02.04.2015
“Our Invitation is to Serve as Jesus Served” – Archbishop Tells Chrism Eucharist
The Chrism Eucharist took place in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, this morning, Maundy Thursday. The service, which includes the consecration of oils used in ministry, also sees the clergy and lay ministers of Dublin and Glendalough renew their commitment to ministry. During the celebration of the service, Archbishop Michael Jackson washed the feet of some clergy and lay people and in turn had his own feet washed.
In his sermon, the Archbishop drew on St John 13: Before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father. In particular he focused on St John’s use of ‘the hour’.
He suggested that the hour is the pivotal point of time and eternity. “It brings a special richness of focus as we gather as today’s disciples called repeatedly to be attentive and to be responsive to the Word of God. Our invitation, as is made abundantly clear on Maundy Thursday, is to serve as Jesus served; that is to serve others whom we know just as much as others whom we do not know. This is difficult and this is unattractive until we draw deep into our thinking and our acting the love and goodness that lie at the heart of salvation and which are enshrined in the words of Gregory the first pope of Rome and echoed in the words of today’s pope Francis: the poor are the Gospel. We need to add to this a phrase of our own: the service is the glory of God,” he said.
The Archbishop said that we are all called to witness in faith to the suffering of Jesus Christ. “We know all too well that the Christians of the Near and the Middle East are called to witness in literal and physical ways that we will never be called upon to do; nor would we have the strength, as a result of our liberal and our secular conditioning, to do so either. Many would say we no longer have the theology deep within us for it. We have a very chilling deficiency in this regard. We are, however, called upon to work out ways of being and doing this example of service in our own place and in our own way and it is to this that I encourage every one of you today. There are many, many possibilities in this city of Dublin. There are many opportunities in rural as in urban areas alike. All of the hype around economic recovery touches the lives of too few and always when there have been recessionary times the poor get poorer because the recovery always seems to take precious little notice of them. Human history shows us the glib shallowness of the maxim that a rising tide lifts all boats,” he stated.
Those who exercise a ministry, Archbishop Jackson said, have a double opportunity of serving and of inspiring others to serve – by example, by sorting out misunderstanding, by offering service and by dealing with betrayal. [The Archbishop’s sermon is reproduced in full below]
Photo caption: Archbishop Michael Jackson prepares to wash the feet of a member of the clergy with Dean Dermot Dunne and the Revd Garth Bunting.
Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, Maundy Thursday April 2nd 2015
Sermon by the Archbishop of Dublin
Exodus 12.1–14; 1 Corinthians 11.23–26; St John 13.1–17, 31b–35
St John 13: Before the festival of the Passover, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world and to go to the Father.
As John’s Gospel grows in simplicity, it grows in intensity. As the picture widens and deepens, often in the simplest of language and in the most direct of expression, The Gospel – that is the living person Jesus Christ – becomes clearer in purpose. And one of the ways in which St John does this repeatedly and relentlessly is through talking to us about: the hour. There is no escaping the longing that God has to give salvation to all God’s creation and to all God’s people. Delay is not described or depicted as indecision; delay is something quite different: it is part of the release into the world of two things and of two sets of relationships: of the creation given by the Saviour and of the salvation given by the Creator. Creation and salvation come together in the hour. The hour is a critical point of salvation and of summation; it is the point of convergence and also the point of commissioning. New and old; darkness and light; God and humanity; death and life – these places of conflict and points of tension come together in the love and freedom of suffering and resurrection. It is the hour that brings us all here together this morning to the mother church of our dioceses as the people of God and as the ministers of the God of grace. We come in simplicity; in humility; in anticipation; in fear – and in the hope of glory. As Jesus himself says: Now the Son of Man has been glorified, and God has been glorified in him.
Time after time we have heard that the hour has not yet come. Disclosure and detection march hand in hand, as in any good detective story. Now and in this Gospel Reading, we hear that Jesus knows that the hour has indeed come. The hour is on the eve of The Passion. The remainder of this Gospel of John, from now to the end, is prayer, suffering, sacrifice, death, resurrection and commissioning. It mirrors and shapes the experience of all of us, with those interlocking components and expressions of who we are and of who, through the broad sweep of The Easter Story, God is making us to become. And so, transformation is offered to us year by year through the lifecycle of the church on earth as we seek to serve and to find, to give and to accept, to receive and to move in the spirit of the Kingdom of this self–same and ever–different God. This is where disclosure and detection continue to inspire us when our faith flags and falters. The hour is a dynamic moment when, in the person of Jesus Christ, time and eternity meet in God’s sacrificial embrace of God’s world and its people. From the first words of St John’s Gospel we are clear that salvation is cosmic in its sweep and in its generosity: In the beginning was the Word. This same Word who has lived dies and rises again on the third day.
