Until Thy High Behest Is Done

Some things stay with you for ever. At Primary School we were taught hymns by rote – I don’t remember seeing anything written down – rather, they were taught to us, line by line, by Miss Flynn, during endless assemblies and Mass rehearsals. The one I remember most vividly is a Newman hymn, which we only ever sang on one day – the Commemoration of All Souls, on November 2nd.

Help, Lord, the souls which Thou hast made,

The souls to Thee so dear,

In prison for the debt unpaid,

Of sins committed here.

 

Those holy souls, they suffer on,

Resigned in heart and will,

Until Thy high behest is done,

And justice has its fill.

 

For daily falls, for pardon’d crime,

They joy to undergo,

The shadow of thy cross sublime,

The remnant of thy woe.

 

When I was six, I didn’t understand a word of it. But the words stayed with me, and ended up defining my feelings about this bittersweet day, when we stand before God, with those we love who have died on our hearts. Twice today I have been to a Requiem Mass. The first was for a friend of mine, Quentin, whose funeral took place at Blackfriars here in Oxford. Then, this evening, I celebrated a Requiem here at St Stephen’s House. The list of people for whom we prayed was considerable: among then Quentin, my Father whose 24th Anniversary of death is in a week’s time, and Fiona’s Father, who died last year. Some names provide connections: familiar surnames, reminding us that every person, every family in the community, stops, and thinks, and grieves. And, as Fr. Peter Anthony reminded us, the thing that binds us together, in this world and the next, is love. The edges of our memories are softened by the restrained beauty of the liturgy, and by the fervent hope we have in resurrection.

‘YOU SEE ALL THESE, DO YOU NOT?

A Sermon preached on the Fourth Sunday before Advent

Readings: Micah iii.5-12, Ps. 43, 1 Thess ii.9-13, Matt xxiv.1-14

We live in a turbulent age – an age characterised by an eroding of old certainty, an exalting of doubt and scepticism, the fragmenation of structures, institutional cynicism and a lack of clear understanding about human destiny and purpose. Violation and murder in the guise of summary justice replaces due process. Economic systems are on the brink of collapse. Those who seek to point the effects of this on the poorest and most vulnerable are met by prevarication and double standards by a cathedral community, instead of being welcomed as a vital witness to the values of the Kingdom which Jesus gave his life to inaugurate. I can’t help but feel that Richard Dawkins’ task just got a lot easier. We are in the midst of what David Ford refers to as an overwhelming – a sense that there’s just too much going on, too much to deal with in our vocational lives before God – that, as we kneel in humility before him with the wounds of the world on our hearts, there is just so much on which to focus.
I believe that it is at times like this that the world is sustained by people like you – by your witness, by your prayers, by your very presence and all for which that presence stands. I suggest that whilst none of us know the future, still less about the ‘end of the age’ – something way above our pay scale in the Divine Economy – it remains the case that this morning’s gospel is particularly disturbing. Famines, Earthquakes, the leading astray of people, the growing cold of human love. And Jesus, in providing not the most appetising analysis of the big picture, reminds us of the need to endure – to ‘keep calm and carry on’.
Perhaps this begins with a renewed understanding of God’s dominion in our hearts and lives – that within this order, we are not the ones, can never be the ones, who are in control. All is within God’s providence, and therefore – ultimately – all is well. This in turn enlivens the grace of humility in our hearts – a true understanding of who we are before God. And, even in the face of the overwhelming of events, we are recalled to our vocation of contemplation and prayer, upon which so much depends in a time of spiritual turbulence. May God enrich us with renewed blessings in this Holy Eucharist, and enable us to grow deeper, reach further, and look higher for his Name’s sake. And may that blessing enable us to pray fervently, with the needs of creation and its ordering in our hearts, that we may see clearly the path along which the Lord Jesus invites us as we sit at table with him.
DAMIAN FEENEY
Vice-Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford
A Sermon preached to the Sisters of the Love of God, Fairacres, Oxford, on 30 October 2011

Playing Games with God

A Sermon preached on Trinity 17
Readings: Isaiah xlv 1-7, 1 Thess i.1-10, John xxii 15-22

It’s easy to see this morning’s gospel as focusing on what our friends in the United States call ‘the separation of powers.’ ‘Give to the emperor’ ‘give to God’: Church is church, state is state. I’m not sure that that’s what’s going on here. In the first place, part of the paradox of Jesus’ answer to the Pharisaic disciples and Herodians lies in the belief that everything is created, hallowed and sanctified by God. There is no part of life or human endeavour that can be so privatised as to render it immune from God’s dominion and oversight, and that includes money with the head of a monarch or emperor on it. What we do with our money is a key question of faith and discernment, part of our rule of life. So perhaps there is something of a false distinction in Jesus’ answer. In any case, the Herodians would in all likelihood been in favour of the tax, as it was only Roman intervention which kept Herod and his followers in power.

Rather, what’s happening here, is that Jesus outwits those who are looking to beat him down by presenting him with a question to which there is no right answer without discredit. He evades their grasp, whilst at the same time tying them in knots, bringing to mind the words of Psalm 57:

they have dug a pit before me and will fall into it themselves .

Universities – and, indeed, theological colleges – are great places for jousts, paradoxes, sleight of word, competitiveness, intellectual japery of all kinds. Points scoring and one up-personship are, to a degree, inevitable, given the nature and character of debate. On one level, it’s part of the business of being a University at all. We should argue, not in the sense of rowing with one another, (hopefully) but so that we may travel closer to the light of truth. Thoughts, opinions and prejudices are refined by our coming up against ideas which are new, or different from our own. We can operate both with confidence in our own thoughts and yet with the humility to accept the different things we receive. I forget who said that true listening is only achieved if you are prepared to be changed by what you encounter, but they had a definite point. Debate, reasonably conducted, is crucial not only to our academic life, but also our political and civic endeavours. In some places this is more adversarial than in others, and Oxford is something of an epicentre for this kind of thing, and I put it to you that a considerable proportion of it – that devoted to self-aggrandisement and point-scoring – is an utter waste of time.

There is so much happening in the world which wants and deserves our attention, our compassion, our prayerful concern. Countries in turmoil, peoples at war, the hungry, the Aids-ravaged, the disease-ridden and the just plain forgotten. Their images invade our screens. And sometimes it seems too overwhelming, and we ask what good our prayers or charity may be, forgetting that part of our calling is to care, and to do so through every means at our disposal. ‘To care’ is not just an action – it starts with an attitude, a state of concern, which should be the birthright of every baptized Christian. And one of the reasons we have to care, even when we are fed up with caring, is that there are too many people who don’t care.

There are too many people who are prepared, like the Herodians, to go along with whatever will prop up their delusions of power and certainty. Not for them the moral agonizing about right and wrong, truth and falsehood – in Eliot’s words, they measure out their lives in coffee spoons, afraid merely for their own survival, afraid of the truth that will force them, blinking, into the light. Can we blame Jesus for being irritated by people of weasel words? Their task was not to seek the truth. Rather, they employed a sickly-sweet faux humility to push Jesus into a trap. But in the face of the one who is the way, the truth and the life they failed to do so.

The path of the Christian soul is littered with distraction. The path of those seeking the way to ordination and beyond is no clearer. We can waste our time, if we choose, in verbal encounters whose purpose is to make ourselves feel good (usually at the expense of another). We can waste our time being merely entertained when we should in fact be edified. But this time of concentration upon formation, prayer and study is precious, and all too short. This is where habits of hard work, thorough prayer and dedicated conviviality and fellowship are formed, to be continued as a witness to the people we will serve.

Above all, let us not insult God with point-scoring, feelings of moral superiority or any other time-wasting nonsense. For God sees through it all. Our vain and pathetic attempts to impress God are a waste of time, because God knows all the secrets of our hearts, and cannot love us more than he already does. We cannot play games with God. Before I was ordained I suggested a fear of mine to a fine and experienced priest. I hypothesized that I had thus far bluffed my way through the process of selection and discernment, through three years of academic, formational and spiritual endeavour, and now, on the verge of ordination to the diaconate, was feeling something of a fraud. The priest grimaced. I won’t say what word he used to describe me, but please be assured that it was very rude indeed. He then went on to say ‘You think you’ve been playing a game with God? You can’t do that. Actually, God has been playing a game with you. He has appealed to all your weakness and your silly vanity and everything else and he has skillfully manoeuvred you into the place where He wants you. Now shut up and get ordained’.

