Press Releases02 Jun 25

Primate preaches at the RUC GC Foundation Service

Archbishop John McDowell, the Church of Ireland’s Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, preached at the annual service for the Royal Ulster Constabulary George Cross Foundation in Darling Street Methodist Church, Enniskillen, on Sunday afternoon (1st June).

In the course of his remarks, Archbishop McDowell reflected on the miracle of grace that the RUC prevented Northern Ireland from a deeper level of conflict in the years of the Troubles, and also that the RUC officers were able to create and maintain normality in their own homes at this time.  He assured those who were bereaved by the murder of police officers that they continued to be upheld in prayer and in the available presence of the peace of God.

The archbishop’s sermon is in full below:

May all the words that I say to you be in the Name of Jesus Christ our Risen Lord.

I have a confession to make. Not a very juicy or newsworthy confession I should add. For very good reasons, Sandra had asked for the readings to be used in this service much earlier in the year than usual. After a bit of thought, I chose the two readings which have been so well read for us today. Usually when I have to choose readings (which isn’t that often as they are almost always provided in the Common Lectionary) I make a note to myself about what they have suggested to me, as a kind of starter for when I sit down to write the sermon.

For some reason or other I didn’t do that for these readings. I can see very clearly why I chose the reading from Philippians but I have no idea what I was thinking about when I chose the Old Testament reading! Nevertheless that is where I want to begin.

As you will know, the Foundation’s principal aim is to mark the sacrifice and honour the achievements of the RUC. For all sorts of reasons, the emphasis often falls on the first of these aims – to mark the sacrifice – but the achievements are also important. First and foremost, the RUC was a law enforcement body. And it had to fulfill that task at a time when there was a kind of licensed lawlessness in large parts of society. Rather like Israel at the time of the Judges, every man did what he thought was right in his own eyes, rather than what the law required.

In many older churches, you will find what are known as the Tablets of the Law – the Ten Commandments – inscribed on wooden boards on either side of the Lord’s Table. They are laid out in a couple of places in the Hebrew Bible but most of us learned them from that twentieth chapter of Exodus which we read from today. And, of course, the first commandment is: “You shall have no other gods but me”. And it is the first commandment because it is when we create other gods that we justify ourselves when we break any of the other commandments.

God is the person who weighs heaviest in the scales of our affections and if we replace the one true God as he is made known to us in his Son, Jesus Christ, then we have created and will worship another God. Often in this country some idea of “the nation”, whichever nation that may have been, weighed heaviest in the affections of many people. The most horrendous violence was perpetrated in the name of Ireland or in the name of Ulster. Indeed at times God was co–opted to justify that violence – for God and Ulster. But God is not our co–worker or our patron; he is our Judge and our Redeemer in that order.

“Every man did what they thought was right in his own eyes” so to prevent Israel from becoming a rabble, God gave then the Law (sometimes called “the work of His left hand”). Until quite recently in history most societies were self–policing. In many remote places they are still. But here in West it became necessary to introduce professional guardians of the law. First in cities but eventually in rural areas too. Yet even then society depended on a certain internalised respect for the law to hold itself together.

The RUC operated in a climate where none of these normalising factors existed for large numbers of people. The RUC had to operate within a society which was the result of the entangled complexity of Irish history and in the face of extraordinarily devious and sophisticated terrorist groups. It was not only an achievement of law enforcement and courage, but also, when we look back, a miracle of grace, that Northern Ireland was not completely reduced to ashes.

In that reading from Exodus, just after the Tablets of the Law have been given, the people cannot bear to receive the Law themselves. They are afraid of God and they ask Moses to receive the Law in their stead. During many of the years when the RUC operated in Northern Ireland, I think that many of us were afraid of everything but God and we expected the RUC to make up the difference and to carry an unbearable weight of our fears and anxieties.

Yet, it would be wrong to think of the RUC as simply a counter–terrorism force. That is not how the majority of ordinary people experienced police officers and the police force during those years. They were the people you called if your son or daughter hadn’t come home when you had expected or when your house had been burgled or when your cat got stuck up a tree. The presence of a police constable in any place is a source of reassurance vastly out of proportion to his or her actual physical presence and that was especially so during those very difficult times.

Now, it is probably worth saying at this point that those of us who had members of our families serving as members of the RUC are very well aware that they weren’t perfected saints. The sheer emotional stress of the vocation made sure of that, as did the normal frailties of human nature. There were grumpy, unpleasant and disobliging police officers just as there are grumpy, unpleasant and disobliging clergymen. But thinking back over that time, it is also something of a miracle of grace: the level of simple normality which RUC officers were able to create and to maintain in their own homes.

But for many of you here today there will be more desolate memories. Memories of the news which you had always feared but put out of your minds as much as you could. The anxiety when you heard a distant explosion or heard of a shooting on a news bulletin. The knowledge that never again would you experience that feeling of relief when you heard the key in the door and the sound of that familiar voice. That the person for who you were the most important person in the whole world was gone for good. Those who have kept yourselves busy over all these years when you would have been much happier simply sitting beside your husband or your wife or your father or your child, doing nothing.

So our prayers continue to be with all of those who have loved and prayed and wept and endured. And I hope that they can dwell on the words of St Paul to rejoice in the Lord always and to let your gentleness be known to all people. To remember in all circumstances – when you are poor in spirit and when you are in good spirits – that the Lord is near.

It will be difficult to follow Paul’s advice not to worry about anything (I think most of us are worriers at heart) and if you find it difficult to let your prayers and requests and even thanksgivings be made known to God, others will be praying for you. And the peace of God will keep your hearts and your minds, for the peace of God is not a glassy calm. It is a mighty confidence.

And, of course, dwell on whatever has been true and just and pure and pleasing and commendable in your treasured memories … and the God of peace will be with you.

And now unto Him, who by the power at work within us is able to do far more than we can ask or think, to him be glory in the Church and in Christ Jesus, unto all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.