As in all things, the Jesus of St John teaches his disciples to follow Him then and now as, at every point in this disclosure, he experiences the death that is in life and the life that is in death. And the coming of the hour is no exception to this pattern and to this rhythm; nor was it ever intended to be otherwise than this in the shaping of the Gospel. The hour is the pivotal point of time and eternity. It brings a special richness of focus as we gather as today’s disciples called repeatedly to be attentive and to be responsive to the Word of God. Our invitation, as is made abundantly clear on Maundy Thursday, is to serve as Jesus served; that is to serve others whom we know just as much as others whom we do not know. This is difficult and this is unattractive until we draw deep into our thinking and our acting the love and goodness that lie at the heart of salvation and which are enshrined in the words of Gregory the first pope of Rome and echoed in the words of today’s pope Francis: the poor are the Gospel. We need to add to this a phrase of our own: the service is the glory of God.
There are many components of the life that we know and live in St John 13. The first is betrayal. Betrayal is part of the weave of God in the role ascribed to Judas. It is essential that Judas go out from the body of disciples for the body of Christ to move into the realm of suffering and death and to do so not as a mistake. Service is also part of the weave of God; we find that this moves to the centre of the divine presence in that the master becomes the servant of all who are present and in this way is living out what he voices elsewhere, in St Mark 10.45: The Son of Man came to serve and not to be served and to give his life a ransom for many. Misunderstanding is a third strand; this too is well known and bitterly and painfully felt by many of us in the ministry we seek to offer and to receive from others. We see it here in how this ministry of humility is received. In many ways, the gift of Jesus Christ to his disciples in this ministry of service is to give significant time to putting right the wrong and the confusion of misunderstanding. He is in effect saying that no ministry of service is too foolish for us as it was not too foolish for him. Perhaps this can help us as from time to time we seek to make sense of the ministries we are called upon to do. The concluding words of Jesus in this section are helpful and useful: If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.
Example is another and it is the most powerful way to turn witness outwards. We are called to witness in faith to the suffering of Jesus Christ. We know all too well that the Christians of the Near and the Middle East are called to witness in literal and physical ways that we will never be called upon to do; nor would we have the strength, as a result of our liberal and our secular conditioning, to do so either. Many would say we no longer have the theology deep within us for it. We have a very chilling deficiency in this regard. We are, however, called upon to work out ways of being and doing this example of service in our own place and in our own way and it is to this that I encourage every one of you today. There are many, many possibilities in this city of Dublin. There are many opportunities in rural as in urban areas alike. All of the hype around economic recovery touches the lives of too few and always when there have been recessionary times the poor get poorer because the recovery always seems to take precious little notice of them. Human history shows us the glib shallowness of the maxim that a rising tide lifts all boats. Soon, in this cathedral, there will be dedicated a commissioned sculpture of great beauty and of great sorrow. Christ the Homeless One lies – living or dead – on a park bench: how is one to tell? The sculpture could be an horizontal crucifixion or a Pieta with no loving mother. The one thing we do sense is that it is a human being despised and rejected. Jesus says: For I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you.
The final thread of the divine and human tapestry is glory. The hour of service is the hour of glory. It has already been given and shown and shared in the service that is given even before the disclosure of self–sacrifice by Jesus Christ in the crucifixion. As everyone is encouraged in another Gospel to take up his and her own cross and follow Jesus Christ, so here everyone is encouraged to follow the way of the cross of Christ in participating in daily life in the sacrifice of service of other people. Those who exercise a ministry have the double opportunity of serving and of inspiring others to serve – by example, by sorting out misunderstanding, by offering service and by dealing with betrayal.
It is by being true to discipleship and ministry together that we live with Jesus Christ the life he lived on earth, his suffering on Calvary, his resurrection from the dead and, in the fullness of time, and eternity his restoration to the Father and the Spirit as God–with–them. But for the moment we have to wait even though the hour has come.
St John 13.35: By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.