‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people’
Generations of praying Christians have begun the day to the words of the Benedictus. They are immediately reminiscent of morning sunlight playing upon Gothic arches, of Choral Mattins at eleven o’clock, and of sherry before lunch.
Yet is the Benedictus an appropriate text for Christian prayer? Our familiarity with the words, and the beauty of the music to which they are set has stopped up our ears to its irony and to its authentic character as a song lamenting an opportunity missed, a dream shattered, and a moment wasted for ever.
The Benedictus is the spontaneous response of Zechariah to the birth of his son John, who will become the Baptist. In his birth, and in the imminent birth of John’s kinsman Jesus, Zechariah discerns the mighty hand of God, triumphantly fulfilling the promises faithfully spoken by the prophets since the dawn of time. In these two births Zechariah perceives God’s threefold action.
Zechariah the elderly Jew perceives God acting to free his chosen people. The song makes two references to Israel’s enemies and one to those that hate Israel. Zechariah looks back upon the long history of his people’s oppression at than hands of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Seleucids and the Romans. He looks back to the covenant made with Abraham. And he looks forward to Israel’s deliverance and salvation
Zechariah the priest of the Temple perceives God acting to restore Israel’s worship. Deliverance from her enemies means that Israel will be free to serve her God without fear, ‘serve’ here having a particular cultic resonance. Zechariah looks back on his people’s constant longing to live securely in their land, serving faithfully the God who has given it to them. And he looks forward to that longing’s imminent satisfaction.
Zechariah the restored penitent perceives God acting to forgive his people. When the angel tells Zechariah that his wife is to bear him a son he cannot believe it. Because of his unbelief he is struck dumb and his speech is only restored when in faithfulness to the angel’s message he names his son John. Zechariah looks back upon the long history of Israel’s doubts, betrayals and apostasies. And he looks forward to a new era of fidelity in which God’s forgiveness will descend everlastingly upon his people.
Yet within decades of the song’s utterance and within decades of the crucifixion the Judaea known to Zechariah, to John the Baptist and to Jesus of Nazareth had changed beyond recognition and had changed for ever. In the year 70 of the Common Era Roman forces overcame Jerusalem. They razed it to the ground and burned the Temple. Never again was the City of David the national capital of the people of David. Never again was sacrifice offered on the Temple mount. The consequences were incalculable.
And it was amidst these consequences and in this context that Luke wrote his Gospel. Among the material that is unique to Luke are the three canticles of the first two chapters, Mary’s Magnificat, Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis, and Zechariah’s Benedictus. When Luke’s audience first heard Zechariah’s words they must have grimaced. They knew that God’s people had not been freed – that the enemies of God’s people had triumphed. They knew that God’s worship had not been restored – that the Temple was a smoking ruin. They knew that God’s forgiveness had not descended – that the covenant sealed by the gift of the land had been rent asunder. They must have heard Zechariah’s words as irony. The dayspring from on high had visited God’s people, and God’s people had nailed the dayspring to a cross. Zechariah’s song laments an opportunity missed, a dream shattered, and a moment wasted for ever.
So how can we pray this lament?
In doing so we take the three promises that Zechariah discerned and make them our own. Yet we are not besieged by Rome; we are not alienated from the Temple; we have not seen our covenant with our God turn to dust and ashes.
The Benedictus, rooted as it is in the reality of Israel’s national tragedy, compels us to acknowledge that Scripture is always a distant land. It recalls us to the discipline of Biblical study. Zechariah’s words come down to us not Tardis-like, heat-sealed and shrink-wrapped, secure against the vagaries of time and circumstance. They come down to us as the product of a far-off age, an age that we cannot hope to recapture. When we read Zechariah’s words we must consider that distance; we must consider the wisdom of the church; and we must pray that the Holy Spirit will speak, and bring these ancient words to life.
When we do so we may discover that our enemies are more likely to have subtle advertising strategies than all-conquering siege-engines. Our enemies play upon our fear and our vanity, upon our insecurity and our pride. Our return to worship is more likely to involve our internal disposition rather than our physical presence in a sacred space. We are here, after all, but our day to day lived experience may not be the day to day lived experience of men and women set free to serve God without fear. And our forgiveness, or our acceptance of our forgiveness, will only be visible and plausible when we are ready to forgive others as generously as we know ourselves to have been forgiven.
Free, worshipping, forgiven: three adjectives for Zechariah’s descendants, three adjectives for the Advent people of God who look for their Lord’s return.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Monday, 9 November 2009
Remembrance Sunday 2009
The Regimental Museum of the South Wales Borderers in Brecon is a neglected treasure trove of military history. Every inch of its four rooms is filled with the artefacts of an illustrious past: weaponry, insignia, and medals. In pride of place stand the Victoria Crosses won by the regiment, including six of the seven won at Rorke’s Drift on 22 January 1879.
The faces of the men who were decorated for their valour that day stare out from small gilt frames. They are separated from the viewer by a glass case, but not only by a glass case. They are also separated by the coloured tinting of Victorian photography, strange to citizens of the digital era. They are separated by the starched formality of the uniforms that they wear and by the style in which their hair and beards are cut. When we look at Harry Hook’s portrait we see not the recognizable and roguish hero of Cy Endfield’s 1964 film Zulu, but a man from another age. He is inaccessible to us; his life is inaccessible to us. It is impossible to re-enter his world imaginatively, to sense it, understand it and sympathize with it.
Imaginative re-entry characterizes the remembrance that has been customary at this time of year since the end of the Great War. Consciously or unconsciously we have been encouraged to re-enter and re-live the horror of the Western Front. Our re-entry has been eased by the poetry of Wilfred Owen and by grainy newsreel footage of the Somme. But it has been eased above all by the presence at our war memorials of the veterans of the First World War. We have seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears and stood shoulder to shoulder in our market squares with the men who fought at Passchendaele and Jutland. Their survival has kept their great struggle from the clutches of the museum’s dusty shelves.
Yet that era is now past. In the last twelve months the last three British survivors of the conflict that gave birth to Remebrancetide have died, and the voice of that generation has fallen silent. For those growing up now, and for those yet unborn, Harry Patch will be as Harry Hook is to us, a stranger from that distant land called the past. Imaginative re-entry into the slime and squalor of the trenches will become more and more difficult. What then will happen to remembrance? How will we remember a time with which we have no living link?
