Latest News from the Church of Ireland Diocese of Cork, Cloyne and Ross

There is an ancient story of a holy monk whom the demons were very busy one day trying to tempt. Nothing was working so they went over to rest under a tree. Suddenly, their Lord, the Devil himself, saw them and asked why they were so tired. ‘It’s that monk’, they said. ‘We’ve tried everything on him. We’ve tempted him with money, with wine, with food, tempted him with women, with men, and nothing works. ‘Ah, wait here’, said the Devil. He went over to the monk who was at prayer, bent down, and whispered into his ear. Suddenly the monk jumped up, tore off his cross, ripped up his habit, made a rude gesture to heaven, what I call a one finger blessing, and shouted a rude word to go with it, and stomped off. The demons were in awe. ‘What on earth did you say to him?’ they asked the Devil. ‘Oh’ he said, ‘I told him that his brother had just been made the Bishop of Alexandria.’

Well, we all have our limits, perhaps. But one Paul Colton was not to be Bishop of Alexandria but the Bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross. It was 1999. The Euro had just arrived, so had DVD players, Bluetooth was introduced, as was Viagra, and, perhaps connected to that, 1999 was named the International Year for Older Persons. Paul Colton, not an older person. He was 39. What sort of Bishop would he be? Would his mitre be like some candle snuff and put out the flame, as can happen? Would this be the bland leading the bland? This canon lawyer, this ecumenist, this educated, talented high flyer, would he rise without trace here and never be seen in the diocese, or engage locally, a bishop in demand across Ireland, the world, but not really interested in Cork, Cloyne, and Ross? Or, please God, would his crozier be put down deep into the earth here so that he might keep himself so still, so rooted, so in tune with life and folk here, and in harmony with the gospel, with a brightness and twinkle of eye and a ready wisdom, that we would learn to trust him as shepherd, pastor, teacher, friend? A diocese prays, please God, yes, that’s what we need. And, today, 27 years later, we know that God listened. And we are here to say thank you to Paul, of course, but we are here to thank our loving God for this great human and humane gift amongst us all.

You know, we ask a lot of our bishops. We want them to secure our unity and model an integrity, we want them to lead as they hold the map, and to pastor those who are struggling, when they might be struggling, we want them to be the coach and the cheerleader and the manager and the team doctor, running on the pitch when we need help and preferably running a long way away when we don’t, we want them at everything, and yet we want them to be that still centre from which we draw. Some can bear all this for a few years and then start dreaming of Saga holidays. Bishop Paul Colton is the longest-serving bishop of Cork, Cloyne and Ross since bishop William Lyon in 1617 and also the longest serving bishop still in office in the Anglican churches of Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. It is a remarkable term of office, and often costly, because like all of us, bishops bruise easily too, though you can’t see because their shirts are purple, but this today is a thanksgiving for an extraordinary and grace-sustained commitment to the office and work of a bishop in God’s universal and local church. In a world in which so many leaders want to be examples of power, we thank God instead today for the power of example.

And, hearing that Gospel of Resurrection, just now, we see that the heartland of a bishop’s ministry is to reflect the Emmaus Christ – to be a companion on the road, to open the scriptures, to break the bread, to help us recognise Christ amongst us in the stranger and the other, and to uphold the mystery of faith, keeping the odd in God, disturbing any churchy jaundice en route like those two disappointed sad plodders who don’t believe what the women have told them, subverting that culture of grievance and moan that can set in when we stop being attentive to love, and thankful for the gift of life, disturbing any culture of contempt with the unarmed and disarming love of Christ that makes hearts resurrect and burn with gratitude within. The heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. That’s where resurrection must always begin.

In the resurrection appearances Jesus does not appear in great glory and hype, like some divine dancer on Strictly coming down a heavenly staircase with dry ice and ostrich feathers. Something I imagine Paul would do rather well actually. To be honest when I saw the procession order and that no one here was knowingly underdressed, I thought Crown Him with Many Crowns, was referring to Paul. But no. And no. Christ doesn’t come to dazzle us but to open our eyes to something. He appears to his disciples in the places he was first with them, the places he spent time with them – the seashore, a garden, an upper room, on a road chatting, breaking bread – and he says in effect it was here we were first together, do you remember? It was here we laughed, and argued and loved, and talked of a reign of God. And it was here that you denied me and left me, but I’m still here, we’re ok, we’re together. It is ok. Our translation says that he saw the disciples and said peace be with you, which sounds a bit politely Anglican. What he said was shalom, which as a day to day greeting meant ‘hello, hi’: so ordinary, yes, we’re back together as we were. Peace be with you, not vengeance is mine. He was saying you can rest and live in my faithfulness, you can have a future my unshakeable immovable love for you. Let´s start again where we began. Believing that you are loveable enough for someone to say this to you is not always easy. We can hardly believe we are loveable sometimes: the gospel tells us those disciples were in “their joy still disbelieving”. To believe in God we can do, to believe that God believes in us can be harder. But God is a great cook, he opens the fridge and uses whatever’s there, uses you and me and Paul, and he turns our full stops into commas and, through resurrection love, helps us with the assurance of love to live with the past, not in the past.

