The Name of Jesus

A sermon for Easter 7.

Acts 16.16-34; John 17.20-26

‘I order you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.’  Today is the seventh Sunday of Easter.  In old money, that’s the Sunday after Ascension Day.  And the themes of Ascension Day continue to echo through the readings we have heard this morning.  The power and authority of Jesus are found in both of our readings this morning. In three stories, we hear of the power of God – the power of God to free a woman being used; the power of God to break open a prison; the power of God to unite us with God and reveal his glory.  In all three we also see the power of the name of Jesus – it is in the name of Jesus that Paul commands the spirit to leave the slave-girl; Paul and Silas tell their jailor that he must believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved; and Jesus tells his Father that he has ‘made your name known to them’. 

The Ascension Day theme of Jesus sitting at the right hand of power continues in our readings this morning in the form of the power of the name of Jesus.  In many ways, it is through the power of the name of Jesus that we experience, and have access to, the power of the Ascended Lord.  ‘I order you in the name of the Jesus Christ’ says Paul.  When was the last time that you said something like that?  I want to suggest this morning that we too should command powers and spirits in the name of the Lord Jesus.  We too have access to the power that Paul taps when he orders the spirit possessing the slave-girl in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her.

But if that sounds exciting or scary or just alien to your experience of the life of faith, perhaps we should begin by looking at just what the power of the name of Jesus is.  And let’s begin with Jesus himself, and his prayer, part of which we have as our Gospel reading this morning.  The whole of chapter 17 of St John’s Gospel is given up to one long prayer of Jesus.  It is a prayer that he offers for his disciples, and those who will come to believe in him through them.  It is a prayer offered at the last supper, when Jesus is preparing for his death.  It is a prayer that circles around and around the word glory.  The prayer begins before the passage we heard read this morning, with Jesus asking ‘Father, the moment has come, glorify your son so that your son may glorify you’ (John 17.1).  In this morning’s Gospel it continues with Jesus praying that ‘The glory that you have given me I have given them’ and later that ‘Father I desire that those whom you have given me may be with me where I am, to see my glory’.  The power of the name of Jesus is intimately related to the glory of Jesus, and that glory is seen above all when he is crucified. 

Look around this cathedral and you will see many crosses.  Our procession is led by one – quite literally we follow the cross.  The danger is that in all this talk of glory, and in the beauty of some of the crosses that decorate our churches, we miss the basic meaning that the cross is the shape of the power of Jesus. The glory and the power of Jesus is the glory and power of the cross, the glory and power of love and faithfulness that we see in the suffering and death of Jesus on the cross. To share in this power is to share in the love and faithfulness of Jesus.  And that can lead us to suffering as well. 

Let’s pause for a moment and catch up with ourselves.  We are thinking this morning about the power of the name of Jesus that we see in Paul’s encounter with a slave-girl in Philippi.  Through looking at Jesus’ prayer in our Gospel reading, we have found that the power of Jesus’ name is rooted, not in super-powers or some easy miracle, but in the self-giving love and faithfulness of Jesus that took him to the cross.  The power of the name of Jesus is the power of love and faithfulness to endure, even through suffering and death, and to make that love and faithfulness available to others. This is our vantage point, the place of insight that our readings this morning offer us.  And from this vantage point, I want to suggest three ways in which we can and we do share in the power of the name of Jesus.

The first way in which we share in the power of the name of Jesus is in prayer.  We end our prayers ‘in the name of Jesus’, following Jesus own teaching to ask in his name.  But his is not a magic formula, or a kind of special phrase that makes God sit up and listen.  Rather it is a reflection of the way that in prayer we share in the life of Jesus and his Father.  In prayer we bring ourselves, or rather we are brought, into the midst of the life of God.  We share in the love of the Father for Jesus and of Jesus for his Father, just as Jesus prayed ‘so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them and I in them’.  Prayer is where we are united to God through Jesus.  The love and faithfulness of Jesus, which we see in the cross, is the love and faithfulness of God.  In prayer is becomes our love and faithfulness.  Here is our unity, for which Jesus prays.  Christian unity is not a matter of meetings and statements of Popes and Archbishops.  These have their place, but fundamentally, the unity of Christians is found in prayer.  Today we say farewell to Patrick who has been part of the life of this Cathedral for nine months.  In the love and faithfulness of God, we pray for Patrick and know that despite our separation we are united with him because we are all united to Jesus.  In the power of the name of Jesus, Patrick remains part of our life and we remain part of his life.  Here is the root of the unity of Christians – in being united to Jesus and his Father in prayer.

