Sermon for a Mass of Thanksgiving for a Civil Partnership

 Song of Solomon 8: 6-7

1 John 4: 7-12

John 15:12-16                                                  

 

Batter my heart, three-person'd God, for you
As yet but knock, breathe, shine, and seek to mend;
That I may rise and stand, o'erthrow me, and bend
Your force to break, blow, burn, and make me new.[1]

There’s more to love than fluffy bunnies and Valentine’s hearts, as the Song of Solomon reminds us. Love is, “strong as death… fierce as the grave. Its flashes are flashes of fire, a raging flame”. There is something wild, untamed, uncontrollable, about love. It’s a risky business.

And that is because love is in the business of finding us, getting to know us, and saving us. Saving us from the webs of illusion in which we humans find ourselves ensnared. The illusion, which is very dear to us, that we are the centre of our universe, creating ourselves and determining our own value. 

Whereas love comes at us as grace, unlooked for, non-negotiable, with the offer of a true identity which is mysteriously given and can only be received. Love is the army in the parable, coming against us with a superior force, requiring us to give up all our possessions, that is, all the ways in which we create and hold on to our false identities.

“Love one another”, says Jesus, in our Gospel reading, and John, in the Epistle. The challenge is not just to love other people, although that matters. Loving one another is reciprocal. It is mutual. It means that we have to be prepared to be loved, ourselves. And, in fact, we can’t know what love means unless we allow that to happen. “In this is love: not that we have loved God, but that God loved us.”

Allowing ourselves to be loved can be the hardest part of all. So often we can engage in all sorts of transactional games, patronage, dispensing our bounty, and think that we are loving others. Unaware of how much we are bargaining and controlling all the time. It is only in learning to be loved ourselves that love breaks through the illusion of our self-sufficiency. Love alone can save us from the ultimate loss, which is the failure to accept that we are loved. 

John Donne, whose verse I opened with, knew a thing or two about our human resistance to being loved, and the pain of its overcoming. So too did George Herbert:

I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
                             I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
                            Who made the eyes but I?[2]

Love does this, comes at us, persistently, indefatigably, come what may. No wonder it is fierce, strong, a raging flame. 

But it is a strange fierceness. If love can find no other way of breaking through our illusions, than to come to us as a helpless baby, or to be shown to us as a rejected man dying on a cross, then that is what love will do. 

And it is a slow fierceness, wildly slow, because love has all the time in the world. It is the glacial erosion of our hardened hearts, grinding through the geological layers of our unawareness, uncovering the jewels that have lain hidden even to ourselves, until love found them out. 

For most of us, the experience of love, love that knows who we are through and through, and wants to be with us anyway, is mediated through the love of partners, friends, or family. 

For most of us, daily life with other people who will not give up on us, if we will allow that, is the path by which our illusions are gradually worn away. It is the conversion of life by which we are constantly drawn out from our obsession with ourselves. It is the commitment to stay with reality until we become real. 

We can leave it to the mystics to experience the overthrowing power of love by the direct union that most of us could not bear. Most of us are not Teresa of Avila. But even mystics, soaring aloft on the direct intuition of love beyond understanding, need their communities, the people who are under vows not to run away from them, no matter how bizarre they may become. 

Love, for most of us, is mediated by the person or community who will see who we are through all our illusions and guilt and shame, through the self-image that we create but know is false, and love us for who we are, anyway. And, in so doing, will show us who we are, in a way we could never have known by ourselves.

Your commitment to each other, in your Civil Partnership, is just this. It says that you are, to each other, the people you want to become real with. It points to the intention and shape of lives lived, to be lived, with each other and for each other. 

And because it is love that is bringing this about, your partnership does not create a closed-in space just for yourselves, but a place of hospitality and welcome, the mutuality of loving one another which has to flow out and make other connections, in which others too can find their place: those who are already part of your family, and the communities and relationships in which you share. Including those of us today who are with you in person or in spirit, giving thanks, celebrating, and supporting you, for you and with you in the great interwoven tapestry of mutuality and belonging that love creates. 

So this is a day of great joy, for all that it is wildly risky. Love is strong, fierce, a raging flame. But the risk is only to the false self, which must die anyway, for that is the meaning of the Gospels. 

