There has never been a less propitious time to speak of kingly power than this, for kingly power is unaccountable and capricious, and we have had our fill of it.
Think of mad Caligula, the emperor who appointed his horse a Roman consul and himself a god. Think of Shakespeare’s Richard III, the king who had his brother drowned in a malmsey butt and his nephews smothered in the Tower. Think of the Bible’s Jezebel, the queen who slaughtered the prophets of ancient Israel and whose name is still a byword for cruel treachery. Think of any of the monarchs whose bloody fingerprints stain the pages of history and mythology and you will conclude that what unites them is the exercise of unaccountable and capricious power
There are no horses in the House of Commons; there are no malmsey butts on Fleet Street; and they’re not building altars to Baal in the Square Mile – not quite – but the exercise of capricious and unaccountable power has dominated our public life for four years.
In the parliamentary expenses crisis, in the tabloid phone-hacking crisis, and in the ongoing economic crisis we have been exposed to power that has treated us with contempt. Ethics have been abandoned; laws have been broken; and responsibilities have been shirked. Systems have been abused; lies have been told; and fortunes have been made. Democracy has suffered; lives have been ruined; and the economic well-being of millions has been put in jeopardy. No one should be surprised that there are tents outside our Cathedral. Power has ignored our needs. It has ignored our requirement of confidence in the integrity of those who represent us. It has ignored our expectation of honesty among those who report and communicate the news. And it has ignored our entitlement to stability in our homes, our incomes, our pensions and our savings. Power has ignored us.
So there has never been a less propitious time to speak of kingly power than this. We object to it intellectually and we are outraged by it morally. Yet speak of kingly power we must, for we proclaim that Christ is King. That proclamation, the earliest Christian creed, was once punishable by death. The one who made it denied that Caesar was king; the one who made it claimed an alternative allegiance; the one who made it was a traitor to the imperial state. The consequences for those make it today are similarly drastic. We belong to Christ – not to Westminster, not to Wapping, and not to Wall Street. We belong to Christ. We reject the claims of systems, political, media and economic. We reject their pretensions to ultimate authority over us. Christ rejects the capricious and unaccountable power that they have exercised. They ignore our needs. Christ cannot.
His kingly power is characterized by his abandonment of the prestige, security and comfort to which those who wield unaccountable and capricious power cling. Christ’s kingly power is characterized by his identification with the hungry and thirsty, with the estranged and the naked, with the sick and the imprisoned. “Truly I tell you, just as you did to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me”. Christ’s kingly power is located wherever our need is greatest. It does not exacerbate our need. It meets it.
And this, I think, is ultimately why there is never a propitious time to speak of the kingly power of Christ. It’s not that in speaking of it we have to face intellectual objection; it’s not in speaking of it we have to face moral outrage, although we do. It’s that we cannot speak of it without speaking of our needs, without acknowledging that they are great, and without acknowledging that the answer to them is beyond us.
That is hard for a generation used to shaping its own intellectual terrain and ever more accustomed to taking to the streets in pursuit of its liberties. Our needs are great and the answer to them is beyond us. Some hunger for forgiveness. Some thirst for the capacity to forgive. Some know the loneliness of estrangement from those to whom they appear closest. Some are naked before hostile enquiry. And some are imprisoned by destructive habits.
But in the darkness of human need the kingly power of Christ is encountered, and in the darkness of human need the nature of that kingly power is revealed. It is revealed as the most devastating power imaginable: capricious, yes; unaccountable, yes; abusive, never. It is revealed as love, absolute and infinite, undiscriminating and eternal. It fills the hungry and clothes the naked. It encircles the sick and embraces the prisoner. It cannot be diverted by intellectual objection, for it speaks an alternative language. It cannot arouse moral outrage, for it is unfailingly gentle.
This is the power in which the Church meets. It is a power which calls us to feed the hungry, clothe the naked and visit the prisoner. This is the power in which we baptize Guy and Rihanna. It is a power which will never ignore them, never oppress them, and never treat them as less than a beloved son and daughter. And this is the power which, we are promised, will redeem the world. It is a power which will overcome poverty, destitution, sickness, and captivity. It is a power which will bring a new creation to birth. In the water of Baptism and in the bread and wine of the Eucharist we touch that new creation. This is the power of Christ the King. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
Monday, 21 November 2011
Tuesday, 26 April 2011
Easter Day 2011
On the eastern wall of St Peter’s is a mosaic depiction of the Transfiguration of Christ, installed by my nineteenth century predecessor George Howard Wilkinson. It survives to this day in what is now the sacristy, and I see it whenever I vest for the Eucharist. In it, Christ, arms outstretched, resplendent in glorious gold and white, hovers a few feet above the holy mountain-top. The scene is suffused with divine light. It is an arresting image.
Its didactic purpose is clear. Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. He has a human nature, evident in his human form; and he has a divine nature, evident in the glory that emanates from him. The glorious transfigured Christ of the mosaic foreshadows the glorious risen Christ of this morning. He is a human being, and is recognizable as such. Yet he is a human being who is unconfined by the limits of time and space.
But there is a difference between the glorious transfigured Jesus and the glorious risen Jesus. It is that the outstretched hands of the mosaic are whole and unblemished, whereas the hands that are proffered to us this morning are not. They bear the marks of the nails which pinned him to the cross. The risen Jesus is wounded.
Why? If Jesus is as our creeds proclaim him to be; if he is as the mosaic depicts; if he is the human face of almighty God, who was revealed in glory on the mountain top then why does he submit to the nails? Why the wounds?
All the classic theologies of the cross answer this by making a link between the wounds of Jesus and the sin of humanity. At one extreme the wounds are seen as a necessary price. Our sin merits death; Christ dies in our place; Christ’s wounds are the cost of our redemption. At the other extreme the wounds are said to work upon our consciences. They call to us, compelling us to repent of the sin that has inflicted them upon him. Both extremes, and all the variations in between, reveal an understanding of the human condition – of human
nature – as essentially sinful. It is our sinfulness that is addressed by the cross of Christ.
I would like to suggest another understanding of the human condition, another understanding of human nature. This not to supplant the understanding that we term original sin, but to offer an alternative to it. We might call it ‘original woundedness’. The wounds of Christ are linked to the wounds of humanity; it is our woundedness that is addressed by the cross of Christ. Before we learn to be sinful men and women we are wounded men and women; often grievously wounded.
I probably need to stop right there. Wounded? Us? It hardly seems likely. We inhabit one of the greatest cities on God’s earth at the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era. Compared with the generation which fashioned the mosaic on the east wall we enjoy lives of remarkable ease and simplicity. We are a confident generation, an articulate generation. In what conceivable sense are we wounded? Sinful we can admit to; sin we understand; sin we can deal with; because, to some extent, sin we’re in control of. We commit it, we identify it, we repent of it.
But wounds are different. Wounds we do not control; wounds we do not choose; for wounds have been inflicted upon us. Perhaps in our tenderest years, perhaps much later; perhaps through neglect, perhaps because of tragedy, perhaps as a result of experiential poverty of a thousand different kinds. Perhaps we are not believed in, we are unsupported, we are rarely heard, or scarcely known. Perhaps our wounds assert themselves in unhappy relationships and in unrealized ambitions, in addiction and in fear, in disappointment and in loss. From our wounds flow the sins of rage and lust, of envy and of hatred. For what does a wound do? It disfigures our beauty; it causes us pain; and from it flows our lifeblood. If I am right; if we are essentially wounded, then our loveliness is hidden, our pain is desperate, and our life – our real life, not the one we build to conceal the wounds, our eternal life – is ebbing away from us.
The twentieth century priest and prophet Henri Nouwen wrote these words: ‘the great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there’. So to wounded humanity comes a wounded leader. The Christ of the mountain top, trailing clouds of glory, shares little with wounded men and women. His feet don’t even touch the ground - quite literally, in the St Peter’s mosaic. The Christ of the cross shares everything with wounded men and women. Like us, his beauty is disfigured; like us, he is in pain; and, like us, the life flows out of him as surely as does the blood.
This sharing is reassuring. We are not alone. Our wounds are known and understood. But this sharing cannot be the end of the story. For sharing is a Good Friday experience. This is Easter Day, and he is risen.
He is risen indeed, but he is wounded. Still his body bears the marks. A wounded leader comes to us, but he does not come to wipe away every last trace of our wounds. He comes to redeem them. He comes to show us that they are an inexorable part of our humanity. He comes to show us that concealing them, ignoring them, running away from them, will only lead us deeper into them and deeper into their consequences. He comes to show us a different path: the path of resurrection, the via vitae. He comes to show us that our woundedness can make us a source of life and love for others. He comes to show us that our woundedness can turn us towards our brothers and sisters. He comes to show us that our woundedness can open our hearts to them in compassion. He comes to show us that our woundedness can enlarge our empathy and equip us to attend to others. He comes to show us that in our woundedness lies our resurrection.
He comes so that our scars might blaze with beauty, so that our pain might be changed to salvific love, so that the flow of life from us might be staunched, and so that we might begin to live as he lives.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrestled with the wounds of isolation, fatigue and depression in his last, Dublin, years: yet, contemplating the resurrection of his wounded Lord, he could write these lines:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
He is risen; we are risen. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Its didactic purpose is clear. Jesus of Nazareth is the Son of God. He has a human nature, evident in his human form; and he has a divine nature, evident in the glory that emanates from him. The glorious transfigured Christ of the mosaic foreshadows the glorious risen Christ of this morning. He is a human being, and is recognizable as such. Yet he is a human being who is unconfined by the limits of time and space.
But there is a difference between the glorious transfigured Jesus and the glorious risen Jesus. It is that the outstretched hands of the mosaic are whole and unblemished, whereas the hands that are proffered to us this morning are not. They bear the marks of the nails which pinned him to the cross. The risen Jesus is wounded.
Why? If Jesus is as our creeds proclaim him to be; if he is as the mosaic depicts; if he is the human face of almighty God, who was revealed in glory on the mountain top then why does he submit to the nails? Why the wounds?
All the classic theologies of the cross answer this by making a link between the wounds of Jesus and the sin of humanity. At one extreme the wounds are seen as a necessary price. Our sin merits death; Christ dies in our place; Christ’s wounds are the cost of our redemption. At the other extreme the wounds are said to work upon our consciences. They call to us, compelling us to repent of the sin that has inflicted them upon him. Both extremes, and all the variations in between, reveal an understanding of the human condition – of human
nature – as essentially sinful. It is our sinfulness that is addressed by the cross of Christ.
I would like to suggest another understanding of the human condition, another understanding of human nature. This not to supplant the understanding that we term original sin, but to offer an alternative to it. We might call it ‘original woundedness’. The wounds of Christ are linked to the wounds of humanity; it is our woundedness that is addressed by the cross of Christ. Before we learn to be sinful men and women we are wounded men and women; often grievously wounded.
I probably need to stop right there. Wounded? Us? It hardly seems likely. We inhabit one of the greatest cities on God’s earth at the beginning of the third millennium of the Common Era. Compared with the generation which fashioned the mosaic on the east wall we enjoy lives of remarkable ease and simplicity. We are a confident generation, an articulate generation. In what conceivable sense are we wounded? Sinful we can admit to; sin we understand; sin we can deal with; because, to some extent, sin we’re in control of. We commit it, we identify it, we repent of it.
