26.03.2016
The Ethic of Altruism: A New Type of Revolution for 2016 – Archbishop’s Easter Day Sermon
Commemoration of the 1916 Rising, the atrocities in Europe and across the Arab World and the future were the focus of Archbishop Michael Jackson’s Easter Day Sermon this morning which focused on revolution and security. In a break from the norm, the Archbishop preached in Sandford Parish Church this morning.
Taking as his text the reading from Isaiah [65.17–25] he examined the words ‘revolution’ and ‘security’ and said it was rare to think of the two holding together. Revolution always created displacement and regularly required violence as witnessed in Brussels this week, while security regularly bred indifference but could also engender a carefulness of others and ecology.
“Some years back, the West had convinced itself that the Arab Spring brought in a silent and seamless revolution in a Western–leaning direction. It surely now seems more like a delusion and an illusion than anything else,” he stated. “People today across ‘The Arab World’ suffer unspeakable cruelty and indignity and flee and suffer again and again abroad in the hope of fresh security. They are sure only of one thing: the absence of any belonging. People in 1916 were battling exploitation, social exclusion, poverty, squalor, indignity and colonialism; they too in their day were offered The Revolution with all of its ambiguities and selectivities, its idealisms and its integrities, its hopes of freedom and its power–grabs. Most especially they were offered the hope of something new, something independent, something of the future.”
In an Ireland which is increasingly diverse, there was room for the old and new the Archbishop said. Ireland in 2016 and beyond would have ‘more religion’ by accommodating the cultural and religious ways of others.
The future also held the need for an ethic of altruism, he stated. “This can be a new type of revolution in 2016. It requires all of us to pull together and to draw together and to hold together revolution and stability as Isaiah suggested. It requires also of us the interchange of knowledge and understanding such as we find between Mary and Jesus. It requires a resurrection of expectation of ourselves and of others as we celebrate Easter and the Risen Jesus Christ for us and for others, for our wellbeing and for our flourishing and especially for theirs,” he concluded.
The full text of the Archbishop’s sermon is below:
Sandford Parish Church, Dublin, Easter Day March 27th 2016 at 10.00am
Readings: Isaiah 65.17–25; 1 Corinthians 15.19–26; St John 20.1–18
Isaiah 65.24: Before they call, I will answer, while they are yet speaking I will hear.
Sermon preached by the Archbishop of Dublin
INTRODUCTION
We gather this morning to worship Almighty God as we celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead and his gift of the risen life to those who follow him and to the world. And we do so in a year when the United Dioceses of Dublin and Glendalough celebrate eight hundred years since the confirmation of Dublin and Glendalough as a united diocese in 1216. This is our inheritance from the past and our invitation for the future.
SECURITY AND REVOLUTION
The Reading from Isaiah for Easter Day speaks directly and forcefully of security and revolution all–in–one for the people of God. It speaks of them as interacting together. The revolution is cast in the language and picture of peace: the wolf and the lamb feed together; the lion and the ox do the same; and the serpent is left with nothing but dust to eat. The security is cast in the language and picture of long–life and of belonging: a life lived to the full without rupture or violence will be a norm; and people will build – they will build houses and plant vineyards and live in them and enjoy their fruit as a fully realized expectation in the here and now rather than as a parched fantasy in a desert delirium.
We rarely think of both of these words: security and revolution as holding together closely like this – for long. Revolution always creates displacement and regularly requires violence. And we are acutely aware on a devastating and increasingly regular basis violence and murder in Europe and across the world, remembering today and most recently the people of Brussels and of Belgium. Security regularly breeds generalized indifference but, if we work at it as a civic duty, it also engenders carefulness of others and ecology of the things of God. In 2016 as we look out right across ‘The Arab World,’ a geography and a series of peoples we have homogenized rather like our take on our own ‘Western World,’ very little has gone according to expectations. We had thought that our cultural download of liberalism was going to arrive ready–made overnight and take root in the dew of early morning. Some years back, the West had convinced itself that the Arab Spring brought in a silent and seamless revolution in a Western–leaning direction. It surely now seems more like a delusion and an illusion than anything else.
People today across ‘The Arab World’ suffer unspeakable cruelty and indignity and flee and suffer again and again abroad in the hope of fresh security. They are sure only of one thing: the absence of any belonging. People in 1916 were battling exploitation, social exclusion, poverty, squalor, indignity and colonialism; they too in their day were offered The Revolution with all of its ambiguities and selectivities, its idealisms and its integrities, its hopes of freedom and its power–grabs. Most especially they were offered the hope of something new, something independent, something of the future. We in Ireland know that there remains to this day the unfinished business of revolution: and that is the work of connecting romantic idealism, interdependence on our nearest geographical neighbour and radical social inclusion with a newly envisioned future – if The Revolution of 1916 is to be more than a tableau of self–applause, a ghostly echo of our own sense of political bravado. As members of our society, we as Christian people and as members of the Church of Ireland are called to seek and to serve God, to nail our colours to the common good and to play our part in ushering in the Kingdom of God through service and through leadership at every point in the compass. In this sense, The Revolution is still to start.