So to share in the power of the name of Jesus is to pray.  We also share in the power of the name of Jesus as we evangelise, as we share our faith with others.  Paul and Silas share their faith with their Jailer and he, and his whole household, come to believe.  ‘Believe on the Lord Jesus and you will be saved’ they tell him.  What the book of Acts shows us here very clearly is that the power of God comes from the faithful and self-giving love that we see in Jesus. There was great power in the earthquake that broke the prison open.  But Paul and Silas do not use this as an opportunity to escape.  Their jailor was responsible for them, and losing a prison-full of captives would cost him dearly.  The loss of his livelihood, absolutely.  Flogging, certainly, and possibly worse.  But then he finds Paul and Silas sitting there, still in his prison.  There is no such thing as easy evangelism.  Evangelism is sharing the life of Jesus with others, and that is a costly self-giving love, not a cheap three point plan.  We share in the power of the name of Jesus, we share in his self-giving love, we share that life and love with others often in costly ways.

So to share in the power of the name of Jesus is to pray and to share our faith.  And finally, we share in the power of Jesus name as we bring freedom to our world.  This is where we began with Paul commending the spirit of divination to leave the slave-girl.  The slave-girl, possessed by the spirit and possessed by her owners, is freed by Paul’s use of the name of Jesus.  This does not please everyone, and those who had been making money from the girl stir things up so that Paul and Silas are flogged and thrown into prison.  There are echoes of the suffering of Jesus even here.  But in this encounter, we do see the power of the name of Jesus in bringing freedom.  As we begin Christian Aid Week, we acknowledge that there are many people in our world who still need the freedom that comes from the power of the name of Jesus.  With your news sheet this week, you have also received a flier about the IF campaign, a campaign that says there is enough food for everyone in this world, IF we can stop those profiting from the poorest by dodging tax, trading unfairly, forcing people off their land and so on.  There will be a big event in Hyde Park on Saturday 8th June, following a Hunger Summit here in the Cathedral on Friday 7th.  Come and be part of these events.  It would be good to have a contingent of folk from Derby Cathedral in London on 8^th June, and I think I can fairly safely say that you won’t finish the day in prison.  Well, not unless you do something else as well.  Come and call for freedom and justice for the poorest in our world in the power of the name of Jesus.

We are, like Paul, to speak in the power of the name of Jesus.  To do so is to share in the self-giving love and faithfulness that we see in the cross of Jesus.  We speak in Jesus name, we share in his love, in our prayers, in sharing our faith and in bringing freedom and justice to our world.  In all that we do, let us share in this power, this love, this mission.  In the name of Jesus Christ.  Amen.

Given at Derby Cathedral. 12.5.13.

Ministry without Armour

A sermon for the Chrism Eucharist, 

Diocese of Derby, Maundy Thursday 2013.

1 Samuel 17.31-33, 37-40; John 19.1-5

It had been a hard Lent.  The APCM, the annual church meeting, had not been able to ask a question about the flag we flew in the churchyard without it feeling to me like it had been asked using a baseball bat.  Then, on Low Sunday, I was speaking with a friend of a friend, a retired priest who knew something of what had happened.  “You need to cultivate the skin of a rhinoceros”, he told me.  I think it was possibly the worst piece of advice I was ever given as a parish priest.

Our first reading this morning tells us of David being unable to function in the armour of King Saul.  ‘I cannot walk with these’, David complains, ‘for I am not used to them’.  Saul’s armour was good armour.  It protected the king, it identified him as king and conveyed his importance.  Saul’s armour was of no use to David as he prepared to take on Goliath.  It prevented the most basic acts.  Wearing Saul’s armour, David could not even get onto the battlefield.  David had to shed that armour. 

