Every so often my wife asks me to act as postman for her presents and today was one of those days. So after my yoga class I took a very pleasant round trip in the car in beautiful weather, the sun sparkling on the sea, as I delivered two birthday presents. The first was to our son-in-law, which requires no explanation, but the second was to one of our goddaughters, which needs a little backstory.
I was in the first of the two parishes where I served as Incumbent for 20 years, long enough to be properly dug in and become part of the local furniture. During that time I baptised more than 200 people, mainly infants, but some adults too. As recently as 2006 I baptised 36 in a year. Each one of those would have at least 2 and sometimes as many as 5 godparents. With baptism numbers dropping like a stone (in the last year at my last parish I think I only baptised 2 people), the role of Godparent is becoming increasingly distant and unknown. It was always difficult, and increasingly hopeless, over my 36 years ministry, to explain that the role was about supporting the parents in the Christian upbringing of the child and so best reserved for a believing Christian rather than given as a privilege to a best friend or a sibling.
In my last 10 years in that first parish my wife and I were involved with befriending and preparing a small but dedicated group of young parents for both their baptisms and confirmations – and in one case their wedding- and their children’s baptisms. These were lovely times and, in many ways, the happiest of my ministry. The parish was not at all well-heeled and all the parents came from ordinary backgrounds. One of the mothers of two had recently separated from their abusive father and found love with a nice young and supportive man (or so it seemed). It was a great joy ‘marrying’ them in the church surrounded by other members of the group.
Despite our best efforts the family started to drift away from the church when they found a house to rent in a different town, so it came as something of a surprise when they asked us both to be godparents to their first child (the mother’s third) even after we’d moved away to my new parish. Ever since then we have taken her presents (chosen by Sarah , delivered by me) even though we never hear from her and only occasionally from her mother.
A few years ago we heard that the father had decided, on a whim, to leave the family home, his wife, child and two stepchildren and return to his city of birth. Around the same time the church in which the three children were baptised and in which the couple were married was closed to the public for safety reasons (quite unnecessarily in my view) and remains so to this day.
So now I find delivering this present a rather sad and poignant experience for three reasons. 1) Family breakdown 2) The drift away from the church along with countless others including other members of the group they were part of, and 3) A reminder of the loss of a church building where so many parish events took place, from weddings, baptisms and funerals to community musicals, school services and Sunday services and where my own daughter was married. This visit therefore reminds me of the breakdown of much I’ve given my life to.
Yet we still do this every birthday and Christmas and I know my wife (not I, sadly) regularly prays for her, her mother and family.
Why? At the baptism service we were asked: ‘Will you pray for them, draw them by your example into the community of faith and walk with them in the way of Christ?’ We answered, ‘We will.’ It might well be thought that our prayers have been unanswered, but I’m not entirely sure. The mother has had a hard, hard life, but she has not been crushed by her experiences. She retrained as a nurse and now works in a local practice, while juggling her life as a single Mum of 3. Remembering her as I do, I’m sure she will have passed some of that strength (and faith?) on to her children. Is that an answer to prayer?
‘God moves in mysterious ways,’ we are told in the hymn. When I was a teacher of RE in the early 1980s I played for a local cricket team near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire. Even though I was only a teacher I gained the nickname ‘Rev’ even back then. The captain of the side asked me to be godparent to his daughter. Unwisely, I accepted. From her baptism to the present day I have never clapped eyes on her. (You can see, I am a pretty woeful example of a godfather) and rarely prayed for her. Though I know nothing about her, I do know that her father has turned out to be an influential churchwarden of church in the Cotswolds (though he never attended church back then) and even sits on the Diocese of Gloucester’s Synod (parliament). Did the church connection start with the baptism, I wonder?
A few years ago I read Dominion by the historian Tom Holland. This is a fine and surprising book about the history of Christianity, fine because it uncovers many interesting things underlying famous episodes in the Church’s history and surprising because Holland sees Christianity and the cross of Christ – despite the manifest secularism that surrounds us- as making the ethical and cultural we inhabit, even in those who appear to reject faith. It is an encouraging book, a compelling testimony to all the unsung work of Christians and the Church throughout history and the legacy it has left.
One of those Christians was Holland’s Godmother. He says this about her. ‘The story of how Christianity transformed the world would have never happened without people like my Aunty Deb. A committed and faithful member of the Church of England, she took her duties as my godmother with the utmost seriousness. Having vowed at my baptism to see I was brought up in the Christian faith and life, she did her best to keep her word… above all, though her unfailing kindness, she provided me with a model of what, to a committed Christian, the daily practice of her faith could actually mean.’
Tom Holland is not a churchgoing Christian but his book has made many people, from weary churchgoers and priests to atheists, reconsider the beneficial effects of Christianity in our Western world, at the very time we are told it is vanishing. Could this be the result of his Aunty Deb’s prayers?
Who knows? Maybe thinking of that story will make me less reluctant to drop off a present at this rather sad little home when I next do it, and remind me to pray for that godchild I never see..
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