Another funeral

(Written 27/01/2011)

One of the benefits of this delay in my current project is that today it allowed me to say farewell to a man who could mix with Royalty, peers, showbiz folk, clergy, monks, the dispossessed, the lost and lonely, and the people who, by accident or their own failings, have fallen through the safety net the Welfare State is intended to provide.

Kenneth Stevenson was Bishop of Portsmouth until ill-health forced his retirement a couple of years ago. He had leukaemia, which he faced with tremendous courage, and wrote about it with candour, humour, humility and many well-turned phrases. He beat the cancer, but his immune system was shot by the treatment, and he succumbed to several infections, the last one carrying him off earlier this month.

His funeral Eucharist was this morning. Mum called last night - "I've booked the taxi for 9:30." The service was due to start at 10:45, so I thought Mum's mania for never being late was in overdrive. We arrived at the Cathedral at 9:50... and joined the queue of around a hundred people entering. Had we got there much later, we wouldn't have got a seat. The pews were already full, but the Cathedral staff had filled every available space with chairs. Even so, many had to stand. There were easily a thousand there.

The place was stiff with clergy of all kinds, and five bishops led the worship,.including one representing the Bishop of Denmark. Kenneth was half Danish, and when the Lutheran Church of Denmark fell out of communion with the Church of England, it was Kenneth who worked his socks off to find a way to bring our churches back together. Not only did he succeed, he was decorated by the Danish government for his efforts.

He sat in the House of Lords, and I had the pleasure of meeting him there a few times when I worked in That Place. He wrote eleven well-respected books, and as one of the most senior bishops in the CofE, helped steer the church through some tricky times. And yet...

For all his intellectual qualities, his mastery of the fine political line in church matters, he was always someone who walked with the Christ who simply commanded "Follow Me". He hated discrimination of any kind, whether it be discrimination against women playing as full a part in church as men, discrimination against other faiths who are climbing the same mountain by a different path, or discrimination against people who are a bit ragged around the edges, don't smell so good and are losing the fight against addiction. He was very down to earth. Indeed, there was a point in my life where I needed very immediate spiritual help. While I won't give details, as that's a part of my life I never want to revisit, Kenneth happened to be the only person available when I went to the Cathedral - and he heard my confession.

I found the best kind of friend, the one who will tell you that you're wrong and that you need to do something about it, the one who won't tell you that it's alright, the one who doesn't deal in platitudes like "God forgives all sins if you're sorry" but talks about the hard path to redemption... and then urges you on to it with much encouragement, and both sympathy and understanding for how you've stumbled. He was a true friend.

So that's the person we said farewell to today. The actor Patricia Routledge read one of the Lessons, the fabulous choral setting was by Mozart, there was plenty of the incence that he loved (although the censer didn't whirl the thurible over his head, as Bishop Kenneth often did, prompting many startled looks from anyone near him), and champagne was served afterwards, at his request.

One, final, illumination of Bishop Kenneth - he and his wife Sarah entertained twelve members of the CoE Liturgical Commission (a really top group of clerics) at their house in Portsmouth. After dinner, Kenneth opened a box of cigars and offered them round. Nobody took one. Kenneth lit a cigar, sat down, exhaled a cloud of smoke, gazed around, and with great satisfaction said - "Miserable buggers!"

He was just the best representative of a loving, challenging, encouraging and welcoming Christ that anyone could wish for.