BBC Radio 4 2016-07-14

Good morning.

New political administrations sometimes begin in great euphoria. When Tony Blair first entered Downing Street in May 1997 there was heady rhetoric about the ending of eras and eager excitement and anticipation at what the new regime would deliver.

For me this morning’s political dawn feels a little bit different – not so much the intoxicating excitement of waking to a new day open to endless possibilities; more like the morning after the night before. Our new Prime Minister surely awakes with, metaphorically speaking, a cracking headache as she faces up to her challenge – how to reconcile the disagreement and tensions within the nation, as within her own party, regarding how we should conceive our relations with the rest of Europe - and how to do this while protecting our economic well-being, sensitive as that is to the uncertainties which protracted negotiations themselves exacerbate.

For the most part Christians have thought that sober realism is a more appropriate mood for political beginnings than wild euphoria. This is not only a matter of certain anxiety – even cynicism one might say – about the behaviour of those in power. Certainly the Old Testament accounts of the sorry misdeeds of so many of Israel’s kings, and the New Testament’s portrayal of the petty political machinations which led to Christ’s death, go someway to justifying the Psalmist’s pithy injunction, ‘Put not your trust in princes’. But it is also a matter of the recalcitrant nature of those who are to be governed – Moses was always complaining to God about the stiff-necked people he was charged with leading, and Solemn asks God, with a tone of some despair, ‘who is able to govern this great people of yours?’

But at the same time as Christianity has been soberly realistic about the failings of rulers and of those they rule, it has also – just to make things especially difficult – still held to a high ideal of human society. The story of Pentecost, when God’s spirit descends on the believers of all nations gathered in Jerusalem shortly after Jesus’s death, provides an exalted vision of unity brought from diversity. Those people, divided by different languages, are brought to mutual understanding by the gift of that spirit, enabling them to comprehend each others tongues – so allowing sympathy and friendship to extend across national boundaries.

In certain Christian rites, the difficulty and responsibility of leadership has been symbolized by having new bishops dragged to their episcopal chairs. Bishops were supposed inwardly to sigh not to cheer as they were installed on their thrones. Our new Prime Minister inherits a fractious party, a nation divided and disinclined to trust politicians, and the pressing task of reestablishing good relations with our neighbours. She will surely be forgiven for sighing, not humming, this morning. But then it behooves the rest of us to remember that leadership is a burden, in part, just because of the stiff-necked people who have to be governed. I hope, for this Prime Minister’s sake, as for any others, that a spirit of understanding, sympathy, and forbearance animates not just our leaders, but also those they will otherwise struggle to lead.