04.01.2016
2016 Presents Opportunity for a New Ireland – Archbishop Focuses on Reconciliation and Acceptance
“2016 is a year in which we in Ireland, South and North, East and West, have the opportunity, once again, to grow into maturity and to express our maturity politically and socially for others.” Preaching in St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, yesterday (Sunday January 3), Archbishop Michael Jackson, said that the reading from Ephesians [1.3–14] was tailor made for 2016, the year in which the centenaries of the Easter Rising and the Battle of the Somme would be marked.
The Archbishop said that the impact of these events on Ireland had overlapped in many ways but had been used to create two communities. “Each ideology has become the enemy of the other and each seeks vigorously to deny this; and still the rapprochement is insufficient to convince an electorate on either side of the Border that there is a real hunger for pro–active peace–making and energetic community–building. It is an electorate that is becoming more and more disillusioned about the priority of the public good in the minds of the professional politicians. Ephesians asks of us in the Season of Christmas and at the beginning of a New Year to take the best of our enemy and make it our own and go out and win our enemy for the Love of God and for the Kingdom of God. To many of us this remains an incredible ‘ask.’ But it is surely a very exciting ‘ask’ and a very urgent ‘ask’,” he stated.
Archbishop Jackson said that yesterday’s Gospel reading [St John 1.1–18] offered a further challenge for 2016, telling us that acceptance and adoption are open to all who receive The Christ. “It is not only that we need to make a real go of resolving our differences as we have inherited them and fed them historically, but we need to let those who are new citizens – immigrants and refugees, recent and of longer standing – to this bickering Ireland look critically at us and help us to become a rather different Ireland. The danger with 1916/2016 is the lure and the attractiveness of deeper and more limiting introspection. The opportunity is to create an Ireland today for tomorrow. This is every bit as important as sorting out the past,” he said.
Referring to the door which is preserved in St Patrick’s Cathedral from which the phrase ‘chancing your arm’ (as an expression of trust) is said to originate, the Archbishop concluded: “Might we all make it our Resolution for 2016 North, South, East and West that we do a bit more of this chancing our arm?”
The full text of Archbishop Jackson’s sermon is reproduced below:
The Second Sunday after Christmas, St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin
January 3rd 2016 Readings: Ephesians 1.3–14; St John 1.10–18
Sermon preached by the Archbishop of Dublin
Ephesians 1.5,6: … and he predestined us to be adopted as his children through Jesus Christ. This was his will and pleasure in order that the glory of his gracious gift, so graciously conferred on us in his beloved, might redound to his praise.
IT’S STILL CHRISTMAS
If we needed reminding that it is still Christmas, then today’s Readings give us a true sense that we are still very much in The Christmas Season. The Gospel for today is part of the very same Gospel we are accustomed to hearing on Christmas Day, St John chapter 1; but what we hear today is the second part of it and just a little bit more. And this, in fact, works extremely well for us as we move on in the spirit of Christmas, through and beyond the festivity, to see what Christmas might mean for our personal faith and for our public responsibility. Christmas is certainly a celebration; Christmas is also a calling of Christian men and women to rejoice to serve and to lead, to engage and to care, to adore and to give thanks. If we learn nothing else about this Season, we learn that it is the time of salvation when the light shines in the darkness and the darkness does not, can not, will not snuff it out. And we stand now in a new year with the hope in God and the hope in the unknown coming together for us and for our sharing of this faith with other people. We need to take time to reflect and to act on the spirit of Christmas and in the spirit of Christmas. This will be one of the most powerful ways in which the festivity, the celebration and the salvation live on as the light grows longer in the new year and as the darkness grows shorter. It is our calling as children of God (St John 1.12) to see the gift of his glory and to share it.
EPHESIANS AND 2016
In today’s Epistle and Gospel we have a bursting forth of the glory and the gift of Christmas in ways that are exciting and empowering. The Letter to the Ephesians, in chapter 6, as we all know of course, gives us the content of The Advent Collect and today it gives us the ways in which we can use what that Collect calls: the armour of light. They are release, forgiveness of sins, wisdom and insight leading to unity in Christ. Advent nails it: spiritual warfare is a significant part of the weave of life as we live it and as it impacts on us. And we are called to be children of the light. Ephesus was a garrison town and Ephesus was a place of deepest pagan holiness; it was the centre of the cult of Diana of the Ephesians. What the writer of this Letter was actually doing was inviting and challenging the hearer to take the best, not of their friends but of their enemies – the regular and little–loved soldier of the Forces of Occupation, the Roman Army in this case, the Imperialists. And he was calling the Christians to redeem, restore, realign to good purpose the armour, the badge of office, the uniform that is so hated and despised because it brings repression and exploitation; it represents the unwanted, it is the enemy. When we look at it in this light, we can see that Ephesians is almost tailor–made for 2016.