When imaginative re-entry is no longer possible solemn recollection is. Solemn recollection is the deliberate calling to mind of events that our corporate consciousness might prefer to forget. Solemn recollection is our regular reminding ourselves that, in the words of the Kohima Epitaph, our today has been won at the cost of others’ tomorrow. It is the painstaking chronicling of their sacrifice even when they can no longer prompt us. It is the acknowledgement that such sacrifice continues in the heat of Helmand and in too many other theatres of conflict. It is the perpetual recognition that war, all war, is an abomination. Solemn recollection is a national task which should claim the allegiance of people of all faiths and of no faith. The vocation of Christians within the national task is to enable this solemn recollection, providing sacred space and sacred language for the purpose. It is a vocation which those who treat our Church’s establishment in cavalier fashion would do well to remember.
Yet the Christian contribution to Remembrance Sunday should not be limited to space and language. It should not even be limited to prayer for the victims of war and ethical reflection on the morality of war. The Church’s most profound contribution is a remembrance which is neither imaginative re-entering nor solemn recollection. This is the remembrance that is celebrated daily within these walls, the remembrance that Christ commended to his friends. We may be able to enter the scene created by Leonardo da Vinci, so firmly is it imprinted on the Western heart, but we cannot imaginatively re-enter the upper room. And although the solemn recollection of the Last Supper plays a part in Eucharistic celebration such celebration does not end with recollection.
For here we remember Christ; that is, we re-member Christ. We know what it means to dismember. It is, after all, the achievement of war to dismember communities, to dismember families, to dismember men and women, God’s unique and precious creation. We too easily overlook what it means to re-member. It means to make whole again, to restore again, to bring into the present again. Here we re-member Christ. In broken bread and wine outpoured the Holy Spirit makes Christ present, as real for us as he was for the company with who he reclined around the table.
And if we are in the presence of Christ then time and space mean nothing. If we are in the presence of Christ then we are in the presence of all who are in the presence of Christ. We are in the presence of the fallen, of all the victims of the folly and sin of war. We gather with Harry Hook, hero of Rorke’s Drift, with Harry Patch, the last fighting Tommy, and with Phillip Scott, killed in Sangin on Thursday last week.
Because Christ is we know that they are; because Christ is we know that love ultimately disarms violence; because Christ is we know that beyond death there is life, that beyond darkness there is light, that beyond despair there is hope. Ours is to remember them, and to remember this broken and suffering world. Amen.
The faces of the men who were decorated for their valour that day stare out from small gilt frames. They are separated from the viewer by a glass case, but not only by a glass case. They are also separated by the coloured tinting of Victorian photography, strange to citizens of the digital era. They are separated by the starched formality of the uniforms that they wear and by the style in which their hair and beards are cut. When we look at Harry Hook’s portrait we see not the recognizable and roguish hero of Cy Endfield’s 1964 film Zulu, but a man from another age. He is inaccessible to us; his life is inaccessible to us. It is impossible to re-enter his world imaginatively, to sense it, understand it and sympathize with it.
Imaginative re-entry characterizes the remembrance that has been customary at this time of year since the end of the Great War. Consciously or unconsciously we have been encouraged to re-enter and re-live the horror of the Western Front. Our re-entry has been eased by the poetry of Wilfred Owen and by grainy newsreel footage of the Somme. But it has been eased above all by the presence at our war memorials of the veterans of the First World War. We have seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears and stood shoulder to shoulder in our market squares with the men who fought at Passchendaele and Jutland. Their survival has kept their great struggle from the clutches of the museum’s dusty shelves.
Yet that era is now past. In the last twelve months the last three British survivors of the conflict that gave birth to Remebrancetide have died, and the voice of that generation has fallen silent. For those growing up now, and for those yet unborn, Harry Patch will be as Harry Hook is to us, a stranger from that distant land called the past. Imaginative re-entry into the slime and squalor of the trenches will become more and more difficult. What then will happen to remembrance? How will we remember a time with which we have no living link?
When imaginative re-entry is no longer possible solemn recollection is. Solemn recollection is the deliberate calling to mind of events that our corporate consciousness might prefer to forget. Solemn recollection is our regular reminding ourselves that, in the words of the Kohima Epitaph, our today has been won at the cost of others’ tomorrow. It is the painstaking chronicling of their sacrifice even when they can no longer prompt us. It is the acknowledgement that such sacrifice continues in the heat of Helmand and in too many other theatres of conflict. It is the perpetual recognition that war, all war, is an abomination. Solemn recollection is a national task which should claim the allegiance of people of all faiths and of no faith. The vocation of Christians within the national task is to enable this solemn recollection, providing sacred space and sacred language for the purpose. It is a vocation which those who treat our Church’s establishment in cavalier fashion would do well to remember.
Yet the Christian contribution to Remembrance Sunday should not be limited to space and language. It should not even be limited to prayer for the victims of war and ethical reflection on the morality of war. The Church’s most profound contribution is a remembrance which is neither imaginative re-entering nor solemn recollection. This is the remembrance that is celebrated daily within these walls, the remembrance that Christ commended to his friends. We may be able to enter the scene created by Leonardo da Vinci, so firmly is it imprinted on the Western heart, but we cannot imaginatively re-enter the upper room. And although the solemn recollection of the Last Supper plays a part in Eucharistic celebration such celebration does not end with recollection.
For here we remember Christ; that is, we re-member Christ. We know what it means to dismember. It is, after all, the achievement of war to dismember communities, to dismember families, to dismember men and women, God’s unique and precious creation. We too easily overlook what it means to re-member. It means to make whole again, to restore again, to bring into the present again. Here we re-member Christ. In broken bread and wine outpoured the Holy Spirit makes Christ present, as real for us as he was for the company with who he reclined around the table.
And if we are in the presence of Christ then time and space mean nothing. If we are in the presence of Christ then we are in the presence of all who are in the presence of Christ. We are in the presence of the fallen, of all the victims of the folly and sin of war. We gather with Harry Hook, hero of Rorke’s Drift, with Harry Patch, the last fighting Tommy, and with Phillip Scott, killed in Sangin on Thursday last week.
Because Christ is we know that they are; because Christ is we know that love ultimately disarms violence; because Christ is we know that beyond death there is life, that beyond darkness there is light, that beyond despair there is hope. Ours is to remember them, and to remember this broken and suffering world. Amen.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Sunday 6 September 2009, Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
‘In the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, the black man is my equal and the equal of every living man’.
