22.10.2012
Pioneering Teams Commissioned as Prayer Ministers
The Prayer Ministry Teams of St Ann’s, Dawson Street and Christ Church Cathedral became the first people to be commissioned as Prayer Ministers in the United Dioceses at a service of Choral Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral on Sunday October 21.
Lily Byrne, Violet Elder and Ron Elder of the St Ann’s team and Hilary Ardis, Carol Casey, Avril Gillatt and Barbara O’Callaghan of the Christ Church Cathedral team were appointed and commissioned by the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson. His sermon is reproduced in full below.
There are currently 20 people in training for prayer ministry. They are due to be commissioned next year. Once their training is complete they will work in their parishes as well as taking part in weekly services.
The prayer teams of St Ann’s and Christ Church Cathedral make a huge commitment to their role. They minister in St Ann’s on Tuesdays and in the cathedral on Thursdays – both at 12.45 pm.
Sermon Preached by the Archbishop of Dublin at the Ministry of Healing Service of Commissioning in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, October 21.
Readings: Isaiah 61.1–3; St Luke 9.40–50
I begin with a scene from a lot further north of here but it is not emotionally as distant as it sounds. It comes from the Flea Market in Reykjavik and is a true story. Recently we held a most successful and interesting Diocesan Growth Forum here in the Dioceses. Over 250 people gave up a full Saturday to talk, to listen, to engage and to contribute. One of the things about which we were talking at the Forum was ways of putting into practice what we mean about the life of the church in circumstances where we might not always expect the church to be. This is the story I share with you from the Flea Market in Reykjavik. On one Saturday in every month a woman Lutheran pastor holds an act of worship for the old men who sit there and talk. They are well known to her: some are widowers, some never married, some are divorced, some undoubtedly are homosexuals – nobody knows. Frankly it does not matter. They are human beings who gather – the original meaning of ecclesia – church. The pastor simply uses oil. She walks up and down where they sit, asks them to hold out the palm of their hand and makes the sign of the cross on the palm with the oil. As she makes her way back along these men, she finds that some have put their hand behind their back and are holding out their other hand! They want the touch of blessing on both palms. Perhaps it is because this is a woman priest. Perhaps it is that these men are touched by nobody in their lives. Perhaps…it does not really matter. What matters is that the pastor continues to give and that the men wish to receive. Beyond that all is literally in the hands of God.
I tell you this story for two reasons. The first is that I wish to commend the Ministry of Healing as a normal part of the weave of parochial life and to do this it is very, very important to know that it does not and will not scare people who are unfamiliar with it. The second is to show that, as the Report of the Committee to last week’s Diocesan Synods state quite clearly: ‘The question is often asked: How does this ministry differ from the ministry of the Church? The answer is simple; it does not. It complements the ministry of the Church and as stated in its mission statement is set up to support that ministry.’ The directness of this statement combined with my short tale from Iceland ought, I hope, to encourage people as to the everyday humanity of healing. It is not perhaps even necessary to call it a ministry. However we do so in order to honour it and to prevent it from being lost in the undergrowth of what the church designates as ministry. It is a proper ministry. And it is all the more proper because it is something which mothers do for small boys; it is something that adult daughters do for even more adult mothers; it is something that lay people do for lay people and for priests; it is something that a Lutheran pastor in Reykjavik does for older men who feel abandoned by emotion, affection and intimacy – simply because they are who they are and are the age they are. And everyone does it because it is a work of Jesus Christ and a gift of the Holy Spirit. It is not confined to the time of Jesus but is part of the peace which Jesus gives and leaves with the disciples as he prepares for Passion, death and resurrection. Therefore the experience of Jesus Christ is overlapped with ours and ours is overlapped with his. As last week’s Epistle from the Hebrews expressed it (chapter 4.15): Ours is not a high priest unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tested in every way as we are, only without sinning.
As I listened to my friend Ada tell the story of her monthly experience in the Flea Market, this could not but draw me to the Gospel Reading from St Luke chapter 9 with its truly faithful stories of healing. I am drawn particularly to the healing of touch as immortalized in the life of the woman with the issue of blood. The story well illustrates both the power of faith and the love of God. The healing is set in the thick of another healing. It is not a distraction but it brings us into the amazing capacity of Jesus to recognize and to engage with need which is expressed in trust. Jesus is pressing on to the house of Jairus the president of the synagogue to offer healing to his daughter. There is such a crowd surging around him and the disciples, with excitement and expectation, that he is not making the greatest of progress. With time clearly not on his side, as the little girl is in fact dying, he suddenly stops and says: Who was it who touched me? Now this is not the inappropriate touching of which we have heard so much and which so scandalizes us, and rightly. This is the interconnecting, the bonding of the needy and the one who can and does meet need. It is one of the most profound moments in the New Testament and for a very specific reason. Jesus, let us remember, lived among Jewish people. He is going to the house of a president of the synagogue. He stops for a woman who is ritually unclean, and genuinely through no fault of her own. Her recognition of the special character of what Jesus came to earth to bring – healing, happiness, dignity, delight – is actually something which nobody else has spotted in this crowd. Her urgency enables Jesus Christ the Son of God to heal someone nobody else would touch. Is it, in fact, any wonder that Jesus responds with such human and divine warmth to her: Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace. (St Luke 8.48) Often we think of God doing things for us. Here we in fact learn, as the women of the Gospels frequently teach us, and it is very important, that God can change God’s own mind and respond and react and change and answer. The woman does something significant for Jesus. Men seem not to work this out so readily! And the energy of divine love is such that, in the same action of healing, Jairus’ daughter also is healed. It is a sort of Lazarus moment. And we are blessed in being able to rejoice in them.
I began with the confident assertion on the part of the Diocesan Committee of the Church’s Ministry of Healing that the healing ministry does not differ from the ministry of the church in any significant particular. I wish to illustrate this from two specific contexts. The great twentieth–century architect of Anglican theological thinking and practice – Archbishop Michael Ramsey – speaks in a vital way about the broken body as follows: ‘When, through the same Passion, the outward unity is restored, then the world itself shall know that the Father sent the Son. Meanwhile the broken Church is closer to the needs of men and women than men and women can ever know, for it is the Body of Christ, who died and rose again.’ (The Gospel and the Catholic Church pages 223,224) I take you to another regular church context, that of Inter Faith relations and quote from a document prepared for the 2008 Lambeth Conference: ‘… as people who find healing through the broken body of Christ and confidence in the daring venture of the Spirit, we must not be deterred by the risk of failure or rejection… we are constantly challenged by the God who calls us to abide in our neighbourhood as signs of his presence with them…’ (Generous Love) My point here is that in all aspects of the church which matter, ecumenism, Eucharistic theology, Inter Faith relations, healing is at the heart of Anglican thinking. I add one further strand. It comes from our Old Testament Reading. The Suffering Servant of Isaiah cried out for justice and committed himself to live for the justice of the humble, the broken–hearted, the captives. To accept the description: broken–hearted of oneself is the beginning of taking the road to healing. It is a hard thing to do. However, it immediately brings you – and me – into the real presence of the Jesus who stops to heal us when already he is no the way to healing someone else.
Is it any wonder, therefore, that the old men who are anointed by my friend Ada want the palms of both hands anointed by the sign of the cross? Wouldn’t you? I certainly would.
Isaiah 61.3…to give them garlands instead of ashes, oil of gladness instead of mourners’ tears, a garment of splendour for the heavy heart.