Press Releases04 May 25

RTÉ Service on racial justice – Archbishop McDowell’s sermon

Archbishop John McDowell preached the following sermon as part of this morning’s RTÉ Service on Sunday led by the Primate’s Reference Group on Ethnic Diversity, Inclusion and Racial Justice.  The service will be available to listen back after broadcast through the RTÉ Player.

Readings: Genesis 1.1,24–28; Psalm 87; Revelation 7.9–17

It is a bit of a commonplace to point out that the Bible begins in a garden – the Garden of Eden – and finishes in a city – the Heavenly Jerusalem coming down out of heaven like a bride adorned for her husband. And, in the Bible at least, in between these two places comes the great arc of the story of God and His people and the world they have a responsibility to make, for as we heard, the psalmist says of Zion, the city of God “…all my springs are in you.”

One thing we can say for certain is that the task of making the world more like the kingdom of God consisting of “a great multitude which no one can number, from every tribe and people and language” worshipping the Lamb on his throne – a kingdom of mutual love – is far from complete.

Looking back over the history (of the West at least) the story is simply one of civilisation and barbarism succeeding one another in an unending cycle which may not be finished yet.

For all the fabled achievements of the Pax Romanum, the writer of the Book of the Revelation to St John took a very dim view of the society in which he and his brothers and sisters in Christ lived. They had been through, or perhaps faced the probability of going through, a “great tribulation” at the hands of the Roman Empire, which he calls “Babylon”. They are being persecuted because they refuse to bow the knee to the religion of the Roman Empire – Emperor worship – which he describes as “the whore of Babylon”. Like dissidents in all authoritarian regimes, including quasi–democratic ones – he has to write in codes and ciphers to conceal his true meaning from all but the faithful.

Yet despite the circumstances in which he lives his pessimism does not become despair. He knows that he and his people will find shelter under the shadow of the throne of the Lamb and that the day will come when God “will wipe away all tears from their eyes”.

In the ancient world people lived in and believed in what historians call a state of radical inequality. That is to say that the world was built on a divine foundation of inequality. That was how the world was made and as far as most ancient peoples were concerned, that’s the way it was meant to be. It was a society of patrons and clients or, in most cases, of patrons and the patronised.

And into this world came a movement led by what most who encountered him thought of as charismatic Jewish prophet. It was this movement which upended the radical inequality of the ancient world. With the story of the Son of God broken on the Cross and rising again, vindicated, on the third day, Christianity brought about an ethical revolution. Now not the most intelligent and powerful but the lowest and most oppressed became the touchstone of morality.

And this revolution had political as well as ethical consequences; and the political touchstone is this: “You shall love your neighbour as yourself”. We are to love God unconditionally– with all our heart and all our mind and all our strength. But we are to love our neighbours–those who we live amongst– as ourselves. Not more than ourselves or less than ourselves, but as ourselves. Or to put it another way, as long as society is made up of groups with competing interests then the Christian expression of love is justice, including of course racial justice.

In every place where those little Jesus–centred resurrection communities sprung up around the Mediterranean they taught the fundamental truth that social justice, which has no elites, is the expression of love. It is interesting how those Jesus communities communities described themselves.  Sometimes they talked about being people of The Way or in other places as Nazarenes. But in the long run they settled for calling themselves by a word which had no religious connotations. They called themselves the ekklesia, the Church, which in the ancient world was the word used for the citizens assemblies of free people who came together to discuss affairs and make resolutions.

So, long before citizen assemblies were dreamed of in Ireland or anywhere else in the democratic world, those groups of believers, the sons and daughters of the resurrection, came together to learn and to put into practice that highest form of civic life – to love their neighbour as themselves – justice as the expression of God’s love in any society.

Jesus Christ was the first person ever to conceive of the divided races as a unity and I think (though the scholars do not) that it was one of the reasons why he thought of himself as both the Son of God and as the Son of Man. And it is why he was convinced of that most incredible of vocations, that he could carry on his shoulders the burden of the entire world. Of every person who had ever lived or ever would life, joined to him as the head, and rising on the third day with him – as a  kingdom in his hand. “A lover for who the love the whole world is too small”.

Within the household of faith perhaps the greatest expression of love is in forgiveness. Within civic and political society the greatest expression of love is justice, fair distribution and mutual respect, because the world is indeed made up of competing interests. Although we may have been called to higher things in the household of faith, perhaps we need first to attain the fairness of justice. And may God have mercy on us all.

So now unto Him who by the power at work within us is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think; to Him be glory in the Church and and in Christ Jesus, world without end. Amen.