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This morning at our parish church we listened to a gospel lection about the kingdom of heaven. This pericope contains some of the most memorable and inscrutable of Jesus' parables. We hear that the kingdom of heaven is like a grain of mustard seed, like leaven which a woman hid in three measures of flour, like treasure hidden in a field, like a merchant in search of fine pearls, and like a net thrown into the sea. Each time we have heard one of these parables expounded in the course of our lives, it has been presented by the preacher or Bible study leader in a new way. Like jewels held up for inspection, the light passing through each parable refracts in different ways for each person who hears them without in any way changing their substance. We suspect and hope that every time we hear these parables they will provide a fresh piece of teaching for us to receive down the range of twenty centuries from ancient Roman Palestine.
But it is not the Lambeth Walk of yore to which we'd like to call our readers' attention this week, even if we know you'd be happier for a few bars of the song and a daily dose of the actual dance.* Our thought is instead about the Lambeth Walk that took place three days ago as part of the Lambeth Conference 2008. Known more formally as the 'Walk of Witness' in support of the Millennium Development Goals, this Lambeth Walk involved some 650 Anglican bishops and their spouses—along with the Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, Orthodox Bishop Kallistos Ware, Armenian Apostolic Archbishop Hovnan Derderian, the Chief Rabbi of the British Commonwealth, and the retired General Secretary of the Muslim Council of Britain. Aerial video of this event shows a line of purple shirts moving past the Houses of Parliament, by the Prime Minister's official residence at Downing Street, and ending at Lambeth Palace; we have never been happier to see so much purple in one place. The Archbishop of Canterbury's words in this connection pledged nearly every diocese represented at the Lambeth Conference to a revolutionary programme of active Christian service toward those who suffer in our world:
It is our hope this week that the Lambeth Walk of 2008—even if it is not quite itself like the kingdom of heaven—will be one of the great fruits of this decennial conference, committing its participants to a vision of the kingdom of heaven in which, with God's help, we can do what is so explicitly required of us: to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with our God (Micah 6:8). See you next week. Oi! |
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Though we hesitate tonight out of honour for the sacred page to write in parables ourselves, it occurred to us this week that perhaps the kingdom of heaven is also like the 