COMMEMORATING
Both security and revolution are good to think about on a day when people throughout the Republic of Ireland are commemorating The Rising. So are words like memory and commitment. In the garden, Mary remembers who Jesus is and when he is dead she continues to remember him; she remembers him as her friend and as her Lord; the tender and beautiful thing is that she talks to the two angels and to the one whom she considers to be the gardener in exactly the same tone and in a continuation of exactly the same conversation. Jesus remembers her and the recognition of each by the other comes about when he says and uses her name. Naming is important. The commitment in the Easter Story has to do with change and with difference. Mary is explicitly asked to accept that things are now radically different; that, although Jesus clearly looks and sounds the same to her, once he speaks, she is not to touch him because he is still to ascend. He is different and he is changing. This combination of memory and commitment leads us very clearly in the direction of change and difference from what we once knew as being essential to reality, as reality itself moves forward around us. In our contemporary context and in The Year of Rising, there is no room for historical retrospect or for sentimental hagiography – if it is conceived of as a sort of political Selfie nor is there good reason to let it dictate the future to us and for us – uncritically. We recognize what has been; we seek to comprehend it; we need to keep interpreting it and not spend our time reminiscing about it. As Christian people we live earth in the light of heaven. The definitive Kingdom is not of this world. Through that Kingdom of God we are, however, committed to the wellbeing of this world.
And the rest of this world is watching – on its TV, its iPad, its iPhone or on any other device available to it – the way in which we are or are not dealing with a past that in many ways still dictates the present. And the same world is watching out for the hopes for the future to which our leaders in public life will today and for the rest of this year give voice. Following wave after wave of Troubles in some shape or form almost every decade since 1916, each iteration of Troubles–life in Ireland has given us a legacy soured by a disrespect for The Other and a predilection for turning the neighbour into the enemy. Of this aspect of ourselves we can be far from proud. We need to move beyond this now. We need to be careful, if we seek to re–focus ourselves at all, to re–focus ourselves along the lines of Isaiah, namely that revolution brings the responsibility and the requirement of security. The other side of our national character indeed regularly does do this; that is the welcoming and hospitable side of us, the creative and the inventive and the open and artistic side of us. And those of us who are Christian need to be committed to our God–given inheritance of faith, hope and love in 2016 and beyond – for others.
WHAT MIGHT THE FUTURE HOLD?
Despite what an increasingly aggressive secular society may prefer to hear, 2016 and beyond holds more rather than less religion. I am not suggesting that the old style will continue to grow back just as it always has been because I am not sufficiently convinced that it can. The old content will still be there and people will continue to defy the sort of logic that says: ‘Because you cannot see it, you have to be wrong; because I cannot see it, you have no entitlement to offer this belief–thing into the society of which I am part.’ To my mind this is extremely important and worth working at. Diversity, to the horror of many and to the relief of others, means that there is and has to be room still for the old and the tested and tried as well as for the new and the young and exploratory.
In yet another way there will be what I call more religion. The broadly–based diversity in our society is asking of us a structured accommodation of cultural and religious ways of life such as we have for so long seen as foreign, alien and at a far distance. We in Ireland have done wonderful work to welcome structurally into citizenship people who delight in being Irish and this is a real focus of celebration for us on Easter Day 2016. More is needed. The capacity for enhancement of an island culture with a beautiful new type of tapestry–society will simply continue to grow. We who are now ‘the old Irish’ need to take great care not to let back in through the cat flap the old insularity of ‘staring exclusion’. The Ireland of tomorrow already includes a very wide range of voices. They are here with us; we are here with them.
Everyone knows that in the world today, and not least with the vulnerability to which Ireland is subject, economics is a vital part of who we are and of what we can do. It is painful for us to admit it but the overriding definition of the human person in Ireland as an economic entity is part of what got us into the difficulties into which we got ourselves and this definition alone will not get us out of these difficulties. The future holds out to us the need for an ethic of altruism. This can be a new type of revolution in 2016. It requires all of us to pull together and to draw together and to hold together revolution and stability as Isaiah suggested. It requires also of us the interchange of knowledge and understanding such as we find between Mary and Jesus. It requires a resurrection of expectation of ourselves and of others as we celebrate Easter and the Risen Jesus Christ for us and for others, for our wellbeing and for our flourishing and especially for theirs.
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.