In her magisterial study of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius, Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes racism as ‘deeply embedded’ in mid-nineteenth century America. Lincoln voiced the egalitarian sentiments with which I began as he campaigned for a seat in the United States Senate in 1858, and he detested slavery. But he believed in white supremacy. The black man in America was not the equal of the white man in America. The black man was not capable of assimilation into American life.
Lincoln was a leader, an orator and a reformer of remarkable stature. Yet he held views that all of us find abhorrent. He was a creature of his time as well as being a creator of his time.
Much scholarly sweat has been expended on the first words spoken by Jesus to the Syrophoenician woman. It is easy to see why. A mother bows down at his feet and begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ‘Let the children be fed first,’ says Jesus ‘for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’. No amount of scholarly sweat can diminish the offensive nature of those words. The food of his ministry is for the children of God; it is for Jesus’s own people; it is for the Jews. It is not for the people who the Jews frequently referred to as dogs; it is not for the Gentiles.
It has been suggested that Jesus was teasing the woman, that the word he used was a diminutive term of endearment, that it was said while a smile played across his lips. Those suggestions are born of a determination that the Redeemer of the World cannot possibly have uttered anything hurtful. That determination, however well-meaning, is surely misplaced. To picture the face of Jesus is the task of the poet, not the preacher. Jesus belonged to a race which believed itself uniquely chosen by God. God had freed them from bondage, given them a homeland, and driven out other nations before them. God’s purposes were for Israel; God’s prophets called for Israel’s renewal; God’s Messiah would restore Israel’s fortunes. Jesus’s mission, in obedience to God, was to Israel. It was to the children, not to the dogs. Like Lincoln, Jesus was a creature of his time.
The encounter with the Syrophoenician woman recalls us to the transience of human values. Just as Lincoln disliked the notion of black suffrage, Jesus drew a parallel between a desperate mother’s sick child and a despised dog. Abraham Lincoln and Jesus of Nazareth in these instances exemplify that transience, and that transience requires us to re-examine the values we hold. How might we assess what is eternal, and what is not?
The Letter of James makes a unique contribution to the Christian understanding of faith, and it makes it so clearly that Martin Luther was driven to condemn it as ‘a right strawy epistle’. ‘What good is it’ writes James ‘if you say you have faith but do not have works? Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’. Protestations of belief are not enough. They have no cash value; they cannot be assessed or analyzed. The quality of faith can be judged only by the action that it generates. Perhaps the quality of values can be judged only by the action that they generate.
Lincoln’s values may fall short of the standards of twenty-first century liberal thinkers. But Goodwin notes that a black contemporary who had met all the leading abolitionists of the day never felt with any of them, as he did with Lincoln, an ‘entire freedom from popular prejudice against the coloured race’. And the crowning achievement of his political career was the emancipation of the slaves of the United States. The Syrophoenician woman responds to Jesus’s words with faithful boldness. The child is healed; the dog under the table receives its scrap. And in the next miracle that is recorded reveals that the impact of her faith has stretched beyond the region of Tyre. The audience for whom Mark is writing three decades after the crucifixion is not an audience of Jews but of Gentiles, her successors in faith.
Isaiah writes of the actions that will identify the coming of Israel’s God. The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame will leap and the speechless will sing. Water will flow in the wilderness and streams will run in the desert. These are the actions that were prompted by faith in Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, walked across the seas and fed the hungry in the desert, whose Gospel was proclaimed to the ends of the earth. These are the actions that that were prompted by Lincoln’s values, values which prompted him to break the shackles of more than three million Americans and restore them to themselves, values for which he gave his life.
So what actions do our values unleash? What actions does our faith provoke? Do we set the prisoner free or do we drain away the vital water of life? Do we make the speechless shout for joy or do we place unconscionable burdens upon their shoulders?
If the latter then no matter how clear we are today, to the generation which worships here one hundred years hence we will appear ludicrous or downright wicked; if the former then we catch in them the echo of heaven’s eternal music.
In her magisterial study of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius, Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes racism as ‘deeply embedded’ in mid-nineteenth century America. Lincoln voiced the egalitarian sentiments with which I began as he campaigned for a seat in the United States Senate in 1858, and he detested slavery. But he believed in white supremacy. The black man in America was not the equal of the white man in America. The black man was not capable of assimilation into American life.
Lincoln was a leader, an orator and a reformer of remarkable stature. Yet he held views that all of us find abhorrent. He was a creature of his time as well as being a creator of his time.
Much scholarly sweat has been expended on the first words spoken by Jesus to the Syrophoenician woman. It is easy to see why. A mother bows down at his feet and begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ‘Let the children be fed first,’ says Jesus ‘for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’. No amount of scholarly sweat can diminish the offensive nature of those words. The food of his ministry is for the children of God; it is for Jesus’s own people; it is for the Jews. It is not for the people who the Jews frequently referred to as dogs; it is not for the Gentiles.
It has been suggested that Jesus was teasing the woman, that the word he used was a diminutive term of endearment, that it was said while a smile played across his lips. Those suggestions are born of a determination that the Redeemer of the World cannot possibly have uttered anything hurtful. That determination, however well-meaning, is surely misplaced. To picture the face of Jesus is the task of the poet, not the preacher. Jesus belonged to a race which believed itself uniquely chosen by God. God had freed them from bondage, given them a homeland, and driven out other nations before them. God’s purposes were for Israel; God’s prophets called for Israel’s renewal; God’s Messiah would restore Israel’s fortunes. Jesus’s mission, in obedience to God, was to Israel. It was to the children, not to the dogs. Like Lincoln, Jesus was a creature of his time.
The encounter with the Syrophoenician woman recalls us to the transience of human values. Just as Lincoln disliked the notion of black suffrage, Jesus drew a parallel between a desperate mother’s sick child and a despised dog. Abraham Lincoln and Jesus of Nazareth in these instances exemplify that transience, and that transience requires us to re-examine the values we hold. How might we assess what is eternal, and what is not?
The Letter of James makes a unique contribution to the Christian understanding of faith, and it makes it so clearly that Martin Luther was driven to condemn it as ‘a right strawy epistle’. ‘What good is it’ writes James ‘if you say you have faith but do not have works? Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’. Protestations of belief are not enough. They have no cash value; they cannot be assessed or analyzed. The quality of faith can be judged only by the action that it generates. Perhaps the quality of values can be judged only by the action that they generate.
