KIRKSPIRE DECEMBER 2009
Reflection on the Centenary of Bishop Lesslie Newbigin
Murdoch MacKenzie
In the November Kirkspire we read that Bishop James Edward Lesslie Newbigin was born on 8th December 1909 and died on 30th January 1998. It is appropriate this month that we reflect on what an eminent Methodist theologian thought of him, what a Russian Orthodox bishop thought of him and also what he thought about himself.
Geoffrey Wainwright, Cushman Professor of Christian theology at Duke University, writes: “Christian theology is more immediately a practical rather than a speculative discipline, and such speculation as it harbours stands ultimately in the service of right worship, right confession of Christ, and right living. Right practice demands, of course, critical and constructive reflection, and the best Christian theology takes place in the interplay between reflection and practice. That is why honour is traditionally given to those practical thinkers and preachers who are designated ‘Fathers of the Church.’ Most of them were bishops who, in the early centuries of Christianity, supervised the teaching of catechumens, delivered homilies in the liturgical assembly, oversaw the spiritual and moral life of their communities, gathered in council when needed to clarify and determine the faith, and took charge of mission to the world as evangelistic opportunities arose. A figure of comparable stature and range in the ecumenical twentieth century was Lesslie Newbigin.”
Such an estimate of Bishop Newbigin’s stature was affirmed, not long before he died, after his address to the world conference on mission and evangelism in Salvador de Bahia in 1996, when a Russian Orthodox bishop told him that he had spoken “like a Father of the Church.”
By contrast at the beginning of his autobiography which he called: ‘Unfinished Agenda’ he quotes the following poem by G A Studdert Kennedy which he applies to his own life which he viewed as an Unfinished Agenda.
IT IS NOT FINISHED
It is not finished, Lord.
There is not one thing done;
There is no battle of my life
That I have really won.
And now I come to tell Thee
How I fought to fail.
My human, all too human, tale
Of weakness and futility.
And yet there is a faith in me
That Thou wilt find in it
One word that Thou canst take
And make
The centre of a sentence
In Thy book of poetry.
I cannot read the writing of the years,
My eyes are full of tears,
It gets all blurred and won’t make sense;
It’s full of contradictions
Like the scribblings of a child.
I can but hand it in, and hope
That Thy great mind, which reads
The writings of so many lives,
Wilt understand this scrawl
And what it strives to say – but leaves unsaid.
I cannot write it over – the stars are coming out,
My body needs its bed.
I have no strength for more,
So it must stand or fall – dear Lord,
That’s all.
This is the man who we, in the Diocese of Madras, were privileged to have as our bishop from 1965 to 1974. As a young missionary in the 1930’s he sometimes came to the Kirk as he did also when he was bishop. On some Sundays when he was free from engagements he would just turn up in a congregation for worship. One evening service in St Andrew’s, when I was preaching on the subject of Prayer, I remember mounting the pulpit steps and looking down on the congregation and seeing Bishop Lesslie sitting there. It helped to concentrate the mind!
So on 8th December, and in these coming days, let us remember him with great thanksgiving by doing as he did by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12:2)
Murdoch MacKenzie
In the November Kirkspire we read that Bishop James Edward Lesslie Newbigin was born on 8th December 1909 and died on 30th January 1998. It is appropriate this month that we reflect on what an eminent Methodist theologian thought of him, what a Russian Orthodox bishop thought of him and also what he thought about himself.
Geoffrey Wainwright, Cushman Professor of Christian theology at Duke University, writes: “Christian theology is more immediately a practical rather than a speculative discipline, and such speculation as it harbours stands ultimately in the service of right worship, right confession of Christ, and right living. Right practice demands, of course, critical and constructive reflection, and the best Christian theology takes place in the interplay between reflection and practice. That is why honour is traditionally given to those practical thinkers and preachers who are designated ‘Fathers of the Church.’ Most of them were bishops who, in the early centuries of Christianity, supervised the teaching of catechumens, delivered homilies in the liturgical assembly, oversaw the spiritual and moral life of their communities, gathered in council when needed to clarify and determine the faith, and took charge of mission to the world as evangelistic opportunities arose. A figure of comparable stature and range in the ecumenical twentieth century was Lesslie Newbigin.”
Such an estimate of Bishop Newbigin’s stature was affirmed, not long before he died, after his address to the world conference on mission and evangelism in Salvador de Bahia in 1996, when a Russian Orthodox bishop told him that he had spoken “like a Father of the Church.”
By contrast at the beginning of his autobiography which he called: ‘Unfinished Agenda’ he quotes the following poem by G A Studdert Kennedy which he applies to his own life which he viewed as an Unfinished Agenda.
IT IS NOT FINISHED
It is not finished, Lord.
There is not one thing done;
There is no battle of my life
That I have really won.
And now I come to tell Thee
How I fought to fail.
My human, all too human, tale
Of weakness and futility.
And yet there is a faith in me
That Thou wilt find in it
One word that Thou canst take
And make
The centre of a sentence
In Thy book of poetry.
I cannot read the writing of the years,
My eyes are full of tears,
It gets all blurred and won’t make sense;
It’s full of contradictions
Like the scribblings of a child.
I can but hand it in, and hope
That Thy great mind, which reads
The writings of so many lives,
Wilt understand this scrawl
And what it strives to say – but leaves unsaid.
I cannot write it over – the stars are coming out,
My body needs its bed.
I have no strength for more,
So it must stand or fall – dear Lord,
That’s all.
This is the man who we, in the Diocese of Madras, were privileged to have as our bishop from 1965 to 1974. As a young missionary in the 1930’s he sometimes came to the Kirk as he did also when he was bishop. On some Sundays when he was free from engagements he would just turn up in a congregation for worship. One evening service in St Andrew’s, when I was preaching on the subject of Prayer, I remember mounting the pulpit steps and looking down on the congregation and seeing Bishop Lesslie sitting there. It helped to concentrate the mind!
So on 8th December, and in these coming days, let us remember him with great thanksgiving by doing as he did by keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith. (Hebrews 12:2)
Murdoch MacKenzie