May you discover who you are in your mutuality of loving one another, as everything that is not you is overthrown in love, mediated through the daily business of sticking with reality until you become real.

You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
                             So I did sit and eat.

Fr Matthew Duckett
22^nd June 2024

---

[1] John Donne, Holy Sonnets, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44106/holy-sonnets-batter-my-heart-three-persond-god

[2] George Herbert, Love III, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44367/love-iii

Sermon for the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, All Saints Houghton Regis

 

Byzantine Reliquary of the True Cross from Jerusalem, la Cattedrale di San Lorenzo, Genova
(Photo Matthew Duckett 2018)

Numbers 21.4-9

Philippians 2.6-11

John 3.13-17

 

Some of our well-known hymns have really exciting backstories. It was in the year 560 that Radegunde, Princess of Thuringia and Queen of the Franks, escaping from a dynastic murder plot at home, fled to the Bishop of Noyen, who ordained her a deaconess and professed her as a nun.

Being a Queen, she didn’t join someone else’s abbey, but built her own, at Poitiers, and persuaded her friend the Byzantine Emperor to give her a large relic of the True Cross, a fragment of the wood found by St Helena in Jerusalem a couple of centuries before. And she asked another friend, Bishop Venantius Fortunatus, to write some hymns for the occasion of its solemn reception. 

We sang one of those hymns at the start of Mass today, “The Royal Banners forward go”. Another one is also familiar in our hymnals:

Sing, my tongue, the glorious battle, sing the ending of the fray;
now above the cross, the trophy, sound the loud triumphant lay,
tell how Christ, the world’s redeemer as a victim won the day.

The dominant note in these hymns is triumph. The cross is lifted up in celebration as a standard of victory. Our word “trophy” comes from the ancient custom, after a battle, of decorating a convenient tree with the captured armour and weapons of the defeated foe. It was called the tropaion.

In these hymns of the sixth Century, which are gold mines of the theology of the early Church, the cross is hailed as the trophy captured from the enemy by the conquering hero, and displayed to prove that the enemy has been defeated.

How are we saved? How does the death of Jesus on the cross save the world? How has he defeated death? And the answer the early Church gives is not a definition, but poetry. Glorious facets of a glorious and wonderful mystery, the triumph of the crucified one. A mystery in the Christian sense is not a puzzle to be solved, or something we can know nothing about. It is rather, something we can never wholly know, a journey into depth and meaning that will never be exhausted.

This is why the New Testament talks about the death of Jesus using so many different images. It is paradox: the stone that the builders rejected has become the corner stone. 

It is sacrifice, which itself has different dimensions. Sacrifice is the surrender of a good thing in order that another good might come, Jesus giving his life so that we might live. But it is also in the strict sense an act of ritual violence which Jesus undergoes, becoming the scapegoat of humanity to take away our need for victims. 

Again, the death of Jesus brings about reconciliation, in St Paul’s words, by putting to death hostility – the hostility between Jew and Gentile, the hostility between humanity and God. 

Jesus himself describes his death as the new covenant, sealed with his blood, to reconcile humanity and God. He describes it as a ransom paid to free us from the captivity of sin. 

Elsewhere in the New Testament the death of Jesus is described as an example inviting imitation, identity with Christ through patient suffering and acceptance of God’s will. It is the debt owed because of sin paid on our behalf. The death of Christ is also our death, baptised in him we have died with him and been buried so that we might share his resurrection. 

Again, Christ is victor conquering the powers of evil through his death and resurrection, taking them captive and leading them in his victory procession – the imagery that Venantius takes up in his hymns.

In Hebrews, Christ is described as passing into the heavens through his death, so as to act as an advocate and intercessor, obtaining forgiveness for sins.

All of these scriptural images describe but do not exhaust the meaning of Christ’s death. And all of them lead us to the same truth, that by his death we die with him to our sins, and by his resurrection we are raised to life with him and in him. 

Attempts to define the atonement as a sort of mechanism, to set out how exactly it works, always fall short of the rich tapestry of images in the New Testament. To say, so some Christians do, that God had to punish human sin and so punished Jesus instead of us, does not reflect the richness of scripture and tradition. Worse, it leaves the Cross still in the enemy’s hands, its power of death not overcome, just diverted elsewhere.

