Press Releases21 Jan 09

Transcript of Bishop of Clogher's Week of Christian Unity Sermons

Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2009
Transcript of Sermon given by the
Rt Revd Dr Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher
in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Armagh (21.1.09) and
to be given in St Peter’s Cathedral, Belfast (22.1.09)

Readings: Ezekiel 37:1-14; Romans 8:18-25; St John 3:7 and 8.

Ezekiel 37:9 'Then the Lord said to me, Prophesy to the wind, prophesy, O man, and say to it: These are the words of the Lord God: let winds come from every quarter and breathe into these slain, that they may come to life.'

I imagine that if any of us was asked to identify ‘an Ezekiel moment,’ it would more than likely be the moment when the dry bones, on hearing the word of the Lord, are knit together into a new bodily creation. Some of us may recollect this visionary happening through the tune and rhythm of a Spiritual Song or from our own reading of one of the more extraordinary books of the Bible. The writings of the prophet Ezekiel incorporate us into apocalypse – now.

This week culminates in the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul, himself a great visionary, if at times an exhausting one. Tonight we travel together in faith, in hope and in love – that great trinity of communion – with Ezekiel as our ecumenical watchman along with St Paul. As we do so, I want at the outset to look a little closer at what we take for granted in this prophecy. First there is the central position of that most complicated part of the creation, the human body. We humans simply cannot let it be! We reject it and we suppress it in the name of religion and of all that is moral and upright. And of course we all have an opinion on it when it comes to that great talking-point and post-modern obsession: human sexuality. In the various swings of the pendulum, we are often closer to a divided and indeed dualistic understanding of creation and of good and evil, rather than to any clear-sightedness Christian orthodoxy which seeks to be generous in being mature. But, as anyone living in Northern Ireland knows, certainty has repeatedly brought in its wake short-sightedness and the most energized contributors to this debate across the spectrum often neither hear nor listen to one another. Rather refreshingly, here in Ezekiel, we are confronted – for God is always God, and the New Testament did not invent the doctrine of the resurrection – we are confronted with the body in a new guise, as a combination of resurrection and new creation. It functions as a definition of national identity for God’s people – and all of this, while they are in Exile in Babylon. Resurrection is a metaphor. As such it carries the hope and the promise of new life for a people exiled from who they are, a people deprived of the land which gives identity and integrity to that same people – and today we have to add a land riddled with human suffering, devastating brutality, dismantling of life itself and at deep unease with itself.

Secondly, Ezekiel is part of the family of apocalyptic writing among books of the Bible. A literal world such as ours which, has largely sold its spiritual imagination for the most up-to-date mobile phone contract and a few soap operas, does not know what to do with this sort of stuff. Our attitude to most things has now become rather like this: if it has not happened to me, then it cannot possibly be true. One of the oddest twists and turns of our time is this. The expansion of human knowledge to such an extent that what we know is doubling in volume every five years, has resulted in a serious loss of inquisitiveness, curiosity even, about things which matter at a deep level. But perhaps too many religious people still think, even in this bicentenary year, that inquisitiveness leads to Darwin and Darwin leads to faithlessness. The thread of Apocalypse makes its way right through the Bible, never far below the surface. It links us as Christians firmly to the Judaism which we have largely forgotten about and it challenges us to be more exotic and a bit less boring and buttoned-up about what really matters. Its idiom is uncomfortable, but its message is something which we need to tease out. The resurrection of the body and the rekindling of the spiritual imagination – these are grafted together and given as a gift to the nation in Ezekiel’s prophecy by the re-stirring of the breath of life, the wind of creation. This is a wonderful moment of regeneration. The people have a chance because God is back and creation is back in full force. Let the New Israel begin!

Physical resurrection, spiritual imagination, the breath of creation – these may well seem to be strange places to begin to think about Christian unity. However, the state of God’s people Israel as voiced piece by piece in Ezekiel chapter 37, well describes much of the institutional inertia of the churches today. It also describes the disjointed way in which we present ourselves to the outsider and indeed to that great vampire of contemporary life: the media. Much of the work of ecumenism is local. Much of the work of ecumenism is personal. Much of the work of ecumenism is patient, low-key and unsung. But here again the prophetic voice of Ezekiel can and must speak to us: without a bigger picture, without a broader brush, the people can lose heart, identity and purpose. So often bound up with one another these three – heart, identity and purpose – can begin to disengage and disintegrate. In a time of economic shrinkage in the West, our confidence and our generosity of spirit will inevitably be re-thought downwards as we concentrate more on ourselves and our survival. But it is into precisely this sort of climate of loss of confidence that Ezekiel speaks and we dare not lose hope.

The Greeting at the peace in the season of Easter, the sustained time of resurrection, takes some words from St John’s Gospel chapter 20 as follows: 'The Risen Christ came and stood among his disciples and said: Peace be with you. Then were they glad when they saw the Lord.' I have always been taken, since the Peace was introduced into the liturgy of my own church, by the delight in resurrection which it voices. Not only does it set a positive tone. It goes all out to express the joy of believing and the joy of belonging. The presence of Christ Risen and his ready capacity to break the ice all over again with those who knew him but not in this guise of one risen in body – these things of themselves speak of someone who sits easily with transformation and new life. Such is his legacy to his disciples now as then. Such is, indeed, the spirit which we need to bring into our ecumenical encounters not only with one another but with those whom we do not yet know. His greeting is the familiar one which still is the normal greeting across the Near and Middle East: Peace be with you! And the first disciples’ response of gladness resonates with recognition of the fulness of God with them – as also has been our gladness in the Season of Christmas. It is somehow as if earth and heaven – united first perhaps since creation itself in human form in the birth of this strange man, and again in the Prayer he had given to his disciples at their request – are held together in a tension at once fearful and faithful: fearful because they saw something which they had not expected; faithful because they made the appropriate connections and saw the Lord. All of this gives us some sense of what are the marks of a community of resurrection: peace, joyfulness, recognition and above all presence, the simple courage to ‘be there.’  Out of that group of disciples, the Risen Lord was already creating within the Octave of Easter another New Israel in whom heaven and earth come together and are united most of all in hope.

But, what of the bigger picture? What of the broader brush-strokes? What of the encouragement which can give permission, and in the language of Ezekiel, body to this resurrection? The contemporary ecumenical movement, empowered by the refinements of deep theological argument and given voice by virtually every Christian leader of substance, lived out by millions of faithful and hopeful believers world-wide, needs today, as a matter of urgency, to make a number of paradigm shifts if it is not now to be the echo of like calling to like. And those paradigm shifts include: from apathy to activity; from mind to matter; from faith to Inter Faith. The first two are prefigured in the prophecy and vision of Ezekiel. The third is forced upon us - however reluctant we are, however strongly any of us wishes to crawl back into a peaceable world of ever-so-polite denominationalism – by world events which make up the place where the churches in their fullness ought to be found.

(1) From apathy to activity

Urgency is something which, sadly, is now largely lost from church life. Maybe we have argued ourselves out of any real belief in a Second Coming. Maybe we are just too comfortable with the church, as we have increasingly made it in our own image and likeness. And I say it first of my own denomination, which itself must repent and turn again and look outwards. But I imagine that everyone can recognize the symptoms. Loss of urgency may indeed be born of the best of intentions but it issues in the most destructive of outcomes. It shows itself in many forms. One is a general irritation in the face of any change to what has become the status quo ante. We see it equally in terms of the attitude of sentimental conservatism which we apply to church buildings, many of which are now in precisely in the wrong location for the work of God’s mission on earth. We see it too in a panic-stricken attitude to any absence of certainty in things of faith. Sadly, the world today is tending to live more by prejudice than by insight and, equally sadly, the institutional churches have frequently found themselves cast in the role of chaplains to inertia. How long ago, we might ask, is it since Michael Hurley SJ, well known in Northern Ireland and across the world for his conviction of the goodness of church people beyond his own denomination, how long ago is it since he encouraged every Christian person to tithe as an ecumenical witness time and presence in a church other than one’s own? How many of us do it?       

There are always opportunities, if only our earth-bound eyes wish to see them or care to notice them. The impact of The Credit Crunch has instantly hit many people across our society. Its impact is now going deeper and wider. Priorities have been changed for us - overnight. Consumerized Christians like ourselves are having to learn new and unattractive lessons. In situations of need and distress, our thoughts turn instinctively to ourselves and our own survival. But, for Christians, unity and mission go together and there is no choice between them in the love of God. That haunting and inescapable question - so often ‘Sin Binned’ in Northern Ireland precisely because it is so probing of our motivation and intention – is asked by Jesus himself and holds both together: Who, then, is my neighbour? The answer is simple and uncomfortable: whoever is in need. Unity and mission draw together urgency and response in a way which contemporary churches are ill-equipped to deal with precisely because the institution has become more important than the instinct – the instinct to go, to give, to share and to rescue. Like Ezekiel, but from the bones of a different battlefield, that of contemporary consumerism, a philosophy lying now in ruins, we need to return to active life in a way which is going to be in many ways simpler, but which will, I hope, be more direct and more community-based.