Beaten up, blood dribbling from thorns gouging his head, and covered in a fine robe (clearly not his own), Jesus is presented to the crowd by Pilate.  Pilate presents Jesus as a broken, wounded and comical figure.  ‘Behold the man!’ he cries, with deep sarcasm.  Yet St John in recording this, finds that, like Caiaphas’ prophesy that it was better for one man should die for the people, Pilate has said something true without meaning to.  Here we see presented the true human being.  In the midst of bruises, blood and humiliation we can see true humanity.

All of our ministry, as readers, deacons, priests, bishops, is founded in Christ’s ministry.  It is Christ’s ministry in which we share.  All of our ministry is then, founded in being truly human.  To be good ministers, we need to be good human beings.  And this is where it gets hard, for so much of what we do as human beings and as ministers, is designed to hide our humanity.  We are too good at wearing armour that protects us, but that distorts us at the same time.  Jesus shows us what it is to be truly human. David, in refusing Saul’s armour, teaches us to refuse that which prevents us from being human, that which prevents us from walking.  As time went on, and as we read on in the Scriptures, David began to fit Saul’s armour all too well, with disastrous consequences for him and for the people of God.  That too has things to teach us.  Saul’s armour, we should note, was probably made by the Philistines who controlled all the blacksmiths (1 Samuel 13.19).  And so, taking my cue from our first reading, I want to suggest three pieces of armour that we should refuse in our ministry.  Remember always that Saul’s armour was good armour, but it left David unable to walk.  So too our armour derives from good things, but prevents us from walking the way of Jesus.

The first piece of armour to refuse is that of the thick skin.  To be a minister is to be vulnerable.  There will be no shortage of people who think that they can do the job better; no shortage of advice; no shortage of criticism, sometimes administered with an astonishing absence of tact.  It is also worth saying that we hear criticism far more intensely than we hear praise.  The need for a rhinoceros skin would seem an obvious requirement for ministry.  But it is armour that should be rejected.  With David, we need to say that we cannot walk in it.  Thick-skinned ministers will not show the humanity of Christ to anyone.  To allow a thick skin to absorb all the hurt that is thrown at us will not help the people who we serve.  It is not honouring of them to allow them to think that bad behaviour is acceptable.  A thick skin will prevent us from hearing the kernel of truth that we need to hear in the torrent of unfounded criticism.  A thick skin will warp us into people who seem unaffected by painful and hurtful situations, and our humanity will be chipped away.  It is alright to be hurt by things.  A thick skin would suggest that we simply accept whatever is thrown at us.  The American pastor, Bill Hybels speaks of a man who made a personal attack on him in a public meeting.  Hybels quieted the meeting, stopping them shouting him down, and then asked his critic to restate the question in a kinder way, promising to answer.  This was no thick-skinned minister, but no doormat either.  Hybels honoured his critic by listening to his criticism, but by also requiring him to be kind in delivering it.  Hybels could then hear what he needed to hear.

http://hypervox.blogspot.com/

So let us refuse the armour of thick skin.  And let us refuse the armour of anxiety.  Anxiety can take a number of forms.  There is the anxiety that comes from the never-ending to-do list.  This is anxiety that makes us busy.  There is the anxiety that comes from the people that need our compassion and our attention.  This is anxiety that makes us solve problems.  And there is the anxiety that comes from the communities that we serve.  This is anxiety that makes us constantly present.  Tasks, people and communities are not bad things, far from it.  Nor are business, problem solving and presence.  But under the influence of anxiety, they become the places from which we derive our identity.  And this is disastrous.  Like our ministry, our identity derives from Christ, not from our ministry, nor from the demands it makes, the people we encounter and the communities we serve.  We live in turbulent times, both within and without the church.  There is a huge quantity of anxiety around, and anxiety is infectious.  As ministers, we need to be a non-anxious presence, in the midst of this.  And that is hard.  We need to understand where we end and the tasks, people and places begin, to distinguish ourselves from them.  Without this distinction, we can never challenge or change the anxiety of the communities and people that we serve.  We need boundaries to keep ourselves and others safe. It is far easier to polish the armour of anxiety, calling it busy-ness, care or compassion.  Whatever we call it, the reality is anxiety.  We must learn the art of stopping, of saying no, of not being needed; the art of knowing when we have done enough.  The art that Jesus knew, of walking away, going somewhere else. 