But the New Testament message, celebrated in hymn and liturgy, is that the Cross has been seized from the enemy, and paraded by the conquering hero, who voluntarily suffered on it for our sake. The lure the foe put forward, to ensnare humanity into death, has become instead the pledge of life and resurrection. “Death, where is your sting? Grave, where is your victory” 

The Cross changes the whole way in which power is exercised in the world, and the meaning of human history. Hope shines forth where death once held sway. The Church celebrates the triumph of the Cross, in images, poetry, hymns and theology. Crosses are seen everywhere. And splinters and fragments of wood believed to derive from the original wood found by St Helena are still venerated throughout the world as the banner captured from the enemy, the sign of his defeat. 

If you think that’s a bit old fashioned, you might need to look again. At the Coronation in May, as the King and all the panoply of state and church processed into Westminster Abbey before the eyes of the world, they were led by a new processional cross, the Cross of Wales, which incorporates fragments of the True Cross, a gift from Pope Francis. Radegunde, Queen of the Franks and Abbess of Poitiers, would have known exactly what was going on, as the Royal banners forward went. All earthly power acknowledges and bows before the Cross of Christ. And to the Cross all people may look in hope for salvation. For the Son of Man has been lifted up, and being lifted up from the earth, he will draw all things to himself.

Power and Forgiveness

Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 14 2023

Ezekiel 33.7-11

Romans 13.8-14

Matthew 18.15-20

 

In today’s Gospel reading Jesus speaks once more about the Church, and the sort of community it should be. This is a theme in Matthew’s Gospel. Two weeks ago we heard Peter’s confession of faith and Jesus’ response, “on this rock I will build my Church”, “what you bind on earth will be bound in heaven”. But that can set up ideas of authority which can be misinterpreted, as Peter soon finds out when he tries to forbid Jesus from going to Jerusalem to be killed. 

Just before today’s reading, in a bit that is skipped over by the lectionary, the disciples argue about who in the community is going to be the greatest. In spite of Peter’s rebuke they still haven’t got it. And Jesus answers by setting before them a little child, a person who in the society of the time had no status and no rights. The community of the church is one in which authority is given for service, not for wielding power over others.

It’s important to bear that in mind when reading today’s passage. Jesus describes the church as a community in which things will go wrong, members will sin against each other. And that is really a joyful and liberating message, because it means there is hope for us all. The Church is not perfect but it is nonetheless the Church, the community of grace and forgiveness.

Jesus teaches about forgiveness and reconciliation in the Church. When things go wrong in any community they can quickly escalate, gossip and rumours leading to accusation, blame and conflict, scapegoats identified and cast out, people taking sides, entrenched against each other. 

The way the Church is to deal with sin is the reverse of this. Jesus’ teaching on what to do if your brother or sister sins against you is not about excluding that person, but about taking every possible means to keep them included. 

This process of forgiveness is communal, and intended to avoid escalation. First talk in private, then with two or three others, then the whole community. As a last resort, says Jesus, treat the offender as a gentile and tax collector. But gentiles and tax collectors are precisely the ones Jesus reaches out to in the Gospel! This is a process aimed at reconciliation, gathering together. And it also recognises that sin damages the community. Forgiveness is about healing the wounded community, as well as wounded individuals. 

And the Church is the community in which this is to become the reality, remaking humanity. The Church is not the club of good people, it is the community of forgiven people. The community which receives and practices reconciliation. 

But it is also the community that, still, gets things wrong. It is a community in which sin can be horribly damaging. The scandals of abuse that have been so grievous in recent years are not over, as recent news stories about “Soul Survivor” show. 

Abuse so often happens through the misuse of power. It may be that someone is in a position of official authority, and misuses that. Or it may be that someone has power in other ways, perhaps by having a very charismatic personality, or by being skilled at manipulation and control. 

In today’s Gospel Jesus describes a community in which someone who has been wronged can go and talk to the culprit in private to seek reconciliation. But we also need to remember Jesus’ teaching just before this passage. The community that can practice forgiveness in this way is a community in which everyone has the status of a child, and nobody exercises power over another.