But wounds are different. Wounds we do not control; wounds we do not choose; for wounds have been inflicted upon us. Perhaps in our tenderest years, perhaps much later; perhaps through neglect, perhaps because of tragedy, perhaps as a result of experiential poverty of a thousand different kinds. Perhaps we are not believed in, we are unsupported, we are rarely heard, or scarcely known. Perhaps our wounds assert themselves in unhappy relationships and in unrealized ambitions, in addiction and in fear, in disappointment and in loss. From our wounds flow the sins of rage and lust, of envy and of hatred. For what does a wound do? It disfigures our beauty; it causes us pain; and from it flows our lifeblood. If I am right; if we are essentially wounded, then our loveliness is hidden, our pain is desperate, and our life – our real life, not the one we build to conceal the wounds, our eternal life – is ebbing away from us.
The twentieth century priest and prophet Henri Nouwen wrote these words: ‘the great illusion of leadership is to think that man can be led out of the desert by someone who has never been there’. So to wounded humanity comes a wounded leader. The Christ of the mountain top, trailing clouds of glory, shares little with wounded men and women. His feet don’t even touch the ground - quite literally, in the St Peter’s mosaic. The Christ of the cross shares everything with wounded men and women. Like us, his beauty is disfigured; like us, he is in pain; and, like us, the life flows out of him as surely as does the blood.
This sharing is reassuring. We are not alone. Our wounds are known and understood. But this sharing cannot be the end of the story. For sharing is a Good Friday experience. This is Easter Day, and he is risen.
He is risen indeed, but he is wounded. Still his body bears the marks. A wounded leader comes to us, but he does not come to wipe away every last trace of our wounds. He comes to redeem them. He comes to show us that they are an inexorable part of our humanity. He comes to show us that concealing them, ignoring them, running away from them, will only lead us deeper into them and deeper into their consequences. He comes to show us a different path: the path of resurrection, the via vitae. He comes to show us that our woundedness can make us a source of life and love for others. He comes to show us that our woundedness can turn us towards our brothers and sisters. He comes to show us that our woundedness can open our hearts to them in compassion. He comes to show us that our woundedness can enlarge our empathy and equip us to attend to others. He comes to show us that in our woundedness lies our resurrection.
He comes so that our scars might blaze with beauty, so that our pain might be changed to salvific love, so that the flow of life from us might be staunched, and so that we might begin to live as he lives.
Gerard Manley Hopkins wrestled with the wounds of isolation, fatigue and depression in his last, Dublin, years: yet, contemplating the resurrection of his wounded Lord, he could write these lines:
In a flash, at a trumpet crash,
I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and
This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond,
Is immortal diamond.
He is risen; we are risen. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The Innocent Blood: Three Addresses for Holy Week, 18, 19 and 20 April 2011
The Innocent Blood: 1
In these addresses for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week I will pursue our Lenten theme of the Way of the Cross, and our Lenten emphasis on the Gospel of Matthew, and will reflect each night on a feature of the Passion narrative that is unique to that Gospel. The theme that unites these three addresses is the blood of Jesus and the response that it evokes: hence I have entitled the series ‘The Innocent Blood’.
Tonight we consider Judas Iscariot, and these remarkable verses which are Matthew’s alone:
When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ But they said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27: 3-5).
Matthew inserts these verses into the Passion narrative after the trial before the high priest. This has concluded in agreement that Jesus deserves to die, and he is bound and led away to face Pilate. The tide is running against him. His own people have resolved to destroy him, and they are handing him over to the Imperial authority which has the power to realize their resolution.
According to Matthew, Judas sees this and reacts. He returns to the chief priests and elders. He confesses that he has sinned. He acknowledges that Jesus is innocent. He flings down the silver coins that he has received. And he goes and hangs himself.
How are we to understand this reaction? There’s some controversy about the verb that Matthew uses to describe it. He uses , which the New Revised Standard Version translates as ‘repents’. The verb more commonly used for repentance is different: . It’s this that John the Baptist cries when he cries to Israel to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at handIt seems that Matthew interprets Judas’s reaction and Judas’s repentance rather differently.
Judas certainly has a change of heart. He is seized with remorse and acts upon it, declaring his guilt publicly, and giving up the benefit he has accrued. He then commits suicide. This is not an action that Jewish scripture or tradition condemned - think of Samson the judge at the Philistines’ feast or Saul the King after his defeat. In his suicide we perhaps see his atonement, or his attempted atonement, for his sin.
But what Judas does not do is repent with any hope or expectation that he can or will be forgiven. His repentance is despairing. Confronted by innocent blood he declares his past fault. Confronted by innocent blood he cannot glimpse any future. If the kingdom is coming then it holds no place for him, and its king, whose blood is on his hands, will not look mercifully upon him. Judas dies, hating himself, hating what he has become.
That is the first response to the innocent blood that Matthew describes: repentance leading to despair. The repentance to which we are called by the innocent blood of Jesus is of a different character. It leads to life. It is to repent - - because the kingdom of heaven is coming. It is not just an acknowledgement of our sin, but an acknowledgement of our need of forgiveness and an acceptance of the forgiveness we are offered through the innocent blood of Jesus. It is to death that we are called, certainly, but it is also to resurrection.
It’s hard to believe that any good comes out of Judas’s despair, and over the generations the Church has tended to prefer Luke’s dramatic and gory account of an unrepentant death. But Matthew adds these lines:
But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.’ After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.’ (Matthew 27: 6-10)
Matthew’s is a Gospel written for a Jewish audience; his Jesus describes himself as sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So we cannot leave this passage without acknowledging that one of the fruits of Judas’s despair is that Gentiles are given a resting place in the City of David. Confronted by innocent blood, even out of despair there comes hope, if not for Judas, then for us.
The Innocent Blood: 2
In these three addresses for Holy Week I am reflecting on three features of the Passion narrative that are unique to Matthew’s Gospel. The theme that unites the three addresses is the blood of Jesus and the response that it evokes. The first considered the despair and death of Judas Iscariot. The second is introduced by the enigmatic figure of Pilate’s wife, who is given a cameo role lasting only one verse:
While he was sitting on the judgement seat, his wife sent word to him, ‘Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.’ (Matthew 27:19)
Dreams have a special place in Matthew’s Gospel. They pepper the famous stories that we tell and re-tell at Christmas-time. Joseph is told in a dream that he should marry Mary; he is told in a dream that he should take his young family to safety in Egypt; he is told in a dream that Herod has died and that it is safe to return to Nazareth. In dreams, God speaks. For Matthew, dreams are a means of divine self-revelation. And in this most Jewish of Gospels God does not confine his self-revelation to the Jews. The wise men, representatives of all the nations of the earth, are told in a dream that they should return to their own country by a different route. So we, Matthew’s audience, can be under no illusion. In Pilate’s wife’s dream God has spoken. God has communicated directly with Gentile power at the very end of Jesus’s life, as he did at its beginning.
The tradition has named her Procla, but in reality we know no more about Pilate’s wife than Matthew tells us in that one verse, and that is not very much. The content of her dream seems clear, though. Jesus is innocent. To shed Jesus’s blood will be to shed innocent blood. The revelation that only dawned on Judas once he had seen his master led away in chains comes to Pilate from God himself through the medium of his wife’s dream. How does Pilate respond when confronted with innocent blood? Matthew tells us:
Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ And they said, ‘Barabbas.’ Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’ Then he asked, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’
So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’ (Matthew 27: 20-24)
There is an ironic parallel between this scene and the scene I considered yesterday. When the desperate Judas returns to the chief priests and elders and confesses “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” they respond with contempt “What is that to us? See to it yourself”. Now Pilate declares himself innocent of Jesus’s blood and flings their contempt back at them. “See to it yourselves”.
“See to it yourselves”. The remark is surely bravado, the arrogance of the tyrant, the petty haughtiness of the Imperial bureaucrat. Pilate does not, cannot leave the matter to the crowd. What he actually does when confronted with innocent blood is to reach for a basin and wash his hands. Where Judas repents in despair, Pilate steps to one side.
How are we to understand his response? What he wants to do is publicly rid himself of any trace of guilt. Yet it is Pilate who releases Barabbas; it is Pilate who has Jesus flogged; it is Pilate who hands Jesus over to be crucified. Does he not wash his blood-stained hands in vain?
“What, will these hands ne’er be clean? Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand…”
Perhaps Shakespeare had Pilate and his wife in mind when he wrote those lines for the wife of another autocratic ruler.
The innocent blood of Jesus calls Pilate to a decision that is personal, and it calls us to a decision that is personal. Judas chose despair and death instead of forgiveness and hope; Pilate chose injustice and security instead of risk and righteousness. Choosing is a bit uncomfortable for Christians of a tradition which has valued the common life of word, prayer and sacrament. But this is Holy Week and the innocent blood of Jesus confronts us. A compromise, or the Christ? Choose we must.
Under the dark trees, there he stands,
there he stands; shall he not draw my eyes?
I thought I knew a little
how he compels, beyond all things, but now
he stands there in the shadows. It will be
Oh, such a daybreak, such bright morning,
when I wake to see him
as he is.
The Innocent Blood: 3
This is the last of three addresses for Holy Week in which I reflect on three features of the Passion narrative that are unique to Matthew’s Gospel, the theme uniting the three addresses being the blood of Jesus and the response that it evokes. The first address considered the despair and death of Judas Iscariot. The second considered the evasiveness of Pontius Pilate, who ignored the divine prompting of his wife’s dream and washed his hands of Jesus’s blood. This evening I consider the response of the people, the response recorded by Matthew in some of the most notorious words in the Bible.
Then the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’(Matthew 27: 25)
A bitter history of Christian anti-Semitism has drawn its inspiration from these words, a bitter history whose protagonists have heard in them an everlasting curse upon the whole Jewish race. This history has chosen to treat the blood of Jesus in the same way that the Hebrew Scriptures treat the blood of Abel. You will recall that according to the book Genesis Abel’s is the first innocent blood to be spilt upon the earth. He is struck down in the fields by his jealous older brother, Cain, to whom God speaks these words:
‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.’ (Genesis 4: 10)
‘Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies’, we sing: Abel’s innocent blood calls down recrimination upon the one who has shed it. Ye those Christians (and I use the term loosely) who have over the generations interpreted Jesus’s blood as having the same effect misread the verse itself and neglect the resurrection faith which is our hope.
As to the verse itself, Matthew makes it very clear that the crowd was being stirred up by the Jerusalem hierarchy of chief priests and elders. This hierarchy has sought Jesus’s destruction and is instrumental in its achievement. If the verse is a curse then the hierarchy is the principal candidate for the role of victim. Even if the curse extends to the crowd, the crowd is only a tiny proportion of the Jewish race. And to extend it any farther defies the plain sense of the text. Matthew, writing as he was in the aftermath of the cataclysmic destruction of the Temple in AD 70, no doubt saw in that event the final, desolating outcome of the Temple’s rejection of the Messiah. The curse, if a curse it was, had done its work.
But that is a limited, historical understanding of Matthew’s infamous verse. It can, indeed it must, also be read with the eyes of resurrection faith, and such a reading opens up a different interpretation altogether.