Any remaining shreds of moral superiority I might have had were dispelled on my deacon’s retreat, when the retreat conductor told me that God was only ordaining me because He couldn’t trust me to be a lay person. This is also painfully true. Don’t smile, because the same is true of anyone who is ordained. Those who offer themselves for ordination, and who explore God’s will for their lives, cannot but end up with a profound sense of inadequacy and unworthiness; once there, we must pray and trust that God will indeed choose us, and use us. Let me conclude with some words of George Herbert which have always resonated with me. They are from his poem The Priesthood, written in 1633.

Wherefore I dare not, I, put forth my hand
To hold the Ark,1 although it seems to shake
Through th’ old sinnes and new doctrines of our land.
Onely, since God doth often vessels make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet,
I throw me at his feet.

There will I lie, untill my Maker seek
For some mean stuffe thereon to show his skill:
Then is my time. The distance of the meek
Doth flatter power. Lest good come short of ill
In praising might, the poore do by submission
What pride by opposition.

Given at S Stephen’s House, Oxford, on 16th October 2011

Life in Formation

A Sermon preached on the Fifth Sunday of Easter 2011

 

Readings: Acts vii.55-60, 1 Peter ii.2-10, John xiv.1-14

 

Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. (1 Peter 2.5)

Strictly Come Dancing isn’t what it was. For those who are of less than a certain age, it is based on a late night BBC programme which ran in the 1970’s called ‘Come Dancing’ which was a regional ballroom dancing competition. It ran from 1949 to 1998. In the realm of Latin Dancing, there was simply no-one to rival Home Counties South, who were invariably represented by the Penge Latin Formation Team, coached by the legendary Frank and Peggy Spencer; quite simply, they carried all before them, to the presumable chagrin of the other regions. So well drilled were they, so rehearsed to the inch, that they achieved astonishing success.

One of the most important things about the experience of residential training is that we are formed, as it were, in formation. In our case this doesn’t mean that we all act, or move, or speak, or even dress the same way – we aren’t being trained to be clones. It does mean that our formation has several dimensions, from the forming of personal and individual habits and virtues which prefigure the grace of ordination to the important understanding that our journeys to ordination and beyond do not take place in isolation. We cannot be solitary living stones, and our journeying is connected by a complex network of relationships which extend beyond our year group, beyond this House, and even beyond the boundaries of living and dying.  Living in formation is part of what it means to belong to the church catholic, as our experiences of God in Christ are mediated to us through the church local and universal. Such a way of life implies that what affects one affects all: whilst your eyes are necessarily fixed on the day when you will join another community – that of the parishes to which you are called, and where another type of living in formation is on the cards – there is no denying that the social habits of our life here will stay with us, and form the way in which we undertake our patterns of living in other places.

One of you said to me the other day that he believed the House to be the kind of place which you grew to dislike while you were here, but demonstrated a huge depth of loyalty and love to thereafter. All of us know by now that as ordinands, no theological college is a place in which to tarry. Many of our anecdotes after ordination will doubtless consist in the things that happened while we were here, and – please be gentle with us – the staff who taught us. But to live, to pray and to learn in community is vital, for by so doing we are seeking the very heart and example of the Holy Trinity, a community of love and mutual concern that models a different way of being to a church which sees training in such a way as too expensive, and to the world around us which struggles to define and live out what it means to be community at all. .

The challenge, then, is to live as those who, as the church, mediate Christ to one another. By living in formation here we undertake a responsibility not only for our own training and shaping, but for that of each other. Our actions, words and examples, for good or ill, shape the thinking and attitudes of individual members of this whole community. And how important that is, in a college where not everyone we meet has a ‘church’ background, or understands our ways of speaking and doing things.

If I may stretch the analogy, living stones depend on one another to stay in position. In a dry stone wall, the dislodging of one stone brings about a collapse of the stones around it, because each relies on the mass, inertia and shape of the others to keep the wall stable. Each of us is called to occupy a different place within the edifice of the church, and for different reasons, and we do so by responding as faithfully as we can to God’s call which, we pray, locates us where we are needed. And, if we are Living Stones, then we must let ourselves be shaped by God into the kind of structure he wants, rather than building large personal edifices of our own called ‘careers’.

There will inevitably be times when we are called to question this – whether we are in the right place, doing the right thing – and there will be times when we do not understand why it is we have been placed where we have until much later on (if at all). If we become angry or frustrated in our situations, and on reflection recognize that those feelings are but a reflection of the community in which we serve, then that should act as an incentive to us; not to justify a superficial desire to ‘bale out’ when the going gets tough, but rather to seek the grace of perseverance and endurance, in our prayer life, our abandonment to the will of God, and to tasks which being in that situation implies. Seek the help, seek the support, of your parishes, your families, your networks, the groups to which you belong. But remind yourself of the consequences of pulling the stone out of the wall, as far greater damage may ensue.

More than this, we need to learn to trust processes, and that God’s grace makes up whatever is lacking in the church through human frailty. All of you who have accepted title parishes and incumbents up and down the country will be aware of a certain sense of risk. It is necessarily a process in which you, the parish and the diocese are called into decision with a relative lack of knowledge. If nothing else, we have to believe that the process that has led us to this place, the point in our lives, has been a grace-filled one, and that through the processes of the church we are being located to a place where we are called to be. There is also a sense in which the very act of trusting, of risking, places us in a situation where we have to rely on God’s resources rather than our own. And his grace is sufficient. ‘Like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ’.

Given at St. Stephen’s House, Oxford, on 22^nd May 2011

Homilies for Holy Week: Preached at New Hinksey, Oxford.

Homilies for Holy Week

Come on and celebrate

A Homily for Palm Sunday preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

[Matthew xxi.1-11] Isaiah c.4-7 Phil ii.6-11 Matthew xxvi.14-27.66

T

oday we have begun a solemn celebration. We don’t normally think that a celebration can be ‘solemn’. To us, celebration is associated with the joyful, the successful, all that is positive in our life achievements. But this celebration is different, because it encompasses the whole of our lives, our living and our dying. What begins in triumph today must go through utter dereliction in order to be transformed into true glory. If we would truly celebrate with Christ, and with his whole church, then we must enter the depths with him, die with him, that we may be raised to new life with him. This week encompasses all that it means to be a Christian person at all. It places us alongside one who came to ‘show us the Father’ and who was to do so by challenging the lives people lived, the structures which speak of power and fear rather than love. If anyone asks you ‘Why did Jesus have to die” you can at least start by saying that his death was the natural consequence of challenging power, violence and hatred with nothing in his hand but love. The New Testament scholar Walter Wink sums this up when he writes

‘Disavowing violence, Jesus wades into the hostility of Jerusalem openhanded, setting simple truth against unequalled force. Terrified by the threat of this man and his following, the authorities resort to their ultimate deterrent, death, only to discover it impotent and themselves unmasked. The cross, hideous and macabre, becomes a symbol of liberation. The movement that should have died becomes a world religion.’[1]

The cross is Jesus’ way of dealing with evil. As Rob Robertson puts it, Jesus preferred to suffer injustice and violence rather than to be their cause[2]. It is a stark choice, and one we are faced with as a society and as individuals. Which is preferable – to suffer, or to be the cause of suffering? In Jesus, the suffering servant, we discover this week the true meaning of sacrificial living and loving, shown starkly in the cross, the sacrifice in which this and every Mass participates.

What will this week have in store for us? A familiar narrative, certainly – with every conceivable human emotion on display, every human characteristic, good or bad. From today’s entry into Jerusalem, filled with sparkle, expectation and promise, we move through a rapidly changing series of scenes; the high drama of the Upper Room, the manipulation of the court room, the challenges to earthly power, the agony of the passion, the desolation of loss, the unspeakable joy of resurrection. This is not simply about the daily liturgy we observe, important though that is. Holy Week casts its character across everything we do.

This week is, in truth, an immense and valuable gift to us. If we determine, this morning, to enter into it fully, daily, it will change us as we need to be changed. We do not just watch as the events of this week unfold – for there can be no audience here, only actors and players. We are drawn in, we participate, living and dying with the moment. And as we do so we are conformed, little by little, to Christ, because the brokenness which is part of us itself dies, and we are made whole.

Above all, we will discover this week that death has no hold over us if we refuse to play its game. We know only too well that this game is played out, rehearsed on a daily basis, in our own communities and throughout the world in Libya and Afghanistan, in the Southern Sudan, New Zealand and Japan, in a whole host of ways that point to our fallen-ness and fragility as human beings, as we grapple with the business of living in a fallen creation.

