Do you remember a certain kind of look, you might call it a ‘knowing’ look? And do you remember a certain kind of remark, one that sounded modest, even self-deprecating but was it deliberately or accidentally also devastatingly accurate?

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.  John 3.8

For the phone to ring after the Bishop had returned to Newcastle from various meetings and parliamentary duties in London with a request that I come across to Bishop’s House to discuss various things was not unusual. But when I got there on this occasion the agenda was stated in one sentence: “They want me to go to Southwark, and I’m going.”  The processes took a little time, and when the news got out there was an inevitable sense of loss, even a bit of “I don’t suppose they thought about us; they don’t till you’re vacant”, grief overlaid with a bit of the Geordie sense of neglect by the people in London. But on reflection nobody thought other than that this was an absolutely right and understandable choice. Ronnie’s years in Newcastle had been a story of loving and careful listening, deep respect for its culture, history and tradition, research commissioned, and then a steady process of implementation, the gathering of people for particular tasks, and a s a result a diocese whose traditions were respected and at the same time developed in directions scarcely imaginable when the process had started.

“They want me to go to Southwark, and I’m going.” It was that sort of experience and aptitude that was now to be placed at the service of a diocese that could hardly have been more different. It had had a distant past of neglect; but that had been transformed over two decades of dramatic initiative with household names like South Bank Religion, new (then) ventures like the Southwark Ordination Course – big names, a high media profile and a self-perception of social radicalism (self-perceptions don’t have to be 100% accurate to be powerful!). What the conversations were that led to this choice – who were the ‘they’? – we might only be able to guess, but to judge from the choice that was made there some very definite features:

First, a place of social engagement where the difficult and challenging questions were high in people’s consciousness could not be asked to lurch in a quite different direction, or even retreat from its radical tradition. Housing,  Ronnie’s special passion, and all the challenging aspects of the urban environment could not drop down the agenda. It needed a person whose instincts were all sympathetic to that, would understand it at a deep level and embed a culture of wisdom, care and attentiveness to a community whose radicalism meant it needed a caring and supportive environment more, not less than, other places. That was going to be particularly true where the cold winds of membership decline and financial challenge were already deeply felt and some understandable and strong opposition to the controversial Southwark culture was already making its presence felt. It would certainly be true when the movement to admit women to ordination, to which he was personally deeply committed produced inevitable divergences and where the setbacks caused hurt to individuals. Southwark might seem to be at a totally different historic juncture, but many of the same gifts would be needed.

We’re here of course to give thanks, to make Eucharist for Bishop Ronnie’s singular contribution, to offer our thanks in the church where he once sat as our bishop, and in doing that to learn what message, what challenges and encouragements we might draw from this life just ended. I want to offer two.

It is not at all surprising that almost without exception the word ‘pastoral’ appears time and time again in the messages that have been sent since he died; and those who say that say well, for it was so. He offered close attention, the experience of being in a room with him and being the only person in his mind while you were there, of knowing you were being heard, that what you said would be remembered next time; and his eyes told you that more was seen and understood than it was necessary to say, and you could leave with the support of that compassionate wisdom. You have to be pastoral like that, and he was, if you are to undertake the further pastoral task, the other necessity, of the establishment of pastoral care as part of the air we breathe and the systems we live under.

So it matters to point out that the establishment of the area system for the diocese, something it would be his task to implement, was controversial for that reason. When he went with his suffragan  colleagues to the Dioceses Commission asking for a scheme in which the diocesan did not have an Episcopal area ‘of his own’, it was carefully explained that that was contrary to policy. I think behind that was a strongly held belief among some about what a monarchical bishop should be – ‘one is one and all alone and ever more shall be so’ – but it was explained that if the Bishop of Southwark wasn’t pinned down in Streatham or the Borough or somewhere empty hours would stretch ahead tempting him to all sorts of unwanted interference in other people’s work. Fortunately for us, the Bishop of Southwark was a person who liked a world of careful explanation, and indeed was rather good at it. He explained that not only was embedding pastoral care in the life of a diocese at least a full-time job but historically and traditionally it was a very proper way to be a bishop.

So just as Wesley Carr famously said, that the ethos of a diocese is something the diocesan bishop cannot – not ‘should not’ or even ‘must not’ – delegate, Bishop Ronnie’s hope was that we would be a pastoral diocese. That meant structures, systems and above all the undertaking of that as a shared priority in every setting, large and small. If (I speak from experience) you were hapless enough to arrive at a staff meeting with the news that other pressures had prevented you from seeing a particular person in trouble or sickness it was not so much a sharp rebuke but a look and a quiet word that were a reminder that this firm has certain priorities and you just missed one. And if we are not to go on living in a world where people are abandoned or trodden underfoot then surely a pastoral diocese, a pastoral city, a pastoral country is what we need to be and are intended to become. We give thanks for that pastoral heart, along with the wisdom that saw being pastoral as what was asked of all of us; and we pray for a share in that heart and in that wisdom.

My second point of reflection, of learning and of thankfulness is in that matter-of-fact sentence: “They want me to go to Southwark, and I’m going”. All sorts of questions might arise: you could wonder about the cost to Liz, his wife, and his children, and whether he’d weighed them and discussed them; he had, but that only takes you so far. You could wonder about the arcane processes by which the CofE generates names for places, and spend many hours wondering who ‘they’ was. You could. But surely the real point is this: once you hear the message that there’s a community out there with particular needs at a particular point in its history, and it has your name on it, then it turns into a call, and “I’m going” becomes the only viable answer. When that’s what you see, and a call is what it has become there can be only one answer. He saw his life, to use the title of the private autobiography he wrote for his family, as the exploration of a call, your sense of having to respond before you could know where it would lead. Some might give their answer with more rhetoric or more pious language; his was always the way of understatement: the point is the answer, not the words in which it’s stated. Where the wind comes from or where it is going become irrelevant; so it is with the person born of the Spirit.

We’re here, to state the obvious, because of a deep gratitude for Ronnie’s “.... and I’m going”, and not just because of him and what he enabled while he was here. It’s also because from the far off biblical days of Abram in Ur of the Chaldees to Saul of Tarsus to John of Patmos and generations since, we know that it’s that kind of recognition of the claim of a community’s need and history that unlocks the future. It always has and without such responses the future is left to be a dreary and damaging repeat of the past.

It is the long held conviction of the Church that what does not stop with the ending of our life on earth is the continued outpouring of our deepest desires, longing, prayers for those whom we’ve loved and cared for. And so we trust you, Ronnie, that among the millions of the faithful departed there is in you one who will pray deeply for us, that we may be a pastoral community in a pastoral city in a pastoral land and a pastoral world; and also that when there are huge challenges to be faced we may nourish a supply of those who are ready to say, “I’m going”.

And with deep confidence, with thankfulness and with love we commit you to the future for which you worked, to the Wisdom that created you and gave you to us, the Wisdom from which you drew so much and which you shared so widely among us, and the Spirit whose promptings you were determined to follow.

As you typically said in your closing weeks, it was time for you to move on, as it is time for us to bid farewell. May your dwelling this day and forever be in the heavenly city, and your inheritance Christ’s peace.