Lincoln’s values may fall short of the standards of twenty-first century liberal thinkers. But Goodwin notes that a black contemporary who had met all the leading abolitionists of the day never felt with any of them, as he did with Lincoln, an ‘entire freedom from popular prejudice against the coloured race’. And the crowning achievement of his political career was the emancipation of the slaves of the United States. The Syrophoenician woman responds to Jesus’s words with faithful boldness. The child is healed; the dog under the table receives its scrap. And in the next miracle that is recorded reveals that the impact of her faith has stretched beyond the region of Tyre. The audience for whom Mark is writing three decades after the crucifixion is not an audience of Jews but of Gentiles, her successors in faith.
Isaiah writes of the actions that will identify the coming of Israel’s God. The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame will leap and the speechless will sing. Water will flow in the wilderness and streams will run in the desert. These are the actions that were prompted by faith in Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, walked across the seas and fed the hungry in the desert, whose Gospel was proclaimed to the ends of the earth. These are the actions that that were prompted by Lincoln’s values, values which prompted him to break the shackles of more than three million Americans and restore them to themselves, values for which he gave his life.
So what actions do our values unleash? What actions does our faith provoke? Do we set the prisoner free or do we drain away the vital water of life? Do we make the speechless shout for joy or do we place unconscionable burdens upon their shoulders?
If the latter then no matter how clear we are today, to the generation which worships here one hundred years hence we will appear ludicrous or downright wicked; if the former then we catch in them the echo of heaven’s eternal music.
Sunday 19 July 2009, Sixth Sunday after Trinity
‘Magnificent desolation’ said Buzz Aldrin as he looked across the Sea of Tranquility forty years ago.
‘Come away to a deserted place’ said Jesus Christ as he looked across the Sea of Galilee two thousand years ago.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a journey with a purpose. It had its roots in the Cold War rivalry of two global superpowers, but it had a rationale that was greater than that rivalry. It will always have its critics and its sceptics, not to mention the conspiracy theorists for whom the term ‘lunatic’ is uniquely apt. It expanded the boundaries of human knowledge. It enlarged human experience. And in its triumph it strengthened the human family, albeit briefly. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place had a purpose. They had just returned from the first solo mission upon which Jesus had sent them. They had much to say, much to recount, much to learn. The crowd was pressing in. There was little space to take a breath, little chance step back, little time to reflect.
Christ has a purpose for those who follow him. It is to send us out as the twelve were sent out. It is to shepherd the flock as he shepherds the flock. It is to be his presence in this place: to be his feet to go about, to be his hands to bless, to be the fringe of his cloak, bringing wholeness to those who touch it.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a test of human ingenuity. It had less computer power behind it than does the average BlackBerry. The ground crew at Houston used slide rules to calculate the optimum angles for its’ re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. And the spindly legs of the lunar module made it look like a child’s junk model. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place tested human endurance. They were newly-returned missionaries. Yet they were taken far from home and family. They were removed from the acclamation of the crowds, and they had only one another for company and for sustenance.
Christ tests those who follow him. In sending us out he offers us not the security of paths we have already taken but a new journey in an unforeseen direction. For our rest he offers us not luxury but a deserted place. To comfort us he offers not the adulation of the mob but his presence among us.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a voyage into silence. We remember the words that enveloped the mission: ‘The Eagle has landed’ said Neil Armstrong; ‘…all the people on this earth are truly one’ said Richard Nixon. What we don’t remember is the silence that envelops the Moon. No breath of wind stirs the lunar dust. The astronauts’ footprints are as clear today as the day they were made. Nothing has disturbed the Sea of Serenity since Apollo 17 departed in 1972. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place was a sojourn in silence. All we know about the place is that it was empty. Jesus took the apostles away from the cities and away from the villages of the region.
Christ leads those who follow him into silence. We are to be sent out. There is a mission to accomplish. But there is always teaching to give. There is always healing to perform. There are always people to care for. The task of Christ in the world is endless; the task of those who follow Christ in the world is endless. Christ leads us away from teaching and away from healing and away from caring. He leads us into silence. For he knows that in silence will we meet his Father; in silence will we be replenished; in silence will we discover who we are rather than what we do.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
They are called to a task, tested to the utmost, and drawn into silence. They steps they take may be small, but their small steps are towards One whose giant leap is eternally towards the cosmos that he has made and has in love redeemed. Amen.
‘Come away to a deserted place’ said Jesus Christ as he looked across the Sea of Galilee two thousand years ago.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a journey with a purpose. It had its roots in the Cold War rivalry of two global superpowers, but it had a rationale that was greater than that rivalry. It will always have its critics and its sceptics, not to mention the conspiracy theorists for whom the term ‘lunatic’ is uniquely apt. It expanded the boundaries of human knowledge. It enlarged human experience. And in its triumph it strengthened the human family, albeit briefly. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place had a purpose. They had just returned from the first solo mission upon which Jesus had sent them. They had much to say, much to recount, much to learn. The crowd was pressing in. There was little space to take a breath, little chance step back, little time to reflect.
Christ has a purpose for those who follow him. It is to send us out as the twelve were sent out. It is to shepherd the flock as he shepherds the flock. It is to be his presence in this place: to be his feet to go about, to be his hands to bless, to be the fringe of his cloak, bringing wholeness to those who touch it.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a test of human ingenuity. It had less computer power behind it than does the average BlackBerry. The ground crew at Houston used slide rules to calculate the optimum angles for its’ re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. And the spindly legs of the lunar module made it look like a child’s junk model. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place tested human endurance. They were newly-returned missionaries. Yet they were taken far from home and family. They were removed from the acclamation of the crowds, and they had only one another for company and for sustenance.
Christ tests those who follow him. In sending us out he offers us not the security of paths we have already taken but a new journey in an unforeseen direction. For our rest he offers us not luxury but a deserted place. To comfort us he offers not the adulation of the mob but his presence among us.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a voyage into silence. We remember the words that enveloped the mission: ‘The Eagle has landed’ said Neil Armstrong; ‘…all the people on this earth are truly one’ said Richard Nixon. What we don’t remember is the silence that envelops the Moon. No breath of wind stirs the lunar dust. The astronauts’ footprints are as clear today as the day they were made. Nothing has disturbed the Sea of Serenity since Apollo 17 departed in 1972. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place was a sojourn in silence. All we know about the place is that it was empty. Jesus took the apostles away from the cities and away from the villages of the region.
