MARTIN.... A life of contrasts

Martin was chair of OSG in the 1980s

“While Jesus was eating, a woman came in with an alabaster jar full of very expensive perfume. She broke the jar and poured the perfume on Jesus’ head. And Jesus said, She has done a beautiful thing for me. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial.”

Martin was pleased that Gordon [the Bishop of Stafford] was going to officiate at his funeral service. He had a ministry review with Gordon some months ago, which Martin described to me as inspirational. I’ve heard Martin use some colourful adjectives to describe bishops – inspirational was a new one.

I first met Martin in the Derby diocese over 30 years ago. We organised a partners in mission consultation, and we hired a mini-bus to drive to the airport to collect the mission partners. Martin was driving, and at a roundabout, a car tried to cut in on him. Martin’s response was robust. There were gestures, there was shouting, there were more gestures, and the other driver, having caught a glimpse of Martin’s clerical collar, retreated in subdued astonishment.

There was nothing remotely pietistic about Martin. He was a colourful, rich, complex, interesting character. He was also a man of deep simplicity and gentle kindness. He was big physically, he was highly intelligent, and he had strong political convictions.

Big physically: believe it or not, years ago he and I used to play squash together, when Martin was, if anything, slightly larger. Unaccountably, he used to win. It took me a few games to realise that he was ambidextrous. He just stood in the centre of the court, hardly moving, and switched the racket from one hand to the other.

He was highly intelligent. He was trained in mathematics and economics, and he knew how things worked, how to get things done. He could read balance sheets. When he was on General Synod, and a Church Commissioner, the suits who ran things expected clergy to be incompetent yes men. Martin was neither. He was highly competent and asked a great many important questions.

He loved books and the world of ideas. Not many people start a degree course in their sixties. Martin graduated with an MA in history earlier this year. Typically, he only agreed to serve as rural dean on condition that the diocese paid most of the fees for his degree course.

His strong political convictions came originally from his family history. Martin had a most exotic pedigree. His immediate ancestors on one side were Jews from the Polish and Russian borders, and on the other a Chinese labourer working on the sugar plantations in the West Indies, who married a Creole woman. It was this country which gave sanctuary to his family, gave them security, and a home, and opportunity. Martin felt a sense of grateful obligation, and he cared about politics because he knew what political decisions could do, to the life of the country as a whole and to individuals in particular.

He was a staunch member of the Labour party and stuck to it, though only just, through the years when Labour was unelectable; though he was sadly disillusioned with the Prime Minister. The day after he came home from hospital, I had a long conversation with him. I’m doing the things you’re supposed to do, he growled, like trying to make my peace with God. I asked if he’d managed it, and the precise words of his reply were “Well I think God’s a bit of a chump. I can think of several people who ought to be dying of cancer – Blair for a start.”

He did also use his political skills in the service of the church. It was Martin who realised that if there was to be a vote in General Synod in favour of the ordination of women to the priesthood, which he longed for passionately, then the elections before that vote were crucial; so he worked tirelessly and effectively to ensure that people would be elected who would vote in favour.

And that brings me to the two aspects of Martin’s life which were closest to his heart – his life and work as a priest in the church of God, and his love for his own family. For all his intellectual sophistication, Martin had a direct and simple faith. He believed in the goodness of God, and he believed that the loving goodness of God embraces everyone; and he believed, therefore, that the church and its ministry should reflect the all-embracing and inclusive love of God.

He gave himself, without reserve, to the parishes which he served, and he made it possible for all kinds of people to discover in themselves gifts they didn’t know they had. He was himself a most capable and gifted person, but his greatest achievements were not those things he did himself, but all the countless things which he made it possible for others to do. He gave us, individually, such loving attention that we began to appreciate and to believe a little more in the inclusive and all-embracing love of God.

He began his ministry in Lambeth, and then served in three parishes in the Derby diocese; and he was at the height of his powers when he was appointed team rector of Kings Norton, in the Birmingham diocese, a parish of 37,000 people, seven churches, and great responsibility. Martin relished the opportunity and the responsibility and he did important work there. But he was then the victim of what can only be described as a vicious and evil campaign.

Martin was never angry at what was done to him, though others were very angry on his behalf. But he was disappointed, though not altogether surprised, that the diocesan bishop and senior staff gave him so little support. He was hurt by the fact that many good people in the church remained silent. But worst of all, a light was put out that was never rekindled. Up until then, he had always believed that if you repaid evil with good, then goodness and love would eventually overcome evil. In Kings Norton he discovered that that is not always so.

So he came to Cheddleton, where he enjoyed parish ministry at its best. He loved working with all the people here, and with the leaders of the community, with the Methodist minister, with the head teacher and the staff of the school. The years he spent here were good years and were special to him.

The other, and greatest love of his life was his family. He had no need to live through his children. His ambition for them was that they should be fulfilled and happy, and he was proud and delighted that they are. As is the way with clergy families, his children had to find out that they shared him. Picture Richenda at the age of four. She has entered a fancy dress competition. She is dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. Her father is judging the competition. She is quite sure that she is going to win first prize. Every vicar knows that you don’t judge anything in the parish, particularly if it involves children, and never if it involves your own. Martin has somehow got trapped into judging, and he gives the prize to another girl, also dressed as Little Red Riding Hood. Richenda eventually forgave him, I think, but she began to learn, as they all learned, that they shared their father with a parish and with a whole community.

But with Martin there was a great compensation. Whenever they had him, playing with them, reading to them, taking them on special treats, on holiday in Mull, on illicit trips to McDonalds, they had the whole of him, and that was not merely good, it was very special.

Martin told me, just once, because it was so important to him, not just how deeply he loved Mary, but also what enormous respect and admiration he had for her because of the long and hard road she had travelled. He never gave me even a hint that he might himself have had something to do with that journey, by giving Mary the security and the courage to be.

For just two short and shocking weeks, he knew that he was dying, and he faced it with a courage which gave to those around him permission to talk with him openly. He counted it a great privilege to be dying at home, and to have his family around him, talking with him seriously and lovingly about his death. In those two weeks, those who loved him most dearly were able to bring their alabaster jars full of very precious ointment, and pour out their love and their gratitude to him. And Jesus said, She has done a beautiful thing for me. She has anointed my body beforehand for burial. Martin, too felt that. And so he died, secure in the deep love of his family, and with simple faith in the goodness and the all-embracing love of God.