The message of this week is simple – that things don’t have to be like this. Through the living, dying and rising of Jesus Christ, we can live as citizens of heaven, free from all that holds us back from loving him. The cross is a stern teacher, but it will educate us to live in such a way that we no longer fear the consequences of living and acting faithfully. Only by staring at the cross and learning its message can we abandon the half-living, the cowardice and delusion which can so often mask our attempts to love as we know we should. For this week death and Satan do their worst to blot the God of love out of our landscape, and they come up short, for the cross of Jesus is our triumph, the gateway to his glory and ours. Through it we are saved and made free. Our Palm Crosses have this morning been blessed; as we hold on to the Cross today, so let us embrace the cross of Jesus through the week. We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Holy Cross you have redeemed the world.

 

Damian Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

The Fragrance of devotion

A Homily for the Monday in Holy Week preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

Isaiah xlii: 1-7, John xii.1-11

 

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 2There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. 3Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them* with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, 5‘Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii* and the money given to the poor?’ 6(He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) 7Jesus said, ‘Leave her alone. She bought it* so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. 8You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.’

9 When the great crowd of the Jews learned that he was there, they came not only because of Jesus but also to see Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. 10So the chief priests planned to put Lazarus to death as well, 11since it was on account of him that many of the Jews were deserting and were believing in Jesus.

L

ast Christmas brought a marvellous treat, courtesy of my sister. A goodie bag from Trumpers of Curzon Street, along with a voucher to select a more substantial offering from among my many favourites. It was between Trumpers Eucris and Limes, and in the end I opted for the latter – 500 ml of the stuff in a plastic travel bottle. In the end I shied away from glass (although it looks lovely) because I feared it might break, either in transit (giving the postman a rare treat) or in the house, which would then have smelt like a perfumiers for months. But it has arrived safely, and it has pride of place on the washstand.

Nard – such as that used by Mary in tonight’s gospel on Jesus’ feet – was a member of the Valerianaceae family. It is a warm scent, musky, pervasive and exotic. In the Old Testament, nard is referred to in the Song of Songs, as a symbol of the intimate nature of the Bride’s love[3]. This is the point at which relations with her beloved are initiated. When the perfume of nard is named, the bride recognizes her beloved as such. There are of course similar accounts of the anointing of Jesus’ feet in Matthew and Mark – there the specific message is about the forgiveness of a life of sin. Here the ‘Mary’ who anoints Jesus is Lazarus’ sister, a close friend of Jesus.

Imagine the explosion of fragrance which would have consumed the house, for days, maybe even weeks afterwards, when Mary anointed Jesus’ feet with a pound of highly fragranced perfume. And, yes, imagine the cost. The rational in us has a little sympathy, perhaps, with Judas, and if anyone else had said it, we’d maybe have a bit more sympathy. But here it seems that Judas is demonstrating how out of kilter he is with Jesus’ will, and so we suppress our rather British thoughts of wastefulness and thrift and move on. Judas has failed to recognize – as we so often do – that Jesus cuts across all our lives, rich and poor, in a unique way, and without him we are nothing, and he deserves from us the best, the richest, the most fragrant of our offerings.

So what is this moment? As Francis Maloney points out, it is neither the act of anointing royalty, nor even of merely welcoming an honoured guest. [4] Rather, it is an act of devotion – an act of wasteful, generous love. It is pure, fragrant gift. If we are, or have been, in love we recognize the desire to want wonderful, extravagant things for our beloved, because we long for them to be happy and to know the extent of our devotion. And so it is with Mary, and the action takes on a yet more profound meaning, as Jesus prepares for his own death, the generous, wasteful gesture of love from the Father towards the whole of humanity, the whole of creation. Jesus, the anointed one, is prepared before hand for his death, but not before he has permeated the whole of creation with the sweetest of fragrances.

Gestures matter very much. They speak the depths of our hearts where words fall short. Wonderful as spoken language is, it cannot express all that the heart longs to say. In this gesture – foolish, reckless and wasteful by any stretch of the imagination – the depth of Mary’s devotion to Jesus is expressed. She recognizes Jesus, not merely as a prophet, or a teacher, or even as brother or friend, but as the anointed on in whom she places her love, her trust. It is a huge moment, and Jesus recognizes and responds to all that is expressed in this moment. It resonates because this is a moment which expressed something of what God is like – generous, reckless, wasteful with his love. He showers grace upon grace upon us, his precious children, and our worship, our devotion, our love, is part of our offering to him in a covenant of the deepest love.

So often at Epiphany we hear sermons around the idea of the gifts brought by the Magi as expressions of identity of Jesus – gold for kingly authority, the frankincense of priestly prayer, the myrhh to anoint the dead. This extends into the question ‘What can I give? What gift can I bring?’ Tonight Mary’s gesture, rich in pervasive perfume, is something of intense and heady for God. She anoints the anointed, and invites us to do the same – to do beautiful, loving, reckless things for God in his world, to show how much we love him, just because we can – not to curry favour, because we can’t – not ask for selfish desires, because we can’t – but simply to say how much we love him, adore him, worship him.

Look around you. The world needs reckless, generous love. We are charged with the business of anointing the world afresh, and by so doing anointing Christ. ‘If you are interested in God, get interested in the world. That is what God is interested in’ observed D.T. Niles. Indeed, ‘interest’ seems a lame word to describe the all-consuming passion for his creation which God in Christ displays. Some pf that passion is reflected in Mary’s beautiful, wasteful, prophetic act. May we be charged this Holy Week with a renewed sense of that beautiful holiness, and the imagination to see how we might, in serving others, reveal the beauty and glory of the anointed one.

Damian Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

And it was night

A Homily for the Tuesday in Holy Week preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

Isaiah xlix. 1-6 John xiii.21-33, 36-38

21 After saying this Jesus was troubled in spirit, and declared, “Very truly, I tell you, one of you will betray me.” 22 The disciples looked at one another, uncertain of whom he was speaking. 23 One of his disciples–the one whom Jesus loved–was reclining next to him; 24 Simon Peter therefore motioned to him to ask Jesus of whom he was speaking. 25 So while reclining next to Jesus, he asked him, “Lord, who is it?” 26 Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” So when he had dipped the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas son of Simon Iscariot. 27 After he received the piece of bread, Satan entered into him. Jesus said to him, “Do quickly what you are going to do.” 28 Now no one at the table knew why he said this to him. 29 Some thought that, because Judas had the common purse, Jesus was telling him, “Buy what we need for the festival”; or, that he should give something to the poor. 30 So, after receiving the piece of bread, he immediately went out. And it was night. 31 When he had gone out, Jesus said, “Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him. 32 If God has been glorified in him, God will also glorify him in himself and will glorify him at once. 33 Little children, I am with you only a little longer. You will look for me; and as I said to the Jews so now I say to you, ‘Where I am going, you cannot come.’ 36 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, where are you going?” Jesus answered, “Where I am going, you cannot follow me now; but you will follow afterward.” 37 Peter said to him, “Lord, why can I not follow you now? I will lay down my life for you.” 38 Jesus answered, “Will you lay down your life for me? Very truly, I tell you, before the cock crows, you will have denied me three times.

O Rose thou art sick.

The invisible worm,

That flies in the night

In the howling storm:

Has found out thy bed

Of crimson joy:

And his dark secret love

Does thy life destroy.

So wrote William Blake in one of his Songs of Experience. The invisible worm has found the rose in the depths of the night,  and will destroy it from within. And we should not be surprised that so much of consequence this week happens at night – the time of shadows, of drama, of altered perceptions and understandings. The Fourth Gospel is masterly in the way it sets scenes, paints canvases, for dramatic purposes, and in that short sentence

‘And it was night.’

we are plunged into the darkness with Jesus, as the story moves inexorably on, into further and further layers of darkness. Tonight we hear of the disturbing conversations, first with Judas, and then finally with Simon Peter. Every word spoken in connection with Judas seems ambiguous, capable of mis-interpretation. Part of Satan’s presence in the scene is the casting of uncertainty, as much in our minds as in the minds of the speakers. ‘Do quickly what you are going to do.’ What does Jesus mean by this? Did Judas see this as encouragement to arrange a stealthy meeting with the Sanhedrin while it was still dark, so that negotiations might conclude in triumph, with the Sanhedrin recognizing Jesus as Messiah? The disciples are uncertain, and don’t seem to connect Jesus’ comments about betrayal with what he then says to Judas. Suddenly, it was night, and earnest clear conversation is replaced by subterfuge, ambiguity, whispers and gossip, as the language of light gives way to the rumours and half-truths of the night. The triumph of Palm Sunday is gone, to be replaced by the dark prelude of uncertainty and threat – and, within it, the glorifying of God, to be expressed in the death of the Son of Man. So Judas moves, away from the light of Christ, the light of the world, and into the darkness of those who reject Jesus and plan to kill him. This has a resonance with a much earlier moment in John, in Chapter 3, when Nicodemus – a sympathizer of Jesus’, though a secret one – comes to him at night and for whom that encounter is the beginning of a journey to the light of the truth. Here Judas makes that journey in the reverse, abandoning truth for lies, light for darkness.

