The Third Sunday of Epiphany 2008

Some of you will recall that the post I left to come to St Peter’s was that of Senior Chaplain to the Bishop of Salisbury. As Senior Chaplain I was a member of the Bishop’s staff team, and, as is the way of teams, we spent a good deal of time discussing our various roles and responsibilities. One of the things I didn’t tell those who interviewed me for St Peter’s was that on one occasion we did so using the Belbin analytical system, which is designed to test the team members’ strengths and weaknesses and to allocate them places in its structure. My results advised me against seeking a position of leadership, and recommended instead that I should seek a powerful and charismatic leader, whose strength would benefit from my natural but second-order skills of discernment and preparation. The Bishop of Salisbury is not used to being described as a powerful and charismatic leader, and he found this very amusing.

There are no doubt some among you who think that the analytical system got it right and that I would have been well advised to steer clear of anything resembling a leadership position, or at least a leadership position anywhere near this parish. But twelve months into the role for which it deemed me plainly unsuitable I find myself thinking a lot about my role and about our mission. And (by way of a footnote, should any of you be great devotees of Belbin) I am inclined to think that it is good at assessing the roles people currently play, and less good at assessing their potential to develop (but then I suppose I would say that, wouldn’t I?)

Role and mission are themes woven deeply into the text of our first reading, from the prophet Isaiah. The passage comes from one of the Servant Songs. As you know, these are the identifiable stretches of Isaiah’s work which concern themselves with the servant of God, a servant destined to suffer greatly but to be vindicated in securing God’s ultimate purposes. This morning’s passage discloses a distinct tension surrounding the servant’s identity. For in verse 3 the servant is named as Israel. It is the nation in whom God will be glorified; the nation is the agent of the divine purpose: ‘You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified’. Yet only two verses later it is to the nation that the servant is sent. For in verse 5 it is asserted that the servant is created to bring Jacob back to the Lord, that the servant is created that Israel might be gathered to the Lord. Far from being the agent of the divine purpose the nation is the object of the divine purpose.

Agent, or object? Any priest is at risk of believing himself uniquely charged with delivering God’s mission. Any priest is at risk of forgetting that he is the target of God’s mission. Any Church is similarly at risk, a timely thought in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. When we draft Mission Action Plans and dream of strategies for our future growth; when we offer splendid worship and raise significant sums for charity; when we do any of these things in our successful and confident context we are at risk of forgetting our needs and God’s nature; we are in peril of becoming intoxicated by our apparent self-sufficiency.

Our needs, and God’s nature: as I’ve said, the peril is twofold. First, we overlook our need of grace. If we are the ones in whom the Lord will be glorified then sin seems small beer indeed, and our need of repentance and redemption a rather bizarre reversal of roles. It is surely God who ought to be turning to us in grateful thanks for all we are doing to keep his name alive. And secondly, we misinterpret God’s nature and begin to assume, with monumental arrogance, that he is ours, safely locked away in zip-up Bibles or ornamental aumbries, ours to dish out to a Godless world.

Today’s Gospel is a powerful blow to such flights of fancy. John the Baptist would I guess have provoked an interesting response from the Belbin system: an original and charismatic orator who drew great crowds to hear him, and whose denunciations could send shivers down royal spines. If ever a man deserved to believe himself God’s agent, then it was he. And so he was, of course, for John understood that he was a witness to God’s action. Yet he also understood that one was coming after him who was ranked before him. He understood that this was the one whose sandals he was not worthy to untie, one whose forgiveness and grace and mercy he stood in need of. He understood that the moment he saw the Spirit descending on Jesus his own time had passed. ‘Here is the Lamb of God’ he said, and at those words his own disciples left him and went to join the one whom he had baptized.

‘Here is the Lamb of God’. That is the mission to which we are called, a mission of pointing people away from ourselves, however plausible or fascinating we believe ourselves to be, and of pointing them towards the living God. And only insofar as we are credible objects of God’s love, of love made manifest in our healed and transformed lives, will we ever be effective agents of God’s love.

Last Sunday our Methodist brothers and sisters celebrated their Covenant service. They used words which we need desperately to hear, clergy and lay people, Anglicans of every persuasion, Roman Catholics, Orthodox, Baptists and independent Evangelicals, words that we need even more desperately to live:

I am no longer my own but yours.
Put me to what you will,
rank me with whom you will;
put me to doing,
put me to suffering;
let me be employed for you
or laid aside for you,
exalted for you
or brought low for you;
let me be full,
let me be empty,
let me have all things,
let me have nothing;
I freely and wholeheartedly yield all things
to your pleasure and disposal.

Agents of God’s love, yes, but objects and recipients of it always. Amen.

Sunday 20 January 2008,
Isaiah 49:1-7;
John 1:29-42.