Lord of All
Sermon
One of the characteristics of European culture, dating back to Plato, is the curse of dichotomy, splitting any phenomenon or class of things into two: Plato's mistake, to which we will return shortly, was to separate and elevate the spiritual above the physical. In politics we tend to divide arguments into two kinds, usually referred to as 'left' and 'right'. In legal matters we think that 'fairness' involves hearing "both sides of the story" and, even in the Anglican Communion, we have ended up with apparent dichotomies between people who call themselves "Evangelicals" and "Catholics", "conservatives and liberals".
Today's Readings, each in their different way, present us with dichotomies. David, characterised as a secular rebel against Saul, asks for the shewbread for his hungry followers and is refused. But it turns out that David is not a rebel but is faithful to Saul, refusing to harm him when he has the chance; and David is a spiritual leader as well as a king. And his argument, fundamental to our understanding of religion, is that the bread might be reserved for God but it isn't thereby set apart from human dealings. The dichotomy in Luke is even more stark: is Jesus acting on behalf of God or the Devil, a question which is being asked today by some Anglicans of other Anglicans.
As the Lambeth Conference approaches, there could hardly be a more apposite Reading than this denial of the Shewbread to David and his followers. The initial reaction of the Priest was that he had two duties: first, as a general principle, to keep the bread from human beings; but, secondly, if the principle had to be conceded (a crucial decision in itself), to decide what kind of people could have the bread. Significantly, the principle of prohibition turned out not to be a principle at all; and the condition set down for receiving the bread was that the men should have abstained from sex.
Today, the circumstances are different but the argument is much the same. In the face of massive poverty, global warming, rampant consumerism and a crumbling commitment to institutional religion, the major topic at Lambeth is slated to be whether people who live in consensual homosexual relationships are fit to Preside at the Eucharist. I put to one side all the subordinate clauses. We need to affirm four central Christian principles: that people are created by God to exercise their freedom to love god which involves choosing to love each other; that freedom is exercised through an informed conscience; that what counts is motive and not outcome; and that we were created to love, reserving judgment to the Creator.
In order to face this issue squarely we have to accept that those who are opposed to the ordination of homosexual clergy regard this as a "first order" issue because they claim Biblical sanction for their stance; but, then, there was an identical claim, right up until the early 1980s, that the Bible supported the racial superiority of white over black people. However, the more fundamental problem with the resort to scripture as an ethics textbook is that however valid different pieces of guidance may be, they cannot all be taken as equal in weight, particularly where they conflict. The Bible is not an ideological statement, like the Communist Manifesto and, even if it were, it would not spare us the obligation to prioritise. Our experience of life as parents, political activists, PCC members and employees is that we have to make all kinds of choices.
Our greatest intellectual gift as human beings is the ability to recognise patterns and that pattern recognition leads us quite naturally to form pleasing intellectual and moral rules; but that only establishes the golden rule that we should never break a rule by accident. Put another way, the crowning glory of our spiritual, ethical and intellectual collective inheritance is the ability to break old rules because we see more coherent paradigms. Renaissance painting, Galileo's astronomy, Newton's physics, the making of rules of harmony by Bach and their breaking by Wagner, and the poetry of T.S. Eliot are all examples of paradigm shifts. In the history of Christianity, the formation of the Biblical canon, the Nicene Creed, Eucharistic Sacramentality, the Reformation and the impetus towards Ecumenism were all paradigm shifts. And in the area of our understanding of ourselves as people, Darwinian natural selection, the crystallisation of the idea of the subconscious by Freud and Jung, the recognition of the equality of people regardless of race and gender and the impetus towards national and global social justice, have all brought about massive changes in social policy.
Change is brought about because there is a shift in the old pattern because a previously overlooked factor achieves greater salience, a new factor is discovered or novel connections are made. My primary question to those who think that the Bible has anything useful to say about our contemporary discussion of homosexuality is to ask them whether they have studied the link between the rise in prosperity, the fall in fertility and the rise in the prevalence of homosexuality?