Let us begin by recalling that the blood of the innocent does not always condemn. God’s covenant with the children of Israel is forged on Mount Sinai. At its foot Moses builds an altar, with twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes. He offers burnt offerings and sacrifices oxen. Half the blood is dashed against the altar; half is dashed on the people. The blood of the innocent victim falls on them not to curse and condemn but to sanction and seal the covenant, to actualize the faithful love of God for his people.
Now, in Pilate’s judgement hall, the children of Israel are once more confronted with innocent blood. It plunges Judas into despair, because he cannot conceive of forgiveness or hope. It prompts Pilate into twisting and turning away from the demands of justice. But the people call for the blood to fall on them. It has perhaps the greatest integrity of the three responses we’ve considered. But what is it that they seek?
In his most recent book Pope Benedict has offered an answer. The eyes of resurrection faith, he writes, allow us to understand that the blood of Jesus is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. Those who call down the blood of Jesus upon themselves immerse themselves in the new covenant that the blood sanctions and seals. But this time the blood is not that of an ox; it is the blood, the life, the love ,of God. These words are not a curse, writes Pope Benedict, but rather redemption, salvation.
He is called Rose of Sharon, for his skin
is clear, his skin is flushed with blood,
his body lovely and exact; how he compels
beyond ten thousand rivals. There he stands,
my friend, the friend of guilt and helplessness,
to steer my hollow body
over the sea.
His blood be on us…
In these addresses for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of Holy Week I will pursue our Lenten theme of the Way of the Cross, and our Lenten emphasis on the Gospel of Matthew, and will reflect each night on a feature of the Passion narrative that is unique to that Gospel. The theme that unites these three addresses is the blood of Jesus and the response that it evokes: hence I have entitled the series ‘The Innocent Blood’.
Tonight we consider Judas Iscariot, and these remarkable verses which are Matthew’s alone:
When Judas, his betrayer, saw that Jesus was condemned, he repented and brought back the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. He said, ‘I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.’ But they said, ‘What is that to us? See to it yourself.’ Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed; and he went and hanged himself. (Matthew 27: 3-5).
Matthew inserts these verses into the Passion narrative after the trial before the high priest. This has concluded in agreement that Jesus deserves to die, and he is bound and led away to face Pilate. The tide is running against him. His own people have resolved to destroy him, and they are handing him over to the Imperial authority which has the power to realize their resolution.
According to Matthew, Judas sees this and reacts. He returns to the chief priests and elders. He confesses that he has sinned. He acknowledges that Jesus is innocent. He flings down the silver coins that he has received. And he goes and hangs himself.
How are we to understand this reaction? There’s some controversy about the verb that Matthew uses to describe it. He uses , which the New Revised Standard Version translates as ‘repents’. The verb more commonly used for repentance is different: . It’s this that John the Baptist cries when he cries to Israel to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at handIt seems that Matthew interprets Judas’s reaction and Judas’s repentance rather differently.
Judas certainly has a change of heart. He is seized with remorse and acts upon it, declaring his guilt publicly, and giving up the benefit he has accrued. He then commits suicide. This is not an action that Jewish scripture or tradition condemned - think of Samson the judge at the Philistines’ feast or Saul the King after his defeat. In his suicide we perhaps see his atonement, or his attempted atonement, for his sin.
But what Judas does not do is repent with any hope or expectation that he can or will be forgiven. His repentance is despairing. Confronted by innocent blood he declares his past fault. Confronted by innocent blood he cannot glimpse any future. If the kingdom is coming then it holds no place for him, and its king, whose blood is on his hands, will not look mercifully upon him. Judas dies, hating himself, hating what he has become.
That is the first response to the innocent blood that Matthew describes: repentance leading to despair. The repentance to which we are called by the innocent blood of Jesus is of a different character. It leads to life. It is to repent - - because the kingdom of heaven is coming. It is not just an acknowledgement of our sin, but an acknowledgement of our need of forgiveness and an acceptance of the forgiveness we are offered through the innocent blood of Jesus. It is to death that we are called, certainly, but it is also to resurrection.
It’s hard to believe that any good comes out of Judas’s despair, and over the generations the Church has tended to prefer Luke’s dramatic and gory account of an unrepentant death. But Matthew adds these lines:
But the chief priests, taking the pieces of silver, said, ‘It is not lawful to put them into the treasury, since they are blood money.’ After conferring together, they used them to buy the potter’s field as a place to bury foreigners. For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day. Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of the one on whom a price had been set, on whom some of the people of Israel had set a price, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord commanded me.’ (Matthew 27: 6-10)
Matthew’s is a Gospel written for a Jewish audience; his Jesus describes himself as sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. So we cannot leave this passage without acknowledging that one of the fruits of Judas’s despair is that Gentiles are given a resting place in the City of David. Confronted by innocent blood, even out of despair there comes hope, if not for Judas, then for us.
The Innocent Blood: 2
In these three addresses for Holy Week I am reflecting on three features of the Passion narrative that are unique to Matthew’s Gospel. The theme that unites the three addresses is the blood of Jesus and the response that it evokes. The first considered the despair and death of Judas Iscariot. The second is introduced by the enigmatic figure of Pilate’s wife, who is given a cameo role lasting only one verse:
While he was sitting on the judgement seat, his wife sent word to him, ‘Have nothing to do with that innocent man, for today I have suffered a great deal because of a dream about him.’ (Matthew 27:19)
Dreams have a special place in Matthew’s Gospel. They pepper the famous stories that we tell and re-tell at Christmas-time. Joseph is told in a dream that he should marry Mary; he is told in a dream that he should take his young family to safety in Egypt; he is told in a dream that Herod has died and that it is safe to return to Nazareth. In dreams, God speaks. For Matthew, dreams are a means of divine self-revelation. And in this most Jewish of Gospels God does not confine his self-revelation to the Jews. The wise men, representatives of all the nations of the earth, are told in a dream that they should return to their own country by a different route. So we, Matthew’s audience, can be under no illusion. In Pilate’s wife’s dream God has spoken. God has communicated directly with Gentile power at the very end of Jesus’s life, as he did at its beginning.
The tradition has named her Procla, but in reality we know no more about Pilate’s wife than Matthew tells us in that one verse, and that is not very much. The content of her dream seems clear, though. Jesus is innocent. To shed Jesus’s blood will be to shed innocent blood. The revelation that only dawned on Judas once he had seen his master led away in chains comes to Pilate from God himself through the medium of his wife’s dream. How does Pilate respond when confronted with innocent blood? Matthew tells us:
Now the chief priests and the elders persuaded the crowds to ask for Barabbas and to have Jesus killed. The governor again said to them, ‘Which of the two do you want me to release for you?’ And they said, ‘Barabbas.’ Pilate said to them, ‘Then what should I do with Jesus who is called the Messiah?’ All of them said, ‘Let him be crucified!’ Then he asked, ‘Why, what evil has he done?’ But they shouted all the more, ‘Let him be crucified!’
So when Pilate saw that he could do nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took some water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’ (Matthew 27: 20-24)
There is an ironic parallel between this scene and the scene I considered yesterday. When the desperate Judas returns to the chief priests and elders and confesses “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” they respond with contempt “What is that to us? See to it yourself”. Now Pilate declares himself innocent of Jesus’s blood and flings their contempt back at them. “See to it yourselves”.
“See to it yourselves”. The remark is surely bravado, the arrogance of the tyrant, the petty haughtiness of the Imperial bureaucrat. Pilate does not, cannot leave the matter to the crowd. What he actually does when confronted with innocent blood is to reach for a basin and wash his hands. Where Judas repents in despair, Pilate steps to one side.
How are we to understand his response? What he wants to do is publicly rid himself of any trace of guilt. Yet it is Pilate who releases Barabbas; it is Pilate who has Jesus flogged; it is Pilate who hands Jesus over to be crucified. Does he not wash his blood-stained hands in vain?
“What, will these hands ne’er be clean? Here’s the smell of the blood still; all the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand…”
Perhaps Shakespeare had Pilate and his wife in mind when he wrote those lines for the wife of another autocratic ruler.
The innocent blood of Jesus calls Pilate to a decision that is personal, and it calls us to a decision that is personal. Judas chose despair and death instead of forgiveness and hope; Pilate chose injustice and security instead of risk and righteousness. Choosing is a bit uncomfortable for Christians of a tradition which has valued the common life of word, prayer and sacrament. But this is Holy Week and the innocent blood of Jesus confronts us. A compromise, or the Christ? Choose we must.
Under the dark trees, there he stands,
there he stands; shall he not draw my eyes?
I thought I knew a little
how he compels, beyond all things, but now
he stands there in the shadows. It will be
Oh, such a daybreak, such bright morning,
when I wake to see him
as he is.
The Innocent Blood: 3
This is the last of three addresses for Holy Week in which I reflect on three features of the Passion narrative that are unique to Matthew’s Gospel, the theme uniting the three addresses being the blood of Jesus and the response that it evokes. The first address considered the despair and death of Judas Iscariot. The second considered the evasiveness of Pontius Pilate, who ignored the divine prompting of his wife’s dream and washed his hands of Jesus’s blood. This evening I consider the response of the people, the response recorded by Matthew in some of the most notorious words in the Bible.
Then the people as a whole answered, ‘His blood be on us and on our children!’(Matthew 27: 25)
A bitter history of Christian anti-Semitism has drawn its inspiration from these words, a bitter history whose protagonists have heard in them an everlasting curse upon the whole Jewish race. This history has chosen to treat the blood of Jesus in the same way that the Hebrew Scriptures treat the blood of Abel. You will recall that according to the book Genesis Abel’s is the first innocent blood to be spilt upon the earth. He is struck down in the fields by his jealous older brother, Cain, to whom God speaks these words:
‘What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.’ (Genesis 4: 10)
‘Abel’s blood for vengeance pleaded to the skies’, we sing: Abel’s innocent blood calls down recrimination upon the one who has shed it. Ye those Christians (and I use the term loosely) who have over the generations interpreted Jesus’s blood as having the same effect misread the verse itself and neglect the resurrection faith which is our hope.
As to the verse itself, Matthew makes it very clear that the crowd was being stirred up by the Jerusalem hierarchy of chief priests and elders. This hierarchy has sought Jesus’s destruction and is instrumental in its achievement. If the verse is a curse then the hierarchy is the principal candidate for the role of victim. Even if the curse extends to the crowd, the crowd is only a tiny proportion of the Jewish race. And to extend it any farther defies the plain sense of the text. Matthew, writing as he was in the aftermath of the cataclysmic destruction of the Temple in AD 70, no doubt saw in that event the final, desolating outcome of the Temple’s rejection of the Messiah. The curse, if a curse it was, had done its work.
But that is a limited, historical understanding of Matthew’s infamous verse. It can, indeed it must, also be read with the eyes of resurrection faith, and such a reading opens up a different interpretation altogether.
Let us begin by recalling that the blood of the innocent does not always condemn. God’s covenant with the children of Israel is forged on Mount Sinai. At its foot Moses builds an altar, with twelve pillars to represent the twelve tribes. He offers burnt offerings and sacrifices oxen. Half the blood is dashed against the altar; half is dashed on the people. The blood of the innocent victim falls on them not to curse and condemn but to sanction and seal the covenant, to actualize the faithful love of God for his people.