Let’s not be too hasty, however. It would be simple, too simple, for me to speak to you of the worm Judas, one of the twelve, the trusted, the inner circle, who turns on the rose and consumes it, out of greed, jealousy, or for whatever mysterious motive, know only to him and to God. Our Gospel reading goes beyond this – to the conversation with Simon Peter, to his protestations of strength and fortitude, to be laid to ash within a matter of hours. The worm is there, too – in the weakness of the moment by which not only Judas, but also Simon Peter, and the whole cohort of the loved and the trusted apostles, would desert Jesus at his Hour. The worm that flies in the night is within all of us – the capacity to destroy, to consume, to negate and to waste.

We do not dwell on such figures of machination and frailty merely to mark the fact that Jesus was surrounded by unreliable friends. We do so as a reminder that such frailty is part of our nature, part of the human condition and story. No-one hearing this passage can claim that they would have acted differently, or more reliably or heroically. What we can do during this Holy Week is to acknowledge before God that frailty, which can so often express itself when challenged. For in the face of all human frailty, and amidst the shadows and deviousness of human behaviour, Jesus is steadfast, recognizing that as his Hour draws closer his words and actions take on a still greater significance. And even in the midst of the fear and the uncertainty, he is able to look beyond the stress of the present moment as he speaks to Peter of ‘following afterwards’ – of a moment beyond the crisis of his own death, a moment when all will be transformed.

The worm in Judas grows in strength as he abandons the light of truth. The worm in Simon Peter expresses itself in arrogance and a desire to be seen as somehow stronger, more faithful than the others. The self delusion present in both men is about to come crashing down. How well Jesus knew them both. Judas will betray him, and Peter will deny all knowledge of him. And because we are not passive observers, but are caught up in this living, breathing drama, we are forced to confront our own moments of denial and delusion, and recognize that both Judas and Peter reach down through history and touch us, uncomfortably, on the shoulder, in the dark watches of the night.

Damian Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

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They are your own words

A Homily for the Wednesday in Holy Week preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

Isaiah l.4-9 Matthew xxvi.14-25

14 Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said, ‘What will you give me if I betray him to you?’ They paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him. 17 On the first day of Unleavened Bread the disciples came to Jesus, saying, ‘Where do you want us to make the preparations for you to eat the Passover?’ 18He said, ‘Go into the city to a certain man, and say to him, “The Teacher says, My time is near; I will keep the Passover at your house with my disciples.” ’ 19 So the disciples did as Jesus had directed them, and they prepared the Passover meal. 20 When it was evening, he took his place with the twelve;* 21and while they were eating, he said, ‘Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.’ 22And they became greatly distressed and began to say to him one after another, ‘Surely not I, Lord?’ 23He answered, ‘The one who has dipped his hand into the bowl with me will betray me. 24The Son of Man goes as it is written of him, but woe to that one by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been better for that one not to have been born.’ 25Judas, who betrayed him, said, ‘Surely not I, Rabbi?’ He replied, ‘You have said so.’

 

Last night we encountered John’s version of Jesus’ conversation with Judas, as he disappeared into the night to initiate he chain of events which would lead to the arrest of Jesus. Today we hear Matthew’s account, and come across a feature of that conversation which has intrigued me for years, and which tends not to be commented upon. The final words of that conversation are Jesus’ words ‘You have said so’: in Greek, Su eipas. It’s intriguing that Jesus doesn’t say ‘Yes’ or ‘It’s you’ – rather, he responds by saying ‘the words are yours’. Judas is condemned not by any words of Jesus, but rather by his own words ‘Surely not I?’ It’s a way of answering that keeps cropping up during this week. Later on, (v.64) in front of the Sanhedrin, the High Priest demands an answer of Jesus as to whether he is indeed the Messiah – the answer is the same one he gives here to Judas. ‘You have said so.’ Again, in Chapter 27 (v.11) he replies in the same vein to Pilate’s question ‘Are you the King of the Jews?’ Each time the question is bounced back to the questioner. ‘You have said it’. Each occasion reflects the convention in law that it was not legal to ask someone to condemn themselves by their own words. By answering in this way, Jesus forces Judas to recognise that it is not Jesus, but his own words, which challenge and condemn him – likewise the Sanhedrin, and Pilate. In every case his reply makes each person take responsibility for their questions, opinions, words and decisions. Each time there is an overtone of burden of proof, of confronting the person with the truth of what they are saying and doing. Nothing assumed, nothing passed by default. Everything is under scrutiny.

It’s a simple but salutary lesson, and for two reasons. First of all, it reminds us that our words are precious, and once they are said, they cannot be unsaid. A Theological Principal of former years once admonished a student who had incorrectly defamed a fellow student [lest you think this is a bit close to home, the College was Mirfield!]. As the student said ‘Oh – in that case I take it all back.’ The Principal replied ‘And how, pray, do you propose to do that?’ Words once said cannot be unsaid. As the Psalmist so neatly puts it ‘Set a watch before my mouth, Oh Lord, and guard the door of my lips’. Words cannot be unspoken. They are out there. I remember being taught as a music undergraduate that when a sound is made, we hear it through the transmission of sound waves. Those waves never stop resonating. They are inaudible to us, as the sound waves pass beyond our hearing range, but they resonate, infinitesimally. Every word ever spoken. Our words can heal, or wound; create, or destroy; encourage, or denigrate. The choice – and the responsibility – is ours.

Secondly, Jesus forces us to take responsibility for our faith, for our discipleship, our following him. And there are no easy answers to our questions, which bounce back to us ‘You have said so’.  It’s by our own words that we confess faith. No-one, least of all Jesus, forces us to do it. We are on this journey because we want to be, because we believe in it, because we know that it’s the only way to travel. The confession of faith is from our own lips. We have responded to an eternal call to participate in the life-giving story of the heralding of the Kingdom of God. This isn’t a call to relentless activity but to a whole re-definition of our lives, refusing to accept what is so often offered to us as truth without substance. A friend of mine once asked his congregation how many of them bought a daily paper. A lot of hands went up. He then asked them whether they spent more time reading the paper or the bible. He was forced to conclude that people were more ready to allow their lives to be shaped by the writings of journalists than by prophets and evangelists. It’s our task to challenge assumptions again and again, and to do so from the basis of lives lived and formed through the truth of Jesus, through the intense, foolish, radical self-giving love which this and every Mass offers us. And this redefinition, which comes about with every examination of conscience, every time we come to Mass, every time we encounter Jesus in his Holy Word, extends and has an influence on everything – how we speak, how we treat people, how we shop, how we work, how we spend our time. To live with Jesus, as a citizen of heaven here and now, requires a journey of conversion which is at once taxing and joyful, and places us at odds, in many ways, with the culture which surrounds us. Jesus calls us into a covenant, a partnership – so that the church, his body in the world, can hold out a beacon of hope and truth for others. And that is no easy task, because our culture is now such that people in many places are being taught to mistrust the church, and to mistrust people of faith, and we have a considerable task in winning back their confidence. That’s a task for people of mature faith.

‘You have said so.’ Jesus will not let his betrayers or accusers off the hook. They – and we – are responsible for the things we say, the questions we ask, the assumptions we make. May his grace be sufficient for us as we journey on through this week of weeks.

Damian  Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

Love unveiled

A Homily for Maundy Thursday preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

Exodus xii.1-8, 11-14, 1 Cor xi.23-26, John xiii.1-15

Now before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. ²The devil had already put it into the heart of Judas son of Simon Iscariot to betray him. And during supper ³Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going to God, ⁴got up from the table,^* took off his outer robe, and tied a towel around himself. ⁵Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was tied around him. ⁶He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’ ⁷Jesus answered, ‘You do not know now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’ ⁸Peter said to him, ‘You will never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no share with me.’ ⁹Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ ¹⁰Jesus said to him, ‘One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet,^* but is entirely clean. And you^* are clean, though not all of you.’ ¹¹For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’ 12 After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? ¹³You call me Teacher and Lord—and you are right, for that is what I am. ¹⁴So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. ¹⁵For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.