When indicators of change are identified, separately or together, it is childish - the imitation of a politician's mantra - to think in terms of a U-turn. And, in any case, we are not usually being asked to throw away our principles - the patterns which we formulate to guide us - but to amend them in the light of experience. Indeed, if we look at the history of Christianity most of what have been identified as "Christian principles" have turned out to be principles held by Christians at a given time.
Now the attentive among you will have noticed that I have just said: "The patterns which we formulate to guide us." I say this quite deliberately because all moral codes are patterns of response built on assumptions derived from our experience. So here, for the record, are my assumptions: first, that when there is an internal conflict between the teaching and actions of Jesus and anybody else in the Bible, Jesus wins; secondly, that we are here to love not to judge; and, thirdly, that only God knows what hand we were dealt and how well we are playing it. Interestingly, where ethical principles go in and out of fashion, the teaching of Jesus is uniquely and timelessly applicable.
Which leads me back to the incident of David and the Shewbread. I do not recall in accounts of the feeding of the 5000 that there was a man on the gate - and it would be a man - checking whether people were morally fit to receive the blessed bread and fish. Neither, then, should Bishops in the Anglican Communion be making any explicit links between exterior human behaviour and a calling to Preside over or the need to participate in, Eucharistic solidarity; neither, incidentally, should bishops, of all people, be withdrawing themselves from Eucharist Fellowship as a form of moral aggression. The Church is not primarily an instrument of doctrinal nor ethical conformity; it exists, as Archbishop Rowan has put it, to transmit the question of Jesus; not the answer but the question.
Given that The Archbishop represents the Church's mission as a question, there is an implication at least that there is not one, easy answer. The human institution of the Church has always, naturally, been tempted to imitate secular politics and exercise power and nowhere has this been more obvious and brutal than in the case of sexual morality and gender.
Yet underlying all these dichotomies which we make for ourselves as the means of including and excluding, reflecting the competitiveness for food and sexual partners which we claim, in the name of Christian love and cultural civilisation, to have outgrown, there lies one truth which requires our humility. We are all broken, every one. We live in a church that is ideally constituted but physically flawed, yet this is not a dichotomy but a unity forged by the solidarity of the Eucharist. Only in Christ's broken body are we truly one body, creatures of the Creator who is Lord of All.
Prayers
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all
Lord of All, bless the creation which you made and which we have spoiled: the oppressors and the oppressed; the torturers and the tortured; the powerful and the powerless; the exploiters and the exploited. Help us to see you in all humanity, beneath the superficial distractions and beyond our personal preferences.
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all
Lord of All, bless us with the humility to serve you: the persuasive and the gullible; the logical and the intuitive; the visionary and the bureaucrat; the leader and the follower. Help us to see the value of all humanity and to be your servants even when we are acting as leaders.
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all
Lord of all, we thank you for your son, our brother and saviour Jesus Christ: for his healing and care; for his gentleness and patience; for his meekness and suffering; for his forgiveness of sinners and failure to judge. Help us always to place love above judgment, conscious of your will for us rather than our will for others.
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all.
Lord of All, send your Holy Spirit upon your beleaguered church: to strengthen all faiths and promote constructive dialogue; to inspire Christian ecumenism; to give restraint to Christian leaders and courage to your people; to build on what unites and respect what divides. Help us to honour the diversity of creation reflected in the economy of the Blessed Trinity.
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all.
Lord of all, mend our broken witness: our delusions of grandeur and false humility; our illusions of coherence and base intimidation; the lies we tell ourselves and the truths we insist on telling each other; the use of rank and the crowning of merit. Help us to use language as a tool and not a weapon that we may grow in self knowledge which is the knowledge of your love.
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all
Lord of All, unite us with the Church Triumphant: with martyrs and cowards; with scholars and peasants; with leaders and servants; with The Virgin Mary and the starved infant. Help us to honour the variety and humility of your saints, and to learn that your grace and not our merit will bring us back to be enfolded in your perfect love.
Can: Lord of All
Res: Bless us all. Amen