I don’t suppose that there is a single one of us who hasn’t, at some stage, been ever so slightly elastic with the truth. We are all capable of concealing the truth and stretching the truth. We are all guilty of having an inconsistent and erratic relationship with the truth. In the face of anxiety, difficulty, danger and stress we can all, like Simon Peter, deny the truth. We are all capable of scripting an alternative reality. As Hugh Laurie maintained when playing House, ‘everybody lies.’

If this is true – which I hold it to be – should we be too concerned with truth telling? And, should we hold those who have an overly elastic relationship with truth to account? If we start holding others to scrutiny, or account, are we being overly judgemental for, after all, ‘everybody lies?’ One more question: if holding others, perhaps even significant others, to account is permissible, who should act permissively?

The answer to my last question in some ways feels rather obvious: it depends, and the dependency is context. If our children are telling outright lies, or just stretching things, then presumably it is the parental right to hold them to account? If a spouse cheats on their partner, breaking a sacred vow, then the partner presumably has the right to hold them to account? The situations I have described have a fairly obvious response mechanism for the context is a closed, or at least relatively closed, essentially private, system.

Where the elasticity of truth is stretched within an open system, or public system, things get a little bit more complicated, for the harm caused is less personal and direct. The harm caused is instead systemic, and the problem with systemic harm is that it goes viral, its effects spread uncontrollably.

As yet there is no vaccine capable of inoculating against systemic harm. Wishful thinking and carefully choreographed messaging, in the absence of a vaccine, are the only strategies available in seeking to reduce the symptoms of public harm.

The trouble with wishful thinking and choreographed rhetoric is that in the spin doctor’s mind they become the truth. Truth becomes so elastic that anything that approximates to reality becomes the truth, in the spinners mind. The spinner of truth stands in solidarity alongside that great elastician, Pontius Pilate, and asks ‘what is truth?’ A script is then written to support that truth. Truth becomes a matter of expediency and a mechanism for the retention of power. It is not a very pretty set of propositions.

So, despite accepting that ‘every body lies’ who should hold the spinners to account when truth is stretched within an open and essentially political system? Should, say the bishops, those men and women (in the C of E) who stand in Peter’s line? My answer to this is a resounding ‘yes.’ Because the bishops stand in Peter’s line they fully understand the reality that ‘everybody lies,’ and they know that lies, distorted truths, narratives retro fitted to render the implausible plausible, go viral and the result may well be death.

The bishops, you see, in criticising the masters of spin aren’t doing so from a place of moral superiority, still less perfection, but as men and women who stand in the shoes of the Peter who three times lied; as men and women who fully know the consequences of sacrificing truth, real truth, public truth, on the flimsy altar of political expediency; as men and women (even though ‘everybody lies’) who have been consecrated into the truth, to speak the truth (cf John 17, 19), and especially to those who exercise viral power.

I enjoyed listening to Archbishop Justin’s interview with the BBC on Sunday evening. I think that he is quite correct in calling for a renewed focus on mental health and for a new post COVID vision for a fairer, more equitable society; one in which each and every citizen feels that they have a legitimate stake.

However, as I have this week been musing on the notion of the ‘new vision,’ I have felt increasingly unsettled for surely the church must also be the embodiment, incarnation and ‘first fruits,’ of the ‘new vision?’

If the church wants, and is prophetically calling for, a ‘bias to the poor,’ alongside a spirit of ‘radical new inclusivity,’ in society as a whole (to borrow two phrases) then this is surely what the church must simultaneously model, and crucially, be seen to model. Our legitimacy to talk prophetically into the big debates of our time is, I reckon, contingent on out willingness to simultaneously look inwardly with a commitment to being a very different church. The church, just like society, indeed needs rebuilding. We should all be Franciscans now!

Rebuilding the church, and relegitimising the church, in the eyes of a public which may well regard us (for the church is the people as well as the building let us not forget!) as an irrelevance, an historical legacy from a bygone age, will take courage, and a commitment to go way beyond the cosmetic, although the cosmetic will, in fact, be very important for as a friend once reminded me ‘real change always starts with the optics.’

So what optics could we start with to get ourselves, the insiders, believing that change is really underway, that a ‘new vision’ really is being crafted? The first place I would be tempted to start would be General Synod, with the removal of the special seats reserved for the bishops. This might seem a small, perhaps even pedantic, but surely if we want to model a sense of equality and stress that all have an equal stake then having only one, standard class, seating plan may well have a significant democratising, and freeing, effect.

I do also think we need to think very carefully about the episcopacy, and optics around the episcopacy. Are purple shirts really necessary and what message do they convey? What is the effect of differential stipends, on the bishops themselves? (I have never understood the rationale for differential stipends). Have supererogatory titles outlived their use, with their tendency to talk to preferment and status as opposed to healthy functionality? Could it be that titles such as ‘The Most,’ ‘The Right’ ‘The Very’ and ‘The Venerable’ should be dispensed with? What do such self-descriptions say about the church, to society? Are they the language of the visionary?