(2) From mind to matter

The second paradigm shift, to which I referred, is the move from mind to matter. It brings us back to Ezekiel and to resurrection. Bodily resurrection is, I can only presume, viewed by many now as no more than an oddity and an antiquarianism. But it has something to tell us about matter over mind. Too often in the church, ideas do not issue in anything happening. Rightly we speak of patience and of the sowing of seeds, but we also seek signs of things being done and of people doing them. The vision of Ezekiel, to which the churches of Korea have drawn us in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity 2009, reminds us of the need for the proper living expression of matter, of the physical and the bodily from which large parts of Christianity from earliest days have recoiled. The sustained commitment to express in living, physical, material form the body of the whole people of Israel is itself a commitment to trust to the Spirit of God. Such a commitment shows that, in bad times as in good times, God is present with his people in the humility of his church. This shift from mind to matter is important for another reason also. We live in a time when the virtual has almost triumphed over the actual. The triumph of electronic communication over the spoken word leaves us ill-equipped for the sort of interaction, as people, which builds up a new body. For us in Northern Ireland, the capacity to construct caricatures has fed off the silence of hatred for many years. Ten years since the outbreak of peace, we are in a strange position as a civil society. We relax when our politicians look as if they can work together, even momentarily, for the good of all. We expect too little of them in terms of matter over mind. We sense deep down that they remain emotionally too tied to the vote-winning Agendas of an era which we hoped was over. Northern Ireland requires creative, collaborative political life, urgently: in education, in healthcare provision, in infrastructure and in the rehabilitation and reintegration with one another of those who locally have been and remain divided.

(3) From faith to Inter Faith

The third paradigm shift is that from faith to Inter Faith. By saying this I am not suggesting a facile melding or an appetizing buffet of world religions. I am talking first of the need for understanding of and respect for one’s own tradition as a building block of sharing that tradition with those who do not live by it. And, secondly, I am talking about the realization that such respect is grounded in the confidence which comes from knowing one’s own tradition, blemishes and all, and listening to, and then acting with, those of another tradition. And, thirdly, a golden rule of such engagement is that you do not look for the worst in the other while presenting the best of yourself. None of this ought to be a surprize to people for whom the centenary of the 1910 Edinburgh Conference is fast approaching us next year. In 1910, unity and mission marched hand in hand. That vision remains. Ecumenists the world over can see that much of our work to be done in this hitherto neglected area of Inter Faith understanding has already been prefigured in our method of engagement in ecumenical encounter. Here we ought to be both ready and urgent to be adventurous. We ought to be ‘ahead of the game.’

Ten, indeed now eleven, years into The Peace, Northern Ireland is a physical, human body which hurts and it hurts particularly because – rather peculiarly in contemporary Europe, I suggest – we are religiously sensitive. Of course, secularism is alive and well in our society every bit as much as it is elsewhere and many of us, whether we care to admit it or not, are beneficiaries of it. Too easily have we accustomed ourselves to a negative reading and understanding of the secular. But I want to ask you to look at it in a slightly different way. The secular lets the daylight in on our practice of religion. And in this daylight we need to let ourselves be opened to the rush of the Spirit of God. At a time of foreign exile and of national emergency, Ezekiel is taken by God to see something from which he cannot turn away his gaze. It is the still life of a fractured world. It is the battlefield where his nation fell defeated and lay disintegrated – bones brittle with the passing years; bones pointing jaggedly to loss and defeat; bones never respected by burial. The vision which God gives to Ezekiel as he speaks for a people for whom Jerusalem is now a distant memory is that they and, through them, Jerusalem can live. Restoration comes in two forms: the bones become recognizable as bodies; and then, as Ezekiel moves from despair to hope, he sees the potential glistening within them - and they become living people. From defeat to potential to activity: this is the progression through which the Lord leads the prophet. And it can be ours too.

For this reason, based in my conviction that such a progression is more than possible, a material emphasis in an understanding of resurrection is to me so important. We see it in the vision of life in the pages of Ezekiel. We see it in the gentlest of rebukes given by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to Mary of Magdala: Do not touch me because I am not yet ascended and in the strongest of encouragements given by that same Saviour to Thomas: If you wish, then put your hands into the place where the sword pierced my side - if that is what you need to be able to believe! We see it in the instinct of the Christian people of Korea, grappling with the unresolved battlefield of national identity, while they still persevere in Christian identity. It is here in the material which they offer the world for worship in this Week of Prayer for Christian Unity. A living reality, not a virtual reality, is what the people inside and outside the churches call for. They look, like St Paul, for the labour pains of a new creation. They still in today’s society respect us enough in our common and shared witness to ask of us: Can these bones live? Our answer has to be: Live and move together.

ENDS