Press Releases11 Nov 04

Bishop Jackon's sermon at the dedication festival of St. Martin's, Ballymacarrett, East Belfast

ST. MARTIN'S PARISH CHURCH, BALLYMACARRETT, EAST BELFAST DEDICATION FESTIVAL
sermon by
The Rt. Revd Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher

Thursday 11th November 2004

Readings : Genesis 28.10-18; Ephesians 2.11-22, Matthew 21.12-16

St Martin of Tours is the French saint par excellence to this day, outstripping even his mentor St Hilary of Poitiers. Not only is this Parish Church dedicated to his witness and service to Almighty God but he is rightly remembered for so many things which we now know to be vital in the development of the Western Christian tradition particularly the championing of the doctrine expressed in what we now call The Nicene Creed. Born in 316, Martin served first as a soldier in the Imperial Army and then left to join Hilary, a Godly activist for the Nicene cause, in Poitiers in the Loire Valley. This area of France beloved of British and Irish holiday-makers year in, year out was the focus of Martin?s exciting work. It brings us back to the history which we share with the whole Celtic world of which we are part and which is closer to us now through the re-discovery of the European dimension to Irish life and, more practically, through Easyjet and Ryanair. Such is life. If we do not take our opportunities, others will snatch them from us and that will be that.

We think with good reason that we live in troubled times in today?s church and in particular in today?s Anglican Communion. The times in which Martin lived were troubled too. The Christian Church was in the process of taking to the farthest corners of Empire a world religion which had started with humble beginnings in the Holy Land and had caught the imagination of the Emperor. He promoted it East and West, not least through the forward march of the very army of which our Martin was a member. Genuine orthodoxy in those days was new, it was radical, it broke down barriers, it turned fresh earth. It created fresh vocabulary to describe the nature of God, the relationship among the persons of God. It grappled with how we perceive and receive God and expressed it in just a few words. It was in fact the conservatives ? like Arius of Alexandria ? who were the heretics. And this we should note with care and attention. It was into this double task of spreading Christianity in a world of Celtic paganism and also of explaining and spreading the doctrine contained in what we call The Nicene Creed across a church at war with itself, its Emperors and its bishops that Martin stepped. And he was good at it. Normandy and Aquitaine, Trier and Vienna, Chartres and Paris ? all of this area respected and remembers Martin still as he had moved among them. And we remember him too with thanksgiving for his Patronage today.

Too often is it fashionable for us to see people like Martin as intellectuals ? a really bad word in the Church of Ireland, clever people with no possible understanding of or care for straightforward, no nonsense people like ourselves. This is, unfortunately, too often a handy way out. It means that we don?t ever have to take them seriously because their heads are already in the clouds. But we can say none of this about Martin of Tours. He made no pretension to being an intellectual and yet he upheld and spread the most sophisticated of teaching. He was rough hewn, a person of action and vision, charitable, given to strong gestures such as the one for which he remains world-famous: dividing his soldier?s cloak with a poor man at the Gate of the City of Amiens. And this is also the person who, it seems, single-handedly introduced into Gaul the monastic tradition of the Eastern Desert. In turn it rapidly spread to Ireland and developed such a powerful hold on the spiritual life and imagination of the people of this land that, when the light of Imperial civilization was snuffed in the fifth century, the Celtic tradition from Ireland and Scotland re-evangelized old Europe. His biographers tell that - and I would say the same holds for many good people since - he died disdained by many clerics but honoured by many laypersons and ascetics in the year 397.

It would be difficult not to let one?s mind and one?s spirit go in the direction of the building itself when taking part in this Patronal Festival of St Martin?s. There is no need for me to point out to you the very special place of this building in the hearts and minds of its parishioners and of all those who worship here yesterday as today. It was consecrated on April 8th 1933, as part of the Southern Church Mission, its territory carved out of the parochial territory of St Patrick?s, Ballymacarrett. It was the inspiration of Almighty God through Bishop Orr of Meath. Today also we are so often in danger of letting the link between North and South slip in the Church of Ireland. We need one another and we need a confident togetherness. There is no need either for me to underline that fact that even those who are hard boiled in their anxieties and oppositions to the definition of the church as building find themselves swept up into the text and the speech of this building, its soaring glories and its small-scale intimacies.

While having great sympathy with the argument and the conviction of those who voice their frustration at the definition of the church as buildings precisely because all too often this is a substitute for carrying through real aspects of the urgent work of the church in terms of justice and principled engagement, I am increasingly wary about assuming that all inspiration comes from energetic activity. I should still wish to make the case for the essential part which beauty plays in the creating and sustaining of a vision of glory, a calling to faithfulness and a spirit of service. Buildings too can and do speak. They carry and convey meaning.

