Chrism Eucharist sermon:
The Ven John Beer
Maundy Thursday, Ely Cathedral
The Archdeacon of Cambridge
Matthew 26:73
Surely you are one of them; for you are a Galilean, and your accent gives you away......
Here in this tiny incident in the High Priest’s courtyard we contrast the un-faithfulness of the man outside, Peter, with the faithfulness of the man inside, Jesus.
And it’s bystanders, ordinary humanity, the world outside, that’s in interrogative mood, urging Peter to come clean about who he is. And it’s a fair question for us as we come to renew our ministry vows today, and bless the oils.
The text is of course about betrayal; but might it also be about Peter’s northern vowel sounds. 'Surely you are one of them, for your accent gives you away?' Scholars now suggest that Galilee was less rebellious and unorthodox than was once thought, but there was still suspicion in the south of those northerners who came to dream dreams, and disrupt the carefully nurtured power structures of the Jerusalem authorities.
To use someone's accent as a form of abuse or mimicry has always been a convenient way of isolating strangers. And Jesus, like Peter, must surely have learnt to speak in a northern accent, though for those with ears to hear, it was God’s received pronunciation.
As we reflect upon these things, perhaps the Christian faith is a bit like a local accent. Of course, those who try to echo God’s word speak the language of their prevailing culture. It’s not that we deliberately learn a foreign language to separate ourselves from culture, but that we form our words with an accent which should mark out God's way of speaking, and our origins in Christ. 'Surely you’re one of them, for your accent gives you away ?'
An established Church like ours, still parish-based for the most part, but in a mixed economy of styles of church, and blessed with worldly privileges, influence, as well as duties, will always be in danger of losing its way, and its Godly roots. We must live in ‘the real world’, as we call it, however detached from it we might seek to become. Christians may be different in degree, but not in kind, from anyone else in their essentially secular expectations of standards of living, housing, retirement, pensions. The distinction isn’t between God and his people, and ‘the world ’outside faith, but between those who, living in the world, already know they belong to God, and those who, also in the world, don’t yet see they belong to God. And many of our current disagreements in the Church boil down to this business of Faith’s relationship to the world and culture, and about the kind of God we believe in as acting in the world.
So, faced with Peter’s moment of truth, how are we to be, as it were, good Galileans in Jerusalem ? Some of us will insist that we don’t lose our missionising edge in a corrupting, secular world. For that reason, we shall happily assert our pride in being Galilean, rather like those media celebrities – Michael Parkinson, Sean Bean - who, having come from the North and become famous in the South, firmly assert their northern roots and accent, like loyal Galileans in Jerusalem. This self-confidence in thinking ourselves counter-cultural, with a gospel of demand, strong boundaries of belonging, suspicious of compromise, of course has eminently respectable roots in the New Testament, and thrives in today’s Church, though like every other model of mission, it has its weaknesses. For, in spite of our fear of absorbing worldly values, we can be compromised by appropriating very secular assumptions about financial strength, techniques for growth in organisations, and our use of technology to bolster strength in the spiritual market place, sometimes at the expense of subtlety, generosity, and humility.
Or maybe we think that as faithful Galileans, we must nevertheless imitate the accent of Jerusalem, if we’re to be respected, understood, in an ambiguous world. So, in reaction to the view that if only we spoke the gospel more clearly in our own accent, then people would listen, we may think that we must avoid the problems which our accent creates, at all costs. After all, Christianity down the centuries has usually survived by adapting to culture, it has compromised, even after persecution. And the messy, compromised world is where the Church should be. But this position too can soon lose touch with its Godly origins if, in being accommodating to all-comers, with less well-policed boundaries, it forgets the rock from which it was once hewn. It can sometimes cause normally sane vicars to buy the whole village pub a round of drinks in pursuit of being relevant ! Of course, these are over-simplifications, but in them we catch just a glimpse of a problem whose roots are there in the Johannine tradition, for example, and have been with us ever since.