It’s important to recognise that. Because situations of abuse are not like that. They arise from the misuse of power. And one of the ways in which the church has gone wrong is to misuse today’s gospel reading, and say to victims and survivors of abuse, “we are Christians, so you should forgive. Talk to the person who has harmed you in private and sort it out between you”. Advice which has led to further harm and continued abuse. 

To read this passage this way ignores its overarching message that forgiveness is about healing the community. Where one member suffers, all suffer. And where the community has been harmed through the misuse of power, the community needs to own that, and forgiveness has to include restorative justice. We should not ask individuals to forgive on their own when it is actually the task of the whole community and needs structural change. We should not expect individuals to stop hurting, if the community does not fix what hurt them.

This is why the Church must constantly be improving its commitment to safeguarding. Why there are safeguarding officers and diocesan safeguarding teams to refer concerns to, when they arise. 

The communal dimension of forgiveness is something that is part of the life of the Church. It is about restoring communities, as well as individuals, to wholeness of life. 

The Church is not the club of good people, it is the community of forgiven people. It is founded on grace, God’s free gift, not anything that we have earned or could earn. It is the community that believes in the forgiveness of sins, that receives the forgiveness of sins, that practices the forgiveness of sins. And this means a commitment to truth telling and justice as aa part of reconciliation, when the community itself has been harmed.

The Church is the community that includes and gathers together, that seeks out and brings in the lost. It is the community where even two or three can start to undo the rivalry, conflict and division that are the wounds of sin, by knowing that the Lord is there with them when they are gathered in his name.  

And it is the community that has to make forgiveness and reconciliation visible in the world, to bring hope to a divided and broken humanity. A humanity that needs to know that forgiveness is not only possible, it is freely offered to all as the gift of God in Jesus Christ. Which is why that must be lived out in the Church, first of all.

Sermon at Parish Mass, Advent 1 2022

 

 

The Taking of Christ - Caravaggio. National Gallery of Ireland.

 

Isaiah 2:1-5

Romans 13:1-end

Matthew 24:36-44

 

Happy new year – Church year, that is – and welcome to a new cycle in our Sunday readings, as this year we shall be mostly reading Matthew’s Gospel.

Now, be honest. When you start a new book do you ever sneak a look at the last pages to see how it ends? Because that’s what we did today. We started our reading of Matthew not at the beginning, but in Chapter 24. By this point in the Gospel we are already in Holy Week, and Jesus has entered Jerusalem in triumph. In just two days it will be the Passover and Jesus will be betrayed and crucified. In the section we heard today he is on the Mount of Olives, teaching his disciples privately about “the end”.

The end of what, exactly? In reading the gospels attentively, we can see that this is answered on more than one level. Jesus speaks of coming catastrophe, and cosmic signs, both in the immediate and the long-term time scale.

There is the catastrophe that is almost upon them, Jesus’s betrayal and death, which he has foretold, but the disciples have not understood. Then, further off, there is the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in great violence, which Jesus has also foreseen. Indeed, he has lamented the fate of Jerusalem, “if only they had known the way of peace”. Jesus is in person the Word of the Lord from Isaiah, speaking from Jerusalem, calling on his people to “beat their swords into ploughshares, and their spears into pruning-hooks”.

But woven through these two themes Jesus also teaches the disciples that all things are transient, that both our bodily life, and the universe as we know it, will come to an end, and all will be brought into the light of God’s eternity in which all things will be seen in their true nature and value.

For all these things, says Jesus, you must be watchful and ready, staying awake, because you do not know when they are going to happen.

It will be like the days of Noah, says Jesus. That’s a startling image: the sudden flood that swept away those who were unprepared and unaware, leaving only Noah and his family. Just so, two people can be going about their ordinary business, working in the fields or grinding meal, and the disaster will snatch away one and leave the other.

First Century Judea was a police state, and the image of being snatched away unexpectedly was one that people would have recognised. If the authorities didn’t like you, they could come for you at any time. Which is exactly what happened. In the Garden of Gethsemane, the Temple police came in the middle of the night, Jesus was taken, and the disciples left behind – the first and most immediate fulfillment of the image that Jesus uses.

But the Greek for “left behind” can also mean “forgiven”, which brings out another layer of meaning. Jesus is taken and killed, voluntarily subjecting himself to the catastrophe of human violence. But through his self-giving death the disciples are forgiven.

