Press Releases07 Oct 09

Michaelmas Law Term Service Sermon by the Bishop of Limerick

Sermon for Morning Service in St Michan's Church Dublin,  Monday 5th October 2009, on the occasion of the commencement of the Michaelmas Law Term

Given by the Rt Revd Trevor Williams, Bishop of Limerick and Killaloe

Full transcript:

Some words from the Prophet Isaiah. 'Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach,    the restorer of streets to live in.' (Isaiah 58.12)

Words of Isaiah, or 3rd Isaiah, but we needn't go into that. God's people had returned from exile in Babylon. They had believed that returning home would be the end of all their troubles. This is what they believed God had promised them. But at the time of writing, one hundred years after their return, there was still no kingdom, no golden age. Apathy and discouragement had dimmed the people’s  vision of the future. Cynicism had replaced hope. They had resorted to 'eat, drink and be merry'. This is how Isaiah earlier, describes the typical attitude  (Isaiah 56:12): '"Come," they say, "let us get wine; let us fill ourselves with strong drink. And tomorrow will be like today, great beyond measure.'

So the writer in the passage we read, cynically reminds his readers of what they had hoped for. The 'promise' that 'Your ancient ruins shall be rebuilt; you shall raise up the foundations of many generations; you shall be called the repairer of the breach, the restorer of streets to live in.'

In today’s Ireland, sobering up with a painful hangover after the blind hedonistic rush of the 'Celtic Tiger', when our strapline could well have been, 'Drink up, tomorrow will be like today, great beyond measure.'  Really there is nothing new under the sun.

Isaiah's message was that his society was in deep trouble, because they had forgotten their mission, their purpose.
Former president Mary Robinson sounded a bit like Isaiah when she said recently that the lack of 'a comprehensive vision of what sort of society we want' is at the heart of the problems Ireland faces.

We have a voice. Whether we work in aspects of the legal profession, the Diplomatic Service, the Church, or wherever we are. In what we do, and how we do it; in what we say and how we say it, we have the opportunity to describe an inspiring vision which will call this society forward from depression of recession to a compassionate society.

Isaiah showed the way. It was to begin with hearing the cries of the oppressed, hungry, homeless, naked, poor, powerless, voiceless, anyone bound by injustice and hopelessness. And responding to their needs not grudgingly but generously.

Are you like me? 'What can I do?', I used to think. 'I'm only a curate, what can I do? Then as a Rector, '…What can I do?', Now, as a Bishop, I need to stop saying 'What can I do?'

We need to be purveyors of possibility, signposts for hope. We need to believe in the day of small things. To believe the next step is important. If we can't solve the whole problem, it doesn't mean there is nothing we can do. It may be small, but yet it can be significant

This is how Archbishop Oscar Romero of San Salvador put it:
'This is what we are about. We plant seed that one day will grow. We water seeds already planted knowing that they hold future promise. We lay foundations that will need further development. We provide yeast that produces effects far beyond our capabilities. We cannot do everything and there is a sense of liberation in that. This enables us to do something, and to do it very, very well. It may be incomplete, but it is a beginning, a step along the way, an opportunity for the Lord's grace to enter and do the rest.'

This week I attended a meeting to see if Limerick and Belfast had anything to learn from one another. At that meeting I met a sociologist who had worked throughout the UK and Ireland in some of the most deprived communities, many with frightening criminal statistics. What she had learnt was at the heart of such a dysfunctional communities was social segregation.

Society is increasingly divided by race, class, social status, educational background, and the age-old divide between rich and poor continues to widen. When those in need are not heard, not only is an injustice done, but fabric of society is torn. In a global village when we are closer than ever together, it seems that the walls between us are getting higher.

Before coming to Limerick, I was the Rector of a Church on the Ardoyne Road in North Belfast. The Holy Cross dispute took place at my church gates. The Glenbryn community who started that protest, told me, 'No-one was listening to us. We wanted security, the end of intimidation and people being driven from their homes, but no one was listening. We started the protest because we didn’t not what else to do.' And as we all know that in that dispute between Protestants and Catholics in North Belfast, it was young children who suffered trauma. Shortly after that dispute the Dunlop report was commissioned and it showed that the whole of North Belfast had been neglected in terms of development for many years. And government responded. Resources were put in place with a special programme of neighbourhood renewal. What does it take for those on the margins of our society to be heard? The walls of segregation are high.

I worked for ten years with the Corrymeela Community in Northern Ireland, which works quietly at bringing Catholics and Protestants together from troubled areas for a couple of days together at its residential centre at Ballycastle. On one schools' programme, 16-year-old Catholics and Protestants came to Corrymeela. It was a three-day programme and on the last evening when they had got to know one another well, and built up some trust, they were divided into groups of eight, four Catholics and four Protestants. They designed a contract to make it safe place to talk freely. The topic was 'how the Troubles have affected my life'. One girl started and shared her story. She told how her father had been killed in a sectarian murder. She described the feeling at every meal as she and her mother looked at the empty chair. And how difficult it was at birthdays and Christmas. Others told their story. After a long, long session all who wanted to had shared. Three Catholics and three Protestants had shared stories equally painful as the first. In the end they spontaneously rose and cried on each others shoulders. Catholics comforting Protestant grief, and Protestants comforting Catholic grief. Their story had been heard, and another step on the road to healing could be taken.

Ben Okri, the Nigerian author, has written in A Way of Being Free, 'Nations and peoples are largely the stories they feed themselves. If they tell themselves stories that are lies, they will suffer the future consequences of those lies. If they tell themselves stories that face their own truths, they will free their histories for future flowerings ... Stories, are the secret reservoir of values: change the stories individuals and nations live by and tell themselves and you change the individuals and nations.'  (p.112) 

Another time, at a closing worship at Corrymeela, people were asked to name someone and something which they were concerned about. A young person spoke. 'I want to remember someone in prison. He is concerned and his wife and children are worried tonight. Because tomorrow he returns to court for his sentence.' On the way out from the short service, a Corrymeela worker asked this young person, 'Do you mind telling me who it was you were praying for?' 'He was the man who murdered my father.'

Here was someone living out of a different story. A story of generous compassion and forgiveness.

As we seek a vision for our future, as we take the opportunities to describe that vision using the public voice which our office has given us, we could do worse than remember the words of Isaiah, 'Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked, to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin? Then your light shall break forth like the dawn.'  

In a sense, we are called back to our roots. We have it there in our story.  Is ar scáth a chéile a mhaireann na daoine. 'It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.'

At the beginning of this new term, may we commit ourselves to describe a vision of a just, compassionate and generous society, and to work to bring that society about.

ENDS