20.04.2014
The ‘Innocence of Difference’ Should be Cultivated – Archbishop of Dublin States in Easter Day Sermon
The innocence of difference should be cultivated rather than focusing on the destructive rhetoric of difference, the Archbishop of Dublin, the Most Revd Dr Michael Jackson, said in his Easter Day sermon at the Festal Eucharist in Christ Church Cathedral this morning.
He said innocence was often associated with naivety, trust betrayed and openness to exploitation but it also had a deeper and more powerful meaning.
“The innocent is that which causes no harm every bit as much as the person who deserves not to be harmed. The series of Resurrection meetings and encounters that friends have with the Risen Lord point us in the direction of this freedom from harm, this particular, and in our case spiritual, type of innocence. This is tremendously important and particularly on Easter Day,” the Archbishop explained.
“Always the protection and the enhancement of the life of the vulnerable is to be championed as a priority in the society and in the churches in Ireland. And on Easter Day we celebrate life in its newness, its freshness and its connectedness to God and we celebrate the careful compassion of innocence in the person of God as a living example to us in our own lives,” he added.
He referred to the meeting of Mary of Magdala with Jesus and said through their conversation it was recognised that God had been changed by the Resurrection. But that meeting also recognised the celebration of difference and the innocence and harmlessness of difference.
“Too often we use the language of difference as a battering–ram to prevent, to brutalize and to close down relationships. This flies in the face of the best of human endeavour and in the face of the positivity that we saw and enjoyed, for example, in the public expressions of friendship and respect between President Michael D Higgins and Queen Elizabeth, a bonding between our two nations for the whole world to see,” Archbishop Jackson said.
He suggested that Resurrection challenged the prevailing wisdom about diversity. For most people, he said, diversity meant undifferentiated equality and redressing exclusion by making different things and people seem somehow the same. “The gift of holiness is somehow different; it is a precious gift and is given by God; it recognizes the need for distinction. The outworking of holiness lies with the people of God, the children of Resurrection – you and me. So does the outworking of difference and respect – and spiritual and physical innocence,” he concluded.
Archbishop Jackson’s sermon is reproduced in full below:
Easter Day, Christ Church Cathedral, Diocese of Dublin
St John 20.18: Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, I have seen the Lord; and she told them that he had said these things to her.
A sermon preached by the Archbishop
Innocence is not something we tend to associate with adult life. Furrowed brows, preoccupation with other people and their preoccupations – real or imagined – with us, ever–deepening anxieties about ourselves and our ability to cope, lack of freedom to stop and to enjoy the small things of beauty, colour and humour which festoon our path hour by hour – this is adult life as most of us know it. The only reward and justification, all rolled into one, is that of collapsing in a heap at the end of yet another frustrating and fruitless day. I wilfully exaggerate, but sometimes it is almost as if we would not know who we are if our problems did not come to meet us. We would be bereft of the props of contemporary living were we able, without guilt, to look up and to see the light.
It is, therefore, all the more interesting to see the reaction to the resurrection of Jesus, as refracted through the personalities who make up the new picture of Resurrection Life after the traumatic events of Good Friday and the earthly vacuum of Saturday. The Gospel writers are helpful to us as we struggle in our own lives and hearts to deal with grief and violence, loss of life and the new freedom that such loss brings in its train, slow though we may be to see it. For individuals and for societies it is not something automatic nor can it be. Just look at Rwanda, just look at Anfield and Hillsborough along with lots of other tearing and torn human situations. Pain, grief, loss take time; and healing does not often look as if it is around the corner. Easter sheds light into our darkness, honour into our fear, hope into our brokenness. God is present with us in a new and Risen way.
Innocence we too often associate with a state of naivety, trust betrayed and openness to exploitation. It has a deeper and, in many ways, more powerful meaning. This meaning is that of absence from harm. The innocent is that which causes no harm every bit as much as the person who deserves not to be harmed. The series of Resurrection meetings and encounters that friends have with the Risen Lord point us in the direction of this freedom from harm, this particular, and in our case spiritual, type of innocence. This is tremendously important and particularly on Easter Day. Always the protection and the enhancement of the life of the vulnerable is to be championed as a priority in the society and in the churches in Ireland. And on Easter Day we celebrate life in its newness, its freshness and its connectedness to God and we celebrate the careful compassion of innocence in the person of God as a living example to us in our own lives.