Today we might think that the death of Jesus, and the destruction of Jerusalem, are in the past, and the end of the universe may be uncounted billions of years in the future. Does that mean that catastrophe is distant from us, that we can relax? No, says Jesus. Be ready, stay awake. And the gospel writers made sure to transmit his urgent message to future generations.

Out of catastrophe, God brings new life and new creation. Through the resurrection, Jesus entered God’s eternity, which does not make him distant from us, but more immediately present. In him, past and future are not distant, for he is the beginning and the end, the first and the last, Alpha and Omega. He is our end as much as our beginning. But, are we aware, are we awake? Do we know him as he stands before us in the present moment?

He is present in the Eucharist, the sacrament of his body and blood. He is the head and the true life of the Church, his body in the world of which we are members. More than that, he fills the universe, for as Colossians says “all things have been created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

Christ the first and the last comes to us in the present moment, in his sacraments, in his Church, in the creation, and in all who are his brothers and sisters in need; how we respond to him gives meaning and value to the present moment. Meaning and value that will not be lost when all things are gathered up at the end.

This season of Advent calls us to watchfulness, a renewed attention to Christ and the coming of his kingdom, not at some distant horizon but in the present moment. Because it is here and now that we are called to respond to Christ. He fills the present moment with his transforming power. Our response opens us to forgiveness and new life, even in the midst of catastrophe, new life that will endure when time has passed into eternity.

Advent is then a good time to renew the habit of attention to Christ in repentance, in prayer, and in deeper study of the scriptures. We do this so that the habit deliberately formed in prayer can pervade our daily lives, every present moment, and all that we do.

The shopping centres around us might think that it is already Christmas. But the stillness and pregnant waiting of Advent are here for us, and demand our attention. The long dark nights and short days invite us to contemplation. Because these days and nights are not empty but filled with the fullness of Christ, who waits for us in the present moment, seeking our attention, our conversion, and our love.

Now is the time to awake out of sleep, says St Paul, now is the moment to lay aside the works of darkness and put on the armour of light. Because now is the present moment in which Christ waits for us in all his fullness.

Sermon after the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 13 2022

Following the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II

 

 

 

Lamentations 3.22-26,31-33

2 Corinthians 4.16-5.4

John 6.35-40

In speaking to people these last few days I have found that we have been struggling to put into words what we are feeling. The death of our beloved Queen has left a sense of national bereavement – not the same as the loss of someone we know personally, but it is deeply and keenly felt nonetheless.

I think that is something to do with the Queen’s representative role, that she has embodied and personified the Nation and the Commonwealth. That she has been, in her person, a force that has drawn into unity the diverse and rich communities in which we share.

She has embodied continuity and stability, in a rapidly changing world. In her Christmas messages, and at times of crisis, she has always found the right words, simply but profoundly put, to reassure, encourage and inspire. At national events her presence has elevated and united her people. And now that rock, who for most of us has simply always been there, has been taken from us. It is a great loss, unlike any we have known before.

But the Queen, of course, was also a person of profound Christian faith. She saw her role as one of service, following Christ, who taught his disciples that those who want to be great among them must be the servants of all. Her faith in Christ, as her Saviour and her Lord, illuminated her whole life to the end. And that faith, which we share with her, is the unchanging rock upon which she placed her hopes, and which is our sure anchor and hope also. In this time of change and loss, she would remind us that our faith is in Jesus Christ, who is the same yesterday, today, and for ever.

In today’s Gospel, Jesus says, “This is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”

In John’s Gospel, the word “all” has a weighty and universal significance. The opening of John tells us that Jesus is the eternal Word of the Father, the Word made flesh, and that “all things came into being through him”. Later in John, Jesus says, “When I am lifted up from the earth, I will draw all [things or people] to myself”.

This is how we are to hear the words of Jesus, that he will lose nothing of all that the Father has given him. The work of salvation accomplished by Christ is universal, cosmic, in its scope. Nothing is excluded. All means all.

In our modern Western mindset we are used to the idea of the autonomous individual, the self-sufficient “self”, and subconsciously we can conceive of the idea of salvation in those terms. Just me, by myself, or you, by yourself, snatched out of this wicked world and carried safe to heaven in the end. Salvation, in that thinking, is something individual, disconnected, atomized.