Annually the Patronal Festival Service provides an opportunity for those who have in their heart the example and the memory, the life of dedication and denial of Martin of Tours to come to this place, this site, this parish church and to make a pilgrimage in the spirit of Martin and of the Collect which gives voice to the church?s perception and remembrance of such a House of Prayer: Almighty God, to whose glory we celebrate the dedication of this house of prayer: We praise you for the many blessings you have given to those who worship here ? The simple directness of this prayer holds our attention as we take stock of our own journey through life: following the example in faith, in hope and in love of an individual whose own teaching of the faith was an example of love. The Prayer of the Fellowship of St Martin also holds our attention. It expresses the diversity of the church as we pray: We remember before Thee this day our brethren in the streets of our cities and towns, and those in the depths of the far glens and those on rocky windswept coasts and islands. It is for us, then, in the spirit of Martin of Tours to add the leaven of hope to the world of which we are part and of which our daily pilgrimage is part. The commitment, emotional and practical, of those who worship here and who love this church is something treasured by all associated with the life of this place carrying as it does deep within its recesses the secrets of the lived history of this very special part of the City of Belfast as its pledge to engagement with the community of today and tomorrow who are the people of Belfast.

Genesis chapter 28 introduces us to the most unlikely architect of the community of faith and of the people of God. I refer, of course, to Jacob. He was on the run. He had been far from good and he knew it. Exhaustion combined with fear had driven him to a local shrine for sanctuary, a safe haven for the night. And yet out of this confused situation, out of this cowardice, out of this combination of superstition and folk religion, the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac appeared to him and in a very particular way became his God, the God of Jacob. The vision which he had of angels of God ascending and descending on the ladder joining the earth and the heaven remained a powerful image as the wider Biblical response to the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob took shape in its Christian form. Nathaniel?s clear expression of who Jesus is: Rabbi, you are the Son of God; you are king of Israel (John 1.49) wrestles with this picture. To Nathaniel, an Israelite in whom there is no guile (and mercifully there still are some of them around even today) is promised the discernment in faith that the Son of God and the King of Israel whom he has espied with innocent clarity is one living person, not two clever theological ideas. By this I mean that the one born human Son of God is at the same time divine King of Israel. These two parts of life, which come together in Nathanael?s mind as he agrees to follow the living God, are the temple of the new Israel in the new age in which we ourselves still live. But the origins of this sort of temple lie in the particular way in which Jacob?s hilltop shrine becomes, through his struggle, the house of God. It is a wonderful, unlikely and inspiring story. I thank God we still have it.

Jacob builds this temple out of what lay to hand. And surely this is a timely reminder to us to make good use of what we might otherwise not take seriously because it has always been around. Much of it may seem so familiar as to be worthless. Much of it may seem so predictable as to be trite. Yet it is out of such debris that Jacob made the first House of God. But he did not simply throw it together. The text is quite clear that he did everything in the proper ritual way: the stone which had been his pillow he set up as a sacred pillar. This is a powerful and timely encouragement to good order in worship. It became a place of gladness, a focal point of celebration because Jacob poured oil over it. Not only was it consecrated. It was also in the same action celebrated. And in all of this Jacob recognized something new, something life-giving in an old place. We are called to do this here tonight, as in the Patronage of Martin we discern God.

I have dwelt on what may seem like the private encounter of Jacob with God because to me it expresses something which is worth delving into no matter how often we have heard it before. To my mind it speaks once more to a generation confused by talk of God. It talks in a true way and in stages which are easy to follow and which also provide a way forward through the confusion generated by much religious banality today. There is also the conviction, of which we must never lose sight, that God is already there. We never need to invent God but we do need to disclose God for ourselves and for other people. And surely that is one of the great excitements of Christianity.

Another House of God, the temple comes to the fore as a living, breathing, developing being, in fact as both a body and a building, in the Letter to the Ephesians. It is easy for us to take all of this churchy language, this Bible-speak, for granted. But we should be more demanding and therefore more respectful of Scripture all at once. We should listen to what it itself is saying, to what it is saying fresh in a new and an old authentic way at the same time. The wonderful thing about this Reading is that all of what we need is here. The author of this Letter has broken through the barrier which had so distorted the influence and the impact of the First Temple in the life of the first Israel. This is so very important for us as contemporary Christian people with a living faith. Just think of the contortions of Matthew 21, the Gospel for today: there is a really strained relationship between the Messiah and the Temple. It all seems to be crumbling before our eyes. We need to be careful, imaginative, critical and open in our reading of Holy Scripture.

The Mosaic Code has somehow come to dominate our understanding of the Old Testament. It is frequently in danger of overpowering the human face of ethical behaviour and of dulling our senses in the discernment of the relationship between justice and righteousness and further the relationship between morality and punishment. This ought not to be so. There are significant dangers, as we now see at work and at play throughout the Anglican Communion at large, in the application of a Code of Conduct designed originally for an unruly nomadic people to a settled domestic church. One of the crowning glories of our Anglican tradition is not pushing the good will of decent people to the limit through the intimidation of legal action and the carelessness of pastoral inaction all in one. We have remained steady by celebrating the doctrine of development expounded by one of my predecessors in the See of Clogher, Richard Hanson. By this doctrine of development I mean that change is not a betrayal of God but a following of God.

