Ordination of Priests (Is.61.1-3;IICor.5.17-6.2;Jn.20.19-23)
‘Inspire a generation.’ That’s been the strapline of the Olympic and Paralympic games. And they have gripped the country in such a positive way over the summer. What a wonderful aspiration to take into your priestly ministries. Last Sunday evening my family and I went to the Paralympics and I was deeply inspired by what I saw and experienced...... and the Church can learn a lot from what’s been happening over the summer. ‘Inspire a generation.’ Before we entered the Olympic Park, we were greeted by a young person saying to the gathered crowds, ‘Come on, smile everybody. Don’t look so gloomy, you’re going to experience something special,’ and this lifted the spirits of everybody. I am wondering whether we should station people outside our churches to say exactly the same thing. ‘Come on, smile everybody. Don’t look so gloomy, you’re going to experience something special,’ As we left the Park at the end of the evening, another young person, perched on a ladder with a megaphone cheerily waved to the thousands who were streaming past him, and said, ‘Goodnight everybody. I’ll miss you.’ There was real joy and laughter and the environment and atmosphere in which the event took place had an affect on the crowd who, in turn, affected and encouraged the athletes. Chris, Gemma and Jan, as you begin this new adventure to which God has called you and for which you have prepared for so long, I want focus on three pointers from these times and these readings about the role which you are undertaking.
First, ‘Inspire a generation.’ That’s a wonderful calling. It’s your task to encourage and inspire people to look beyond themselves to God and at the same time to work with God in God’s world. But none of us can inspire others, unless we ourselves are inspired. Inspiration isn’t taught, it’s caught. Somebody once said that if you want to encourage somebody to be a sailor, you don’t teach them to build a boat, but you inspire them with a love of the sea. It is so important that your relationship with God is kept alive.....it’s not always easy and it’s not always straightforward, but it’s essential. One way of doing this is to rediscover delight. In the introduction I read the words, ‘Priests share with the Bishop in the oversight of the Church, delighting in its beauty and rejoicing in its well-being.’ What I want to encourage you to do, is to delight in your faith, in your relationship with God. Delight is not a word we use a great deal today. If we delight in someone or something, we are uplifted and a smile is brought to our lips and to our hearts. There is something playful about it. There is sense that what we have before us is a gift. Do we delight in our relationships? Do we delight in creation? Too often our culture is too noisy and brash and unsubtle that we find it difficult to delight in many things: possess, yes; own, yes; demand, yes; delight, no. The Old Testament, the Hebrew Scripture, is full of encouragements to delight in God. Ps. 37.4 ‘Let your delight be in the Lord•and he will give you your heart's desire,’ Ps.37.11, 'In the scroll of the book it is written of me that I should do your will, O myGod;•I delight to do it: your law is within my heart (40.9). The much neglected book ‘Song of Songs’ is full of delight. On a trip to Israel not long ago, I attended an act of worship, in a synagogue in Jerusalem, marking end of the Jewish year. At the end of that worship, the most sacred Torah, the book of the Law, was taken from its resting place and people danced with it as they would any dance partner. Dancing with the Law. What had been a fairly solemn act of worship, erupted into a party. There was real delight. The dancing music was not religious music but folk music. Faith and culture needs to re-discover delight. Make it part of your relationship with Jesus Christ, make it part of your lives and help us all to do it through your ministry.
Secondly, yours is a ministry of liberation, of setting free, of encouraging and enabling people to be released from what holds them back. As priests you will be giving God’s absolution and God’s blessing. In that first reading from Isaiah, which is taken up by Jesus in Luke’s Gospel, Isaiah speaks of his role, as prophet, in terms of freedom and liberation – ‘He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed, to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to captives and release to the prisoners.’ Your role is not to hold back or restrict, it is to live and point to the freedom that comes from a living relationship with God through Jesus Christ. Release and liberation are at the heart of the Christian Gospel and they should be at the heart of your ministry. We hear a lot of talk about the need for freedom, but it is important to remember that to be truly free, we need to be truly committed. Freedom without commitment is not liberating but it is enslaving. The great novelist and philosopher Iris Murdoch was married to John Bayley. After she died, John Bayley wrote a very moving memoire of his relationship with his wife and he used the fascinating phrase, ‘We grew closer and closer apart.’ The deeper their relationship, the freer they became. If a relationship is not right, people may consider themselves trapped, restrained and fearful: a healthy relationship has within it delight, freedom and unimagined possibilities. It is your role to be at the heart of the freedom that God brings, point it out and minister it to others.
Finally, you need to be alert to that important link between faith in Jesus Christ and justice. It is especially important in your pastoral ministry to be alert to God’s justice. In July I visited our link dioceses in Tanzania – and we have much to learn from our link dioceses. While Tanzania is a peaceful country compared to our other link diocese in Zimbabwe, it is, by and large, a very poor country. The bishop of this Tanzanian diocese has a pastoral concern for and ministry to the poor, but he is quite clear that the reason why they are so poor is that the country’s considerable resources are not distributed in a just way and so, while he is supporting the poor, he is raising the question of justice. The people need both pastoral support and justice. There is the danger that if we only address the pastoral need, that we unwittingly help keep in place an unjust system. That is true around the world and it is true in our communities as well. As we address a pastoral issue, we must ask the justice question. It may be that there is no justice question, it may be that a person simply needs pastoral love and support for a trauma through which they are passing. In the words of that reading from Isaiah, their wounds need binding up. But the justice question is too easily ignored. I believe that one role of the ordained person is that, at a time when many people are demanding their rights, to discern issues of justice, especially for those who have no voice in society. Rights and justice are not the same. We are reminded by our brothers and sisters in our link dioceses that in our pastoral encounters, we need to ask the justice question.
The final race of last Sunday’s Paralympics was the 5,000 metres where all the paralympians raced in their wheel-chairs. After a very exciting and nail-biting finish, David Weir from GB won the gold. The last minute was unbelievable. The crowd was clearly wanting and willing David Weir to win and as we saw how close it was going to be, all 80,000 of us stood up, made an amazing noise and cheered him past the finishing line. That is an image of prayer and is a reminder of the prayer and support that you, Chris, Gemma and Jan, have tonight and will continue to have in the future. Tonight you are being cheered on – by us here, by others who could not be here, by many others across the diocese whom you don’t know and by that countless host surrounding God whom no-one can number: they are wanting you to win and are always there to cheer you across the finishing-line. When things are tough and it feels lonely, remember that there are always more people supporting and praying for you than there appear to be. When things are going well, always give thanks for that huge number who are cheering you across the finish line.
St. Nicholas, Chislehurst. 8.ix.12.
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