07.05.2012
Archbishop’s Sermon at St John’s Patronal Festival
Sermon preached by Archbishop Michael Jackson at the Patronal Festival, St John’s Sandymount
St John ante Portam Latinam, Fourth Sunday in Easter, May 6th 2012
Readings: Acts 3:12–19; 1 John 3:1–7; St Luke 24:36b–48
The Feast of St John is one which we often associate with the dark and dreary days of winter. Even in the timeframe of December 27th the major Feast Day of St John speaks eloquently and positively of creation and contrast. As the days garner what little natural light they possibly can, we are ourselves encouraged, through the First Letter of St John, to be very bold and bright:
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. (1 John 1.5)
This, however, is a brightness which few of us are able to endure for long. Yet, in both Gospel and Epistle, we are invited to come to know this light, to walk in it. By means of this light we are given the capacity to close the gap which has opened up between us and our neighbours and between us and God, through the deception of ourselves that we have no sin. We are not asked to cope with this light all on our own. But we are asked through the confession of our sins to be wide open to cleansing and reviving and to receiving graciously and joyously the new freedom from unrighteousness which is God’s gift to us. In this way, the light is now both something which we recognize and something for which we long eagerly. On December 27th this makes for a strong and confident message of hope in the work of God at a time of year when we remember a number of saints and sufferers in quick succession: St Stephen the First Martyr, St John the Evangelist and The Holy Innocents. Immediately after the birth of Jesus Christ in human form we have the passion of adults and children, the interplay of light and darkness, death and resurrection, suffering and glory. The light at that point perhaps most of all is to be found in the witness where there seems to be no light at all.
With St John the Evangelist, we get a second opportunity and we are taking it this evening, the Feast of St John before the Latin Gate. It falls annually on May 6th and commemorates the survival, against the odds, of St John when he was martyred in AD 92 under the Emperor Domitian. The method of martyrdom applied to him was that of immersing him in a vat of boiling oil, at a place by the Latin Gate, on the outskirts of Rome. He survived and was exiled to Patmos. The church of San Giovanni in Oleo (St John in the Olive Oil) stands today on the spot where this is understood by tradition to have happened and I have once had the summer–time pleasure of visiting it.
For Anglicans in particular, the Gospel of John is a favourite, not least because of the wonderful capacity which the writer has to tell a story and to depict characters and situations with a simplicity and directness all of their own. St John is unashamed to give us real theological food. He is unswerving on the centrality of the historicity of the death of Jesus: 19.35: This is vouched for by an eyewitness, whose evidence is to be trusted. He knows that he speaks the truth, so that you too may believe …With this as his basis St John takes us directly into the story of the person of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the eternal Son of God, who is older than Abraham and also has existed since before the world began. The bond between the Son and the Father is made very clear as being something inseparable: whoever has seen me has seen the Father (St John 14.9) But this Son is in no way distant or abstract. The earthliness of Jesus, the humanity, the incarnation, are equally stressed as is the physical nature of who he is.
Another very significant part of the message of St John’s Gospel is the combination of light and life. Light dispels darkness and darkness keeps company with some rather unpleasant individuals, by which I mean ignorance and sin. Life is always eternal life in St John’s Gospel. This life is not delayed until some future time but is immediately available and freely given through believing in Jesus (St John 5.24: In very truth I tell you, whoever heeds what I say and puts his trust in him who sent me has eternal life; he does not come to judgement, but has already passed from death to life.) A further important thing is the close connection of the gift and the coming of the Holy Spirit and the fact that salvation depends on the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. (St John 16.7: Nevertheless I assure you that it is in your interest that I am leaving you. If I do not go, the advocate will not come, whereas if I go, I will send him to you.) The unity and the continuity within God of Son and Spirit is very clearly set out.
If all three of these sound rather complicated, the outworking is simple and straightforward. Disciples are asked to believe in Jesus as the Son of God sent by the Father to bring them into the family and fellowship of God; from this flows the need to be showing the same love as Christ has shown to us; and we are required to witness to this faith and love in order to bring others in. These actions and activities give the capacity to enjoy the same unity which the Son enjoys with the Father. (St John 17.22: …the glory which you gave me I have given to them, that they may be one, as we are one.)
All of this is perhaps interesting, and I hope not confusing. And yet I offer it in a spirit of humility with no intention to be confusing but to be an encouragement to those associated with and devoted to this church and to members of this community. God is present here and God is at work here. God is our light and our life. The community is our lifeblood and we need to rejoice to be part of it. But the community, for many church folk, is an alien place to be, a place from which we retreat into the church building for comfort, for silence and for the absence of questions. This must not be the case for the people of this church and for the community of the church which first gathered at the foot of the cross with John the beloved disciple as one of its human trinity. Inclusion means opening our doors in the spirit of St John chapter 1.46: Come and see! The tradition of this church is venerable and it is distinct. It is different from most of the diocese of Dublin and yet we have always succeeded in peaceful co–existence, in mutual affection and in shared belonging. The architecture of this church is distinctive and is very much part of who we are. It also points us to the recognition that things which are good and ennobling do not come our way without controversy – this is a useful lesson and timely corrective to glib optimism
The Ireland of which we are part is itself now riddled with controversy and ambiguity. We have a Government which offers us the Austerity Gospel as the successor to the Prosperity Gospel. Neither in fact is Gospel – but few seem to realize that. The Prosperity Gospel suited those whom it suited at the time of profligacy. We have been thrown into the dreamland of Joseph in Egypt, with the seven lean cattle following fast on the seven fat cattle. The undue reliance on the construction sector as the well which would never run dry in our insatiable thirst for a quick fix for the coffers of public service will long stand as a question mark over the Irish nation as we approached the centenary of our independence. We had all the opportunities laid before us in paper form and on the web to avoid such an internalized neo–colonialism and we effectively squandered our patrimony. Our educational sector, as it is called, is seen by many to be in disarray; we still have no recognizable public health service, unless I have missed something very obvious. Our national pastime is to rubbish religion in all its forms as being nothing other than sub–intellectual in a world of secular cynicism. But at some point the tide has to turn. People may not want to call it church, and all I can say is: Good luck to them in the name of the Lord! But they will have to grapple with three concepts; the spiritual – what lies beyond the world of the crumpled Credit Card; the educational – we are citizens with a voice and why is our perspective so utterly irrelevant; the caritative – why does nobody care sufficiently and structurally for those for whom nobody cares? This is not the eighteenth century. It is the twenty–first century. The cluster of the spiritual, the educational and the caritative is, to the mind of most of us, what we have historically and by convention called: religion. But in the political policy of the provision of the public good, religion has all but been put out for the bin lorry for collection on a Monday morning.
This church community, in the spirit of St John, has much to contribute to the future as well as the present. St John speaks eloquently of the presence of God the Father in creation and in all earthly activity – so do you. St John speaks equally eloquently of the creation of a community of the way, the truth and life itself in response to God the Son – and so do you. St John speaks eloquently again of the gift of the Holy Spirit who both bridges the gap between heaven and earth and blows like the wind wherever the Spirit wills – and so do you. Take heart from the God whom St John proclaims to us as the God: of truth and of compassion: of love and of wisdom and most of all, in our worldly eagerness to be God’s children, of Word and of sacrament.
1 John 3:2: Dear friends, we are now God’s children; what we shall be has not yet been disclosed, but we know that when Christ appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.