Maundy Thursday is a night of the tightest drama imaginable. The atmosphere is unbearably tense and moving: there are veiled allusions in Jesus’ speech to terrible things which are about to happen. All of this happens over a meal, a gathering of friends, at a time when they thought they were going to be celebrating their freedom. This, after all, was the night different from all other nights, when families gathered to fulfil the law as laid down in the Book Exodus. A meal of roast lamb, with bitter herbs, to be eaten in haste, with staff in hand and ready to move on. The first Passover was eaten under the shadow of the angel of death, who came that dread night to take all the first-born male children of the Egyptians as God’s action to prise his people free from Pharaoh’s grasp. And death is present at this Passover, too, as Jesus has already told his friends that he will not be with them much longer.

When a person we love dies, part of the process which follows often involves the rehearsing of things which the deceased said to loved ones. These words – because they are the last to be said – take on a particular significance. Not only words, but actions, are subjected to the same loving scrutiny. And so it is that Jesus’ words and actions that night have acquired an eternal significance for us, his friends, his followers, his disciples. Firstly, there is the action, mentioned in our gospel, where Jesus washes the feet of his followers. No words of mine can convey to you the shock this would have occasioned. Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of the Most High, the anointed one awaited by the people of Israel for centuries as King and deliverer, stoops to kneel before the very least of them and perform the ritual which would render him not merely servant, but slave, and which enabled them to eat the meal at all. In a single gesture Jesus overturns centuries of assumption and expectation about the kind of Messiah they had in mind. And this was not enough – the command for his followers to do the same, to be servants of the world, is very clear and specific. Jesus doesn’t use parable, or cloak this in any way. He doesn’t hint that this is what he wants. He is crystal clear. We must do as he commanded if we are truly his disciples. We re-enact this tonight, to remind ourselves that this is a sign of the people we are meant to be. We overcome our natural reticence, our embarrassment at the state of our feet  and boldly step forward to claim a chair in the aisle as if to say ‘I will allow Christ to serve me, and in my turn will serve others.’

 

Secondly, there is the taking of bread, and wine, and the words which are said over them. All the significance of the world, in short sentences. The pledge that whenever we do this, he is here present. Bread and Wine, his Body, his Blood, ask not how, for we know not how. But this is his pledge, his promise. And whenever we celebrate the Mass, he is here in these forms, truly here. And whenever we walk into this church, and we see the small light shining in the Lady Chapel, we know that he is here, too, a constant and moving reminder to us of the closeness of Jesus to his people.

Later tonight, that light will go out. It will go out because that presence will depart from this place, this upper room, and go to another place – to a garden a little way off. There, as on that aweful night, Jesus will bid us to stay with him in prayer, to stay awake, to pray earnestly not to be put to the test. That is the church’s task on this night, which is different from all other nights, as Jesus gives himself away, first to his friends and followers, and then to his enemies and those who would see him dead.

All of this is encapsulated into the one command, the new command, the command given with such gravitas, such cost. We are to love one another. This, above all, is what Jesus came to bring – the healing of true, divine love, a love which can right all wrongs, which can prevail over all suffering. Here tonight, and on the Cross tomorrow, is what Jesus is like, what God is like. Total love, total giving, total embrace. These three days, this Triduum, destroy for ever any notion that there is a tyrant in heaven. There is our life and purpose, embraced in God’s own – to love, to love again, and love whatever the cost, for in the end this is the only way the world can be rid of the terrible power of evil. How do we act in the face of evil and injustice? With love. How do we attend to the people we encounter? With love. How do we attend to the people we find difficult? With costly, costly, love.

That is Christ’s unambiguous message. That is the message of this meal. It is the message of the washing of feet. It is the message of Gethsemane, the message of Golgotha, the message of all life, all death in the great and small canvasses on which we paint our lives. That is our challenge, and sometimes our cross, and we should be alert to the danger of hardness of heart.

Damian Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

Accessories after the fact

A Homily for Good Friday preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

Isaiah lii.13-53.12, Hebrews iv.14-16; 5.7-9, John xviii.1-19.42

What, in our imaginings. is the very worst thing we could do? Probably murder would come high up on the list – it is difficult to comprehend what must go on in the mind of someone who has – either intentionally or accidentally – killed someone. To those brought up in the tradition of the ten commandments, it directly contravenes one of them. In most social order, however founded or constituted, the offence of killing has the severest penalties, perhaps a lifetime of incarceration, or even death itself. The mindset of a murderer – the stress, the remorse, the fact that once we have killed, our own lives can never be the same again – if we kill, then we can be sure that part of our humanity dies with our victim.

But most of us do not murder – at least, not directly. We haven’t experienced the feelings attached to ending the life of another. There are some who kill at the bidding of the state – executioners, soldiers, spies. My contact with those who have served in the armed services confirms the view that the act of killing changes people, affects all that comes after, colours the personality, the conversation, the outlook.

Again – most of us have not experienced this. But when we come to the drama of this day, there are many people, all of whom have some say in the business of the killing of Jesus.  From the chief priest to Pilate, to Herod – all those in power of one sort or another – their complicity kills Jesus. Shame on them, we may say. What an abuse of  power. Then there are those who were only obeying orders – soldiers, temple guards, the man whose task it was to wield the hammer that hit the nail that shattered the bone that held the Son of Man to the wood of the cross.  The guards who kept the crowds at bay – the centurion whose proclamation of faith came too late to make a difference to anyone but himself. Like guards, and henchmen, and professional killers through the ages – they were only obeying orders. Like the guards at Auschwitz, Belsen, Flossenberg and Dachau – they were only obeying orders. But they would go home, coloured by what had happened – perhaps feeling a little dirtier than they had before.

Shame on them, we may say. They could have refused, could have stood up for the righteous man – and they did not.

Then there are those who knew Jesus well – those who lived with him, were healed by him, were transformed by him, ate and drank with him, witnessed miracles and mighty deeds by him, the signs of the kingdom they believed in and longed for – well, last night disposed of them. The first sight of a temple guard turned their good intent to rubble. Desertion, they call it, in the face of the enemy. ‘Let us go and die with him’, says Thomas. ‘Even if I die with you, I will never disown you’ says Simon Peter, the rock. I wonder if those words echoed in Jesus’ bewildered imagination as he repeatedly fell under the crushing weight of the cross?

Then there was Judas – Judas, who takes to himself the venom of all the gospel writers, the Judas who thought he could force the hand of God, the Judas who Dante places at a level just above Satan himself in the circles of Hell in the Divine Comedy, the one who betrayed him. Never mind the fact that they could have taken Jesus whenever they wanted, or the fact that we constantly mis-translate the Greek of the gospels so that ‘handed over’ becomes ‘betrayed’. Never mind the theory that Judas saw himself  as a crucial link to bring Jesus and the Sanhedrin together, so that they could speak with united and godly voice against the forces of occupation. Perhaps he was a traitor. Perhaps not. Only God and Judas know what was in Judas’ mind. Judas is a convenient scapegoat for us sometimes, when we want to shift the blame, as we have practically all of us have been brought up to do. In the drama of the passion of the Christ, Judas paid the ultimate price – the price of a demented and shattered heart and conscience.

I speculated at the beginning about the feelings of those who kill. As we leave here today then those feelings should not be far away from any of us. Like Caiphas, Herod, Pilate, Peter, Judas, the guards, the man with the hammer and ropes, the centurion, or any player in the piece you like – we have played our part in bringing this about. Like every human, we have played our part in rendering necessary the death of the Christ. We were not there then, but we are here now. In this killing we have all had a say, unless our lives have been as perfect as his: it was the brokenness of all humans, of all creation, that made necessary the broken body of the God-man, whose birth we celebrated just 122 days ago. Jesus is dead. But those who have brought that death about are still alive, in every village and town, every city and country, living lives of manipulation, power dealing and cosy half-truth, threatened by the robust love and truth of the real King, the real Kingdom. They would love to sweep Good Friday under the carpet – all the more reason why we cannot and must not.