The witness of St Paul is often ambiguous, indeed problematic but on this issue he is quite clear and so is the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians. The Law has in a certain and in a real sense run its course. Its role as instrument and indicator of racial separation and superiority has had its day. By the way, this is something we are still learning nearly two thousand years later. If you do not believe me that it has already happened, just listen to Romans 3:30: For if the Lord is indeed one, he will justify the circumcised by their faith and the uncircumcised through their faith. The Epistle to the Ephesians, whatever its time-scale, wherever it comes from, gives flesh to this pronouncement. You would certainly be a wiser modern Christian for reading it.

The vital work of Christ Jesus in saving the world ? I am reminded of the words of Anne Atkins which hit my pillow one morning during Thought for the Day when she said with rapier-like insight: Jesus came not to enhance our existence but to save our lives ? is such that the Gentile is in but this does not mean that the Jew is out. I think also of the words of that most humble of Archbishops of Canterbury, the one who travels by public bus, Rowan Williams, when he says: Why is it such an unexamined assumption of modern life that our success simply has to be on the back of the failure of someone else? To this question ? about which none of us has probably ever thought ? what answer does a modern, competitive person have? Little more, I suggest, than blank incomprehension at such a clever man coming across as such a pathetic loser. But we would be quite wrong. This is a question which needs a real and a strong answer.

Sentence after sentence in Ephesians 2 trumpets with utmost charity and confidence the equivalence of old and new Israel, of Gentile and Jew by, with and in the one Christ Jesus. He is now The Temple and we are The Temple. You can call us The Body if you prefer but it is all the same thing, God be praised! This is a tension which runs throughout the Old Testament. There are to be found in Isaiah prophecies which completely restructure the argument for the sort of exclusivity encouraged by the Mosaic Code by entirely dismantling it. The Mosaic Code is itself likened to what we in Northern Ireland call the siege mentality. Just listen to what The Letter of Aristeas (third century) says: Our Lawgiver ? fenced us round with impregnable ramparts and walls of iron that we might not mingle at all with the other nations but remain pure in body and soul. The words of Ephesians chapter 2.16 speak loud and clear to us as the Anglican Communion examines with fresh urgency the whole lived reality of communion: This was his purpose, to reconcile the two in a single body to God through the cross, by which he killed the enmity. It might seem to any passer by that the enmity is not killed and dead but alive and kicking hard.

This background of reconciliation through equivalence, reconciliation through acceptance, reconciliation through inclusion in relation to the body is important for us in reading the particular section on the Temple which forms the latter part of this reading. It speaks of growth and applies it to a building but it speaks of the new thing on the stage of world history ? the Christian church itself ? as the coming together of God?s people, aliens now fellow-citizens in this holy temple in the Lord. This is not a foregone conclusion. This is not some Cookery Programme where someone produces from under the worktop something which had been prepared earlier. This is happening here and now with all the messiness of holiness, with all the muck and dirt of purity. And this sort of holiness is something which the contemporary church too easily airbrushes out. Holiness comes out from the Body of Christ. It is not made up simply of the individual holinesses which we put in. We are bombarded by the language of a closed body of the elect. We are offered a fast-forwarding of the video of heaven but most of us are not offered a seat in the cinema. As Professor Moody says to the young Harry Potter, what is required is: Constant vigilance!

Those who are holy have no delusions of superiority ? they are too dependent on God?s grace for that. Those who are pure usually don?t know what you mean when you use the term about them. There is that element of surprize, that lack of contrivance which gives hope where there is a genuine sense of inadequacy. There is a sharing, a mutuality of everything and that is what communion is. A building is not all cement and bricks. A body is not all tongue and legs. Cohesion and collaboration are vital, however hard we need to work to create them and to sustain them in trust. And in our own Church of Ireland everybody needs to want this.

The Scriptures which we have enjoyed this evening, the worship in which we are participating has through the patronage of St Martin of Tours, one of the most important doers and teachers of the fourth century church, brought us back to the roots of our religious heritage and forward to the roots of our contemporary witness. Martin was someone who set an example of Christian charity to a stranger ? we can do that. Martin was someone who knew that tradition was not all about the past ? we can do that. Martin was someone who was a player and a participant in the history of his own day ? we can do that. All of these characteristics of one so ancient are our opportunities in a world so modern. God needs us out in the world every bit as much as God needs us in church.

Patronage is not the insurance policy of withdrawal but the confidence to go forward in faith. The building is not the whole story but, like a Squash-court of the soul, it can contain and strengthen visions, aspirations and hopes which otherwise might simply fade. It can inspire with humour, with sound and with ceremony when the mind has gone dry. But above all, I think, by its constancy, by its sense of place all of this can draw us back to the tradition of Martin and of the early church here in the middle of Belfast, battered but resilient, misunderstood but faithful, problematic but hopeful in 2004.