The Ichabod Springs Covenant (The Sun also Rises).

Here in Ichabod Springs, like many places around the world, the Sun arises each morning at a different time to that of the day before. In winter it’s later, and in summer earlier, and the only constant is that it’s always changing.

Some years ago this became a source of considerable agitation to our community, and a series of meetings held to determine a fixed hour at which dawn would break, irrespective of the season. A simple enough process, you might well think, but believe me, my dear sinners, this is when the fighting really started.

Some wanted sunrise to occur early, so they could enjoy an early morning nude frolic in the town parks beneath the warming rays, while others demanded the appointed time be set quite late, so as to extend the time in which they could enjoy peeping through people’s bathroom windows under the cover of darkness. As might be expected, each side was utterly convinced the other was wrong, and acting in contravention of God’s revealed order and purpose.

Naturally I expressed my own vociferous opinion, and was in the process of gently breaking the legs of several of my severely mistaken opponents when something knocked me flat on the ground.

And no, my dear sinners, it wasn’t a mistress of the local councillor I’d just maimed: what had happened was that I remembered my Vocation as a Priest meant my job is to get people into Church, minister to them spiritually, and encourage them to fill the offertory plates. Irrespective of what they believed concerning the correct moment at which the Sun should rise - my job was to be their Vicar!

Now I’d be lying if I told you this didn’t hit me like a bolt from the blue, since I was having such a wonderful time correcting those whose foolish notions contradicted with my own, but there could be no denying it: I had to leave the fray and get on with nurturing and growing the Church – and all those in it - with which I had been entrusted. That was my job, and to do anything else was nothing short of disobedience and sin.

The rest, as they say, is history. Eventually our community decided to sign a Covenant agreeing on a particular hour and minute, and after a good deal more quarrelling (from which my faithfulness regrettably prevented me from participating) that time was determined, and everyone (with varying degrees of willingness) signed the thing.

The following morning the sun rose in shameless disobedience of the appointed time, and the following day it rose at a different time again. And so on.

People quarrelled some more, expressed their outrage, and gradually, over time, gave up and begun fighting about something else. Meanwhile I worked hard at the task before me, and today the Spires of St. Onuphrius’ stand tall in the sunrise – irrespective of when that might happen on any given morning.

Were the Grand Tufti and his retinue to visit Ichabod Springs (perish the thought!) I can’t help thinking they might learn something with respect to their current idiocy concerning a Convenant and people who love and live the way God has obviously made them to be.

You see, it doesn’t matter what people sign, or force others to sign: God will still call people in blatant contravention of any documentation. Love will still burst forth where it shouldn’t, and human sexuality will continue to appear in as many variations as there are sunrises. Sure we can produce Covenants declaring what should happen, but I’ll happily accept any wager you might care to make that God won’t be bound by them. God never has.

So - and I write this as merely a humble parish Priest who happens to be the wisest and most authoritative teacher in Christendom – it’s time for everyone, from the Grand Tufti down, to accept the completely obvious and get on with the task of caring for those whom God has brought into our family, encouraging Vocations wherever the Sprit may choose to have given them, and enthroning as Bishops those whom Christ has called to pastor the Pastors. Regardless of how fascinating we find the subject, we’ve all spent far too long obsessing about genitals and what people may or may not do with them, and not enough time serving the hearts, minds and souls to which those genitals are more-or-less attached.

Or to put it more simply: no matter what gets decided on ++Rowan’s dreadlock holiday – nothing, absolutely nothing, is going to change. Those whom God loves simply won’t go away.

I’m Father Christian and I teach the Bible.