The immensity of what God has done is paralysing and bewildering. The scale of what God is about to do should blow our minds. Because God cannot and will not let it end here, and will not allow the powerful, the manipulative, and the scheming to have the final word over Jesus. All well and good. Thanks be to God. But for now, let us at least go home recognising the fact that today we have killed: let us live for a while in quiet, shamed recognition of what we have done. We will depart from here in silence, lives ripped apart as surely as the veil in the temple. Jesus is dead, and we are accomplices, accessories after the fact. It is accomplished, fulfilled, completed, over. Let us weep over his body, and abandon ourselves to the Father as he did, that even now he may touch us through the dark empty space where Jesus was, and is no more. Let us sit in our homes, and reflect on what we have done: let us hold fast to the dead Jesus, and wait, and wait, and wait for God to shatter our misery.

Damian Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

That he must rise from the dead

A Homily for Easter Day preached at

St. John the Evangelist, New Hinksey, Oxford

Acts x.34, 37-43, Col. iii.1-4, John xx.1-9

 

Early on the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been removed from the tomb. ²So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, ‘They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.’ ³Then Peter and the other disciple set out and went towards the tomb. ⁴The two were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. ⁵He bent down to look in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he did not go in. ⁶Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen wrappings lying there, ⁷and the cloth that had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen wrappings but rolled up in a place by itself. ⁸Then the other disciple, who reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; ⁹for as yet they did not understand the scripture, that he must rise from the dead.

I wish to make a confession to you this morning, and it is this. I don’t understand the Resurrection, which perhaps makes me a pretty poor choice of preacher. But a large part of me is very happy with that, because there is a tendency to seek to make the Resurrection understandable, as if that makes it more believable. Reduce this moment to human reasoning and reckoning, as we deprive it of its power. The resurrection is in no small measure a mystery because it bids us into a way of living which we can only guess at – a way of living which can only be gained through faithfulness to Jesus, to his teaching, to his living and dying, to his rising, to everything about his person. He calls us into a place we have not been, have not experienced, before. So I hope that I am less concerned for my understanding, and more concerned for my believing and my faithfulness.

In any case, out gospel tells me that if I don’t understand the resurrection, then I’m in pretty good company. In John’s account, we meet three people confronted with the empty tomb – they each encounter more and more evidence as the story unfolds. First the empty tomb, then the grave clothes, then finally the covering that had been on Jesus’ head. Gradually the scene mounts up, and the impression is of people gradually coming to an understanding of the incredible thing that had happened. That story develops, of course, as Jesus makes his first appearance to Mary, who in turn goes to tell Jesus’ other friends.

Today our waiting is over. God has acted, once, for always, forever. No greater act, no greater moment. It’s a God-sized moment, because only God can do this thing. And like Jesus’ friends, we can’t understand, we won’t understand, because it is a God-sized moment that only God can do, and only God can understand. It comes at the end of a week when those of us who have tried our best to stay as close to Jesus as we can have experienced tremendous love, the deepest grief, and now bewilderment which turns to amazement, and finally the deepest joy.

Yesterday was a day’s silence, during which we held our breath in suspense before the emptiness of our church, and when we felt the absence of Jesus. In the depths of the night itself we discovered that in that silence Jesus has gone down into the valley of death and has trampled death underfoot. Now the Father has raised Jesus from the dead, to die no more.

All the witnesses to the first Easter talk about the empty tomb. Mary, who came to embalm Christ’s body, never found it, never used the spices she had brought. Did, he, or didn’t he? I’m here to tell you – to proclaim to you – this morning that he did, completely, categorically, utterly, he did. Two days ago, he died, was killed, and today he does what no-one else has done, or can do, because the Father has acted decisively, raising Jesus from the dead. Thus God destroys evil and death, delivering a body blow from which Satan can never recover. Jesus is beyond the power of death. He is the eternal living one, the source of new life for those who believe in him. This morning we are set free into real joy, real living. When we run to meet Jesus we still know sadness, suffering and challenge that has been part of our lives, but we see them now in an entirely new way. We look at our lives as people who have the assurance that in the end ‘all manner of things shall be well.’ If we have accepted the cross – the hardships and sufferings in the world around us, and our part in them – then today is a good day, a great day, the best day, the best day ever, because we discover that whatever the world throws at us, then God’s grace will always be greater, always be better, always be the answer.

Easter Day is the pivotal day of our year. It is more important to us even than Christmas. Even in the face of the execution of the Son of God – what appeared to be a triumph for evil – God could not and would not let it stop at that. He raised Jesus from the dead – and made this the moment that is supremely important for all who came before, all who have come since, and who have earnestly sought after God. It is the greatest assurance we have, the greatest consolation we have, the greatest hope we have. Now we can face our final fear – that of death and dying itself – and can face it with renewed hope and confidence, for we do not face them alone. For Jesus Christ has conquered the powers of sin and death, has trodden down Satan under his feet, and lives, never to die again. No wonder St Augustine memorably said that ‘We are Easter people, and Alleluia is our song’.

We have fasted with Jesus for the forty days of Lent. We now feast with fellow Christians for the fifty days of Easter. That feasting is but a foretaste of the celebrations of heaven, when Christ hands over the Kingdom for which he died and was raised back to the Father, and then the party will really begin. For Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, and has destroyed the power of death and hell forever. To him, with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all might, majesty, dominion and power, now and to the ages of ages. Amen.

Damian Feeney

Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

 

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[1] Wink, W. (2003) Jesus and Nonviolence (Augsburg Fortress) pp. 41-2

[2] Robertson, Response to the Kairos Document quoted Wink (2003) op.cit.

[3] Songs 1.12

[4] Maloney, F. (1998) The Gospel of John (Glazier) p. 349

Call and Response

At some point we who follow Jesus are called to examine the nature of that call and its origin. The stories of others who have had the courage to follow someone or something beyond themselves in the search for truth are a great encouragement, and so I offer you two people quite outside the structure of the churches who have articulated thoughts about vocation which have struck many chords. Dag Hammarskjold, the former Secretary-General to the United Nations who was killed in a place crash in 1961. He wrote:

I don’t know Who -or What- put the question, I don’t know when it was put. I don’t even remember answering. But at some moment I did answer Yes to Someone – or Something- and from that hour I was certain that existence is meaningful and that, therefore, my life, in self-surrender, had a goal. … As I continued along the Way, I learned, step by step, word by word, that behind every saying in the Gospels stands one man and one man’s experience. Also behind the prayer that the cup might pass from him and his promise to drink it. Also behind each of the words from the Cross[1].

Our sense of vocation, if we are blessed, diligent and careful with it, grows and blossoms throughout our lives. It can also be blighted by the all too human failings of frustration, impatience and envy. We can so easily forget the fundamental truth that our vocation often leads us into places and situations we had not imagined, and if we are not sufficiently grounded we can waste much time and energy in thinking that our response would be so much better if only we were somewhere else. In his book Myths, Dreams and Mysteries, the Romanian author Mircea Eliade tells the story of an obscure Jewish Rabbi, Isaac ben Jekel, who several hundred years ago, lived in great poverty in a single-roomed house in Cracow. One night he dreamt vividly of a treasure buried beneath the bridge leading to the royal palace at Prague. Three nights running he dreamt the same dream and, unable to dismiss it from his mind, he determined to make the long journey to Prague on foot in search of the treasure. But when he reached the city he was bitterly disappointed to find the bridge guarded by soldiers and the treasure, if indeed there was a treasure, totally inaccessible. As the Rabbi stood there in dejection, the captain of the guard took pity on him and asked him what his trouble was. So he related his dream. The captain of the guard laughed.

‘You should not pay any attention to dreams. Why, only the other night I had a dream about treasure. It was buried in the house of a man I had never even heard of, a Rabbi named Isaac ben Jekel, who lived in Cracow. But no sensible man pays any attention to dreams’.

The Rabbi listened with inward astonishment; he bowed low and thanked the Captain. Then he set off with all haste back to Cracow and when he reached home, he at once began to dig in the corner of his room behind the stove. Eventually he unearthed treasure sufficient to end his poverty.

We grow up with our treasure; it is near to us all the time, but so often we do not recognize its value.

This has many implications. First of all, whatever our situations, and our feelings about them, one things is sure. God has called each and every one of us, by name, to minister for him to others. It is so tempting to look at the gifts of another, the achievements of another, the situation of another, and pine, if not with envy or jealousy, then maybe with a certain degree of wistfulness, for the things others can do, achieve or enjoy. We waste a good deal of time looking for our treasure in unrealistic places, places where it is not accessible to us. One result of this fruitless journeying is that we become unhappy with who we are, our regard for our own gifts diminish, and we become less and less fruitful for God.

Our treasure is within us. It is so often what we grew up with. If God has called me, then I know at least that there is something within me that God can use. George Herbert alludes to this in his poem ‘The Priesthood’

…only, since God doth often vessels make
Of lowly matter for high uses meet,
I throw me at his feet,

 

There will I lie, until my Maker seek
For some mean stuff whereon to show his skill:
Then is my time.

