Diocesan News
Sermon preached by the Bishop of Clogher at the annual Clogher Friends' service
Sunday 17th May 2009: Rogation Sunday, Friends’ Service, St Macartan’s Cathedral, ClogherPsalm 67; Genesis 28.10-22; Revelation 21:10, 22-22:5
Psalm 67.7: God will bless us, and all the ends of the earth shall fear him.
For us to gather annually in St Macartan’s Cathedral, Clogher for The Friends’ Service is an opportunity to enjoy this intimate, classical cathedral church and to share it with those whom we invite to accompany us here as our friends and to become its Friends. Standing as it does on the A4, a road which leads us from east coast to west coast, Clogher Cathedral is clearly visible by day and by night whether you are travelling from Belfast to Sligo or from Sligo to Belfast, or from any points in between which take you through this very special place of The Golden Stone. We take heart from a cathedral which is in a real sense ours and which by its presence and life speaks of continuity in a landscape which has seen many changes and developments. These have happened over centuries of Christian presence and all of the complexities of history which accompany lived Christianity wherever it is to be found. Christianity and its forward march is not a simple matter. History - that is the recording and interpreting of what happens – is in many ways more complex than the events themselves. And the role of religion itself is complex in the midst of this historical life. Take, for example, the very year in which we stand: 2009. Have we now passed four hundred years of The Plantation or of The Dispossession? It really depends on your School of History. And it has a direct bearing on how today we view, for example, the very landscape in which we stand – anything up to 5000 acres granted to one of my predecessors and none of it now apart from this cathedral church in the hands of the Church of Ireland! History does not stand still and, if we resent its passing, we simply miss out on the life that others will live in our stead.
Each of us will have our favourite part of the Bible and it will vary from individual to individual. I suspect that it is often to the psalms that many of us go regularly and instinctively for guidance, for reassurance and for inspiration. They are capable still today, and across the centuries and the cultures, of responding to and engaging with life as we know it, with live as we live it, with life as we can and, equally often, can-not cope with it. But we have, in any case, to grapple with it and to keep trying. Somehow it seems that, like a good parent, the psalmist has been there before. The psalms challenge profoundly and repeatedly glib certainties in the religious as well as in the irreligious sphere. They often bring us up short with things which we need to be told and perhaps do not want to hear. They swing from sorrow to joy and often, like a cameo, capture the essence of a moment of decision or difficulty or discernment. In ways which are unexpected, they can give voice to things which we need to hear, even though we cannot always quite get round to saying them for ourselves. They give voice to the God who is in the situation, however different one situation is from another.
Today’s psalm we associate more instinctively with Harvest Thanksgiving than with an afternoon in mid-May. But, as anyone knows all too well, there is no reaping if there is no sowing. This is the time of Rogation, a little Season stretching from the Sixth Sunday after Easter through to the Wednesday in this week and then bursting forth into Ascension Day on Thursday. It is a good reminder of how things come to be and of the historical circumstances – the things which actually happen – which make new responses to the message of Christianity not only possible but necessary. Rogationtide – to many the great Cinderella Season of the Church’s Year and leading into another great Cinderella Season, that of Ascension – what is it all about? Often our cycle in the life of the church is that of fasting before feasting. The pattern holds for Advent-Christmas and Lent-Easter. The same holds here for Rogation-Ascension. Rogation derives from the Latin word: rogare, to ask, and marks the response of Mamertus, bishop of Vienne in Gaul, to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions in Auvergne around 470 AD. Mamertus introduced a period of appeal, supplication, asking God for mercy and help in the face of such devastation. This instinct was harnessed by the church in a range of Councils which standardized such an idea of asking God for mercy and help, by combining these few days with an existing festival to give us what we call: Rogationtide. And our own Irish Prayer Book has a Collect particular to Rogationtide: O Lord, from whom all good things do come; Grant to us thy humble servants, that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good, and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same; through our Lord Jesus Christ.
And so, Rogationtide, just in the face of the great Feast of the Ascension, is a time of fasting in remembrance of the unpredictable character of nature itself and in hopeful anticipation of God’s goodness and bounty at a time more associated with sowing than with reaping. Too often we take for granted our need, and make the assumption that it is God’s job to supply it. But anyone associated with farming and agriculture will tell you that growth and production are perilous enough and good weather makes the world of a difference between success and failure, between survival and disaster. We think only of Harvest Thanks-giving for God’s Mercy but the church reminds us that we need also to start this process by Asking God’s Mercy at the beginning of our efforts and at the sowing of our plans.