Christ leads those who follow him into silence. We are to be sent out. There is a mission to accomplish. But there is always teaching to give. There is always healing to perform. There are always people to care for. The task of Christ in the world is endless; the task of those who follow Christ in the world is endless. Christ leads us away from teaching and away from healing and away from caring. He leads us into silence. For he knows that in silence will we meet his Father; in silence will we be replenished; in silence will we discover who we are rather than what we do.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
They are called to a task, tested to the utmost, and drawn into silence. They steps they take may be small, but their small steps are towards One whose giant leap is eternally towards the cosmos that he has made and has in love redeemed. Amen.
Sunday 14 June 2009, First Sunday after Trinity
'Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller’
It is sixty years since George Orwell published his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, a prophetic depiction of a world still recognizable to the reader yet submerged in a totalitarian nightmare. Its three super-states are locked in unceasing war; its brutal governance is in the hands of the anonymous Party; and its people are kept under constant and total surveillance.
Chief among the instruments of oppression is the manipulation of language, as is explained to the novel’s hero Winston Smith in the passage with which I began. In 1984 Oldspeak, the language of Milton and Shakespeare, of Coleridge and Shelley, the language with which you and I are familiar, is being replaced by Newspeak, which is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year. Its purpose, Orwell writes, is to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of the governing Party’s ideology. It is also to make all other modes of thought impossible. The Newspeak dictionary introduces new words and eliminates undesirable words; those undesirable words that remain it strips of undesirable meanings. Political freedom and intellectual freedom have been abolished so the word ‘freedom’ can retain little of its original sense. The word ‘freedom’ still exists but only to describe the freedom of a dog from fleas.
The Party uses language to achieve certain ends; so too does Jesus. ‘With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples’. Saint Mark believes that Jesus gives an explanation to those closest to him, but that in public he chooses to speak differently. His subject is the kingdom of God: that kingdom, he says, ‘is as if someone would scatter seed upon the ground…it is like a mustard seed’. Jesus denies the crowd the interpretation he gives to the disciples, and offers instead sketches and stories. George Orwell warns us that language can be deployed to oppress. We are surely entitled to ask why Jesus deploys language as he does. And Orwell may help us find an answer.
In his 1946 essay ‘The Prevention of Literature he ponders what journalism and imaginative writing have in common. It is commonly acknowledged that the former is likely to suffer in societies that are not free. The authorities will clamp down on reporting that dissents from their ideological line. But Orwell argues that creative writing is just as likely to suffer. ‘The journalist is unfree’ he writes ‘when he is forced to write lies or suppress what seems to him important news: the imaginative writer is unfree when he has to falsify his subjective feelings, which from his point of view are facts’. Authentic history and enquiring journalism: these are the mark of the free; but so too is imaginative writing, poetry and story-telling.
Newspeak strips away all nuance, colour and interpretative possibility, denying the hearer space to imagine, question or speculate. Story is steeped in nuance, colour and interpretative possibility. It encourages the hearer to imagine, question and speculate. The language of totalitarianism is Newspeak. The language of freedom is story.
So Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom, a language that recognizes our need to think for ourselves, question for ourselves and speculate for ourselves. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of the kingdom, the kingdom that grows like a mustard seed as we think, question and speculate. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom because freedom is what men and women have been created to enjoy, because in growing up and exercising our freedom we can become God-like.
Slavery and oppression still stalk our planet. Slavery and oppression are the antithesis of the kingdom that Jesus Christ proclaims. Twenty years ago this week thousands of protestors were swept from Tiananmen Square in an operation that China’s rulers can barely acknowledge took place. ‘If you want a picture of the future’ says O’Brien, Winston Smith’s torturer, ‘imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever’. In too many places there is no need to imagine. Wherever the liberty of God’s children is abused the seed of the kingdom is trampled underfoot; the face of Jesus Christ is bruised and bloodied.
‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view’ Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians. We cannot understand any human face simply as a human face, for in every human face we see the face of the One who gave up himself for the sake of us all. Their suffering and their struggle are ours. So let us speak the language of freedom; let us speak it boldly; let us tell the story. Amen.
It is sixty years since George Orwell published his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, a prophetic depiction of a world still recognizable to the reader yet submerged in a totalitarian nightmare. Its three super-states are locked in unceasing war; its brutal governance is in the hands of the anonymous Party; and its people are kept under constant and total surveillance.
Chief among the instruments of oppression is the manipulation of language, as is explained to the novel’s hero Winston Smith in the passage with which I began. In 1984 Oldspeak, the language of Milton and Shakespeare, of Coleridge and Shelley, the language with which you and I are familiar, is being replaced by Newspeak, which is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year. Its purpose, Orwell writes, is to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of the governing Party’s ideology. It is also to make all other modes of thought impossible. The Newspeak dictionary introduces new words and eliminates undesirable words; those undesirable words that remain it strips of undesirable meanings. Political freedom and intellectual freedom have been abolished so the word ‘freedom’ can retain little of its original sense. The word ‘freedom’ still exists but only to describe the freedom of a dog from fleas.
The Party uses language to achieve certain ends; so too does Jesus. ‘With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples’. Saint Mark believes that Jesus gives an explanation to those closest to him, but that in public he chooses to speak differently. His subject is the kingdom of God: that kingdom, he says, ‘is as if someone would scatter seed upon the ground…it is like a mustard seed’. Jesus denies the crowd the interpretation he gives to the disciples, and offers instead sketches and stories. George Orwell warns us that language can be deployed to oppress. We are surely entitled to ask why Jesus deploys language as he does. And Orwell may help us find an answer.
In his 1946 essay ‘The Prevention of Literature he ponders what journalism and imaginative writing have in common. It is commonly acknowledged that the former is likely to suffer in societies that are not free. The authorities will clamp down on reporting that dissents from their ideological line. But Orwell argues that creative writing is just as likely to suffer. ‘The journalist is unfree’ he writes ‘when he is forced to write lies or suppress what seems to him important news: the imaginative writer is unfree when he has to falsify his subjective feelings, which from his point of view are facts’. Authentic history and enquiring journalism: these are the mark of the free; but so too is imaginative writing, poetry and story-telling.
