Sunday 29 September 2002
On this Michaelmas Sunday, exactly 40 years after my ordination as a Deacon in St Paul's Cathedral, I stand to preach my last sermon as Archbishop of Canterbury in this similarly awe-inspiring place of worship. It is not a bad place to say farewell. Farewell to a city that has made Eileen and myself so welcome during these last eleven and half years. We shall miss the Lord Mayor's Carols in the Market on Christmas Eve with Christopher Gay, the former chief Executive, conducting with such aplomb! Thank you to the successive Mayors with whom we have become good friends.
Farewell and thank you to the Dean and Chapter of this great cathedral - I will say more of you this evening. To the choristers I pay a special tribute for their professionalism and yet their fun. I will have no one to play 'Captains on deck' this Christmas Eve! It was one of our grandchildren who said very innocently a few months ago: 'Mummy, when Granddad gets fired will we see more of him?' Yes, retire and fire does sound similar - and yes, we shall see more of them all.
In fact it was the verb 'seeing' that attracted my attention in the gospel reading we heard just a moment ago and if you were ask me what is the subject of my sermon this morning I can summarise it easily in a few words: 'Those who spend time in the company of Jesus see new things'. And in that simple sentence you will find two concepts - community and transformation.
Let's take community. Nathaniel was clearly a good and honorable man - Jesus was impressed and taken with him when he saw him and said, "Here is an Israelite worthy of the name. There is nothing false in him!" Nathaniel was amazed and there follows a conversation which circles around the theme of vision. The point the writer is making is that when people come into the company of Jesus, they start to see things differently - even angels.
Eileen and I have just returned from a conference in Hong Kong where we met a man called Ted who is working with HIV/AIDS sufferers in South Africa. Believe me, he is dealing with people at the very bottom of the heap. Ted stirred us all with his description of dying people. Over supper one evening he told Eileen how he became involved with HIV/AIDS victims. The story began in 1983 when the virus was beginning to worry people in the US. Ted was then the vicar of a prosperous church in Dallas, in Texas. One evening a knock at the door revealed a very sick man - his entire face was covered in the awful lesions and sores often shown by those dying of AIDS related illness. The man said simply: 'Will you allow me to come into your church and die?' Ted did not know what to say but nervously he invited the man in. The sick man explained that he had been to six churches in Dallas and each had rejected him - he was simply too awful to look at and the stigma attached to AIDS made people recoil. It was rumoured that if you drank from a communion cup that someone from AIDS had supped, then you too would contract the virus. Ted quickly realised that his understanding of the Christian faith was at stake here and he said firmly but gently: 'you are welcome at my church'. The problem was that the majority of his congregation disagreed and they left in droves. The numbers plummeted to 21 and on one occasion at a main Eucharist only three people turned up. But Ted persevered and around him gathered people who began to see what the implications of the gospel are. Ted found out that when the man asked if he could die in the church, he really meant he wanted to commit suicide. However, when he realised that Ted and others actually loved him he began to love others too. He got his wish - he died in the arms of a caring church a few moments after receiving his last Holy Communion.
But it was that experience that launched Ted on a ministry in South Africa where the level of desperation and hopelessness calls for unconditional communities of hope. Unconditional - the problem with community is that by definition a community has boundaries. To be sure there is often nothing wrong in having boundaries and sometimes they are absolutely necessary - but the embarrassing fact for us Christians is that Jesus Christ is not generally very keen on them. He was a boundary breaker. He had the habit of mingling with outcasts and strangers, lepers and tax collectors, women of dubious reputation and men who sat begging at the city gates.
We hear and read such terrible stories of boundaries these days. The Archbishop of Adelaide told me of the time some years ago when he was in Gaza shortly after an incident when a little boy had been shot by an Israeli soldier. The boy was only six and had been sent by his mother to get some milk from the store only 50 yards away. Being a typical boy he saw a stick that looked like a pistol. He picked it up and imagined himself firing it. At that moment the soldier saw the boy with what he thought was a real gun - he fired and fatally wounded the boy. Too many of life's tragedies involve such misperceptions-what we see and what is really happening are quite different. The mother heard the shot and knew instantly that her boy was in trouble and flew out of the house just as her boy's body was being lifted into an Israeli ambulance. She pleaded to go with him - but was pushed away. A Palestinian was not allowed into an Israeli Military hospital. It was a boundary that could not be crossed. Her boy died alone when he needed his mother most of all.