Now, in Pilate’s judgement hall, the children of Israel are once more confronted with innocent blood. It plunges Judas into despair, because he cannot conceive of forgiveness or hope. It prompts Pilate into twisting and turning away from the demands of justice. But the people call for the blood to fall on them. It has perhaps the greatest integrity of the three responses we’ve considered. But what is it that they seek?
In his most recent book Pope Benedict has offered an answer. The eyes of resurrection faith, he writes, allow us to understand that the blood of Jesus is not poured out against anyone; it is poured out for many, for all. Those who call down the blood of Jesus upon themselves immerse themselves in the new covenant that the blood sanctions and seals. But this time the blood is not that of an ox; it is the blood, the life, the love ,of God. These words are not a curse, writes Pope Benedict, but rather redemption, salvation.
He is called Rose of Sharon, for his skin
is clear, his skin is flushed with blood,
his body lovely and exact; how he compels
beyond ten thousand rivals. There he stands,
my friend, the friend of guilt and helplessness,
to steer my hollow body
over the sea.
His blood be on us…
Monday, 14 March 2011
Sunday 13 March 2011, 1st of Lent, Evensong (Westminster Abbey)
An extract from the Parish Magazine of St Peter’s Eaton Square, dated Lent 1911:
“A ‘Quiet Day’ was held at St Peter’s by the Vicar, on Thursday, the 23rd. The timetable was as follows: Holy Communion, 8.30 am; Mattins, 10.30 am; Addresses, 11 am, 3 and 4.45 pm; Special Intercession for the Parish , 12.30 pm. Evensong at 5.30 formed a fitting close to the day. The attendance, especially considering the weather, was very good and well maintained throughout the day.”
It’s reassuring to know that some things never change. I’m not just referring to the weather. The intensity of the worship and preaching which my illustrious predecessor as Vicar of St Peter’s, John Storrs, offered to the faithful in Lent certainly gives the lie to the suspicion that Victorian religion in Westminster was all about social convention. Ten hours, four services and three sermons: not for the faint-hearted, but not what the day was billed as, either. Ten hours, four services and three sermons do not a Quiet Day make. They ad up to an extremely active day. My point is that the weather never changes and our compulsion to pack Lent with activity, whether it’s un-quiet Quiet Days, worthy books, sermon series, or study groups, never changes either. This morning I promoted 2011’s Lent programme at St Peter’s just as John Storrs must have done 1911’s Lent programme one hundred years ago, and they don’t look so very different.
Of course, books and sermon series and study groups are good, and I hope that what’s being offered at St Peter’s (and I’m sure what’s being offered at the Abbey) will nurture the disciples of Jesus Christ in their faith. However it will fail to do so if it encourages us to believe that faith is equivalent to religious activity. It will fail to do so if it encourages us to believe that we can read, listen or attend our way to eternal redemption.
There is no more active word in the vocabulary of faith than the verb ‘to repent’, ‘’ in the Gospel-writer’s Greek. To repent is not simply to change your mind or adjust your preference. It’s to turn away. In early Christian liturgy candidates for Baptism were asked whether they repented, and they would turn to give their answers, demonstrating through their physical posture the fundamental re-orientation of their lives. So how strange it is that, in Saint Luke’s record of stories told to illustrate the nature of repentance, Jesus chooses as his subjects a lost sheep and a lost coin. The latter is an inanimate object capable of no activity at all, be it physical, intellectual or emotional, and the former is a notoriously stupid animal capable of the first of those but not, frankly, of much else. Neither can conceivably repent in the active sense that the verb demands. The activity in the stories is all their owners. Clearly, there’s a different way of understanding repentance.
The lost sheep does nothing except to wander in the wilderness. Yet nothing can keep the shepherd from his charge, and when he finds it he carries it home rejoicing, and calls his friends to party. It’s not the only party in this passage. There’s another in the home of the woman whose coin is lost and who lights the lamp, sweeps the house and searches high and low until it is found. The stories paint a picture of a God who does not wait to be approached, but who goes out eagerly looking for each one of us, and who will not rest while any is lost. And they paint a picture of repentance which consists less of our activity, and more of our inactivity, of our being found by God. Of course, we have to be willing to be found. If we are bent on hiding ourselves from his eyes, or blocking our ears to his call, or fleeing wildly from his embrace then we will not be. But our redemption is God’s activity, not ours.
Many of us will be very active this Lent. It’s simply how the disciples of Jesus Christ are. But as we absorb ourselves in study groups, fill our ears with sermons and concentrate our minds on books we might just ask whether our activity will allow God to find us, or whether it will keep God at a safe distance. We might ponder the commandment that Moses put before the Israelites. ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might’. It’s the commandment that Jesus called the greatest. But perhaps it’s rather easier to love our Lenten diaries and our Lenten programmes. Perhaps it’s rather easier to love our activity. Perhaps. Amen.
“A ‘Quiet Day’ was held at St Peter’s by the Vicar, on Thursday, the 23rd. The timetable was as follows: Holy Communion, 8.30 am; Mattins, 10.30 am; Addresses, 11 am, 3 and 4.45 pm; Special Intercession for the Parish , 12.30 pm. Evensong at 5.30 formed a fitting close to the day. The attendance, especially considering the weather, was very good and well maintained throughout the day.”
It’s reassuring to know that some things never change. I’m not just referring to the weather. The intensity of the worship and preaching which my illustrious predecessor as Vicar of St Peter’s, John Storrs, offered to the faithful in Lent certainly gives the lie to the suspicion that Victorian religion in Westminster was all about social convention. Ten hours, four services and three sermons: not for the faint-hearted, but not what the day was billed as, either. Ten hours, four services and three sermons do not a Quiet Day make. They ad up to an extremely active day. My point is that the weather never changes and our compulsion to pack Lent with activity, whether it’s un-quiet Quiet Days, worthy books, sermon series, or study groups, never changes either. This morning I promoted 2011’s Lent programme at St Peter’s just as John Storrs must have done 1911’s Lent programme one hundred years ago, and they don’t look so very different.
Of course, books and sermon series and study groups are good, and I hope that what’s being offered at St Peter’s (and I’m sure what’s being offered at the Abbey) will nurture the disciples of Jesus Christ in their faith. However it will fail to do so if it encourages us to believe that faith is equivalent to religious activity. It will fail to do so if it encourages us to believe that we can read, listen or attend our way to eternal redemption.
There is no more active word in the vocabulary of faith than the verb ‘to repent’, ‘’ in the Gospel-writer’s Greek. To repent is not simply to change your mind or adjust your preference. It’s to turn away. In early Christian liturgy candidates for Baptism were asked whether they repented, and they would turn to give their answers, demonstrating through their physical posture the fundamental re-orientation of their lives. So how strange it is that, in Saint Luke’s record of stories told to illustrate the nature of repentance, Jesus chooses as his subjects a lost sheep and a lost coin. The latter is an inanimate object capable of no activity at all, be it physical, intellectual or emotional, and the former is a notoriously stupid animal capable of the first of those but not, frankly, of much else. Neither can conceivably repent in the active sense that the verb demands. The activity in the stories is all their owners. Clearly, there’s a different way of understanding repentance.
The lost sheep does nothing except to wander in the wilderness. Yet nothing can keep the shepherd from his charge, and when he finds it he carries it home rejoicing, and calls his friends to party. It’s not the only party in this passage. There’s another in the home of the woman whose coin is lost and who lights the lamp, sweeps the house and searches high and low until it is found. The stories paint a picture of a God who does not wait to be approached, but who goes out eagerly looking for each one of us, and who will not rest while any is lost. And they paint a picture of repentance which consists less of our activity, and more of our inactivity, of our being found by God. Of course, we have to be willing to be found. If we are bent on hiding ourselves from his eyes, or blocking our ears to his call, or fleeing wildly from his embrace then we will not be. But our redemption is God’s activity, not ours.
Many of us will be very active this Lent. It’s simply how the disciples of Jesus Christ are. But as we absorb ourselves in study groups, fill our ears with sermons and concentrate our minds on books we might just ask whether our activity will allow God to find us, or whether it will keep God at a safe distance. We might ponder the commandment that Moses put before the Israelites. ‘You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might’. It’s the commandment that Jesus called the greatest. But perhaps it’s rather easier to love our Lenten diaries and our Lenten programmes. Perhaps it’s rather easier to love our activity. Perhaps. Amen.
Friday, 11 March 2011
Ash Wednesday, 9 March 2011
At last week’s Annual Parochial Church Meeting I spoke of my interest in the gym. It’s not purely a personal interest, although part of the Lenten regime that I’m aspiring to is a more rigorous use of my own membership. I went at lunchtime which is why I’m looking the picture of health tonight. It’s an interest in the reality that gym membership is booming while church membership is not.
I attribute this to three words beginning with ‘P’ at which gyms excel. They have a clear purpose; they offer a clear programme; and they make a clear promise – they promise that if their members follow the programme they’ll achieve the purpose. I told the APCM that I believe that the Church needs to get better at articulating its purpose, its purpose of forming disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of God’s world. It needs constantly to shape its programme to meet that purpose; and it needs to rediscover its confidence in promising that that through faithfulness to the programme that purpose will be achieved.
This is abundantly true in the season we enter today. Lent’s purpose is the formation of disciples; Lent offers a programme; and Lent makes a promise. This is reflected in our liturgy. The Introduction has placed before us the programme. It’s of ‘self-examination and repentance…prayer, fasting and self-denial…reading and meditating on God’s holy word’. It promises that ‘By carefully keeping these days’, that is, by following this programme, we will ‘grow in faith and in devotion to our Lord’. The Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer will express our hope that through Lent’s pilgrimage of prayer and discipline ‘we may grow in grace and learn to be your people once again’. And in the Post-Communion Prayer we will pledge ourselves to follow daily ‘the blessed steps’ of Christ’s most holy life.
That is why Lent’s theme at St Peter’s this year is Via Crucis: Via Vitae. The Way of the Cross is not a way of life, like veganism, Freemasonry or caravanning, but the Way of Life. It’s not just that we will be privileged to host a performance of Liszt’s work for piano and choir on Sunday 10 April – although as it features Leslie Howard and our Choir under Andrew’s direction I would advise you strenuously not to miss it. It’s that in the Way of the Cross, in the last hours before Jesus’s crucifixion, we discover for our discipleship what the Atkins diet is for slimmers or what British Military Fitness is for those strange individuals who enjoy running round Wandsworth Common while being shouted at. We discover the programme, the model, the pattern, that we are called to follow.
It is a pattern that we will enter into and inhabit on Tuesday evenings throughout Lent. Using the building, its grounds, and the garden of Eaton Square we will walk with Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to Pilate’s judgement hall, from Calvary to the empty tomb. We will hear the story told again and again, and we will pray for ourselves and for the world to which the Way shows the way. In a series of addresses followed by meditations on the organ we will ponder the disciplines that the Way requires of us, the disciplines of prayer and worship, of study and service. Then on Sunday mornings our preachers will bring alive for us the virtues which will flourish if we are faithful to the Way. These are not Virtues with a capital ‘V’, a notion so redolent of Sunday School Victoriana, but the hard-won, costly virtues of trust, of justice and forgiveness, of solidarity and hope. It is these that will transform God’s world, a world in critical need of more trust, more justice, more forgiveness, more solidarity and more hope.
And the Way begins tonight with a cross of ash inscribed on our foreheads. Ash serves as a sign of our acknowledgement of our sin and of our contrition at our sin: so ash does for us what that first run or first tomato juice sometimes does for potential gym members. Ash signals our willingness to change and be changed. Ash also reminds us that we are mortal and that one day we will die: so ash also does for us what health scares and encroaching middle-age sometimes do for actual gym members. Ash spurs us on to change and to be changed, to allow God not to remove our mortality but to transfigure it, so that our every pore shines with divine light.
Via Crucis. We follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We tread where he trod. Through prayer, worship, study and service we are formed as his disciples; through the love, hope and forgiveness that flow from us God’s world will be transformed. Amen to that.
I attribute this to three words beginning with ‘P’ at which gyms excel. They have a clear purpose; they offer a clear programme; and they make a clear promise – they promise that if their members follow the programme they’ll achieve the purpose. I told the APCM that I believe that the Church needs to get better at articulating its purpose, its purpose of forming disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of God’s world. It needs constantly to shape its programme to meet that purpose; and it needs to rediscover its confidence in promising that that through faithfulness to the programme that purpose will be achieved.
This is abundantly true in the season we enter today. Lent’s purpose is the formation of disciples; Lent offers a programme; and Lent makes a promise. This is reflected in our liturgy. The Introduction has placed before us the programme. It’s of ‘self-examination and repentance…prayer, fasting and self-denial…reading and meditating on God’s holy word’. It promises that ‘By carefully keeping these days’, that is, by following this programme, we will ‘grow in faith and in devotion to our Lord’. The Preface to the Eucharistic Prayer will express our hope that through Lent’s pilgrimage of prayer and discipline ‘we may grow in grace and learn to be your people once again’. And in the Post-Communion Prayer we will pledge ourselves to follow daily ‘the blessed steps’ of Christ’s most holy life.
That is why Lent’s theme at St Peter’s this year is Via Crucis: Via Vitae. The Way of the Cross is not a way of life, like veganism, Freemasonry or caravanning, but the Way of Life. It’s not just that we will be privileged to host a performance of Liszt’s work for piano and choir on Sunday 10 April – although as it features Leslie Howard and our Choir under Andrew’s direction I would advise you strenuously not to miss it. It’s that in the Way of the Cross, in the last hours before Jesus’s crucifixion, we discover for our discipleship what the Atkins diet is for slimmers or what British Military Fitness is for those strange individuals who enjoy running round Wandsworth Common while being shouted at. We discover the programme, the model, the pattern, that we are called to follow.
It is a pattern that we will enter into and inhabit on Tuesday evenings throughout Lent. Using the building, its grounds, and the garden of Eaton Square we will walk with Jesus from the Garden of Gethsemane to Pilate’s judgement hall, from Calvary to the empty tomb. We will hear the story told again and again, and we will pray for ourselves and for the world to which the Way shows the way. In a series of addresses followed by meditations on the organ we will ponder the disciplines that the Way requires of us, the disciplines of prayer and worship, of study and service. Then on Sunday mornings our preachers will bring alive for us the virtues which will flourish if we are faithful to the Way. These are not Virtues with a capital ‘V’, a notion so redolent of Sunday School Victoriana, but the hard-won, costly virtues of trust, of justice and forgiveness, of solidarity and hope. It is these that will transform God’s world, a world in critical need of more trust, more justice, more forgiveness, more solidarity and more hope.
And the Way begins tonight with a cross of ash inscribed on our foreheads. Ash serves as a sign of our acknowledgement of our sin and of our contrition at our sin: so ash does for us what that first run or first tomato juice sometimes does for potential gym members. Ash signals our willingness to change and be changed. Ash also reminds us that we are mortal and that one day we will die: so ash also does for us what health scares and encroaching middle-age sometimes do for actual gym members. Ash spurs us on to change and to be changed, to allow God not to remove our mortality but to transfigure it, so that our every pore shines with divine light.
Via Crucis. We follow in the footsteps of Jesus. We tread where he trod. Through prayer, worship, study and service we are formed as his disciples; through the love, hope and forgiveness that flow from us God’s world will be transformed. Amen to that.
Tuesday, 8 March 2011
Vicar's Report to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting, Wednesday 6 March 2011
St Peter’s Eaton Square
The Vicar’s Report to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting
Wednesday 2 March 2011
I love going to the gym. I can gaze at those around me with envy or contempt. I can ignore everything else that’s going on and plug myself into my own private soundtrack. And I can leave feeling enormously superior to those who haven’t made the effort.
All in all it’s a bit like going to Church. And yet the fact is that four and a half million adults in the United Kingdom belong to a gym. And while only just over a quarter of them make regular use of their membership, that still probably means that more people go to the gym each week than worship in a parish Church of the Church of England.
Why is that? There are all sorts of reasons, of course, but my guess is that chief among them is that people go to the gym for a purpose and if they are moderately persistent they achieve that purpose. The purpose of the gym is to get you fit. At the gym you are given your individual programme, and you are promised that if you follow it you will achieve the purpose. Contrast that with us. The purpose of Church is…well, it has a variety of purposes: glorifying God; building his Kingdom; making us into better people, into a better people. Lots of purposes are difficult to sell in the age of the gym. And if there are lots of purposes then it’s hard to see which of the programmes we offer serves which of the purposes. Does the May Fair glorify God? Does the baptism of infants create a fairer world? And if our programmes don’t appear to fit our purposes then perhaps it’s unsurprising that the various promises that the Church makes - of forgiveness, of redemption, of a more virtuous life – probably seem pretty remote from the weekly round of hymn-singing and of constantly being asked to give to this and volunteer for that.
Now I’m certainly not an advocate of muscular Christianity of the ‘Real Men Love Jesus’ variety and I see much to dislike about the cult of the gym, which breeds narcissistic obsession with an ideal of perfection. But I also think that it poses us a challenge. Purpose; programme; and promise are vital for the gym. Might they also be vital for us?
I believe there is a double purpose to which God is calling St Peter’s Eaton Square. It is the formation of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of God’s world.
“We’ll get there together” says LA Fitness; “Let’s start your journey” says Fitness First. “Forming disciples:” says St Peter’s Eaton Square, “transforming the world”. Come here, worship here, belong here, and you will be formed as a disciple; come here, worship here belong here, and your discipleship will transform the world. We promise.
Why have I come to believe that formation is our key purpose? Because it is the sum of all that we do here. We offer worship to God, whether it’s the glory of the Sung Eucharist or the flickering candle-lights of Taize. We pray, whether it’s in the monthly Silent Hour or in the clamour of the Family Eucharist. We study, whether it’s in the upper room of the Phoenix or on a sparsely-attended morning in Lent. We serve, whether it’s in the busy-ness of the May Fair or in our nascent link to Angola. Worship, prayer, study and service are the disciplines of disciples. Through them we are being formed as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Why ‘disciples’ – why are we not forming ‘Christians’? It’s just that a Christian sounds like a finished product, while a disciple is a traveller. We’re not finished products, we’re travellers. The journey before us is a long one, and there’s a lot of learning we need to do. But if we journey together, and if our journey follows Jesus Christ then it will be a journey into truth and fullness of life.
Why is our discipleship for the world’s transformation? Is it not for its own sake? The answer is no, it’s not, because this is not a gym. We’re not about the body beautiful and we’re not about the soul beautiful either. William Temple once remarked that the Church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of non-members. We exist to build the Kingdom of God and as we are formed in our discipleship, as we grow in love, forgiveness, trust and hope, we will change the world around us.
And why can we promise that our discipleship will transform the world? Because our discipleship is of one who calls us, one who, as Paul writes to the Thessalonians, is faithful, and he will do this.
So I am as ever deeply grateful to those who have formed my own discipleship in the ten months that have passed since we last met. Chief among these are my ordained colleagues James, Claire and Mark. There are different things I value about each of them: James’s manifest ease with almost every situation, however bizarre or improbable; Mark’s apparently unquenchable energy (he said Yes to chairing the May Fair committee with barely a second’s pause); Claire’s utterly reliable pastoral good sense. But what I value most about them as a group is the quality of the conversation and exchange that we have had over the last few years, and the assurance that together there has been no issue that we have not been able to resolve. Thank you, all three of you. It is a privilege to work alongside you.
I am similarly grateful to our musicians, to Andrew Sackett, to Dan Moult, to April Frederick, to all our superb singers, and above all to our Director of Music, Andrew-John Smith. He would be the first to admit that his administrative skills have not always been 100%. I will be the first to insist that the quality of what he delivers is never less than 500%. His skill is consummate and the care that he brings to what he does here is absolute. If you have not bought his new recording of Max Reger’s music then you should. The music that we hear week in week out has been instrumental is shaping my prayer and thought this year, and we remain exceptionally fortunate in those who make it for us. Thank you all.
Then I want also to thank our office and premises staff. They may think they are doing their jobs. What they are actually doing time and again is forming my discipleship. Let me give you an example. Yesterday Douglas took an early lunch break because the Church was in use in the afternoon. Consequently he did not serve at the lunchtime Eucharist as he usually does. One of the regular members of that congregation rang me in a state of panic. Was Douglas all right? He is so constant in his duties in the sacristy that the person concerned could not believe that he was absent from them. What an example of service. I could give you many others: Olivia, who never finishes work at her prescribed time of 1 pm but remains at her desk into the afternoon; or Susan Redwin, whose attentiveness to the preparation of our figures for audit means that Citroen Wells heave a sigh of relief when our file reaches the top of their pile every year. Thank you all.
And lastly I want to thank those whose time is given freely and sacrificially: those who devote hours to service as Foundation school governors; those who help out in the office; those who launder and iron; those who garden and cook. The Parish could not thrive as it does without you, and for the example you give me of faithful discipleship I am very grateful. Thank you.
The year behind us can be characterized by steady growth and development on the one hand, as we approach the end of our current Mission Action Plan, and radical change on the other.
We have seen steady growth and development in our worship, teaching and service. The revision of our Sunday liturgy and ceremonial has largely been completed and innovations such as the Taize service and the Silent Hour have been established. The occasional Parish Eucharist has gained an unassailable place in the calendar, and we have worked successfully to make it cohere better. Of particular note was the Advent Carol Service, which opened what we observed as the Season of Exile. The Choir’s singing of the Spirituals from A Child of our Time will never be forgotten by those who heard it. The Life Course has found its feet and found a home at the Phoenix; we ran another liturgical teaching series, this time on the songs of the Eucharist, and this time at 11.15 as well as at 10 o’clock; we invited a range of speakers to address us in Lent and in Advent. Our long hoped-for Angola link received a setback when we discovered that the Angolan Government had built a school where we had planned to. However it also received a huge boost when a member of our congregation, Richard Wildash, was appointed Her Majesty’s ambassador to Angola. He has linked us firmly with the Diocese of Angola and with Save the Children in Angola, and the prospect of our funding an Early Childhood Development Centre suddenly seems very realistic.