Newspeak strips away all nuance, colour and interpretative possibility, denying the hearer space to imagine, question or speculate. Story is steeped in nuance, colour and interpretative possibility. It encourages the hearer to imagine, question and speculate. The language of totalitarianism is Newspeak. The language of freedom is story.
So Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom, a language that recognizes our need to think for ourselves, question for ourselves and speculate for ourselves. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of the kingdom, the kingdom that grows like a mustard seed as we think, question and speculate. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom because freedom is what men and women have been created to enjoy, because in growing up and exercising our freedom we can become God-like.
Slavery and oppression still stalk our planet. Slavery and oppression are the antithesis of the kingdom that Jesus Christ proclaims. Twenty years ago this week thousands of protestors were swept from Tiananmen Square in an operation that China’s rulers can barely acknowledge took place. ‘If you want a picture of the future’ says O’Brien, Winston Smith’s torturer, ‘imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever’. In too many places there is no need to imagine. Wherever the liberty of God’s children is abused the seed of the kingdom is trampled underfoot; the face of Jesus Christ is bruised and bloodied.
‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view’ Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians. We cannot understand any human face simply as a human face, for in every human face we see the face of the One who gave up himself for the sake of us all. Their suffering and their struggle are ours. So let us speak the language of freedom; let us speak it boldly; let us tell the story. Amen.
Monday, 8 June 2009
In George Orwell’s clear, strong voice we hear a warning. Because we, too, live in a time when truth is disappearing from the world, and doing so in just the way Orwell worried it would: through language. We move through the world by naming things in it, and we explain the world through sentences and stories. The lesson of Orwell’s essays is clear: Look around you.
Describe what you see as an ordinary observer – for you are one, you know – would see them. Take things seriously.
And tell the truth. Tell the truth’.
In his recent essay marking the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four Keith Gessen recalls the novel’s philologist Syme telling its hero Winston Smith ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? . . . Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness is smaller’.
All doctrine, whether economic, political or religious, has the potential to be Newspeak. It has the potential to control thought through the control of language. We are aware of this potential, and it explains why we are suspicious of doctrine.
This makes life difficult for the preacher on Trinity Sunday, when the Church celebrates its faith and celebrates what is perhaps the most ambitious doctrine of them all, the doctrine that articulates the Christian understanding of God. At least - it would make life difficult if that doctrine did not have its roots in the one source of authority that our suspicious, cynical age respects. That is the personal, authentic experience of individual men and women.
For Dan Brown cannot be allowed to have it all his own way. The doctrine of the Trinity was not cooked up by a conclave of male hierarchs and imposed on a Church which had hitherto revelled in blissful diversity. We forget at our peril that the doctrine of the Trinity was born out of the prayerful reflection of the Church upon the events that shaped its early life.
So let us rehearse them and let us recall: that early life was nurtured in Jerusalem, a city which contained only one Temple. That made it unusual for the Empire in which it was a far-flung outpost. That one Temple bore witness to the conviction of the Jewish people that there was only one God.
That one God had no more devoted worshipper than a man called Jesus, from Nazareth. He visited the temple, prayed in the synagogues, and quoted the Scriptures. Yet the followers he gathered were forced to think hard about who their friend was. He was a teacher, yes; and a prophet, certainly: thus far he did not stand out from a great Jewish tradition of holy men, and his crucifixion only confirmed him in it. Many like him had been cruelly put to death, most recently his cousin John. But unlike John, and unlike the ancient men of God put to the sword by the Jewish kings, Jesus had been raised. His followers had seen him, walked with him, eaten with him. His touch had brought healing; his presence had calmed the raging storm; he had spoken words of forgiveness.
Now: only Israel’s God could not be destroyed by death; only Israel’s God was the source of life and health; only Israel’s God was the creator of sea and wind; only Israel’s God was the judge who could forgive. It was as if in Jesus Israel’s God had become human and had lived on earth. In fact, the followers of Jesus came to believe, that’s what had happened. Nothing else would explain it. In Jesus the one God had become united with the things of the earth.
And despite the withdrawal of Jesus from their sight his followers sensed that God was not absent. God was around them and among them, opening their eyes and their hearts, deepening their understanding, equipping them to speak, strengthening them to suffer.
Theology (doctrine, if you will) is faith seeking understanding, wrote Saint Anselm. The Church’s faith is that God is one; yet Jesus has united God to earth; and the divine Spirit will not allow the earth to forget God’s continuing engagement with it. We seek to understand this faith, and what we understand above all is that God reveals Godself to us: to Abraham the patriarch, Moses the lawgiver, David the King and Isaiah the prophet. God reveals Godself and the Church, reflecting on what the revelation of Jesus means for the revelation of God, is drawn ineluctably to the revelation of the Trinity.
‘We move through the world by naming things in it, and we explain the world through sentences and stories. The lesson of Orwell’s essays is clear: Look around you.
Describe what you see as an ordinary observer would see them. Take things seriously.
And tell the truth. Tell the truth’.
Doctrine becomes Newspeak when it stifles thought. The Church arrives at the greatest truths entrusted to it when it looks at its experience and reflects upon it. I am with Keith Gessen. Look around you. Describe what you see. Take things seriously. And tell the truth. Tell the truth. Amen.
Describe what you see as an ordinary observer – for you are one, you know – would see them. Take things seriously.
And tell the truth. Tell the truth’.
In his recent essay marking the sixtieth anniversary of the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four Keith Gessen recalls the novel’s philologist Syme telling its hero Winston Smith ‘Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? . . . Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness is smaller’.
All doctrine, whether economic, political or religious, has the potential to be Newspeak. It has the potential to control thought through the control of language. We are aware of this potential, and it explains why we are suspicious of doctrine.
This makes life difficult for the preacher on Trinity Sunday, when the Church celebrates its faith and celebrates what is perhaps the most ambitious doctrine of them all, the doctrine that articulates the Christian understanding of God. At least - it would make life difficult if that doctrine did not have its roots in the one source of authority that our suspicious, cynical age respects. That is the personal, authentic experience of individual men and women.
For Dan Brown cannot be allowed to have it all his own way. The doctrine of the Trinity was not cooked up by a conclave of male hierarchs and imposed on a Church which had hitherto revelled in blissful diversity. We forget at our peril that the doctrine of the Trinity was born out of the prayerful reflection of the Church upon the events that shaped its early life.