But that is a very impoverished version of the vision that scripture gives us. The Bible tells us that Christ is the Saviour of the world, that his work of redemption is cosmic, integrated, and whole. All means all, and all things gathered together. Ephesians chapter one tells us that the will of God is “to gather up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth”.

Human beings are not created for isolation, but for community and communion. “It is not good that the man should be alone”, as God says in Genesis. And we are not saved as isolated individuals, but as a holy people. Destined for the communion for which we were made, communion with God who is himself supremely community and communion beyond our understanding, the Blessed and Holy Trinity.

Human beings do not exist in isolation, but belong to societies, communities, neighbourhoods, and nations. And within those communities, although we experience many failures, we feel instinctively that we must seek and strive for all that builds up and unites. Sharing in communities by nature, we yearn for the supreme gift of communion, the blessed diversity in unity that ultimately we can only receive by grace.

Indeed, the Bible tells us that not only individuals are saved, but also nations. At the end of the Book of Revelation, we see the vision of the New Jerusalem coming down from God, and are told that “the nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it… people will bring into it the glory and honour of the nations.”

Kings, those representative people who embody and personify a nation, will bring their glory into God's New Jerusalem. Peoples and nations will bring their glory and honour. What are the glory and honour of the nations? Everything that is good and right and noble and true. All the achievements down the ages of human culture and art and thought and science. Everything that God’s creative Spirit has inspired and brought about through human endeavour will be gathered in.

The role that the Queen has had, a person of profound Christian faith, representing and personifying the nation, has its fulfilment now in that vision, as she journeys into the New Jerusalem.

As we gather for the Eucharist, we reflect that all paths of Christian discipleship are nourished and patterned by the mystery we celebrate. The Queen’s particular vocation, of being a person who embodied unity, was a fruit of her Christian faith and her Eucharistic life. For when Christians share the bread that is Christ and drink his blood, we all share in God’s work of re-assembling and raising to life a divided and broken humanity. Though we are many, we are one body, because we all share in one bread. And as we celebrate the Eucharist we look to that final vision of all things gathered in, the glory and honour of the nations, of humanity united in God at last, with angels and archangels and the whole company of heaven.

The Queen’s role has now passed to her son, King Charles. And although he has only been King for three days, he has stepped with unbroken continuity into that representative role that stretches back through the history of this nation, and of so many others. He, too, has spoken movingly of his Christian faith. We may be encouraged that the same faith, that kept the Queen firm in her dedication to the end, lives in him too. And we pray for him, that the rich gifts of God’s empowering Spirit will be poured out on him, now, and in the years ahead.

Anointed for Service

Sermon at Parish Mass, Pentecost 2022

Acts 2:1-11

When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.

 

5 Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. 7Amazed and astonished, they asked, ‘Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? 9Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 11Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.’

 

Romans 8:8-17

 

and those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 9 But you are not in the flesh; you are in the Spirit,* since the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10But if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit* is life because of righteousness. 11If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ* from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through* his Spirit that dwells in you.

 

12 So then, brothers and sisters,* we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— 13for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. 14For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 15For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, ‘Abba!* Father!’ 16it is that very Spirit bearing witness* with our spirit that we are children of God, 17and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

 

John 14:15-16,23-26

What a weekend it has been. We have never seen a platinum jubilee before, and it may be a very long time before one comes again – certainly not in my lifetime. So much has come together for this unique celebration, not only for the United Kingdom, but also for all the nations of the Commonwealth.

This bank holiday weekend began with the anniversary of the Coronation Service in 1953, the service at which the Queen received the crown in Westminster Abbey. And we’ve seen an awful lot of crowns this holiday: millions of crowns on logos, crowns made in their thousands in schools all over the country from shiny paper and plastic jewels, and some very imaginative ones: knitted crowns, baked crowns, cars dressed up as crowns, a giant crown of flowers at the Chelsea Flower Show.

But we haven’t seen very many ampoules of oil. Which is slightly odd, because the central, the most important moment of the coronation service, was not the placing of the crown on the Queen’s head. The most important part of that service, the most important symbol of royalty, was the anointing of the Queen with holy oil.

The act of anointing is rich in the symbolism of the Holy Spirit, whose gifts we celebrate this day, the Feast of Pentecost.

The prayers used at the anointing of the Queen spoke of her being consecrated, sanctified and set apart for life, of her being filled with the gifts of the Holy Spirit. After the anointing, the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed this prayer over the Queen:

“Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, who by his Father was anointed with the Oil of gladness above his fellows, by his holy Anointing pour down upon your Head and Heart the blessing of the Holy Ghost, and prosper the works of your Hands.”

Oil has been used from of old as a sign of consecration to God’s service. In ancient Israel, prophets, priests and kings were anointed with oil to set them apart them for the task to which they were called. Oil is not like water, it doesn’t evaporate in a moment, it soaks in, spreads, and gets everwhere. And the grace of the Holy Spirit, too, is like that. It spreads, it soaks in, it rubs off on people you encounter. It’s the devil of a job to keep it out! This is why anointing is so powerful a symbol of the Holy Spirit’s gifts.

The Queen has spoken many times of her own Christian faith, and of the help of God’s grace that has supported and equipped her throughout her long life and long reign. That moment of anointing and consecration at her coronation service has been of enduring significance for her. The Queen, of course, has a particular and unique task among her fellow Christians. But she is not different from any other Christian in needing, expecting, and receiving, the grace of the Holy Spirit for the task and path of life to which God has called each one of us.

The Queen is the only person currently alive to have been anointed as a monarch. But all Christians are part of a royal, priestly, people. All Christians receive the anointing of the Holy Spirit in our baptism. The Holy Spirit is poured out in abundance when we are baptised, with all the royal gifts that Christ gives, equipping and empowering us for the work and the path of life that God calls us to.

Those gifts are renewed and bring forth fresh fruit at other sacramental moments: confirmation, ordination, marriage, absolution, the anointing of the sick. The Church invokes the Holy Spirit over the gifts of bread and wine in the Eucharist, that they may become the Body and Blood of Christ, and that those who receive them may become one body in Christ. These sacramental moments are signs of the Spirit who is continually at work in us, constantly supplying the grace and strength that we need.

At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit was poured out on the disciples, empowering them to preach the gospel to all nations. That gift was manifested then in visible signs, in the way the disciples preached with boldness, accompanied by signs and miracles just as Jesus had done.

And the gift of the Spirit endures in the Church in the life of every Christian. Usually the external signs of the Holy Spirit are not so spectacular as on the day of Pentecost: things like reconciliation, love, faith, the quiet business of conversion of life, endurance and hope in adversity. These signs, too, show a real outpouring of spiritual power, enabling us to do things that we could not do by ourselves.

But the deepest sign of the gift of the Holy Spirit is not exterior at all. Saint Paul in the letter to the Romans today tells us that the Spirit bears witness within us, in the secret place of our own spirit, that we are children of God, and if children then heirs, fellow-heirs with Christ, suffering with him that we may be glorified with him.

The work of the Spirit in our lives, the exterior work we are equipped to do, flows from our interior identity in Christ. We are children of God and fellow-heirs with Christ. God’s Spirit has been poured into our hearts, enabling us to cry out, with confidence and faith, “Abba, Father!”

That faith, that assurance of our calling, of the gift of the Holy Spirit, of our identity in Christ, is the bedrock of our Christian life. It has been so for Her Majesty the Queen throughout her life, as she has so often testified. And it is in no way different for every other Christian, for you and for me.

As we celebrate the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee, and the fruits of the Holy Spirit that God has brought forth in her life, we celebrate too our own calling and identity in Christ, the work of the Spirit in our own lives, and we commit ourselves once more to to our work as Christian disciples, for which the gifts of the Holy Spirit are poured out in abundance.

"The Church must be as powerless as God"

 Sermon at Parish Mass Lent 2 2022

 

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal Public Domain Dedication

Genesis 15.1-12,17-18

Philippians 3.17 - 4.1

Luke 13.31-35

 

In today’s Gospel Jesus is continuing on his way to Jerusalem, and there is a background of growing threat, which becomes explicit today when some Pharisees – so often cast as the bad guys – warn Jesus that Herod wants to kill him. But Jesus is not yet in Jerusalem, and he tells the Pharisees, who seem only to want to help him, that he can’t be killed yet, as it is impossible for a prophet to be killed outside Jerusalem.

As so often in the Gospels, Jesus’s prediction of his suffering and death must have seemed bewildering and distressing to those who were following him.

And then he speaks words of lament over the city, like so many of the prophets did of old, speaking not just of his own time but with the voice of centuries, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it!”. But these words are in one way different from those of the prophets. They passed on the word of the Lord that they had received, “hear the word of the Lord!”. But Jesus speaks in his own person. He, himself, is the Lord who has lamented over Jerusalem down the ages.

And then comes a most extraordinary sentence. “How often have I desired to…” What? If we hadn’t heard this text before, what would we imagine the Lord would want to do to this violent city that kills his prophets and stones his messengers? Punish it? Raze it to the ground? Force them to obey? But no. “How often have I desired to – gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings.”

In the Old Testament, there are many images of God that evoke power and strength, but Jesus does not choose any of those. Instead he uses an image that does not appear in the Old Testament at all. A hen – which is weak, vulnerable, powerless. But totally committed to protecting her chicks regardless of the threat. Constantly gathering them together as they constantly try to scatter. The hen is an image of unconditional commitment and nurture that will not give up. But she is not an image of power.

God is totally committed to the human project. This is God’s creation and God will not give up on it. His mysterious covenant with Abraham will include all those who have faith in every age, who are more in number than the stars of heaven. God constantly desires to gather together a world that is constantly trying to fly apart.

But when Jesus ratifies this irrevocable covenant he does so in vulnerability and weakness. Jesus says that Jerusalem will not see him until you say “Blessed is the one who comes in the name of the Lord”. The crowds will cheer on Palm Sunday. They will still be expecting a Messiah who appears in strength. Instead, God’s commitment to them will be shown in a man on a cross. Few will understand that this is how God’s love is shown to them.

The Church, like Jesus, is called to witness to God’s irrevocable commitment to humanity. The Church shares in God’s desire to gather humanity together like a hen gathering her chicks, in a world that is constantly trying to fly apart. But, like Jesus, this will so often be shown to the world in weakness, risk and vulnerability. In fragile acts of kindness and love that are always open to rejection. In the testimony of the martyrs down the ages whose weakness and death testify to God’s power. Even in the courageous witness of those Russian Orthodox priests arrested just last week for using their sermons to tell their people about the invasion of Ukraine, and to call for peace.

In the words of a great Russian Orthodox saint of a previous generation, Metropolitan Anthony Bloom, “the Church must be as powerless as God”.

In the Diocese of London, we have a vision for the next eight years “for every Londoner to encounter the love of God in Christ”. We need to consider how we will do that in an age when the church has lost the power, prestige and privilege of former times. We can’t control much, any more. But encounters with love aren’t really something that can be controlled, anyway. A church that is in a position of weakness will find it much easier to be like a hen gathering chicks, than like a powerful lord telling people what to do.

We need to be attentive, then, to how our Diocesan vision is referred to or presented. There is nothing in it about power or control. There is nothing that says we want to turn every Londoner into a Christian, or to make everyone come to church. It is about people encountering the love of God in Christ, out there where the people are. Where Jesus has already gone ahead of us and is already meeting people with his love, whether they recognize him or not. 

To encounter the love of God in Christ is a risky, weak and vulnerable thing. It is the desire of a hen to gather her chicks. Not the desire of the powerful to make everyone conform or become like us. The Church must be as powerless as God. Which means to reject the vainglorious delusions of former ages with their power and privilege.

It means, also, to see through the all-too worldly managerial language of success, numbers and growth. Encounters with the love of God in Christ can take so many forms. Acts of kindness for lonely people. Building bridges of understanding between the many cultures and religions in our diverse city. Prioritizing those who are marginalized by a privileged society. Supporting the local foodbank. Giving to refugees whom we will never meet. We can’t really quantify those things. We can’t add them up and report them in our statistics for mission. But they are part of the mission of the Church, nonetheless.

This is what it means for the Church in this age to engage in the risky, weak and vulnerable business of a hen gathering her chicks. Constantly desiring to gather together a world that is constantly trying to fly apart. Witnessing to God’s love persistently, unconditionally, with irrevocable commitment, come what may. And that is to follow in the way of Jesus, and to make real in our discipleship his covenant commitment to the world God has made.