When communities become obsessed with putting rules, convention and tradition before people they become all too quickly conditional communities. And Churches are not immune from this tendency - far from it. It is one of the sadnesses of my ministry as Archbishop that I receive letters from hurt people who cannot understand why their child is refused baptism or why they cannot get married in a particular church. To be honest, there are times when I can't either. The gospel is incorrigibly reckless, irredeemably open and profligate in its generosity. And that reality leads on to the second concept I mentioned: after community, transformation-the transforming power of God's grace and love.
Take Philip a young Episcopal priest in LA. One day his bishop offered him his first church - he was to work among very poor Mexicans. The problem was there was no church and no congregation. He had to start one. Furthermore there was no other support. He was totally alone.
Philip walked around his parish and was overwhelmed by the needs of the place, the lostness of people; the poverty and unemployment; the drugs being sold openly. He was warned by the police that the area was very dangerous and he should avoid the park at all costs.
What could he do and what could he offer? He decided that the only thing he could offer was the thing God had ordained him to do. So, at midday on his first day Philip approached the notorious park with a rickety card table. He put a white tablecloth on it and a cup of wine and some bread. He then invited people to take communion with him. No conditions were attached - only come and receive. He did this day after day after day after day. Gradually he built up a daily congregation; he then started English classes; established a clinic for the mums and children; he found some jobs for a few of the men. He created trust and gave people a sense of worth; he showed people he loved them; he was unconcerned about the risks of becoming a victim of the drug culture and the gratuitous violence. When I was there I had the privilege of baptising one of the children of his new congregation and it was a joy to see that from unconditional, transforming love an authentic community was growing.
Those who spend time in the company of Jesus see new possibilities. Even angels. Michaelmas is all about that possibility. I have never seen an angel but, then again, perhaps I have - because the word 'angel' really means a messenger. Perhaps that man in the church in Dagenham in Essex who first mentioned ordination to me over forty years ago was one of God's angels, a messenger, sent particularly to me. And then again when I was in Islington finishing my curacy that anonymous person who stuffed fifty pounds in an envelope - an enormous amount in those days - with the scribbled words 'to register for your Ph.D' - was an angel of the Lord - even if much later we found out the donor was the vicar's wife! You must have had similar experiences of enormous generosity or when someone encouraged or believed in you.
But if we want transforming communities, hope must be central to them - there has to be reason for going on. A great cathedral like this cannot survive for long on memory alone - it has to look forward, it has to have reason for believing that the best is yet to be. And you Civic leaders, in the all important work of community building, need to have assurance that your labour is not in vain. And that is where the message of Michaelmas is so exciting and liberating. Because when Jesus said to Nathaniel, 'You shall see greater things than this. You will see heaven open and God's angels ascending and descending upon the son of man', he was opening Nathaniel's eyes to look ahead to what God can do. Michaelmas says firmly to us all, that behind all the trivia that dominates much of our lives there are realities that make all we do worthwhile; that transform death and give hope for tomorrow.
As the poem puts it:
"Truth forever on the scaffold
Wrong forever on the throne -
Yet, that scaffold sways the future
And, behind the dim unknown
Standeth God within the shadow
Keeping watch above his own"
Here is part of the message of Michaelmas and one of the reasons why I am confident in the future of the Church. The reading from the Apocalypse of St John tells us that a war is going on between good and evil and that good will triumph. And you and I have a part to play in that battle - to create Christian community where all are welcome and where transformation beckons; where each of us can be a ministering angel for others. Those who spend time in the company of Jesus see new possibilities. That is the story of my forty years of ordained ministry. And where Christ is, the barriers come crashing down and the boundaries are crossed. Brian Wren, the hymn writer puts it this way:
When Christ was lifted from the earth,
His arms stretched out above,
through every culture, every birth
to draw an answering love.
Where generations, class or race
divide us to our shame,
He sees not labels but a face
a person and a name.
Thus freely loved, though fully known,
May I in Christ be free
to welcome and accept his own as
Christ accepted me.