Mary of Magdala is a very good example of innocence as she comes to accept the changes that have taken place in Jesus. We are told this through the conversation between her and Jesus about the fact that his body cannot and must not be touched. For an incarnational faith, which Christianity is, this is a very important and difficult moment. We tend to concentrate on the positive changes brought about by the birth of God; we need also to concentrate on the positive changes brought about by the death of God in the body of God. The Early Fathers of the church are very clear that God became human in order than humanity might become divine. We have here, in the person of Mary of Magdala, a worked example of this principle as Jesus Christ Son of Man and Son of God, while Risen, prepares to Ascend. He will take the very expression of who God is a stage beyond where it has ever expressed itself before. God has given the very self of God to humankind. God remains God and returns to being God, enriched and enhanced by the experience of being human – and once again, God is in some sense: different. So, innocence has also to do with learning the recognition and the celebration of difference. The important thing that we learn from Mary is that the innocence/the harmlessness of difference is something that we should cultivate much more than the more dismissive and destructive rhetoric of difference. Too often we use the language of difference as a battering–ram to prevent, to brutalize and to close down relationships. This flies in the face of the best of human endeavour and in the face of the positivity that we saw and enjoyed, for example, in the public expressions of friendship and respect between President Michael D Higgins and Queen Elizabeth, a bonding between our two nations for the whole world to see.
Thomas likewise is a good example of innocence, although we might never have thought to see him in this way. Thomas is hurting on the evening of Easter Day and he is hurting badly, most of all because he alone of the disciples has missed the Risen Lord when he came to be with his disciples after the Resurrection. We can only imagine what his emotions are like and we can do no more than guess what he made the others feel like, what he put them through, because he had missed out. We all know people like this! People like Thomas often are very hard work indeed. They want evidence, and they want it on their own terms, and they want it now! Yet the Risen Lord comes back again and Thomas, true to form, wants to be very hands–on with the body; he is himself; he wants to touch the openings in the side, the feet and the hands. But the message, delivered in a different way, is the same as the message delivered to Mary: you may not, you do not need to, you must not touch the Risen body. It still has work to do; it still has places to go; it still has something to become; it is something other and you will touch it only when it is Ascended – because then the body of the Lord will truly be the body of Christ, and that new and Risen body is the people of the Risen God. Again there is an innocence, a shielding from harm, in all of this new interaction between God and God’s creation in this new world of Easter.
Resurrection teaches us about holiness. It gives us access to the most holy of holiness: living divinity itself, but not any longer only on our earthly and limited terms. It takes forward the story and the truth of incarnation. But we still have to continue to live by faith, even those of us who have been privileged to see, as were Mary and Thomas and the first disciples. And we too, from time to time and from person to person, today are privileged to see, if we have the imagination and the obedience. It happens in those moment which we, as exhausted adults need to reclaim: moments of colour, seconds of laughter, flashes of freshness. Easter teaches us all a really powerful lesson about life. As the Easter story unfolds, it is a lesson that is first taught and given to the bereaved. Through the innocence/the harmlessness of trust and not touching we can let something new happen. It is the new creation, life through the gate of death, resurrection itself. It lives a new and different life – a life which, extraordinarily, comes about by means of death and not by outwitting death. It also teaches us about distance as an essential component in difference.
Resurrection challenges the prevailing wisdom about diversity. For most people diversity has to do with an undifferentiated equality and with the redressing of exclusion simply by making the things and the people who are unlike each other somehow the same. The gift of holiness is somehow different; it is a precious gift and is given by God; it recognizes the need for distinction. The outworking of holiness lies with the people of God, the children of Resurrection – you and me. So does the outworking of difference and respect – and spiritual and physical innocence.
Colossians 3.4:
When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory