Last night I had the great pleasure of licensing Jessica Martin to be the new priest in charge for the parishes of Duxford, Hinxton and Ickleton in South Cambridgeshire. We all wish her very well indeed in her new ministry. Here is what I made of the interesting Bible readings she chose for service. The service was in Ickleton Church which is famous for its well-preserved mediaeval wall paintings of the Passion Cycle.
Photo of Passion Cycle scene from wall-painting in Ickleton Church © Anne Marshall 2001
Phil 4.4-8 4 Rejoice in the Lord always. I will say it again: Rejoice! 5 Let your gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near. 6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7 And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9 Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Lk 17.20-21 20 Once, having been asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The kingdom of God does not come with your careful observation, 21 nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is within you.”
It really is a great joy to be with you again in these parishes tonight, and especially to be here to license Jessica as your new priest-in-charge. Both you and she bring a lot to the party, and I am looking forward very much to sharing an exciting journey with you over the next months and years.
A large part of what that journey and any aspect of the journey of our lives will be like comes down to what we decide we want it to be like. Old fashioned ethics and moral philosophy took something of a battering in the twentieth century when suddenly everything seemed to get so much more complicated. We discovered how important our genes and our environment are in making things happen as they do – and flirted with determinism as others have done before us, the idea that for one reason or another we don’t really have much or anything by the way of choice, and so not much accountability either. We also, rather paradoxically, experienced a massive leap in our ability to control or at least exploit the said environment, and a toxic blend of individualism and consumerism has not only taken us very near the limits of sustainable society but also ethically driven us into the arms of a relativism that finds it very challenging indeed to privilege any one claim that something is good or right above any other. A recent icon of this was when arrangements were made so that the Luton protestors would not have to stand at the entry of the judge, as by their books only Allah should be shown respect in this way. The issue is not our respect for their particular faith: it is whether there remains anything which can and should and even must command the respect for us all.
Now we are in a new century, and some of our previous ways are starting to look rather dated. We are starting to realise that we had painted ourselves into a corner, and that where we found ourselves was bringing not freedom but frustration, not self-discovery but a loss of our self, and that this was neither true to our experience nor a basis on which we could build a good future. We have found that we can believe in the big bang and evolution as scientific truths without abandoning creation and providence as theological ones. We have found, to use an image mooted by the chief executive of the Royal Society of the Arts in his New Year address, that even if life is like riding an elephant through a jungle, neither the elephant of our genes nor the jungle of our environment take away the importance of the will and skill of the rider on the great beast’s back.
I want to suggest tonight, then, that it is time we rehabilitated the idea that growing up is a good thing, and that growing up, from the perspective of the Christian faith, involves not living in a sort of perpetual playground or teenage rebellion but looking at ourselves in the light of Christ and exercising our will to choose to live like him. When you or I do this, we start to change, for the better, from the inside out. We let the kingdom of God come within us. We are drawn to others who are experiencing the same change and together start to build a better sort of community that is also the Kingdom of God; a community whose marks are peace and gentleness, joy and thanksgiving; purity and nobility. And to do that not over against the world around us but as a gift to that world, serving it in the same Spirit of Christ. That, however often it has hit the rocks, is (if I can borrow Marks and Spencer’s phrase) God’s Plan A; and there is no Plan B. And if some of the words like purity and nobility sound somewhat old-fashioned, then so be it. They are still Plan A.
In fact I can remember hearing of one Bishop who only ever really preached one sermon, though in a thousand guises. It was a sermon on Joy, and the simple motto was that true joy – as opposed to passing happiness – comes from putting Jesus first, Others second, and Yourself third. Jesus – Others – Yourself; J – O – Y; Joy. Love God and love others before you start thinking of yourself and you will not lose yourself but find your soul. “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and all your strength and with all your mind; and your neighbour as yourself. This do, and you shall live.” This is no new-fangled recipe for life; this is the real thing. We can’t, to nearly borrow a phrase, go on as we are; to live, we need to live Plan A. At its simplest it means that if we call ourselves as Christians by the name of Christ, we will do well to walk the talk and live our lives in the Spirit of Christ.
This is unashamedly the language of faith. I do wonder what else you should you expect from a bishop, but I am nevertheless very conscious that many of us are still not comfortable with these sort of assertions. It is not just that our society is signed up to the idea that anyone is entitled to their view of the truth as long as they don’t impose it on others. We also share an inheritance of an often wise reticence in the face of religion that has since the Civil War preserved us from the worst of its excesses.
What can I say in the face of such a challenge? I would like to finish by drawing attention to one thing that above all helps me to hold my head high as a Christian in the face of my own faith’s atrocities and the calumnies of some who do not share it. That one thing is that in Christ we see that at the very heart of everything, at the very heart of the One who called everything into being, is a self-giving, self-sacrificing love that shows us what all power, all authority should authentically be like. This, if anywhere, is where the circle is squared: a faith that inspires us with a truth that is not just personal opinion writ large, but which at the same time inspires us to embody that truth according to its own eternal principle of self-giving love. What we sing with our lips on an occasion such as this has the power to take root and be believed in our hearts; and what we so believe in our hearts has the power to shine forth in our lives – and change the world.
And heaven knows, there is plenty in our world that needs to change. To catalogue it now would need a whole second sermon, and I must spare you that if I want to leave here alive, but I have been looking at your Mission Action Plans and rejoice that each of your parishes is determined to play its part. One thing only do I ask. As Jessica joins you, do not forget that behind all the doing lies the being. The quality of the Plans, the Action and the Mission depend to a large extend on the quality of the character of those who make them, and that in its turn depends on the quality of their relationship with Christ.
I don’t know what you have planned in the pipeline for Lent, but it is just around the corner now, and can I suggest that in whatever way will work for you, you use it to strengthen that relationship. Look again to Christ and his Cross [how could you do otherwise in a church like this with such a fine medieval passion cycle painted on its walls], and let yourself grow in your Christ-shapedness and Cross-shapedness – and root your planning in prayer.
So let me finish with a prayer for you and for Jessica as you embark on this journey together:
Lord God, maker and lover and enlivener of all, look with mercy on your people of this place; so draw their hearts to you that your heart may live in them, and living in them, bring peace to the world; through Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace. Amen.
Filed under: Sermons and Talks