So let us rehearse them and let us recall: that early life was nurtured in Jerusalem, a city which contained only one Temple. That made it unusual for the Empire in which it was a far-flung outpost. That one Temple bore witness to the conviction of the Jewish people that there was only one God.
That one God had no more devoted worshipper than a man called Jesus, from Nazareth. He visited the temple, prayed in the synagogues, and quoted the Scriptures. Yet the followers he gathered were forced to think hard about who their friend was. He was a teacher, yes; and a prophet, certainly: thus far he did not stand out from a great Jewish tradition of holy men, and his crucifixion only confirmed him in it. Many like him had been cruelly put to death, most recently his cousin John. But unlike John, and unlike the ancient men of God put to the sword by the Jewish kings, Jesus had been raised. His followers had seen him, walked with him, eaten with him. His touch had brought healing; his presence had calmed the raging storm; he had spoken words of forgiveness.
Now: only Israel’s God could not be destroyed by death; only Israel’s God was the source of life and health; only Israel’s God was the creator of sea and wind; only Israel’s God was the judge who could forgive. It was as if in Jesus Israel’s God had become human and had lived on earth. In fact, the followers of Jesus came to believe, that’s what had happened. Nothing else would explain it. In Jesus the one God had become united with the things of the earth.
And despite the withdrawal of Jesus from their sight his followers sensed that God was not absent. God was around them and among them, opening their eyes and their hearts, deepening their understanding, equipping them to speak, strengthening them to suffer.
Theology (doctrine, if you will) is faith seeking understanding, wrote Saint Anselm. The Church’s faith is that God is one; yet Jesus has united God to earth; and the divine Spirit will not allow the earth to forget God’s continuing engagement with it. We seek to understand this faith, and what we understand above all is that God reveals Godself to us: to Abraham the patriarch, Moses the lawgiver, David the King and Isaiah the prophet. God reveals Godself and the Church, reflecting on what the revelation of Jesus means for the revelation of God, is drawn ineluctably to the revelation of the Trinity.
‘We move through the world by naming things in it, and we explain the world through sentences and stories. The lesson of Orwell’s essays is clear: Look around you.
Describe what you see as an ordinary observer would see them. Take things seriously.
And tell the truth. Tell the truth’.
Doctrine becomes Newspeak when it stifles thought. The Church arrives at the greatest truths entrusted to it when it looks at its experience and reflects upon it. I am with Keith Gessen. Look around you. Describe what you see. Take things seriously. And tell the truth. Tell the truth. Amen.
Pentecost 2009, Sunday 31 May
‘The money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization’.
President FD Roosevelt’s first inaugural address was delivered in 1933, as the Great Depression gripped the planet. In it he challenged his nation to restore that temple to the ancient truths. ‘The measure of the restoration’ he said ‘lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit’. His words have a double resonance for our age.
First, depression is a reality once more. Secondly, we have entered the fourth week of the parliamentary expenses scandal. It’s easier to debate floating duck palaces than the morality of global capitalism. Through red-faced repayments, heartfelt apologies and piecemeal resignations, the money-changers are fleeing, if not from the City of London then from the Palace of Westminster.
The Daily Telegraph’s revelations have, of course, prompted calls for reform of the expenses system, as well as for retribution against those Members most blatantly at fault. The plea that the claims were all ‘within the rules’ sounds increasingly plaintive, and the relationship between individuals and the systems and structures within which they live and work is under the spotlight.
That relationship is a timely one for the Church to consider at Pentecost.
We claim our descent not from Magna Carta or from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but from those chaotic happenings in a Jerusalem street two millennia ago, when the Spirit of God galvanized eleven timid men and turned them into world missionaries. Yet it must be admitted that our gathering today doesn’t look much like that; our structure and system don’t look much like theirs; the fact that we have a structure and system at all seems to flout the wild gift of the Spirit who quite literally blew into their lives as they waited in an upstairs room. They spoke in different tongues – we sing polyphony; they were thought drunk – we are sedate and Anglican; they waited on the Spirit – our liturgy appears to command her.
So Pentecost is a good moment to ask whether the Church as she has evolved can claim any real kinship with the tumultuous days that she celebrates at Easter. It is a good moment to ask whether the money-changers have clambered into the high seats in this temple; to ask whether, like the parliamentary expenses system, the Church is in need of root and branch reform.
Organizational analysis turns on the determination of the key tasks of the organization. If today’s Church shares these with her ancient Middle Eastern forebears then she can stake some claim to being their rightful heir. So what might those key tasks be? Some possibilities must fall straightaway. The Church cannot exist to read the Scriptures and promote their study, for she predates their recording, or that of the New Testament at the very least. She cannot exist to defend the doctrines of the catholic creeds, for she predates their composition. Scripture and creeds are the offspring of the Church, not her ancestors.
No, the key tasks were two, and they remain two. The Church exists to baptize in water and to break bread. All else is accretion, frequently valuable, vital accretion, but accretion nonetheless. In these two key tasks, these two key acts, the Church sets before the world her vision of God and God’s vision for the world.
Through the water of baptism God displays the forgiving love that is his essential disposition towards his creation. In baptism God looks upon humankind, whether infant or octogenarian, and washes away all that might ever separate him from them. Baptism is the enacted seal of welcome; baptism is the sign that the recipient is a permanent guest in God’s roomy house; baptism is the symbol of God’s eternal hospitality towards his creation.
Through the broken bread of the Eucharist God gives himself to his people, and, as in Baptism, shows himself eternally turned towards the world and eternally surrendering himself for love of it. The Eucharist is the enacted self-sacrifice of God for all; the Eucharist is God’s gift of himself to all who seek him; the Eucharist is God’s giving his own self in bread and wine to be his people’s sustenance and support.
The church of the apostles baptized and broke bread; the church of today baptizes and breaks bread. It is a pattern of behaviour that stretches unbroken across two thousand years of human history and it enables, indeed compels us, to find our roots in the events we celebrate today.
But if the structure of the Church is ordered to allow these key tasks to be performed, and if the system is to that extent still fit for purpose, then there remains the question of the individuals who live within it, whether godparents taking on a new role, or daily communicants who live and breathe Eucharistic worship. Are they, are we, surreptitiously erecting tables for money-changing within the sacred precincts? Are they, are we, expecting someone else to clean our moats or fund our expensive manure habits? The system of faith – God’s system – is broad and spacious; it is the unfailing offer of unconditional love. The life of faith is the life lived in response to the offer, and all too often, individually and corporately, our response is mean at best and downright wicked at worst.