2016 is a year in which we in Ireland, South and North, East and West, have the opportunity, once again, to grow into maturity and to express our maturity politically and socially for others. Two iconic historic events in particular have their centenary commemorations in 2016: The Easter Rising and The Battle of The Somme. As subsequent history has dealt us its hand, these events which in so many ways have overlapped in their impact on Ireland much more than the self–styled purists and high priests of historical selectivity would like us to think, these two events have somehow helped to create the fault–lines which give us our fractured identities in Ireland, as Northerners and Southerners. They have helped to cement not only political but psychological differences. They have been used to create ‘the two communities’. And these differences can perpetuate a paralysis in generosity in the inter–relations of both countries. Each ideology has become the enemy of the other and each seeks vigorously to deny this; and still the rapprochement is insufficient to convince an electorate on either side of the Border that there is a real hunger for pro–active peace–making and energetic community–building. It is an electorate that is becoming more and more disillusioned about the priority of the public good in the minds of the professional politicians. Ephesians asks of us in the Season of Christmas and at the beginning of a New Year to take the best of our enemy and make it our own and go out and win our enemy for the Love of God and for the Kingdom of God. To many of us this remains an incredible ‘ask.’ But it is surely a very exciting ‘ask’ and a very urgent ‘ask.’
St JOHN AND 2016
For most of us, the following words are familiar, and in many ways perhaps too familiar for us to need to try make the relevant connections with Christmas: St John 14.2: In my Father’s house are many mansions; were it not so I should have told you; and I go to prepare a place for you. We are tired now; Christmas after all is over. We in the pew associate ‘John 14’ with funerals. The interesting word for us today in St John 14.2 is the word: mansion. A mansion is a place where you remain, where you stay on. And the translation abode/abide rings bells for us in relation to St John 1.1–18 from which today’s Gospel comes and from which the Gospel of Christmas Day comes. The Son of God came to make his abode, his mansion among us, to stay on with us by being born human. As we stand on the threshold of 2016, today’s Gospel offers us a further challenge in the Ireland of 2016. It is not only that we need to make a real go of resolving our differences as we have inherited them and fed them historically, but we need to let those who are new citizens – immigrants and refugees, recent and of longer standing – to this bickering Ireland look critically at us and help us to become a rather different Ireland. The danger with 1916/2016 is the lure and the attractiveness of deeper and more limiting introspection. The opportunity is to create an Ireland today for tomorrow. This is every bit as important as sorting out the past. I remember a long time ago now, in 2002, attending a meeting on community–building in Stormont, in Northern Ireland. Each speaker was given five minutes. One speaker said simply the following: I am a French Algerian atheist and a woman. I do not understand your ‘two communities,’ I do not belong to them nor do I want to. The language of ‘the two communities’ and the language of ‘both sides’ is literally incomprehensible to people who have not staggered through the minutiae of Irish history and traded prejudice and factual distortion as a definition of what matters most in civic and social life. They cannot understand our near–paralysis around historical legacy and our failure to move forward with some sort of togetherness.
The Prologue of St John challenges this slide towards inertia. Today’s Gospel tells us that acceptance and adoption – in itself an interesting word in this highly theological context – are open to all who will receive The Christ. As for those who have rejected The Christ either actively or by neglect, we are not told at this point what happens to them but we learn more and more of what it is to be ‘out of the picture’ as the Gospel unfolds before us. The Gospel clearly tells us that from acceptance and adoption flow the greatest gift that God can offer: becoming a child of God. It is all made possible because of the fact that God in God’s Son came to abide in us, make his mansion and his home among us, by being born human while also being and remaining divine.
RECONCILIATION AND 2016
The invitation to reconciliation is at the heart of this living. It is a reconcilation of those of the present to the future as much as it is a reconcilation of those of the present to the past. As the danger in the Ireland of 2016 is that our shared confusion about the past becomes a dominant motif which overshadows the future, so we need to create spaces to hear the voices and to accept the gifts of humanity and of generosity of those who are new to our inherited preoccupations, those who today make their abode here. And we need to do it country–wide if Irish society from this new year is to move beyond the economic model of recovery to a social model of development of people who, as individuals, together change community and expectation. The experience of life in Northern Ireland and in the Republic of Ireland is crying out for ways which meet the need to respond to all that lies in front of us. We continue to think of those who are Irish and homeless; those who are in direct provision centres and not free to contribute to society; those who are refugees. Each has a shared need and each has different needs; and each has different things to give, to offer and to share.
RECONCILIATION AND CHANCING OUR ARM
Reconciliation is a word that has been used much in Ireland up until today. Without the tireless work of Glencree and Corrymeela and countless other Centres of hope in a time of distrust we should be in a much worse place. And for all of this local and international work we must indeed be thankful and grateful. Much remains to be done. There is the inspiration of Jesus Christ who connected and reconciled earth and heaven in little space as the hymn–writer expresses it. There is the perhaps mythical and romantic inspiration of a door preserved in this National Cathedral and it is purported to be the origin of the phrase: chancing your arm. With our Irish capacity for softening something, often to the point of lessening its meaning, we have tended to move this phrase down a gear or two so that it means: pushing your luck. But the phrase is an expression of trust more than it is an expression of opportunism. This primary meaning needs to be reclaimed in a context where mythology has all too often been dressed up as history. In the larger Christian tradition on this island we have been in A Year of Mercy since Advent Sunday 2015. Might we all make it our Resolution for 2016 North, South, East and West that we do a bit more of this chancing our arm?
St John 1.16:
From his full store we have all received grace upon grace