 

‘Our time’ – our calling, our life – is now. Our treasure is within ourselves, the gold of the gospel and our gifts – and it has been gathering and collecting every day of our lives. Rowan Williams earths this understanding of the paradoxical nature of God’s call when he writes:

 

‘God chooses where he wills: there is no set of conditions for his grace. We are to rejoice in the fact that, weak and sinful and silly as we are, God has chosen us for the privilege of loving and serving him.’

 

But with that rejoicing comes a balancing responsibility, a pain, if you like, when our loving and serving becomes unbalanced and we are unable to hold on to the burden and privilege of this calling. Rowan Williams continues:

 

‘And so our crises occur at those points when we see how unreality, our selfish, self-protecting illusions, our struggles for cheap security, block the way to our answering the call to be’.

The treasure is under our feet, it is within us, and therefore it is the very thing most likely to be taken for granted. I gain tremendous encouragement from that passage in Mark 6, where Jesus returns to Nazareth, to be greeted by those who knew him when he was but a lad – and they decided that no-one who came from their town could possibly be anyone special (‘We knew him when he had nowt’) – ‘and he could work no miracle there….and he was amazed at their unbelief.’ In my native Lancashire, it is said that the reason people go to church is to to stop other people going; some people, without realising it, manage to limit God and limit others at the same time. Perhaps they – and we – have every right to be concerned. Jesus came among us, and through him we discover a very human side to God that we had never suspected, and wonder whether God can really do this thing this way. For those on the way to faith this particularity can be hard to fathom, and how we preach it and proclaim it a most sensitive issue.

But this, after all, is the treasure at our feet, carried in these earthenware vessels. What we have to offer the world is Christ crucified and raised from the dead – the action of a God who will stop at nothing to redeem his people, redeem his creation. That miraculous action continues this morning and every day in the Mass and its outworking in our daily living, as we seek to discover and rediscover the treasure at our feet.

 

Preached at St. Stephen’s House on Sunday 18 January.

 

Pitching a Tent

 

A Sermon preached to the Fairacres Community, Oxford on Christmas Day, 2010

And the Word became flesh and lived among us (John i.14)

Let my first words be words of thanks to you for the rich privilege of celebrating with you on this wonderful morning. Put simply, I love my visits here. I knew I was going to like it here on my first visit, when I noticed the wonderful inscription which adorns the   tabernacle, and saw that key text which lies at the heart of our understanding of the miraculous events of the night, the visible fulfilling of God’s promise and longing for his people.

εσκηνωσεν εν ημιν

The Word became flesh, and dwelt among us; more properly, as you will know, the verb eskenosen carries with it the sense of tent-pitching, imbuing a provisionality, a transient quality, to the means by which the Word became Flesh. Last summer my wife and I decided to give camping another go, after a few years of declaring that after that regrettable incident on the Isle of Wight, when the wind uprooted our tent during a storm at four o’clock in the morning, we would never dally under canvas again. A week on the shore of Loch Lomond was booked; however, we did have the back-up creature comforts provided by some friends who had a splendid caravan nearby, and who provided warmth and good food – so we’re not quite back in the wilds yet! What I have rediscovered is that camping involves a degree of exertion – lots of bending down, and pegging canvas to unyielding ground, trying to create a reasonable shelter. That’s irritating, because the older I get, the more I long for my creature comforts.

Maybe the same is true of my spiritual life. Maybe with age I find myself wanting to settle for a little more comfort where the incarnate God is concerned – perhaps a new spiritual accessory which will help me to avoid the very real business of Christian living, dying and rising which is the pattern of the logos for my life. It seems to be getting harder to knock the pegs in, to make the whole warm and watertight – I would like it to be easier. But this morning I remember that this can never be – there is no substitute for the real authentic life which Jesus offers his followers. I recall this, and I am profoundly glad, because it shows that God’s longing for me is real as well, and that his sublime presence shows that he has not given up on his people.

How much we have to celebrate. God enters his own creation, by means of the womb of a young girl, into a political and spiritual maelstrom, with risk and danger at every stage, a child not immune from the challenges and difficulties of human living but rather immersed in them. This is the first indication of the depth of redeeming love we can expect from Jesus – a love fully consummated at Calvary. Costly, total, perfect love. It is the quality in this passing age which should mark us out in the world – a love which transforms the callousness and uncaring which is so often a mark of the imperfect relationships we form. It is this love alone which awakens the human heart to the immense possibilities of living in God’s economy.

May this love, so evident to those who visit this place, continue to overflow to all who pass through this place, and may the one who pitched his tent among us grant us peace, joy and mercy as we continue to live in the image of the Love of God.

Damian Feeney

Vice-Principal, St. Stephen’s House, Oxford

 

 

Christ the King

CHRIST THE KING

An Address preached on The Solemnity of Christ the King, 2010

Readings: Jer xxiii.1-6, Col i.11-20, Luke xxiii.33–43

‘This is the King of the Jews’ (Luke xxiii.38)

Louis-Dieudonné de France, Louis Quatorze, Le Roi Soleil, the Sun-King, King of France and Navarre from 1643-1715. Was ever a monarch more richly titled than the progeny of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria? Certainly none has been so royally garbed as he, judging by the portrait by Hyacinthe Rigaud painted in 1701, on display in the Apollo Salon of the Château de Versailles‘ Grand Apartment – you received a copy when you entered the chapel this morning.

He stands in regal pose, bewigged and swathed with the Golden Fleur-de-Lys on royal blue, ermine-lined, with garters and shoes which defy any description of mine. Even his name. Dieudonné, means ‘God-given’ – his is the very epitome of the divine right of kings, and has come to represent the height of a dynasty of monarchs which would – quite literally – be decapitated some ninety-two years after his portrait was unveiled. But all that was in the future. He ruled for longer than any European monarch. At the time of the portrait France was pre-eminent among the nations of Europe. Put simply, he was the most powerful, unchallenged creature on the planet. God-given – or, more cynically, he thought he was God’s gift. I’ll move on quickly, before anyone starts talking about the good old days.

You can probably tell what’s coming next, but I make no apology for telegraphing it. Today we celebrate our Lord Jesus Christ, Universal King. King not of France, or even France and Navarre, but the universe. King of all that is, that has been, that will be. King of every atom and particle, every moment of time, every creature and every soul. Yesterday and today, the beginning and the end, Alpha, and Omega; all time belongs to him, and all the ages. To any novelist, poet or story teller, the fact that the moment of the cross is the moment of declaration that ‘This is the King of the Jews’ would be a moment of the profoundest irony, because it is the moment when the King has been ignobly disrobed, stripped of all royal apparel, as he undergoes the execution reserved for the accursed criminal.

But this is not irony. Rather, it is sublime paradox, and his dying is entirely of a piece with is living, for this is he who

though he was in the form of God,   did not regard equality with God   as something to be exploited, ⁷ but emptied himself,   taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form   he humbled himself   and became obedient to the point of death—  even death on a cross[i].

Our readings point to certain vital characteristics of a Kingship worthy of the title ‘Dieudonné’. To Jeremiah, such a one is raised up by God, and is righteous, both in name and in deed. In the letter to the Colossians we read of one who transcends all human power and authority, one who is prior to all existence, one who holds the created order together – a veritable Sun-King. And in Luke we read that such a one as this universal king is rejected to the point of execution by the very people he came to serve – the Sun King overshadowed by darkness and the mire and sin of his fellow humans. But even here, condemned by a desperate brigand on the one hand and acquitted by another, the Kingship of Jesus is shown to us in a definitive way which challenges and threatens.

The reign of our King is terrifying. Jesus is the true Dieudonné, God-given, since here is God, giving himself, to redeem his very creation. Here Christ completes the process begun before his birth, the kenosis, the self-emptying, whose self-negation fulfills all creation. God-givenness confers not privilege and power, but quite the opposite, and it is in exploration of this sublime and puzzling mystery that our intimacy with Christ and its outworking in our lives and actions is to be found. Laurence Freeman uses this idea to frame a puzzling question:

The question that Jesus asked his disciples ‘And who do you say that I am?’ is at the heart of Jesus’ encounter with our humanity. For to attempt to answer this question involves us in an inevitable questioning of our own identity for, whoever we say Jesus is, has very real implications for who we say we are[ii].

