Pentecost 2009, Sunday 31 May

‘The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization’.

President FD Roosevelt’s first inaugural address was delivered in 1933, as the Great Depression gripped the planet. In it he challenged his nation to restore that temple to the ancient truths. ‘The measure of the restoration’ he said ‘lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit’. His words have a double resonance for our age.

First, depression is a reality once more. Secondly, we have entered the fourth week of the parliamentary expenses scandal. It’s easier to debate floating duck palaces than the morality of global capitalism. Through red-faced repayments, heartfelt apologies and piecemeal resignations, the money-changers are fleeing, if not from the City of London then from the Palace of Westminster.

The Daily Telegraph’s revelations have, of course, prompted calls for reform of the expenses system, as well as for retribution against those Members most blatantly at fault. The plea that the claims were all ‘within the rules’ sounds increasingly plaintive, and the relationship between individuals and the systems and structures within which they live and work is under the spotlight.

That relationship is a timely one for the Church to consider at Pentecost.

We claim our descent not from Magna Carta or from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but from those chaotic happenings in a Jerusalem street two millennia ago, when the Spirit of God galvanized eleven timid men and turned them into world missionaries. Yet it must be admitted that our gathering today doesn’t look much like that; our structure and system don’t look much like theirs; the fact that we have a structure and system at all seems to flout the wild gift of the Spirit who quite literally blew into their lives as they waited in an upstairs room. They spoke in different tongues – we sing polyphony; they were thought drunk – we are sedate and Anglican; they waited on the Spirit – our liturgy appears to command her.

So Pentecost is a good moment to ask whether the Church as she has evolved can claim any real kinship with the tumultuous days that she celebrates at Easter. It is a good moment to ask whether the money-changers have clambered into the high seats in this temple; to ask whether, like the parliamentary expenses system, the Church is in need of root and branch reform.

Organizational analysis turns on the determination of the key tasks of the organization. If today’s Church shares these with her ancient Middle Eastern forebears then she can stake some claim to being their rightful heir. So what might those key tasks be? Some possibilities must fall straightaway. The Church cannot exist to read the Scriptures and promote their study, for she predates their recording, or that of the New Testament at the very least. She cannot exist to defend the doctrines of the catholic creeds, for she predates their composition. Scripture and creeds are the offspring of the Church, not her ancestors.

No, the key tasks were two, and they remain two. The Church exists to baptize in water and to break bread. All else is accretion, frequently valuable, vital accretion, but accretion nonetheless. In these two key tasks, these two key acts, the Church sets before the world her vision of God and God’s vision for the world.

Through the water of baptism God displays the forgiving love that is his essential disposition towards his creation. In baptism God looks upon humankind, whether infant or octogenarian, and washes away all that might ever separate him from them. Baptism is the enacted seal of welcome; baptism is the sign that the recipient is a permanent guest in God’s roomy house; baptism is the symbol of God’s eternal hospitality towards his creation.

Through the broken bread of the Eucharist God gives himself to his people, and, as in Baptism, shows himself eternally turned towards the world and eternally surrendering himself for love of it. The Eucharist is the enacted self-sacrifice of God for all; the Eucharist is God’s gift of himself to all who seek him; the Eucharist is God’s giving his own self in bread and wine to be his people’s sustenance and support.

The church of the apostles baptized and broke bread; the church of today baptizes and breaks bread. It is a pattern of behaviour that stretches unbroken across two thousand years of human history and it enables, indeed compels us, to find our roots in the events we celebrate today.

But if the structure of the Church is ordered to allow these key tasks to be performed, and if the system is to that extent still fit for purpose, then there remains the question of the individuals who live within it, whether godparents taking on a new role, or daily communicants who live and breathe Eucharistic worship. Are they, are we, surreptitiously erecting tables for money-changing within the sacred precincts? Are they, are we, expecting someone else to clean our moats or fund our expensive manure habits? The system of faith – God’s system – is broad and spacious; it is the unfailing offer of unconditional love. The life of faith is the life lived in response to the offer, and all too often, individually and corporately, our response is mean at best and downright wicked at worst.

In baptism we are forgiven. In response to our baptism we are called to live as those who have been forgiven, as those who refuse to condemn, as those who see in others what God has seen in us, something or someone worth forgiving. In the Eucharist we share as equals at the table of God. In response to our Eucharistic participation we are called to live as those who have shared as equals, as those who understand that there is not a man or woman alive or dead who God does not invite on the terms he has invited us.

Today’s Church, like the House of Commons and every other human institution, is fallible and failing. It remains an agent of oppression and injustice; it orders its priorities wrongly; and too often it refuses to side with the radical transformation that Pentecost promises. But it is also God’s institution and God’s agent, and in the great symbols, the effective symbols of Baptism and Eucharist, it is at one with the Church of the apostles and the Church of every age. It is a temple, as FDR would have said ‘of ancient truths’. Here we meet God, endlessly loving from all eternity; here we meet God, endlessly giving himself to us and for us; here we meet God, as equals, fellow citizens, neighbours, and friends. Here, and here only, do we find hope for ourselves and so for all the world. Amen.