Sorting out the optics will help change the culture, of that, I think, there can be little doubt. But, we clearly need to go further, far further. In particular we need to head to the north, both east and west. It is an inescapable fact that there is a bias, in all of our structures, and all of our finances to the south, or southern province (which is not to say that south equals rich and north equals poor, for there are also real structural imbalances within the southern province). If the Church of England is to model – incarnate – any form of new vision then now is the time to start redistributing assets: money and people. Put simply: we need to put our money and our people where our mouth is.

One of my frustrations is that the need to redistribute is frequently discussed at General Synod, with resolutions calling for ‘every diocese,’ or ‘every parish’ to do X,Y or Z, and then the conversation stalls. We need to move beyond talk and into action if we truly desire to be a prophetic and visionary church. If we are to be taken seriously we need to be the vision we demand to see.

There are no short cuts, or easy solutions to rebuilding the church, to becoming a truly visionary church, even a fit and proper and prophetic church. It will take courage and decisiveness (and the church is not very good at being decisive) and it will mean that the ‘mighty’ may need to voluntarily climb down from their ‘thrones,’ relinquishing power, status, and, yes, cash. If we are going to talk truth to power with integrity, alongside ‘filling the hungry with good things,’ through acts of loving service, then change must start, and be seen to start, from within.

Fashioning a new vision for the church must, or course, be underpinned by prayer. But, what we mustn’t do is to allow prayer to become a stalling tactic, for in reality we perhaps already know what needs to be done. We need to not only pray the Magnificat but be the Magnificat.

Let me finish with a prayer by Percy Dearmer, called New Vision:

O God our Shepherd, give to the Church a new vision and a new charity, new wisdom and fresh understanding, the revival of her brightness and the renewal of her unity; that the eternal message of the Son, undefiled by the traditions of men, may be hailed as the good news of the new age. Through him who maketh all things new, Jesus Christ our Lord, Amen.

I don’t know how you feel about the church at present: enthused, invigorated or just plain fatigued?

I suppose, if I am honest, for me, a little bit of both. I have found the ‘great debates’ about whether the Eucharist should be celebrated from home or from within the sanctuary quite tiring.

I can genuinely see both sides of the argument. But, what I can’t understand, or accept, is that those priests who have decided to follow guidance, either out of a sense of loyalty to their bishop, or out of socio-technological necessity, are being in some way less priestly (in the right sense of the word).

I also find it really hard to understand how a congregation brought together through the via media of the internet is necessarily less present than a congregation gathered in a church. The Lord who ‘is here, and whose ‘Spirit is with us,’ cannot be contained, boxed in, domesticated and privatised. I also find the notion that we have become a membership organisation, saying our private prayers, truly depressing, not to say inaccurate.

Yes place is important, and to be sure I don’t know of a single bishop, priest, deacon and parishioner that doesn’t miss being ‘in church, for going to church is part of our DNA, but we are not bound together simply by place. It is after all entirely possible to be ‘in church,’ yet distracted, absent and elsewhere.

We should also remember, I think and believe, that when we gather to pray we are not bound together simply through being in the same place at the same time, but through the liturgy. Liturgy is our common and binding language. Through our common prayers we are ligatured. This was the great insight of liturgists starting with Odo Casel. Liturgy has the capacity to draw us into a common space.

To be clear there is nothing I look forward to more (other than seeing my family) than to being back in church. I miss the bells, I miss the organ, I miss the choir and I miss the smells. Above all I miss the people. I miss the ‘full monty’ of being gathered in a physical community of the young and the old, the male and the female, the gay and the straight, the well and the sick, the able and the disabled. I miss all of this terribly. And, I am not alone for so does every bishop, priest and deacon that I know.

In the midst of these multiple ‘missings’ the criticism of those who see things differently and who are doing their level best, even if they are doing it less than perfectly, is truly tiring.

I don’t believe for one minute that the Church of England is in retreat, or on the way to irrelevance, and the reason I believe this – with all of my heart – is because one of the things we have rediscovered is our diaconal ministry. Church communities up and down the land have discovered what it means to be dismissed, sent, to ‘love and serve the Lord.’ Church communities, and their bishops, priests and deacons, are present to others ‘in the name of Christ,’ and this is what enthuses and invigorates.

Many, many churches are learning and relearning what it means to ‘respond to human need through loving service’ and as time goes on churches, at the institutional and local level will be well placed to make sure that the ‘unjust structures of society’ are challenged. Churches are also partnering with other civic institutions in new ventures, ‘tending’ to the needs of the vulnerable. The church truly is ‘alive and active’ and our diaconal ministry is being ‘sharpened’ through the horrors of these turbulent times.

In these turbulent times let’s cut each other a little slack and exercise some charity, let’s tend to each other, and accept that we are all trying to do our best: bishop, priest and deacon alike. And finally whether we chose to celebrate from the sanctuary or the kitchen table (and we are doing both) let’s retain a sense of confidence that ‘the Lord is here,’ and ‘his (invigorating) Spirit is with us.’

God is not in retreat, and neither, do I believe is his body: the Church.