We must refuse the armour of thick skin, and we must refuse the armour of anxiety.  Finally we must refuse the armour of being nice.  One writer on ministry suggests that ‘an automated priest with a perpetual grin on his face, everlastingly wandering around the parish and automatically “mouthing” … a small repertoire of platitudes, would meet the vast majority of needs’ (Nick Stacey, Who Cares).  Let us be clear, ‘nice’ is not a Biblical word.  Readers, priests, deacons, bishops are called to be many things, but the word ‘nice’ will not appear on anyone’s license, nor is it found in the ordinal.  Nice is easy, it gives us a smooth ride.  It certainly meets the expectations of regular congregants and occasional visitors alike.  But it doesn’t actually do anything to meet their needs.  Nice doesn’t help anyone, ourselves or those we serve.  Christians are called to be like Jesus, called to become more and more fully human.  We look for that day to which the first Easter morning points, the day of all our resurrections, when we will be re-made, re-created, when all of who we are will be given to us. Jesus appearing to his disciples on that first Easter is unrecognisable, yet indisputably himself.  So it is for us, we do not yet know who we are.  And that is frightening.  As ministers, we are called to lead God’s people into becoming fully human, becoming fully themselves.  And there is nothing nice about it.  Rowan Williams, speaks about our fear that ‘we might have to change our lives unrecognisably, in order to become who we are’ (Choose Life, p. 19).  We have to follow this path, hearing again and again the message of the Bible ‘do not fear’; and we have to lead others on that path.  Love, compassion, challenge, comfort, all these and more are what we are called to give.  We are nowhere told to ‘be nice’.  Nice is a piece of armour that is really our fear about our own change.  It is a refusal to become more human than we are.  It is worse than useless in helping others down that path.

We gather this morning to renew our commitment to our different ministries as bishop, reader, priest, deacon.  We also gather this morning for the blessing of the Oils.  The oil of Chrism for blessing on ministry; the oil of initiation, for the signing of the cross on those to be baptised; the oil for the sick, for the healing and wholeness of the world.  We are called and committed to ministry.  But first of all we are called as disciples of Jesus, the truly human one, to be human.  And our humanity and our ministry is in the service of the healing and wholeness of the world.  We cannot do these things, we cannot walk the path of ministry, if we are wearing the armour of a thick skin, the armour of anxiety or the armour of being nice.

May God 
who has given us the will to undertake these things, give us also the strength to perform them,
that he may complete that work that he has begun in us; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

The Chrism Eucharist is a service of renewal of commitment to ministry and the blessing of the Oils.

Given in Derby Cathedral, 28.3.13

The Churches and the Common Good

Have you ever played or seen Sim City?  It is a computer game in which you are invited to build your own city by deploying some basic features of city life.  It is undergoing a re-launch this year, not without some pain.  For all it is a game about planning and building, the makers did not plan for the popularity and complexity of their own game and did not build enough servers to cope with the online demand.  Sim City asks a range of questions about what makes a good city and what is needed to build a good city.  Playing Sim City brings one into contact with the need for disposing of rubbish, laying pipes and cables, building schools, policing, even offering leisure activities, and, in some versions of the game, capping volcanoes!  And, at least since 2003, places of worship have been included in the range of options a Sim City builder could include.  Some of the ingredients (though sadly not the capping of volcanoes) have been tackled in this series of addresses: the City Council, business and commerce, education, law and order and arts and culture. My task in this final address is to speak on the Churches contribution to common good in the city.