Bishop Paul has done exactly this throughout his ministry, with a deep loyalty to the past and to tradition, but with an even deeper loyalty to the future, to a shared and more just future. Whether speaking honestly in the Decade of Centenaries, or speaking for schools and education, whether speaking his conscience for a more inclusive and loving Church, or speaking protectively to someone in crisis or worry, Paul has always sought to be a symbol of unity but also a symbol of integrity, and that has a cost to it in today’s culture of contempt and in that 9^th circle of hell known as Anglican social media. You may disagree with Paul on this or that, but he respects you enough to open his own mind and heart to you, so that our reasoning doesn’t have to be a fight to the death, but a way of helping both have clearer vision, and a commitment to honest complexity in polarised times that thrive on dishonest simplicity. And by this, whereas his study might have been very easily, in Yeats’ words, ‘where slippered contemplation finds it ease’, it has instead been a place where a people’s bishop has contributed to the public square, with an engaging restlessness to pursue what is true and honest, and a bishop who has shaped the diocese into being what it should be, a fun but serious witness to the world of gratitude and love enlarged, where everyone is encouraged to be fully themselves, and we become a voice for and with the unseen, unwanted and unloved. Pontius Pilate asked ‘what is truth?’ and didn’t hang around for the answer. Paul asked it time and time again, and stayed here in the community, and with ecumenical partners, young people, politicians, and anyone of goodwill, to help everyone live into the answer, whether it was about finances, policies, and synods or about human living, the good life instead of the enviable life, or about the beauty and tides of faith. Paul is a lover of bridges not walls. God has given us the gift of being and in return we are asked to give one gift back, our becoming, who we become. We need friends to do this better and in St Augustine’s phrase, Paul has been exactly that, he has indeed been a ‘Christian with us, and a bishop for us’.

I asked Paul what he would like to be remembered for. ‘I’m not dead!’ he shouted. That’s very true. Today is not a full stop either, but a comma, to the next chapter for him and Susan and the family who have been equally wonderful in what they have given and, let’s face it, put up with from time to time. This is the day to celebrate all that has been and all that is to come. But Paul thought about what he wanted to be remembered for and his answer, ‘I’d like to be thought of as someone who just did the best he could’. This honest answer brought to mind what I’ll end with.

In 2011, Otto von Habsburg died at 98, and the Habsburg funeral was celebrated in full view. The funeral procession made its way to the small chapel for burial with full pomp and ceremony. On arrival the doors of the chapel were found to be closed. The herald bangs on the door. The abbot’s voice is heard on the other side. ‘Who is it? The herald read out loudly all the titles of the deceased – the Crown Prince of this, the Prince Royal of that, the Duke of the other. The list ran on and on. At the end, the Abbot’s voice came from behind the door again. ‘We know him not’. The herald bangs again. ‘Who is it?’ This time the herald read out a list of achievements, the promoter of peace, the cerator of this, the architect of that and so on. ‘We know him not’. The herald bangs again. ‘Who is it?’ The herald is quieter now. ‘A sinner, in need of God’s mercy’. The Abbot’s voice was clear: ‘Him we know. Enter.’ And the doors were opened.

There is something of the spirit of the Paul I have come to know in this story. Because for all this ceremony and the dinners and the champagne, and let’s face it he’s the sort of Bishop you’d buy in Fortnum’s, and for all the heartfelt love and affection expressed, I know that deep down Paul knows he isn’t perfect, but that he has tried to do his best and that he needs God’s mercy today as much as ever. All of us here know that he has done what he could and more, and the time is here now to hand over that pastoral staff and then to stay close to God in a life that is only just beginning for him and Susan and the family. It won’t be easy in many ways, but it will be of God too, for he was called, and obeyed and now must leave it all in the hands of the same God in whom, in the end, all is harvest, for he is a God of endless beginnings.

In love of the Emmaus Christ you have served and sought to show in your life, Paul, and in the name of everyone here and beyond who loves you very deeply, thank you for walking with us, thank you for opening the scriptures, breaking the bread, helping us see ourselves and our potential in the resurrection love that never gives up on us whoever or whatever we are. Thank you. And now the resurrection Christ says to you, as he does to his disciples, lets start again where we began. And may God be with you in the adventure, and bless you and Susan richly. Peace be with you. Peace be to this diocese. Peace be to the one who will come to build on what you have sown. For today, with a full heart, we say in united joy – thanks be to God!