Are we to fear, or to be at home in, God’s world ? Whatever we choose, we’re all called to question, to stand against, some aspects of the world we’re pleased to live in, but to do it with Godly, wise judgement. God didn’t send his Son into the world to found a Dead Sea sect, but risked his kingdom message, and his flesh, in a hostile world, lost without him, yet the very place where God’s truth had to be fleshed out.
Because we’re all fragile creatures under God, speaking with the accent of Galilee in a Jerusalem which can seem such a hostile or disinterested place, either will drive us increasingly into a ghetto of like-mindedness, or into a renewed confidence in what we’re meant for in ministry to a world that belongs to God. And the more we’re tempted to despair of our world, the more we shall end up demonising it, as unworthy of redemption, with the mindset of children, banished to their room after a family row.
We feel these tensions in small, but powerful ways, especially if we believe that ‘mission’ is in part about hospitality, a graciousness to strangers. We all know that longing to welcome baptism families, carefully prepared by us, yet still unskilled in holy things, and, yet that sense of dis-ease, as we wade through the prayer of blessing over the water, skilfully edited to speed things up, just as the crying baby evokes from the family a liturgical ‘Bless’. ( Be in no doubt that I’m smiling, here, not sneering !) But we know that since Princess Diana and all that, our society has become much more sentimental and customer oriented, and for those whose trade is to speak about God and to do liturgy, it isn’t always easy to be welcoming, when we find ourselves bargaining with bereaved families, say, about ‘our’ liturgy. These are tiny symptoms of a greater reality - that our society still knows what a priest looks like, but doesn’t on the whole need or respect what’s on offer. We long to do well, to grow churches, to get out of bed in the morning relishing the rhythms of a Quiet Time or a daily office, to preach stunning sermons, but the fever of busy-ness, computers, the logistics of family life, or maybe a lack of confidence, acknowledged only in our prayers, can entice us into losing heart. And in such difficult moments, just occasionally, the parish, the people we’re supposed to love and care for, can start to feel like the opposition.
But we have a Father whose Son understands these things, for, in messy detail and ordinariness, he shared our human nature, not to offer us a form of being human which implies that we must escape this world, but to give us permission to be human, to be normal - as we are, yet as we might become, by God’s grace.
When you get home, cast a generous eye over your study bookshelves. Those paper sentinels, silent bystanders shaming us, as it were, into reclaiming truths which once seemed so seminal to God’s truth – and I speak personally ! - have become for the most part frozen assets. But no matter; for they once helped to shape us as human beings, and as ministers of the God who teaches us our proper humanity. Like those other bystanders in the High Priest’s courtyard, they’ve played their part.
And perhaps we can cast a generous eye over our prayers as well. Sometimes, forms and words which once helped, need to be refreshed, along with the desire to pray. Many of us pray daily with colleagues, but some, like me, must for the most part pray alone. And without supportive rhythms and people, it’s hard to keep going. But those down the centuries who’ve best understood, have been there before us, just like Jesus himself; and remember that nothing is ever wasted with the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the re-cycler of all our fallings away from self-confidence, unfulfilled longings, our wastefulness of opportunity, our disappointed hopes, and even our mistakes.
You and I are of unique value to God as ministers of the gospel, not because we’ve always been successful, certainly not by our holiness, status or cleverness, but simply because we once heard God speak the language of ‘calling’. He it is who reminds us today to be faithful, as we try, by God’s grace, to be good Galileans in Jerusalem.
So, as we renew our vows to God, be encouraged never to lose heart in ministry, or to lose respect for that world which once played host to a saviour who spoke with a Galilean accent. May we never sneer at those infuriating human beings who, shaped equally by God, are just careless of his love or his presence, or who are simply unable to believe, though their goodness is often palpable. For, some of them, may just surprise ‘a hunger in themselves to be more serious’, and seek a place ‘proper to grow wise in.’
And, as we wait in these last days with our Galilean Lord, remember that in the plot of our redemption God casts ordinary, seemingly unimportant people, to play their part, and to be good stewards of the calling into which they have been called; ‘for the one who calls you is faithful’.
Surely you are one of them; for you are a Galilean, and your accent gives you away......
The Ven John Beer
Archdeacon of Cambridge