Today’s Old Testament Reading takes us back to the earliest attempt in the Bible to make a House of God. Jacob is ‘on-the-run’ and, worn down and worn out, he goes to sleep, improvizing with a stone for a pillow. While he rests restlessly, God visits him and promises him something which he does not expect to deserve: blessing and an international family of the blessed. For Jacob the response which he makes to God is, again, interesting. He engages in a simple yet precise ritual of recognizing the presence of God in the particular place where he is: he takes the stone on which he laid his head, he sets it up as a pillar and he pours oil over it. All of these deliberate acts make it a House of God. The name of the place itself is changed to just that: Beth-El, House of God. In our own way today we mark this cathedral church as House of God by our prayer and our praise, by our listening attentively to God’s Word, by our friendship and recognition that history is every bit as much part of the weave of the church as it is of any other part of life.
Worship of Almighty God is part of the living and changing tradition which on this site and in this House of God takes us back into the life of the Celtic Church which runs deep and strong through the Christianity of this land from the times of Saint Macartan, patron saint of our diocese, and indeed before. And it is still part of our living inheritance. It is an inheritance which we share with everyone irrespective of denomination. Here in Clogher you have components integral in Celtic Christianity – cross, stone and site. On this site, of course, have been built the contemporary church and its predecessors, so careful is religion to honour by continuity of respect. We must never give up hope precisely because the physical ruin of yesterday holds within it the building blocks of tomorrow. And in our own time and place we have the opportunity to be part of that living history here in Clogher particularly as you seek to bring this Word and this vision out into the community and to invite the community to embrace it.
Revelation, the last and in many ways strangest Book of the New Testament, draws into the vision of what the church is destined to become, God’s giving of the totality of himself in what is called his dwelling with mankind. It holds closely to, and takes to the next stage, the sort of things we read about the Child of God in the opening verses of St John chapter 1 on Christmas Day. It surely is, therefore, a great way to celebrate the resurrection throughout the Season of Easter by linking us with the birth of God as a child on earth. The new way of living for Jerusalem is one of completeness of giving and receiving: He shall dwell among them and they shall be his people, and God himself will be with them. We would not contemplate stopping the source of water. We would not even now question the tap which fills our kettle, the shower which refreshes our bodies, the hose with which we wash our car – or somebody else washes our car! And so, God too says: To the thirsty I will give water from the spring of life as a gift. As the New Jerusalem lives the life of Christ Jesus in and through its citizens, it gives water generously and it is a place where other wonderful things happen. It is not a place of darkness – it does not need even the light of sun and moon because its sun and moon come from the glory of God directly. It is generous with this light for it shares its light with the nations of the earth. It is a place of welcome and a place of trust - always open and ever welcoming. It is exuberant and fruitful – the tree of life yields a crop for each month of the year. It is a place of restoration and healing – the leaves of the trees are for the healing of the nations. And, perhaps most wonderful of all, there will be no more shame – God and God’s worshippers shall look one another in the eye, see one another face to face. The treadmill of grinding guilt shall be no more. It would be easy to say: This is the church of the future! But it is more exciting than that: It is for us to make it the church of the present!
Let us remember now both the simplicity of Jacob’s Stone, the first recorded House of God, as we think fondly of the Stone of Gold, the Cloch-or here in this cathedral church. Let us think also of the many promises given us in a new picture of the House of God in Revelation – water, light, trustfulness, givingness, fruitfulness, healing. Let us remember also the traditions of inheritance of history, of generosity of spirit, of inclusivity of expression of our faith, of openness to community of fellow-human beings as Friends. All of this is ours as today we worship God in this finest of churches. Let us also remember the further words of the Lord God to Jacob in Genesis 28.15 as we take the spirit of this Service of Thanksgiving as Friends out with us beyond this church: I shall be with you to protect you wherever you go, and I shall bring you back to this land. I shall not leave you until I have done what I have promised to do. Rogationtide as a time of sowing opens up fresh hopes and new pathways for us, in the fullness of harvesting-time, to return and give thanks again to Clogher’s House of Prayer and city of God. And surely it is fitting that today a revised History of the cathedral is being launched. It is the painstaking work of Mr Jack Johnston and as well as being a History, it incorporates a Guide which any of us can use as we move around this building seeing things and seeking explanation. It is all to be found there in the new History. In the spirit of Revelation, each of you is invited to receive one as you leave; in the spirit of Genesis I ask you, not to lay your head on it as a pillow, but to see it as a blessing. In the spirit of Rogation, I ask you with it to sow the seeds of Friendship of Clogher Cathedral among all whom you see and meet.
Psalm 67.1: May God be gracious to us and bless us, may he cause his face to shine on us, that your purpose may be known on earth, your saving power among all nations.
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