in the way of God! And this is a shame because our call as a Church is to make God available to God’s people, to allow people to meet 'The Almighty' through prayer and services, through openness and welcome. And yet we all too often, unintentionally, block people's paths to membership of our communities and place God on a pedestal that is just out of reach because we expect them to meet us where we are, rather than seeking to meet them where they actually are.

The Church is the people of God; the Church is a community of faith. Everyone is welcome. Tradition and custom, rules and regulations should not be an obstacle or a hindrance. We need to re-order our priorities. I often see people who have become Chaplains never return to parish ministry. I can understand why. It is not that parish ministry is unfulfilling or that the good people who attend churches such as this are not lovely or holy people. The real reason is one of freedom and disarming vulnerability to God. As a Chaplain you have no institutional safety net that will catch those you drop, or provide for those who are different to you, or who want something different to that which you personally are offering. You have to change and as a servant of God that is a good and rewarding experience that many who have gone through it find difficult to return from. Chaplaincy grew out of church communities to meet the needs of those who the church as an institution found it difficult to minister to in their natural environment. Chaplaincy came out of 'the Church'. Today, I believe that the Church has much to learn from the experience of Chaplaincy and the many gifts God has bestowed upon this form of ministry. The Church and other religious communities need to recognise the freedoms of Chaplaincy in the telling of God's love. On the whole, Jesus avoided the Temples and went out to the highways and by-ways to meet people where they were. He spoke their language, allowed them to ask any questions they wanted and did not at any time expect them to fully understand what He was saying. But He did ask them to trust, and through trust experience a new way of encountering God. To me this is the privilege and gift of Chaplaincy.

In today's age, I truly believe that the approach of Chaplaincy, the way that Chaplaincy does its business, holds the key to revival for 'the Church'. Jesus, on the whole kept away from established religion and religiosity. He told of the love of God and not of the glories of institutions and the like. Although he recognised their contribution to the story of God, he set out on a new path, and this too must be our path this Lent and beyond. We must remember how we began over 2000 years ago, as reformers, as innovators, as enablers, as facilitators, allowing God to be known in new and exciting ways. I believe we have much to learn from the Chaplaincy model in our parishes and as an institution. If we are to truly seek to help the people we work with and live with in our local communities meet the God who has changed our lives beyond recognition, then we need to do it with open hearts and minds and not by setting out ground rules for membership and expecting them to do all the running.

This Lent I hope that you will reflect upon what Chaplaincy has brought to our workplaces but more importantly how it seeks to be amongst people, whoever they may be, of whatever creed or colour, of whatever belief or background. I believe that Chaplaincy seeks God first, shows love and compassion above all else and allows for religion when it is wanted or needed. This is the approach I will take back to parish ministry and I hope that the parish I will soon seek to serve will be encouraged and enabled by it.

I had been thinking of the Breton fisherman's prayer and how our vehicle of transport towards God was a boat rather than a plane or car. And this was right because our spiritual forefathers, the Hebrews, feared the sea. To them the deep was the habitation of demons, a place of danger, the home of chaos. And if they were on the sea, their boat was their refuge and protection, their Ark, as it had been long ago to Noah and his precious cargo of the future of all Creation. And to them, as to us now, there is still God's promise that, however the storms may rage, however leaky and fragile our boat may be, God will in the end, bring it and us with it, to the land to which we are striving. In the meantime though, we are entrusted with a responsibility to take God's love and welcome to His people through our actions and our words, but above all through generosity and understanding. My experience of Chaplaincy in the military and the University of Cambridge has changed my life and ministry, my perceptions, my hopes and my prayers. The experience of Chaplaincy has much to offer 'the Church' as it reassesses its ministry to God's people. My hope is that 'the Church' will continue to recognise it has much to learn from the initiative of Chaplaincy and not give into the temptation to see it as a sideline offered to those who are not its members.

AMEN.