03.07.2012
Sermon Preached by Archbishop Michael Jackson During the Irish Church Music Association Summer School
The Irish Church Music Association is holding its Summer School in St Patrick’s College in Maynooth. As part of the Summer School, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, preached at Evensong on St Thomas’s Day, July 3, in St Mary’s Parish Church, Maynooth. The full text of the sermon is reproduced below:
Readings: psalm 139:1–18, 23, 24; Job 42: 1–6; 1 Peter 1:3–12
The Anglican tradition, until not so long ago, was of a piece with an ancient Western liturgical tradition, in marking the apostleship of Thomas on December 21st annually. The thinking behind this is much too esoteric for a modern world but, even at this late stage in the game, let me offer an explanation to you who are liturgically nuanced. Nuance is part and parcel of all those who combine harmony and ideas and it needs to be and to continue to be. We associate Thomas with the Resurrection and its many complexities. But as you might expect, on December 21st Thomas is embroiled in the Incarnation and its many complexities, as indeed are we all. What most of us remember about Thomas is his need to question rigorously and to seek proof tangibly. The Incarnation offers tangible and indeed tactile proof to those with faith in Jesus Christ to explore and to dare. And so this December date once offered nuance to the self–understanding of the church, as a fragile human institution, composed of fragile human beings. It in fact honoured the honesty of doubt not as a dark corner of shame but as the ante–chamber of glory.
Few in the church today would wish to admit this, but to those outside and in other walks of life, the fog–horn and the battering–ram of unquestioned certainty herald dis–ease and lack of confidence, precisely because, taken together, they suppress the entitlement to ask the sort of questions which themselves ask whether we voice them or suppress them. Such questions are often an improvisation on the one question: Is it really true? I say this, not out of disbelief but out of a need to claim the large room of faith. I would hazard a guess that, as we worship here this evening, on the Eastern liturgical tradition’s Day of Thomas, July 3rd, the trappings of Christmas 2012 are already being prepared for sale somewhere not too far from here. Such is the great danger to our adventure in faith offered constantly by a society of seemingly irreversible consumer proportions. The deepest danger for us spiritually is that we simply capitulate to cynicism and resignation. And for that reason, I seek annually not to forget Thomas on December 21st even though my own church now tells me that I ought to do so.
The Collect for the Feast of Thomas draws us into the complexity of what we are exploring. Let me quote it and I would ask you to listen:
Almighty and eternal God,
Who for the firmer foundation of our faith,
Allowed your holy apostle Thomas
To doubt the resurrection of your Son
Till word and sight convinced him:
Grant to us, who have not seen, that we also may believe
And so confess Christ as our Lord and our God;
Who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit,
One God, now and for ever.
The Collect has the strong and kindly intention of helping us. It holds us in that delicate area which Thomas inhabited. It also holds us in that delicate area which we ourselves inhabit and all too often find it hard to admit to – particularly if we are people who worship and lead others in worship. Thomas has witnessed the crucifixion and clearly recoils from it. He had previously over–committed, as we are told in St John 11.16. There, in response to Jesus’ decision that the disciples are all to go to the dead Lazarus, we find the following: Thomas, called The Twin, said to his fellow–disciples, Let us also go and die with him. As John tells the story, there may even be embedded in this exuberance a sense that Thomas overplayed his hand. But Thomas, mercifully, is only momentarily brow–beaten. He bounces back and, uniquely, interrupts the Farewell Discourse with another of those ‘I need to know’ questions: Lord, we do not know where you are going, so how can we know the way? which draws from Jesus that all–important answer which itself places our discipleship in the heart of the mission of Christ: Jesus replied: I am the way, the truth, and the life; no one comes to the father except by me. (St John 14.5 and 6) Neither should we misread Thomas’ utterance: My Lord and my God. It is as glib to speak of Believing Thomas as it is to speak of Doubting Thomas – helpfully, he straddles both worlds for us and gives us the clear path and the freedom to graze which modern people need in their search to be obedient, faithful and disciplined in the love of God.
But our dilemma is, in fact, a reversed dilemma. We are different from Thomas and there is no point in snuggling into his comfort blanket and hoping for the best. We have not seen, cannot in fact empirically have seen, and yet we need help constantly to believe. In this way, words like reassurance and support develop a new range of meaning when applied to needy adults rather than to growing children. Secularization masquerading as pluralism erodes our confidence and it is for this reason that we deserve the community of one another – personally, ecumenically and across World Faiths. The New Atheism makes us feel stupid and it for this reason that we must engage theologically with our faith, in conversation and in dialogue of life as well as of words and ideas. The need and scope for a climate of respect for a range of viewpoints grows daily and as Christian people we need to want to be part of such sharing of the precious gift of the Word of God who is the way, the truth and the life. Thomas is the first to confess the divinity of Jesus and, although such confession takes place in the crucible of resurrection, this is why regularly and inevitably I am drawn back to the December date for St Thomas’ Day. Incarnation, crucifixion and resurrection are hard places to live.
I know that it is possible to worship God on any day of the year. I know also that it is possible to play and to hear liturgical music on any day of the year. I would go further to say that, when what we hear and what we see come together and are seen to engage with one another, we can be taken somewhere we have not been able to take ourselves before – and the music does it for many of us – rightly and beautifully. Some people wonder why churches and cathedrals continue to bother. The argument is very familiar: Sure, there is hardly anybody there, so why do you do it? This is not, nor has it ever been, the point. The relationship between personal faith and institutional generosity is much more subtle and much more demanding than this. So is the relationship between personal faith and artistic beauty. Churches always have been and always will be really for the people who are not in them. And surely music is and can be and always will be part of this zealous outreach, this impassioned invitation, on the part of those for whom excellence of endeavour and quality of delivery matter. Good sacred music has no need to stay indoors. Nor does it need to stay in church. It does not ultimately benefit or blossom from so doing. It is designed to be public ever more than it is designed to be private. And it is the privatization of religious purpose which has done all of us a disservice as we seek to combine on a daily basis the things which matter with the things which will not go away.
Our evening–time worship here in St Mary’s Parish Church gives us time to reflect on Thomas the Twin before he fades into the setting sun and from our liturgical memory for 2012. Your gathering – under the umbrella rather than the parasol of the Irish Church Music Association, it has to be said – here in St Patrick’s College during this week gives you time to explore, develop and embed principles and practices of music in liturgy and of music as liturgy.
Resurrection, Crucifixion, Incarnation – these are the big themes which have always been addressed with creativity and with panache by the best of sacred music. May it long continue thus! And may you be blessed in laying your gift of creativity on the altar of an harmonious God!
St John 14.12: In very truth I tell you, whoever has faith in me will do what I am doing; indeed he will do greater things still because I am going to the Father.