Press Releases31 May 09

Bishop Jackson's Address, Ecumenical Service, Pentecost Sunday

Address by the Rt Revd Dr Michael Jackson, Bishop of Clogher, Sunday 31st May 2009

Ecumenical Service Errigal Old Graveyard

Readings: Numbers 11.24-30; St John 15.26, 27 and 16.4b-15

St John 16.8a: 'And when he comes he will prove the world wrong …'

It is all too difficult to make the case for Christianity in today’s world without calling down scorn – even more than wrath – from nearly every quarter for being irrelevant. It is rather like that old-fashioned party-game: Pass the Parcel. It seems as if the church is always caught out holding the parcel when the lights are switched on and has to walk away from the fun and games – defeated yet again. Somehow in today’s highly selective and thoroughly secularized definition of meaning itself, the church has found itself defined as having nothing to contribute because it has nothing meaningful to offer any longer. We have reached this position in a relatively short time and we, of course, have ourselves to thank for this in so many ways. The tide of time and the cycle of change batter hard an institution which seeks to hand on tradition. However dynamic our intentions, delivery often fails to excite. When we consider the increasingly dismal record of church people and church leaders in relation to so many things which matter to lay people, there is little wonder that negativity is now in the air we all breathe about church itself. At the same time, it would be very easy to conclude, as disciples of Jesus Christ, that we have nothing to contribute; that we are in that cheap and cheerful modern phrase ‘no longer fit for purpose’; that we are so comprehensively disempowered as to be disinherited.

This would be a mistake. The generosity of the Gospel, the sweep of the Spirit and the graciousness of God outrun the worst and the best of human attempts to express who God is and what God does. The recognition of sin as wrongdoing is essential to any aspiration to repentance, forgiveness and restoration. This is not to let anyone off the hook – it is, rather, to set our genuine attempts to be God’s children in the ambit of God’s love and work. It is also to give voice to the glory of God on the day in the Christian Year – Pentecost itself - when we celebrate the presence of God in every place at every time and for every one. In this context proving the world wrong may sound rather ambitious and foolhardy. But let us be careful and for a moment look at the three areas where the Advocate will, in the thought of St John’s Gospel, prove the world wrong.

They are defined as follows: about sin and righteousness and judgement. Stated like this, they are not self-explanatory. What is very important in linking what God does with them and with those to whom they relate is the term: Advocate. The advocate pleads the case. We are between law courts in St John’s thought and expression and the Advocate is so important because the Advocate will plead the Christian case in the Court of Appeal on three charges, in three ways. The Advocate will plead that Jesus was not a sinner and impostor. The Advocate will plead that righteousness comes as a gift from Christ with the Father in the Spirit. The Advocate will plead that the definitive judgement was and remains the judgement as meted out to the unjust judges and the Prince of this world by the transformative death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It is in this framework that St John’s Gospel speaks so consistently violently of the world. It is not that St John is defending the church as such – indeed there was no church as such in his day. Yet, too many branches of Christianity have taken the language used of the world in John as justification of their own withdrawal from the world and their own self-righteousness in the face of it. But it is indeed the very same world into which the child of Bethlehem came and was sent to save. And churches are corrupted and corrupt and corrupting, of that there is no doubt.

The dilemma is real, the tension is fierce but the lines are cleared by the Advocate – to prepare us for a different way of acting, of being and of reacting. In standing with the Jesus who was without sin; in accepting that righteousness comes from the Trinitarian God working as One; in separating out injustice in the world – we, as followers of such a God and such a Christ, cannot stand for ourselves alone but we must stand with those who are in need, with those who are being abused, dehumanized, treated unjustly, with those whom we have hurt and with those who have hurt us. For this reason, as much as for any other, it is important that we let ourselves and everyone else be embraced by the open heaven of the day of Pentecost.

The illustration from Numbers of the life and working of the Spirit of God is a useful and a timely one to keep before us. It points us towards recognition, delight and the dignity of other people. The church of today cannot ‘bottle’ the Spirit and decant the Spirit on its own terms, whether they be good, bad or terrible. However unattractive it is to us as people associated with the warp and weave of an institution such as the church, we cannot presume to limit or to thwart the operation of the Spirit – and expect to be credible. An over-anxious Joshua, a young man in leadership showing early signs of principled responsibility, thinks that Moses needs to know what is really going on back in the camp. Once Moses does know, he immediately embraces the prophesying of Eldad and Medad as something much more than a breach of protocol or the opportunism of buskers with no permit. He takes it as an example of what is possible in the Spirit.

We are asked in Ireland often to be generous about the past and about our remembering. We need also to be generous about the future and our envisioning. That is why I am so honoured to be part of this Whitsun Service every year. It is here together and across what others may see as insuperable divisions of sectarian prejudice and deep-running hatred – still sadly all too alive and kicking hard - that we give voice to the binding presence of the Spirit of the Christ on the Day of Pentecost. We simply cannot tell where God will bring us together next!
 
Numbers 11.29: 'But Moses said to Joshua, Are you jealous on my account? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets and that the Lord would bestow his spirit on them all.'

ENDS