The radical change that has taken place has been in this building. As I indicated would happen at last year’s Annual Meeting, work took place last summer to divide the Crypt into two lettable units. The work was not without its difficulties and involved us in expense that could not have been foreseen at the outset. In particular, a serious damp problem in the Crypt had to be addressed, and the introduction of tenants revealed that the fire alarm and detection system throughout the building was seriously inadequate for its purpose. With our history that plainly needed to be addressed. So although these issues were not foreseen they would both have had to be dealt with at some point, and dealt with they have been. The Crypt is now let to the Knightsbridge Kindergarten and to Bodydoctor Fitness. The Bodydoctor has refurbished his unit to a very high specification, far beyond anything we could have spent ourselves, as the PCC saw at their last meeting, and the rent that we will receive from our tenants will enable us to plan for the future more securely. I cannot leave the subject of the building works without expressing one more word of thanks, to Peter Wilde, Andrew Elder, and Stefan Turnbull. They are a trinity of the most modest men I have ever met, and they will hate this, but they really are the most significant trinity any Parish has ever had, with the obvious exception of the Holy one. Their expertise and their care has driven this project and they are owed a huge debt of thanks.
At last year’s meeting I also spoke of the impending changes to the Charities associated with the Parish: the creation of the new Pimlico St Peter Trust, and the dissolution into it of the St Peter’s Eaton Square Charity and the Vicarage Charity. The decisive changes are still, I regret, impending. The new Trust has been constituted: its Trustees are the Vicar, Caroline Downey and James Lawson and Hilary Schofield – Bob Enslow has resigned because of his increased commitments overseas, and the other Trustees have yet to meet to appoint his replacement. However it has not been able to begin work because of the difficulties we have encountered in transferring the assets of the existing Charities to the new Trust. Banks seem depressingly unwilling to accept my claim that I am the Vicar of St Peter’s Eaton Square or that I or anyone else has any authority to move or change anything. Archbishop Rowan must feel like this every morning, and I thank God that I’m dealing with RBS and NatWest rather than the Anglican Communion. On this front – and only on this front – it has been a rather frustrating year, but there are at last signs of movement, and I am confident that by Easter the new Trust will be fully operational, minding our historic assets and using them to support our mission.
Next year we will celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Church’s re-consecration. The Bishop of London will be here for the Dedication Festival and we will launch a new Mission Action Plan for the next five years. Discerning its content will be the PCC’s principal task in the next twelve months.
Our purpose is the formation of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of Jesus Christ’s world. But a gym offers its members programmes to ensure the delivery of its purpose, and it is to the programmes that we offer that we must attend. Without pre-empting the discussion that the PCC will have overnight in Canterbury at the end of June I envisage three priorities.
The first priority (and these are not in any order) is our building. The gym is frequently an attractive space that its members want to be in – witness the Bodydoctor’s expenditure on our Crypt. Our building is similarly a great asset in achieving our purpose. It must be properly maintained; it must contain a sacred space that is the best that we can afford; it must be accessible to all, including those who come in wheelchairs or pushing buggies; it must proclaim its purpose effectively and tastefully; and it must contain different spaces in which different communities can grow and flourish. We need to set out a timed and costed plan for the maintenance of the building (including the work required by the last Quinquennial Report); for the refurbishment of the existing public spaces; and for the development of the Welcome Room and of the southern end of this floor. We need also to consider how we might spend the money raised by the May Fair and the 2012 Appeal to enhance the sacred space downstairs.
The second priority is our children and young people. The formation of disciples of Jesus Christ does not begin at adulthood. It begins in the pre-school years. The stories tiny children are told have a powerful impact on them for the rest of their lives. Are we telling the stories in the best way we can? Then come the school years. We have a thriving Primary School with a Headteacher dedicated to the link with Church. But what do we offer school-age children on Sunday mornings? Does a member of the Butterflies need the same as a member of Year 5? And what of those children – and there are some – who don’t go to our School? How are they included when they don’t have schoolfriends at Church? And then comes secondary school and the teenage years, and the palpable drift away from St Peter’s. What do we offer that generation – how do we give them a place where it is safe to question while still belonging? These are just a few questions, but there are others. We need to look at the effectiveness of the Family Eucharist at forming disciples as it is presently constituted; at how we offer Baptism and Confirmation; and, crucially, at how we help worn-out parents to grow not just as parents but as…what else, but disciples of Jesus Christ. I want St Peter’s to become a place where our formation of the young is, quite simply, excellent. I see no reason why we should settle for anything less.
The third priority is the interface between our discipleship and the transformation of the world. We offer opportunities for worship, prayer, study and service. We believe that faithfulness to those disciplines will change us and increase in us the Christlike virtues of trust, hope, love and forgiveness. But how do we then do something real with them? On the Day of Pentecost the apostles were quite literally set aflame by the Holy Spirit, but they didn’t keep it to themselves. Only three hundred years later the mighty Roman Empire had fallen to the disciples of Jesus Christ. How do we convert our personal faith into energy for change? How do we exchange religion for the building of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of mercy, justice and peace? Members of the former PCC are aware that the clergy have some ideas about this, based upon the work we did together at the PCC Day Conference, and upon our further work with the theologian Ann Morisy. The new PCC will debate our ideas further and will act upon the fruits of the debate.
Forming disciples: transforming the world. Four years of working with you, four years of receiving great kindness from many of you, four years of discipleship here has grown my confidence that this is what we need to be about and convinced me of the three key areas in which we need to act. I am looking forward to Lent, I am looking forward to Easter (and to seeing all of you – all of you here at 5.30 on Easter morning), I am looking forward to 2012, I am looking forward to the next five years, and I feel full of energy and hope. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of continuing to serve this Parish.
The Vicar’s Report to the Annual Parochial Church Meeting
Wednesday 2 March 2011
I love going to the gym. I can gaze at those around me with envy or contempt. I can ignore everything else that’s going on and plug myself into my own private soundtrack. And I can leave feeling enormously superior to those who haven’t made the effort.
All in all it’s a bit like going to Church. And yet the fact is that four and a half million adults in the United Kingdom belong to a gym. And while only just over a quarter of them make regular use of their membership, that still probably means that more people go to the gym each week than worship in a parish Church of the Church of England.
Why is that? There are all sorts of reasons, of course, but my guess is that chief among them is that people go to the gym for a purpose and if they are moderately persistent they achieve that purpose. The purpose of the gym is to get you fit. At the gym you are given your individual programme, and you are promised that if you follow it you will achieve the purpose. Contrast that with us. The purpose of Church is…well, it has a variety of purposes: glorifying God; building his Kingdom; making us into better people, into a better people. Lots of purposes are difficult to sell in the age of the gym. And if there are lots of purposes then it’s hard to see which of the programmes we offer serves which of the purposes. Does the May Fair glorify God? Does the baptism of infants create a fairer world? And if our programmes don’t appear to fit our purposes then perhaps it’s unsurprising that the various promises that the Church makes - of forgiveness, of redemption, of a more virtuous life – probably seem pretty remote from the weekly round of hymn-singing and of constantly being asked to give to this and volunteer for that.
Now I’m certainly not an advocate of muscular Christianity of the ‘Real Men Love Jesus’ variety and I see much to dislike about the cult of the gym, which breeds narcissistic obsession with an ideal of perfection. But I also think that it poses us a challenge. Purpose; programme; and promise are vital for the gym. Might they also be vital for us?
I believe there is a double purpose to which God is calling St Peter’s Eaton Square. It is the formation of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of God’s world.
“We’ll get there together” says LA Fitness; “Let’s start your journey” says Fitness First. “Forming disciples:” says St Peter’s Eaton Square, “transforming the world”. Come here, worship here, belong here, and you will be formed as a disciple; come here, worship here belong here, and your discipleship will transform the world. We promise.
Why have I come to believe that formation is our key purpose? Because it is the sum of all that we do here. We offer worship to God, whether it’s the glory of the Sung Eucharist or the flickering candle-lights of Taize. We pray, whether it’s in the monthly Silent Hour or in the clamour of the Family Eucharist. We study, whether it’s in the upper room of the Phoenix or on a sparsely-attended morning in Lent. We serve, whether it’s in the busy-ness of the May Fair or in our nascent link to Angola. Worship, prayer, study and service are the disciplines of disciples. Through them we are being formed as disciples of Jesus Christ.
Why ‘disciples’ – why are we not forming ‘Christians’? It’s just that a Christian sounds like a finished product, while a disciple is a traveller. We’re not finished products, we’re travellers. The journey before us is a long one, and there’s a lot of learning we need to do. But if we journey together, and if our journey follows Jesus Christ then it will be a journey into truth and fullness of life.
Why is our discipleship for the world’s transformation? Is it not for its own sake? The answer is no, it’s not, because this is not a gym. We’re not about the body beautiful and we’re not about the soul beautiful either. William Temple once remarked that the Church is the only organization that exists for the benefit of non-members. We exist to build the Kingdom of God and as we are formed in our discipleship, as we grow in love, forgiveness, trust and hope, we will change the world around us.
And why can we promise that our discipleship will transform the world? Because our discipleship is of one who calls us, one who, as Paul writes to the Thessalonians, is faithful, and he will do this.
So I am as ever deeply grateful to those who have formed my own discipleship in the ten months that have passed since we last met. Chief among these are my ordained colleagues James, Claire and Mark. There are different things I value about each of them: James’s manifest ease with almost every situation, however bizarre or improbable; Mark’s apparently unquenchable energy (he said Yes to chairing the May Fair committee with barely a second’s pause); Claire’s utterly reliable pastoral good sense. But what I value most about them as a group is the quality of the conversation and exchange that we have had over the last few years, and the assurance that together there has been no issue that we have not been able to resolve. Thank you, all three of you. It is a privilege to work alongside you.
I am similarly grateful to our musicians, to Andrew Sackett, to Dan Moult, to April Frederick, to all our superb singers, and above all to our Director of Music, Andrew-John Smith. He would be the first to admit that his administrative skills have not always been 100%. I will be the first to insist that the quality of what he delivers is never less than 500%. His skill is consummate and the care that he brings to what he does here is absolute. If you have not bought his new recording of Max Reger’s music then you should. The music that we hear week in week out has been instrumental is shaping my prayer and thought this year, and we remain exceptionally fortunate in those who make it for us. Thank you all.
Then I want also to thank our office and premises staff. They may think they are doing their jobs. What they are actually doing time and again is forming my discipleship. Let me give you an example. Yesterday Douglas took an early lunch break because the Church was in use in the afternoon. Consequently he did not serve at the lunchtime Eucharist as he usually does. One of the regular members of that congregation rang me in a state of panic. Was Douglas all right? He is so constant in his duties in the sacristy that the person concerned could not believe that he was absent from them. What an example of service. I could give you many others: Olivia, who never finishes work at her prescribed time of 1 pm but remains at her desk into the afternoon; or Susan Redwin, whose attentiveness to the preparation of our figures for audit means that Citroen Wells heave a sigh of relief when our file reaches the top of their pile every year. Thank you all.
And lastly I want to thank those whose time is given freely and sacrificially: those who devote hours to service as Foundation school governors; those who help out in the office; those who launder and iron; those who garden and cook. The Parish could not thrive as it does without you, and for the example you give me of faithful discipleship I am very grateful. Thank you.
The year behind us can be characterized by steady growth and development on the one hand, as we approach the end of our current Mission Action Plan, and radical change on the other.