On one level, there is a huge amount to say about the amount that the churches contribute to the common good of the city.  Churches in Derby are involved in a huge range of things from Parent and toddler groups to visiting care homes; providing youth work to pastoral care of the bereaved, the sick and the lonely.  These are not simply done by the Cathedral (although the Cathedral is involved in some things), nor by the Church of England (although, again, the Church of England is heavily involved in all or almost of the things I mention).  Rather, it is Christian Churches of all different varieties, with differences in the way in which we worship, and the understandings of various doctrinal and organisational features.  But the list of activities that the churches are involved in goes on and on.  Churches offer chaplaincy in the work place, to schools, the university, and the Police. Street Pastors offer ministry to those present in the city in the evening.  Many lunches are provided for those in need, there are health groups, like walking groups, advice centres on debt and pregnancy, special events like the Christmas Lunch on Jesus which supports those in Derby and Calcutta.  There are many organisations that owe their origins to the work of the churches, the Derby Contact Centre supporting broken families, and the Padley Centre, supporting the homeless, to name but two.  Homelessness is something the churches in Derby have a particular concern for, and a soup run and drop-ins are part of the churches’ response to this.  Foodbanks run in a variety of church settings, both in Derby and around the county.  All this is not to mention the historic and continuing role of the churches in hospitals, hospices and schools.  The Church of England alone has a role in 110 schools in Derbyshire, and supports them, their teachers and their students.

That is a very partial and certainly incomplete account of some of the contributions that the churches make to the common good of the city.  It reflects a picture replicated across the country. The 2012 National Church and Social Action Survey found that over the last two years, in the face of the recession and of austerity, the Churches in the UK increased their local social action by 36% to 98 million hours per year, increased their giving to social action initiatives by 19% to £342 million per year.  Each church in the UK now runs an average of more than 8 social action initiatives.  This only covers Church run initiatives, and does not include the many more hours and great sums of money given by church goers to other charities. If the volunteer hours put in by churches alone were to be paid for, it would cost over £1.9 billion.[1]

I could probably stop there, having demonstrated that the churches do indeed contribute to the common good of the city.  But I want to go further and to talk a little about why the churches do all of this, and why it should not really be a surprise that they do.  All of this activity that I have spoken about is really the outworking of five far deeper contributions that the churches make to the common good of the city.  These five contributions are vision, hospitality, worship, commitment and judgement. Together, these five things comprise a particular Christian calling and an irreplaceable contribution to the common good of the city. 

The first of these is vision.  The Churches have a vision for the good of the city.  Christians are called to seek the welfare of the city (Jeremiah 29.7).  And the Christian vision of what it means for a city to fare well is a broad one.  It is for economic prosperity, certainly, but much more.  It is for all aspects of human life, not just the economic, to fare well.  This is a vision of wholeness which, by its very nature, means that all aspects of human life and welfare are to be considered.  And all people are to be considered as well.  It is wedded to an understanding of justice as concern for the poorest and weakest members of our society.  Unless the cares and concerns of the marginal and the hidden members of the city are addressed, the vision of faith will not be satisfied. The vision of the welfare of the city, which the Churches bring, is not satisfied with things as they are, but has a transformative aspect.  This can be seen in the hope and the work of Christians and the churches for a renewed and better society.  This vision for the welfare of the city of marked by wholeness, justice and transformation is a vision marked by God’s own concern for all people and for the restoration of all of creation to the goodness for which he created it.  It is one of the key contributions that the churches make to the common good of the city.

The churches bring vision to our city, a vision marked by concern for justice, transformation and the well being or wholeness of all.  But this vision is sustained by worship and prayer.  Fundamental to the life of this Cathedral, and of all churches is worship.  Our faith calls us to worship, to come into the presence of God with gratitude, to acknowledge his supremacy and to ask for his guidance and help.  The practices of faith set our concerns in a wider context, they call us to penitence for our misdeeds and commitment to future good.  Worship provides the city with space; space in which reflection can happen, space in which we can own our failures, space in which commitment can be fostered, space in which the Spirit can work.  Faith provides space in which mourning and tragedy can be expressed, and in which joy and celebration can be enjoyed.  The marking of death, marriage and new life is part of this, as is the weekly disciplines of worship seen in all religious traditions.  Above all, perhaps, it is in the daily prayers of believers of all faiths that this gift is given to the city.