In baptism we are forgiven. In response to our baptism we are called to live as those who have been forgiven, as those who refuse to condemn, as those who see in others what God has seen in us, something or someone worth forgiving. In the Eucharist we share as equals at the table of God. In response to our Eucharistic participation we are called to live as those who have shared as equals, as those who understand that there is not a man or woman alive or dead who God does not invite on the terms he has invited us.
Today’s Church, like the House of Commons and every other human institution, is fallible and failing. It remains an agent of oppression and injustice; it orders its priorities wrongly; and too often it refuses to side with the radical transformation that Pentecost promises. But it is also God’s institution and God’s agent, and in the great symbols, the effective symbols of Baptism and Eucharist, it is at one with the Church of the apostles and the Church of every age. It is a temple, as FDR would have said ‘of ancient truths’. Here we meet God, endlessly loving from all eternity; here we meet God, endlessly giving himself to us and for us; here we meet God, as equals, fellow citizens, neighbours, and friends. Here, and here only, do we find hope for ourselves and so for all the world. Amen.
President FD Roosevelt’s first inaugural address was delivered in 1933, as the Great Depression gripped the planet. In it he challenged his nation to restore that temple to the ancient truths. ‘The measure of the restoration’ he said ‘lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit’. His words have a double resonance for our age.
First, depression is a reality once more. Secondly, we have entered the fourth week of the parliamentary expenses scandal. It’s easier to debate floating duck palaces than the morality of global capitalism. Through red-faced repayments, heartfelt apologies and piecemeal resignations, the money-changers are fleeing, if not from the City of London then from the Palace of Westminster.
The Daily Telegraph’s revelations have, of course, prompted calls for reform of the expenses system, as well as for retribution against those Members most blatantly at fault. The plea that the claims were all ‘within the rules’ sounds increasingly plaintive, and the relationship between individuals and the systems and structures within which they live and work is under the spotlight.
That relationship is a timely one for the Church to consider at Pentecost.
We claim our descent not from Magna Carta or from the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but from those chaotic happenings in a Jerusalem street two millennia ago, when the Spirit of God galvanized eleven timid men and turned them into world missionaries. Yet it must be admitted that our gathering today doesn’t look much like that; our structure and system don’t look much like theirs; the fact that we have a structure and system at all seems to flout the wild gift of the Spirit who quite literally blew into their lives as they waited in an upstairs room. They spoke in different tongues – we sing polyphony; they were thought drunk – we are sedate and Anglican; they waited on the Spirit – our liturgy appears to command her.
So Pentecost is a good moment to ask whether the Church as she has evolved can claim any real kinship with the tumultuous days that she celebrates at Easter. It is a good moment to ask whether the money-changers have clambered into the high seats in this temple; to ask whether, like the parliamentary expenses system, the Church is in need of root and branch reform.
Organizational analysis turns on the determination of the key tasks of the organization. If today’s Church shares these with her ancient Middle Eastern forebears then she can stake some claim to being their rightful heir. So what might those key tasks be? Some possibilities must fall straightaway. The Church cannot exist to read the Scriptures and promote their study, for she predates their recording, or that of the New Testament at the very least. She cannot exist to defend the doctrines of the catholic creeds, for she predates their composition. Scripture and creeds are the offspring of the Church, not her ancestors.
No, the key tasks were two, and they remain two. The Church exists to baptize in water and to break bread. All else is accretion, frequently valuable, vital accretion, but accretion nonetheless. In these two key tasks, these two key acts, the Church sets before the world her vision of God and God’s vision for the world.
Through the water of baptism God displays the forgiving love that is his essential disposition towards his creation. In baptism God looks upon humankind, whether infant or octogenarian, and washes away all that might ever separate him from them. Baptism is the enacted seal of welcome; baptism is the sign that the recipient is a permanent guest in God’s roomy house; baptism is the symbol of God’s eternal hospitality towards his creation.
Through the broken bread of the Eucharist God gives himself to his people, and, as in Baptism, shows himself eternally turned towards the world and eternally surrendering himself for love of it. The Eucharist is the enacted self-sacrifice of God for all; the Eucharist is God’s gift of himself to all who seek him; the Eucharist is God’s giving his own self in bread and wine to be his people’s sustenance and support.
The church of the apostles baptized and broke bread; the church of today baptizes and breaks bread. It is a pattern of behaviour that stretches unbroken across two thousand years of human history and it enables, indeed compels us, to find our roots in the events we celebrate today.
But if the structure of the Church is ordered to allow these key tasks to be performed, and if the system is to that extent still fit for purpose, then there remains the question of the individuals who live within it, whether godparents taking on a new role, or daily communicants who live and breathe Eucharistic worship. Are they, are we, surreptitiously erecting tables for money-changing within the sacred precincts? Are they, are we, expecting someone else to clean our moats or fund our expensive manure habits? The system of faith – God’s system – is broad and spacious; it is the unfailing offer of unconditional love. The life of faith is the life lived in response to the offer, and all too often, individually and corporately, our response is mean at best and downright wicked at worst.
In baptism we are forgiven. In response to our baptism we are called to live as those who have been forgiven, as those who refuse to condemn, as those who see in others what God has seen in us, something or someone worth forgiving. In the Eucharist we share as equals at the table of God. In response to our Eucharistic participation we are called to live as those who have shared as equals, as those who understand that there is not a man or woman alive or dead who God does not invite on the terms he has invited us.
Today’s Church, like the House of Commons and every other human institution, is fallible and failing. It remains an agent of oppression and injustice; it orders its priorities wrongly; and too often it refuses to side with the radical transformation that Pentecost promises. But it is also God’s institution and God’s agent, and in the great symbols, the effective symbols of Baptism and Eucharist, it is at one with the Church of the apostles and the Church of every age. It is a temple, as FDR would have said ‘of ancient truths’. Here we meet God, endlessly loving from all eternity; here we meet God, endlessly giving himself to us and for us; here we meet God, as equals, fellow citizens, neighbours, and friends. Here, and here only, do we find hope for ourselves and so for all the world. Amen.
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