This month it will be twenty years since I was ordained priest in Ripon Cathedral.  In itself, this is not a particularly significant anniversary - certainly not compared to the fiftieth anniversary of priesting which Revd John Innes celebrates this month, thanks be to God!  But nonetheless, those two decades have seen a remarkable series of changes in the world.

In 1987, nuclear war between America and the USSR was still for very many people a real and terrifying possibility.  Now, the Berlin Wall is dismantled, Germany is re-united, and the Soviet Union has been consigned to the pages of history.  But new anxieties have grown up in their place, with the rise of Islamist fundamentalism, and the proliferation of terrorism worldwide. ‘9/11' has entered the vocabulary of us all.  In 1987, Mrs Thatcher won the General Election with a majority of 102 to become the longest continually serving Prime Minister in more than 150 years.  Since then, we have witnessed the renaissance of the Labour Party, and the rise - and fall, some might say - of Tony Blair.  Twenty years ago, the thought of owning a personal computer with which you would be able instantaneously to access more data than is stored in all the libraries in the world, was inconceivable to the ordinary person; today we take it for granted - as we do mobile phones, digital television, and a myriad other technological advances.

The Church too has not been without its share of change in those twenty years.  1987 was the first year in which women in the Church of England were ordained as deacons - and a further six years had to pass before the first women priests were ordained.  Since then, the life and ministry of our Church have been transformed by the contribution of women as priests, and we are - albeit slowly - moving towards accepting women as bishops.  In 2007 we are now struggling over the issue of gay clergy.  (Though let's be clear: twenty years ago, there were already plenty of gay clergy faithfully serving the Church - but you couldn't talk about them.  The issue isn't so much about whether or not we ‘allow' gay clergy, but about whether we are going to be open and honest about it, or not.) 

In short, we have had to come to terms with a whole host of changes in those twenty years, both as an international community, a nation, a church, and - of course - as individuals.   And, just as these past two decades have brought changes which were inconceivable to us in 1987, so in 2027 we will find ourselves (God willing) having assimilated a whole set of changes which we cannot imagine today - even if we have an idea what some of them might be.

Nearly forty years ago, Alvin Toffler wrote a book called Future Shock, in which he argued that we live in a time in which there is too much change in too short a period of time, with the result that we feel overwhelmed and disconnected, stressed and disorientated, and that this will in turn lead to a whole host of personal and social problems.  This is maybe even more true in 2007 than it was in 1970 when the book was written.  And it makes even more pressing the need for us to find security and stability, lest the tide of change should overwhelm us completely.

For the Christian, such a sanctuary of security and stability may be found in the unchangingness of God.  But we have to take care.  God's unchangeability depends not upon God's being identified with ‘the good old days' but upon God's being beyond all change, and thus unable to be limited to, or identified with any period of our personal or social history which we might identify as a ‘golden age'.  Acknowledging God's unchangeablility does not mean reading the Scriptures only in the Authorised Version, or praying only in the language of the Book of Common Prayer, or recognising only male priests, or anything else of that sort.  Rather, it means realising that there is a core, and essence, which remains true and constant in and through all the changes which are going on around us, the quiet and calm ‘eye of the storm' no less.  This is the God I was ordained to serve as priest twenty years ago, and this is the God I will strive to serve in the twenty years to come if I can, no matter what changes I may have to negotiate in my life and the world during that time.