The churches bring the gifts of vision and worship as contributions to the common good of the city.  The churches also bring hospitality, expressed above all in an openness to difference.  Faith crosses boundaries, it is in itself an expression of trust and it opens our hearts to those who are not like us.  Many religious traditions, Christianity included, have an important role for hospitality, for entertaining strangers.  And the importance of hospitality is in the relationships that are born with those who previously were strangers.  Hospitality is deeper and more active than mere tolerance.  Hospitality involves us in listening to those who are not like us; in meeting and sharing with them; and in opening our lives to those who are different to us.  Hospitality is a risky encounter, one which risks change to our lives as they are opened to others.  ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers’, says the writer of the Letter to the Hebrews, ‘for thereby some have entertained angels unawares’ (Hebrews 13.2).

Vision, worship and hospitality; all of these are the contributions made by the churches to the good of the city.  The churches also brings a patient, sustained and long-term commitment to places and to people.  Standing in a church which dates its origins back to a Christian community on this site that began in 943 the sustained nature of this commitment is clearly on show.  But all the churches show something of this long term commitment.  Because the churches’ contributions are founded on vision, worship and hospitality, they are not just short term strategies.  Rather, the churches’ commitment is rooted in the most essential elements of Christian faith.  They reflect the faithfulness of God to his creation, his constant love for the world even after it has gone awry, and his emptying of himself, enduring even death on the cross, to bring all people back to himself.  The commitment of the churches is rooted in God’s faithfulness and this is reflected in the daily lives of their members.  This commitment has no limitation to its time-frame.  From this the churches have a a wisdom and a rootedness that is hard to match in any other way.  It is of the nature of the church that it thinks in the long term, in terms of lifetimes, rather than in terms of the next election or the impending funding deadline.  Faith is expressed in faithfulness to the people and places whose lives we share.

So vision, worship, hospitality and a patient sustained commitment: these are the contributions of the churches to the common good of the city. The final contribution is less comfortable, an acknowledgement that this is a Lenten address, if nothing else.  The final contribution that the churches bring to the city is judgement.  The churches seek the welfare of the city, but they do so out of their worship of God.  This gives the churches a different perspective and a particular contribution.  Sometimes, that contribution is a challenge to those with power in the city.  We have seen this recently on a national level in the letter concerning the cuts to benefits signed by both bishops of this Diocese, and supported by Archbishop Justin.  Locally, the churches have met with representatives from the council to express their concerns about the homeless in the decisions made about cuts in the council’s budget.  Each of the contributions that the churches make can also offer a challenge to the city and for its leadership: a challenge to look beyond the merely economic vision of well being; and to seek a broad account of the welfare of the city; a challenge to work with faith communities and to unlock the resources they have to offer; a challenge to deal generously with strangers in the city; and a challenge to develop long-term commitments for the good of the city that look beyond the immediate economic and political horizons to the future of life for all in Derby.

But judgement begins with the household of God, and the churches find themselves just as challenged by the contributions that they make.  The churches are challenged to practise what they preach.  They is challenged to find the imagination and courage to offer vision for the city in a way that builds partnerships with those of all faiths and none as together we work for the welfare of the city.  The church is challenged by the gift of worship to truly open itself in worship to God, and not simply to claim a divine authority for our own prejudices.  We are challenged to find ways of exercising hospitality with those who differ from our neat theological positions and to express penitence for the times when that our lack of faith has meant that hospitality is lacking.  And, finally, the steadfastness of God challenges the church to maintain its commitment to places and communities in an era of fewer financial resources. 

The churches contribute a great deal to the common good of this city.  The many and varied contributions are founded on deeper contributions of vision, worship, hospitality, commitment and judgement.  May our prayers and our activity continue to seek the welfare of this city, for in doing so we will be serving the God who in Jesus Christ came to dwell with us. Amen.

Given as part of a Lent Series on 'Contributing to the Common Good in the City' at Derby Cathedral 21.3.13

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[1] Geoff Knott, Church and Community Involvement: National Church Social Action Survey Results 2012 (Jubilee Plus and ACT Network, December 2012).  Available online at http://www.jubilee-plus.org/Articles/337911/Jubilee_Plus/About_Us/Research/RESULTS_OF_THE.aspx