We have seen steady growth and development in our worship, teaching and service. The revision of our Sunday liturgy and ceremonial has largely been completed and innovations such as the Taize service and the Silent Hour have been established. The occasional Parish Eucharist has gained an unassailable place in the calendar, and we have worked successfully to make it cohere better. Of particular note was the Advent Carol Service, which opened what we observed as the Season of Exile. The Choir’s singing of the Spirituals from A Child of our Time will never be forgotten by those who heard it. The Life Course has found its feet and found a home at the Phoenix; we ran another liturgical teaching series, this time on the songs of the Eucharist, and this time at 11.15 as well as at 10 o’clock; we invited a range of speakers to address us in Lent and in Advent. Our long hoped-for Angola link received a setback when we discovered that the Angolan Government had built a school where we had planned to. However it also received a huge boost when a member of our congregation, Richard Wildash, was appointed Her Majesty’s ambassador to Angola. He has linked us firmly with the Diocese of Angola and with Save the Children in Angola, and the prospect of our funding an Early Childhood Development Centre suddenly seems very realistic.
The radical change that has taken place has been in this building. As I indicated would happen at last year’s Annual Meeting, work took place last summer to divide the Crypt into two lettable units. The work was not without its difficulties and involved us in expense that could not have been foreseen at the outset. In particular, a serious damp problem in the Crypt had to be addressed, and the introduction of tenants revealed that the fire alarm and detection system throughout the building was seriously inadequate for its purpose. With our history that plainly needed to be addressed. So although these issues were not foreseen they would both have had to be dealt with at some point, and dealt with they have been. The Crypt is now let to the Knightsbridge Kindergarten and to Bodydoctor Fitness. The Bodydoctor has refurbished his unit to a very high specification, far beyond anything we could have spent ourselves, as the PCC saw at their last meeting, and the rent that we will receive from our tenants will enable us to plan for the future more securely. I cannot leave the subject of the building works without expressing one more word of thanks, to Peter Wilde, Andrew Elder, and Stefan Turnbull. They are a trinity of the most modest men I have ever met, and they will hate this, but they really are the most significant trinity any Parish has ever had, with the obvious exception of the Holy one. Their expertise and their care has driven this project and they are owed a huge debt of thanks.
At last year’s meeting I also spoke of the impending changes to the Charities associated with the Parish: the creation of the new Pimlico St Peter Trust, and the dissolution into it of the St Peter’s Eaton Square Charity and the Vicarage Charity. The decisive changes are still, I regret, impending. The new Trust has been constituted: its Trustees are the Vicar, Caroline Downey and James Lawson and Hilary Schofield – Bob Enslow has resigned because of his increased commitments overseas, and the other Trustees have yet to meet to appoint his replacement. However it has not been able to begin work because of the difficulties we have encountered in transferring the assets of the existing Charities to the new Trust. Banks seem depressingly unwilling to accept my claim that I am the Vicar of St Peter’s Eaton Square or that I or anyone else has any authority to move or change anything. Archbishop Rowan must feel like this every morning, and I thank God that I’m dealing with RBS and NatWest rather than the Anglican Communion. On this front – and only on this front – it has been a rather frustrating year, but there are at last signs of movement, and I am confident that by Easter the new Trust will be fully operational, minding our historic assets and using them to support our mission.
Next year we will celebrate the 20th Anniversary of the Church’s re-consecration. The Bishop of London will be here for the Dedication Festival and we will launch a new Mission Action Plan for the next five years. Discerning its content will be the PCC’s principal task in the next twelve months.
Our purpose is the formation of disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of Jesus Christ’s world. But a gym offers its members programmes to ensure the delivery of its purpose, and it is to the programmes that we offer that we must attend. Without pre-empting the discussion that the PCC will have overnight in Canterbury at the end of June I envisage three priorities.
The first priority (and these are not in any order) is our building. The gym is frequently an attractive space that its members want to be in – witness the Bodydoctor’s expenditure on our Crypt. Our building is similarly a great asset in achieving our purpose. It must be properly maintained; it must contain a sacred space that is the best that we can afford; it must be accessible to all, including those who come in wheelchairs or pushing buggies; it must proclaim its purpose effectively and tastefully; and it must contain different spaces in which different communities can grow and flourish. We need to set out a timed and costed plan for the maintenance of the building (including the work required by the last Quinquennial Report); for the refurbishment of the existing public spaces; and for the development of the Welcome Room and of the southern end of this floor. We need also to consider how we might spend the money raised by the May Fair and the 2012 Appeal to enhance the sacred space downstairs.
The second priority is our children and young people. The formation of disciples of Jesus Christ does not begin at adulthood. It begins in the pre-school years. The stories tiny children are told have a powerful impact on them for the rest of their lives. Are we telling the stories in the best way we can? Then come the school years. We have a thriving Primary School with a Headteacher dedicated to the link with Church. But what do we offer school-age children on Sunday mornings? Does a member of the Butterflies need the same as a member of Year 5? And what of those children – and there are some – who don’t go to our School? How are they included when they don’t have schoolfriends at Church? And then comes secondary school and the teenage years, and the palpable drift away from St Peter’s. What do we offer that generation – how do we give them a place where it is safe to question while still belonging? These are just a few questions, but there are others. We need to look at the effectiveness of the Family Eucharist at forming disciples as it is presently constituted; at how we offer Baptism and Confirmation; and, crucially, at how we help worn-out parents to grow not just as parents but as…what else, but disciples of Jesus Christ. I want St Peter’s to become a place where our formation of the young is, quite simply, excellent. I see no reason why we should settle for anything less.
The third priority is the interface between our discipleship and the transformation of the world. We offer opportunities for worship, prayer, study and service. We believe that faithfulness to those disciplines will change us and increase in us the Christlike virtues of trust, hope, love and forgiveness. But how do we then do something real with them? On the Day of Pentecost the apostles were quite literally set aflame by the Holy Spirit, but they didn’t keep it to themselves. Only three hundred years later the mighty Roman Empire had fallen to the disciples of Jesus Christ. How do we convert our personal faith into energy for change? How do we exchange religion for the building of God’s kingdom, the kingdom of mercy, justice and peace? Members of the former PCC are aware that the clergy have some ideas about this, based upon the work we did together at the PCC Day Conference, and upon our further work with the theologian Ann Morisy. The new PCC will debate our ideas further and will act upon the fruits of the debate.
Forming disciples: transforming the world. Four years of working with you, four years of receiving great kindness from many of you, four years of discipleship here has grown my confidence that this is what we need to be about and convinced me of the three key areas in which we need to act. I am looking forward to Lent, I am looking forward to Easter (and to seeing all of you – all of you here at 5.30 on Easter morning), I am looking forward to 2012, I am looking forward to the next five years, and I feel full of energy and hope. Thank you for allowing me the privilege of continuing to serve this Parish.
Monday, 28 February 2011
Sunday 27 February 2011, 2 before Lent
“Salvation cannot be found in a garage pasty”. I’ll repeat that. “Salvation” the advertising hoardings proclaim “cannot be found in a garage pasty”. And most of us would concur.
“Good food” the hoardings continue “deserves Lurpak”.
It’s a clever campaign. A garage pasty may give a moment’s satisfaction, a mouthful of high-carb, artificially favoured, winter-warming bliss, but the moment will not last. Real enjoyment comes from real cooking, from the time-consuming collation of ingredients and from the careful transformation of those ingredients into the good food that is greater than the sum of its parts. Think about tomorrow, not today, Lurpak is urging. Think about your next meal, not about your next snack. Don’t respond to today’s craving for junk-food; set your mind on tomorrow’s banquet.
The Gospels are silent as to whether Jesus ever ate a garage pasty, and I don’t want to claim him as a mouthpiece for Ginsters. But his teaching, in the passage from the Sermon on the Mount that we have heard, challenges the ethos that Lurpak is trying to press on us. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own” he says. “Today’s trouble is enough for today”. Or, don’t let your Stilton ripen, don’t wait for your Claret mature and don’t put your chicken in to a marinade. No. Eat garage pasties.
Well, as I’ve already said, for once most of us would concur with the advertiser, and not just in matters nutritional. We try to educate our children away from short-termism in their diets. We dread them attempting to survive on Pot Noodle and frozen pizza. And we similarly try to think long-term for ourselves, managing our futures as we might manage an orgy of gastronomy. Our mortgages mean that one day we will be property-owners; our pension plans mean that one day we will not have to work; our insurance policies mean that one day when the spectre of ill-health looms large it will not intimidate us. So we worry about tomorrow. In fact most of us could worry for England. So what might it mean to live differently, to live as Jesus teaches – to live on, if not garage pasties (after all this is SW1) then perhaps a diet of quickly-prepared omelettes.
There is possibly a worked example within our reach, in the streets of Tripoli and Ben Ghazi. There the hoardings do not proclaim salvation in the shape of butter, but salvation through the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. His image still stares out across the land he has tyrannized for forty years, but it has been defaced and disfigured by protestors. There is a sense abroad that, after the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, his hour too has come. And possibly his hour would have come a great deal sooner, as would have the hour of Mubarak and the hour of Ben Ali if only the world had worried a little less about tomorrow and a little more about today. For to varying degrees we have been prepared to tolerate their regimes on the basis that our strategic and petropolitical interests have been served by the stability that they have afforded. We have ignored the internal repression that has characterized their rule; we have been deaf to their people’s clamour for reform; and we have swallowed our distaste for a form of governance that we would not be prepared to live under ourselves. We have worried about tomorrow, and as long as the troubles of today have not been our troubles of today, then they have not troubled us.
The teaching of Jesus is at odds with the realpolitik of hugging dictators. Why? Why does Jesus not encourage us to think of the promises of tomorrow and to overlook the inconveniences of today? Because today, he says, we are to “strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness”. Not tomorrow and not the day after, but today. Today we can choose God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. Today we can remember those to whom God’s kingdom belongs: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted. Today we can remember the righteousness of God, the righteousness that consists not in following God’s rules but in following God’s Son. Not tomorrow. Today is our opportunity. Today.
This is a dangerous sermon to have preached. I am not suggesting that you rip up your wills, drink your cellars and cash in all your endowments. But I am suggesting that the teaching of Jesus is that we all learn a little more recklessness and a little less caution; that we all live with a little more trust and a little less fear; that comfort and convenience can wait and that mercy, justice and peace cannot.
I am suggesting that now and then – God forbid – salvation may indeed lie in a garage pasty. Amen.
“Good food” the hoardings continue “deserves Lurpak”.
It’s a clever campaign. A garage pasty may give a moment’s satisfaction, a mouthful of high-carb, artificially favoured, winter-warming bliss, but the moment will not last. Real enjoyment comes from real cooking, from the time-consuming collation of ingredients and from the careful transformation of those ingredients into the good food that is greater than the sum of its parts. Think about tomorrow, not today, Lurpak is urging. Think about your next meal, not about your next snack. Don’t respond to today’s craving for junk-food; set your mind on tomorrow’s banquet.
The Gospels are silent as to whether Jesus ever ate a garage pasty, and I don’t want to claim him as a mouthpiece for Ginsters. But his teaching, in the passage from the Sermon on the Mount that we have heard, challenges the ethos that Lurpak is trying to press on us. “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own” he says. “Today’s trouble is enough for today”. Or, don’t let your Stilton ripen, don’t wait for your Claret mature and don’t put your chicken in to a marinade. No. Eat garage pasties.