We are servants of the God-given, with a servanthood modelled on his own. The authority of the church is given as another way to serve creation – to live and to die for it, for God, to serve all that Christ holds dear, and for which he went to his death. As Freeman reminds us, our answer to the question of Jesus’ identity cannot sit on its own. It leads to further questioning about ourselves, and who we are, if we gaze on the crucified Christ and see the God-givenness of our King. If this is he, then who are we?

Clearly, we are servants too – a servanthood which expresses itself in a number of ways. Part of that is to be people who watch, and wait for the Lord, being faithful while being vigilant – vigilant over God’s people, vigilant for his return. Think of the images used in the ordination rites – messengers, watchmen, heralds – those of us who are ordained carry these images of the Dieudonne with the whole church. These images are intimately related to our perception of who we believe Christ to be, and the share in his priesthood we model will depend on our deepest reflections upon the crucified King.  We should glory in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ – for he is our salvation, our life, and our resurrection – through him we are saved, and made free[iii] – and so all glory to him, now and to the ages of ages.

Preached at St. Stephen’s House, Oxford, on November 21^st 2010

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[i] Phil 2.6-8 NRSV

[ii] Laurence Freeman, The Teacher Within

[iii] Entrance Antiphon for Maundy Thursday – Roman Missal

Caught in the Crossfire

I suppose I was reasonably well prepared for the robust language which accompanies academic debate – I was, after all, a priest serving in a parish for fifteen years or so, and had been a secondary school teacher prior to that. Nor am I surprised that academic discussion and argument (itself a word with more aggressive overtones than seems helpful) is invariably robust. Part of the process of discerning truth in whatever discipline or sphere of activity, is discourse. It might be argued that subject this process to diplomatic nuance can shroud discourse, so that we are less likely to say what we mean. And amidst our conversations there is a kind of brittle politeness which can shatter under the strain of the passions aroused by having a strongly held point of view challenged. We are human, after all, and calling it conversation doesn’t stop us feeling vulnerable in the face of attack.

Then, of course, there is the discourse between people of faith, and in my case, discourse (generally) between Christians. At what point does the straight talking demanded by the nature of the argument and the demands of the pursuit of truth cross the line so that the exchange becomes more than argument, and less than civilised? I search in vain for help from Jesus on this, by the way – in Matthew 23 Jesus progressively ramps up what is admittedly a monologue, offering a series of condemnatory statements which begin with the words ‘Woe to you, scribes and pharisees….’. His words become more pointed, more heated, as part of the means by which he conveys the urgency of what he wants to say.

Nevertheless, there is such a thing as Christian discourse. The standards of the debates and discussions we conduct should be such as to recognise, first of all, the presence of the Holy Spirit in one another. It’s the very foundation of Christian community living within the body of the church. That presence surely has implications for the way we speak to each other. I know of priests who dread meetings with parishioners, because they fear they will be caught in the crossfire of the less than Christian exchanges which will result. The whole process by which the church consults and makes decisions becomes even more flawed when we fail to recognise that, however passionately held our views, the contrary view held by others is equally sincere. Our conduct begins from this point, and should not depart from it. In addition, bad behaviour is a distraction. It helps people concentrate on process stories rather than the issues which require resolution – we can talk in hushed tones about why person X spoke to Y as they did, and why such and such a piece of behaviour was not acceptable. Thus it is that gossip is born. And you can’t get away with bad behaviour by claiming that it is somehow ‘prophetic’.

Inspired by the presence of the indwelling Holy Spirit, (who, we are told, leads us into all truth),

Let all thy converse be sincere,
Thy conscience as the noon-day clear;
Think how all-seeing God thy ways
And all thy secret thoughts surveys.

In a little known verse later on, Thomas Ken, the author of those words, writes

Direct, control, suggest, this day
All I design or do or say
That all my powers, with all their might,
In Thy sole glory may unite.

Amen to that.

The Riches of his Glorious Inheritance

A Sermon preached at Keble College, Oxford on the Feast of All Saints, 2010

Readings: Daniel vii.1-3 & 15-18, Ephesians i.11-23, Luke vi.20-31

It’s a great joy to be here with you this evening. Thank you for this invitation to be with you, and to explore with you for a little while the riches of the inheritance of the saints in this wonderful setting, and on this special day.

The call of the Christian life is a call to holiness, to self-renunciation, and to the rule of love. Saints do not theorise about sanctity, but rather live it, expound upon it, proclaim it. Often the sacrifices they are called to make are as a result of doing these things well. Those who have undergone martyrdom have in some sense experienced the same consequence of gospel-centred living that Christ did – words, thoughts and actions considered too dangerous, too subversive, for the places and times in which they occurred. This was particularly so in the last century, when it was believed that more Christians were martyred than in any other.

The danger with saints is that we can lionize them to the extent that we fail to appreciate the need for saintly living in this age as well as any other. It is becoming fashionable in a lot of places to mount an attack upon what is perceived as a new and militant atheist apologetic sweeping the land. Now – I don’t doubt that such things are happening, and that humanists have much that is critical to say about people of faith. But perhaps this is a wake-up call – a call to repentance in the church, a call to all people of faith to bring the lofty ideals of faith and belief to bear in practical situations. Very often nationally broadcast criticisms of faith and the faithful frustrate because the Christian response is not all we feel it might be, and there goes up a cry for a renewed Christian apologia to counter such arguments. We know, perhaps, of local churches and faith groups doing good, wholesome and holy things for the good of the kingdom of God and for the care of his precious people – but it’s all very local, and not at all ‘newsworthy’. Still, I remain convinced that there is a lot of Good News out there, wonderful stories of human transformation brought about through the grace-filled witness of the church, and a great many people who are gently wearing the mantle of sanctity in the service of others. But if we are honest, do we sufficient attention to the virtue of humility, the joyful tasks of service, the ‘holy chores’ of grace? Can we honestly say that our lives contribute all they might to the coming of the kingdom? It’s a question we need to ask constantly, and one which our meditation upon the lives of the saints helps to bring to the surface.

It has been said that what distinguishes the saintly is not the capacity to perform the huge, Herculean task, but rather to perform the small and the mundane task with beauty and with grace – to live as in a world invested and charged with the grandeur of God, and so to reveal that grace to the less focused eye. If we would counter the arguments and criticisms of others – some of them well founded – then we must labour to ensure that change is brought about through love, prayer, word and action.

But saints do not merely perform tasks with grace. They live in ways which provide evidence of the divine in human endeavour and being. Faithfulness to the Christ of the Gospels makes clear to us that saintly living is possible in any age, including our own. To offer ourselves to God for this way of life, definite acts of will are required – acts of renunciation of the things which stand on our way, acts of ascesis and mortification, which serve to remind us that it is not we ourselves, but Christ in us, who guides, inspires and makes possible the things we undertake. To that end, St. Gregory of Nyssa wrote that ‘Christian perfection has but one limit, that of having none ’.

I enjoy the thought, from time to time, that Heaven will be a state of endless meetings between saints of different eras. What fun that will be! It will take an eternity to meet them all. I wonder, for example, what St. Stephen, the first martyr, will have to say to St. Paul, who assisted at his execution. I imagine that there will be quite a queue to meet St. Augustine of Hippo, for good or ill, and that one or two friendly discussions will take place between Calvinists and Catholics during the queuing. Then the apostles, of course, meeting their Episcopal successors with a mixture of joy and bewilderment – and one could go on. But one thing is for sure. There is a glorious diversity within the company of the saints – people of all shapes and sizes, some who wielded temporal power and others who shunned it, those who were passionate and argumentative, those who were serene and irenic, those of amazing and intense learning, those of pure and joyful simplicity, those of contemplation, those of action. At some point people who we think of as saints have committed every sin in the book, but their lives were transformed not by their own efforts, but through God’s wonderful and redeeming grace in their lives, so great and strong that they couldn’t help but respond in exciting and radical ways. There are those we know, and celebrate, and those we do not – those whose saintliness has been known only to God. All responded to their time, their circumstances and the events which surrounded them with the light of the gospel – well received in some times and places, rejected in others. What matters is that they sought to be vessels of God’s grace, not only for those around them but for successive generations. It is part of the deepest Christian vocation to cherish our sense of communion, not only with one another but with all who have gone before us, marked with the sign of faith. May the Saints, our brothers and sisters in eternity continue to urge us on, to renewed and fervent holiness, until we are blessed to be among their number, and Christ is all in all.

DAMIAN FEENEY
Vice Principal, St. Stephen’s House

Given at Keble College, Oxford, on 31^st October 2010