Chrism Eucharist 2008 - Bishop's Sermon
I want to give a text from Romans Chapter 8 (which I know is not the easiest of Paul’s writings) but it is a verse that says something about our relationship with God and with one another on which I would like to reflect this morning. St Paul wrote:
For all who are moved by the Spirit of God are children of God. The Spirit you have received is not a spirit of slavery leading you back into a life of fear, but a Spirit that enables us to cry, Abba, Father!’ In that cry the Spirit of God joins with our spirit in testifying that we are God’s children; and if children then heirs. We are God’s heirs and Christ’s fellow heirs, if we share his sufferings now in order to share his splendour hereafter. Romans 8:14-17
A few weeks ago I received a letter from a woman asking for help. She explained that as a 16 year old, she was sent to Newport to stay with relatives whilst she gave birth to her child. Her daughter was born at the Royal Gwent Hospital in 1970 and her adoption arranged through the Monmouth Diocesan branch of Moral Welfare which ceased to exist three years later. This mother was now trying to trace her daughter who would be aged 38 and who knows, maybe the daughter has also been trying to trace her birth mother. Those who have been adopted and those who have given children for adoption often need to find one another to feel complete.
St Paul understood adoption because he was both a Jew and a Roman. Roman law was very clear about the process of adoption. There were two distinct ceremonies. In the first ceremony, the parent giving a child for adoption would buy back the child twice - but not the third time, and then after the second ceremony performed in front of witnesses the adoption was complete and the adopted child became a full member of his or her new family.
St. Paul would also have known that the theme of adoption runs throughout the Hebrew Scriptures in which the people of Israel are seen as the adopted children of God. So Paul uses these images to talk about our relationship with God as Christians. He says that when we receive the Spirit of God (in baptism) we become full members of the family of God (just as in Roman law) and with what an ecclesiastical lawyer might describe as ‘all rights, privileges and pertinences thereunto belonging’ – St Paul says that we become a full child of God and therefore an heir of God the Father and that in turn makes us a joint heir with Christ.
St Paul says that it is the Holy Spirit that acts as the witness to our adoption and that you and me – all of us – are adopted sons and daughters, and we now belong completely to God and Jesus is our brother. We often speak of the church as a family and of course, sometimes we behave like a somewhat dysfunctional family with squabbles and rifts, with jealousies and power games. But we are family and good families stick together. They are loyal to one another and they know that there is a bond that unites them. A diocese should be a family within that larger family (and to use Paul’s model) we are all brothers and sisters of Jesus and share the same heavenly Father. Whilst clergy and laity may be different in function and in the grace that is given to carry out a particular ministry, we are all children of God.
For each of us in ordained ministry (and for the laity as well) this service of renewal of Ordination Vows and the Blessing of the Oils should be one of the highlights of the year because it reminds us of who and what we are – adopted sons and daughters, (and to quote St Peter) we are also a royal priesthood, a holy nation and a people set apart to sing the praises of him who has called out of darkness into his wonderful light. Our identity is first and foremost through baptism and then through the particular ministry to which God has called us. Taking place in Rome today is the funeral of a remarkable lay woman Chiara Lubich, the founder of the Focalare Movement, a movement founded during the Second World War to remind Christians that we are all brothers and sisters whatever our national or denominational identity and that (as she put it) we are ‘one family united in truth’.
I expect for all of us who are ordained, today we look back to the days when we were ordained deacon and priest. Maybe, then we were eager, joyful, energetic, full of hope and with plans to covert the world, and maybe today we still feel like that - or perhaps ‘the changes and chances of this fleeting world’ have taken their toll. Maybe at times we even give in to negativity and cynicism and now place our hope in the Church in Wales Pension Fund rather then in the God who chose us and calls us.
But today is a day of renewal. It is a day for recognising cynicism, despair and weariness as being destructive to the Spirit. It is a day to rekindle that sense that Christ has called us, chosen us and commissioned us to continue his ministry and mission on earth. Today, is a day to go back to our first love, that first feeling or nagging that we recognised (and others recognised in us) to be a sign of a true calling from God to be a deacon or a priest.
Today, is a day when we join as brothers and sisters to give thanks for the gifts of the diaconate and priesthood and to commit ourselves again to the service of God. And because this service takes place in Holy Week, today is a day when we prepare ourselves to lead our people and to journey ourselves through the Passion and crucifixion because (as St Paul says) to be a co-heir, a brother with Christ, requires us to suffer with him so that we may be glorified with him.
Priesthood is about suffering because that is one of the consequences of being human. Jurgen Moltmann said that being human is about having the strength to live, the strength to suffer and the strength to die. For those of us who are called to diaconal service and to the ministerial priesthood, suffering will come our way in many different guises. It may be in helping to carry the crosses of others who seek our pastoral ministry; it may be in having to face the daily chores of ministry that drain our energies; it may be through the 24-7 nature of our job; it may be because of growing secularism and attacks on the faith; it may be through personal and spiritual struggles and even having to live with the institutional church, but to quote St Paul again we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. This is what this week is all about – that we may so unite our hearts and minds with Christ’s passion that we experience more deeply the power of the resurrection in our lives.
Graham Greene’s novel ‘The Power and the Glory’ was greatly influenced by the ministry of a Mexican priest, Father Miguel Pro during a time of religious persecution. Miguel Pro was a master of disguise and he went about his priestly work, secretly ministering to hundreds of people every day. Finally, he was arrested with his two brothers and placed before a firing squad and as they shot him, he threw open his arms in the form of a cross and shouted, ‘Long live Christ the King’. Miguel Pro knew what it was to have Jesus as his brother and to minister to the family God had given him.
So let us rejoice that we are family. God has adopted us into his family – we are fully his sons and daughters – and let us give thanks that he who has called us is faithful. Let us also give thanks for our diocesan family and remember those family members who are in special need, and any in ministry whose vocation has gone cold and who are enduring the dark night of the soul, and let us thank God for the thousands of clergy and laity who have belonged to our diocesan family and now share the fullness of life in heaven.
My brothers and sisters, I want to end on a personal note and to say two things.
Firstly, thank you – thank you for your ministry. I know that it is not easy and I know how great is the personal cost to be in ordained ministry today. I thank you for your faithfulness, for your lives of prayer and for preaching God’s word and for ministering the sacraments. I thank you for engaging in the challenges that lie ahead as we seek to proclaim the gospel in new ways.
And secondly, please, please make sure that you do not try to run on empty batteries. Please find time for silence and prayer so that you may listen to what God is saying to you. Please find time for a retreat or other spiritual refreshment each year. The more demanding ministry becomes, the greater the need to recharge your spiritual batteries so that you have a personal and not just a working relationship with God.
May God bless you this Holy Week and Easter – and to him be the glory. Amen.