Well, as I’ve already said, for once most of us would concur with the advertiser, and not just in matters nutritional. We try to educate our children away from short-termism in their diets. We dread them attempting to survive on Pot Noodle and frozen pizza. And we similarly try to think long-term for ourselves, managing our futures as we might manage an orgy of gastronomy. Our mortgages mean that one day we will be property-owners; our pension plans mean that one day we will not have to work; our insurance policies mean that one day when the spectre of ill-health looms large it will not intimidate us. So we worry about tomorrow. In fact most of us could worry for England. So what might it mean to live differently, to live as Jesus teaches – to live on, if not garage pasties (after all this is SW1) then perhaps a diet of quickly-prepared omelettes.
There is possibly a worked example within our reach, in the streets of Tripoli and Ben Ghazi. There the hoardings do not proclaim salvation in the shape of butter, but salvation through the overthrow of Colonel Gaddafi. His image still stares out across the land he has tyrannized for forty years, but it has been defaced and disfigured by protestors. There is a sense abroad that, after the revolts in Egypt and Tunisia, his hour too has come. And possibly his hour would have come a great deal sooner, as would have the hour of Mubarak and the hour of Ben Ali if only the world had worried a little less about tomorrow and a little more about today. For to varying degrees we have been prepared to tolerate their regimes on the basis that our strategic and petropolitical interests have been served by the stability that they have afforded. We have ignored the internal repression that has characterized their rule; we have been deaf to their people’s clamour for reform; and we have swallowed our distaste for a form of governance that we would not be prepared to live under ourselves. We have worried about tomorrow, and as long as the troubles of today have not been our troubles of today, then they have not troubled us.
The teaching of Jesus is at odds with the realpolitik of hugging dictators. Why? Why does Jesus not encourage us to think of the promises of tomorrow and to overlook the inconveniences of today? Because today, he says, we are to “strive for the kingdom of God and his righteousness”. Not tomorrow and not the day after, but today. Today we can choose God’s kingdom and God’s righteousness. Today we can remember those to whom God’s kingdom belongs: the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers and the persecuted. Today we can remember the righteousness of God, the righteousness that consists not in following God’s rules but in following God’s Son. Not tomorrow. Today is our opportunity. Today.
This is a dangerous sermon to have preached. I am not suggesting that you rip up your wills, drink your cellars and cash in all your endowments. But I am suggesting that the teaching of Jesus is that we all learn a little more recklessness and a little less caution; that we all live with a little more trust and a little less fear; that comfort and convenience can wait and that mercy, justice and peace cannot.
I am suggesting that now and then – God forbid – salvation may indeed lie in a garage pasty. Amen.
Monday, 17 January 2011
Sunday 16 January 2011, Second of Epiphany
I belong to only the third generation of my family to bear my surname. My great-grandfather was called Michael Hadjipappas. He was a priest of the Orthodox Church, whose village was Neo Khorio, in south-western Cyprus. My grandfather, Savvas, took the name Papadopulos, because it means ‘son of a priest’. I used to remind my own son of this meaning whenever he complained about having a long name. At least, I would say, his describes who he is. That’s probably more than can be said for most of the Stevensons and Clarksons he comes across.
This coherence between nomenclature and identity is rare. Had I never been ordained the name Papadopulos would have said as little about my son as it does about me. I am the son of an engineer (and that, translated into Greek, would probably be still longer and even more unpronounceable). In Great Britain in 2011 we do not expect our names to interpret us to the world. We still expect them to identify us (I am Nicholas Papadopulos, not Mark Lowther). But we no longer inhabit the brightly coloured world of Happy Families, buying our bread from Mr Bun the Baker and asking the time of Mr Constable the Policeman, and our names are not revelatory in the way they once were.
It is true that a certain revelatory quality is sometimes discovered accidentally and applied retrospectively, and when it is it is of immeasurable value to classroom jokers and to tabloid satirists. After the Barclays boss Bob Diamond gave evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee this week the sketch writers were delighted that he had lived up to his name: highly polished and utterly unbreakable. But for most of us, most of the time, our names reveal more about those who have conferred them on us than they do about us.
We may be named after a virtue (easier for girls than for boys), revealing our parents’ aspirations for us. We may be named after a beloved relative, revealing their familial preferences, or after an idol, revealing their cultural preferences. Our names may be a coalition, Vincent David, say, revealing a hard-won truce between parents of different political complexions, or they may commemorate a particular moment in history (I have one friend who named his unfortunate firstborn Halebopp, a folie de grandeur if ever there was). Kylie may grow up to sing like a crow, Rex may mature into the least regal man on earth, and Hope may be a whining nuisance, but their names tell us what their parents once dreamt of.
So can our names ever say anything of value about us?
Today’s Gospel suggests that they can, but that the names that can are names we are yet to discover for ourselves. They are names conferred not by our parents or by our contemporaries, or by ourselves. They are conferred by God. What they have in common with our own names is that they reveal something about the one who confers them – about God. But what they do not have in common with our own names is that what is thus revealed is not transient fashion or unlikely ambition. What is revealed is the identity that God imagines and intends for each of us.
In today’s Gospel two names are conferred, one on Jesus, and one on Simon brother of Andrew. Jesus already has a name, of course, but the words which introduce him to the Gospel reader and thus to the world are words that confer a new name, the inspired words of John the Baptist, ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. Like any such words they reveal the intentions of the one who confers. But the one who confers is not John, playfully inventing a new nickname for his cousin. The one who confers is God the Father, speaking through his prophet, and wanting the reader and the world to understand that Jesus of Nazareth is also Jesus the Lamb, the Lamb of God. He is the lamb who will be sacrificed in order that God’s people may be free. Just as the lamb’s blood smeared on the doorposts saved the children of Israel from God’s wrath and guaranteed them a place among the redeemed, so the blood of Jesus will save God’s people and seal God’s covenant with his people. ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. The mark of the Father is upon the Son. God gives Jesus a name which reveals not God’s preferences or his prejudices but the whole of his Son’s eternal destiny.
The weeks ahead of us in the liturgical year will recall us to the faithfulness with which Jesus lives out this destiny. Simon brother of Andrew, on the other hand, for a long time looks like a much less worthy recipient of his new name. ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’. His old name discloses his parents’ preferences; it identifies him and locates him within his family. His new name discloses his destiny, just as Jesus’s discloses his. ‘Simon’ has been the name of a small boy and a young man, one who has laughed and wept, been praised and admonished, has learned his trade and courted his wife. ‘Simon son of John’ is known to all Capernaum. Cephas, the Rock, is known only to God. Simon is given a name which reveals his foundational role in God’s new order, the name by which he is remembered still.
Last week the Pope gave an address which, despite the media reports, was not concerned chiefly with attacking the Beckhams’ choice of names for their sons. In it he called a child’s Christian, Baptismal name an indelible seal. It is. It identifies us with the tradition. But the Pope also said that Baptism was the beginning of a journey of faith. It is. It is the beginning of a quest for that other name, that name known only to God, that name by which we are known to God. Our Christian names tell us who we are. Our Baptism calls us to what we might be. Amen.
This coherence between nomenclature and identity is rare. Had I never been ordained the name Papadopulos would have said as little about my son as it does about me. I am the son of an engineer (and that, translated into Greek, would probably be still longer and even more unpronounceable). In Great Britain in 2011 we do not expect our names to interpret us to the world. We still expect them to identify us (I am Nicholas Papadopulos, not Mark Lowther). But we no longer inhabit the brightly coloured world of Happy Families, buying our bread from Mr Bun the Baker and asking the time of Mr Constable the Policeman, and our names are not revelatory in the way they once were.
It is true that a certain revelatory quality is sometimes discovered accidentally and applied retrospectively, and when it is it is of immeasurable value to classroom jokers and to tabloid satirists. After the Barclays boss Bob Diamond gave evidence to a Parliamentary Select Committee this week the sketch writers were delighted that he had lived up to his name: highly polished and utterly unbreakable. But for most of us, most of the time, our names reveal more about those who have conferred them on us than they do about us.
We may be named after a virtue (easier for girls than for boys), revealing our parents’ aspirations for us. We may be named after a beloved relative, revealing their familial preferences, or after an idol, revealing their cultural preferences. Our names may be a coalition, Vincent David, say, revealing a hard-won truce between parents of different political complexions, or they may commemorate a particular moment in history (I have one friend who named his unfortunate firstborn Halebopp, a folie de grandeur if ever there was). Kylie may grow up to sing like a crow, Rex may mature into the least regal man on earth, and Hope may be a whining nuisance, but their names tell us what their parents once dreamt of.
So can our names ever say anything of value about us?
Today’s Gospel suggests that they can, but that the names that can are names we are yet to discover for ourselves. They are names conferred not by our parents or by our contemporaries, or by ourselves. They are conferred by God. What they have in common with our own names is that they reveal something about the one who confers them – about God. But what they do not have in common with our own names is that what is thus revealed is not transient fashion or unlikely ambition. What is revealed is the identity that God imagines and intends for each of us.
In today’s Gospel two names are conferred, one on Jesus, and one on Simon brother of Andrew. Jesus already has a name, of course, but the words which introduce him to the Gospel reader and thus to the world are words that confer a new name, the inspired words of John the Baptist, ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. Like any such words they reveal the intentions of the one who confers. But the one who confers is not John, playfully inventing a new nickname for his cousin. The one who confers is God the Father, speaking through his prophet, and wanting the reader and the world to understand that Jesus of Nazareth is also Jesus the Lamb, the Lamb of God. He is the lamb who will be sacrificed in order that God’s people may be free. Just as the lamb’s blood smeared on the doorposts saved the children of Israel from God’s wrath and guaranteed them a place among the redeemed, so the blood of Jesus will save God’s people and seal God’s covenant with his people. ‘Here is the Lamb of God’. The mark of the Father is upon the Son. God gives Jesus a name which reveals not God’s preferences or his prejudices but the whole of his Son’s eternal destiny.
The weeks ahead of us in the liturgical year will recall us to the faithfulness with which Jesus lives out this destiny. Simon brother of Andrew, on the other hand, for a long time looks like a much less worthy recipient of his new name. ‘You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas’. His old name discloses his parents’ preferences; it identifies him and locates him within his family. His new name discloses his destiny, just as Jesus’s discloses his. ‘Simon’ has been the name of a small boy and a young man, one who has laughed and wept, been praised and admonished, has learned his trade and courted his wife. ‘Simon son of John’ is known to all Capernaum. Cephas, the Rock, is known only to God. Simon is given a name which reveals his foundational role in God’s new order, the name by which he is remembered still.
Last week the Pope gave an address which, despite the media reports, was not concerned chiefly with attacking the Beckhams’ choice of names for their sons. In it he called a child’s Christian, Baptismal name an indelible seal. It is. It identifies us with the tradition. But the Pope also said that Baptism was the beginning of a journey of faith. It is. It is the beginning of a quest for that other name, that name known only to God, that name by which we are known to God. Our Christian names tell us who we are. Our Baptism calls us to what we might be. Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)