The Seventh Sunday of Easter
16th May 2010:
Sung Eucharist (9.00 am)
Preacher: The Revd John Chynchen, Cathedral Chaplain
W S Gilbert was the librettist — the
wordsmith — who conjoined with the composer Arthur Sullivan was responsible for
those late Victorian operettas that attracted full houses in Hong Kong 30 odd
years ago when performed by Sceneshifters or the Hong
Kong Singers, starring household names such as Gordon Jones and Richard
Mills-Owen.
I offer you this witty dash of Gilbert’s
verse from Act 2 of Iolanthe:
I
often think it’s comical
How
Nature always does contrive
That
every boy and gal,
That’s
born into the world alive,
Is
either a little Liberal,
Or
else a little Conservative!
In the middle of this last week, what has
been called “Britain’s accidental revolution” — a liberal conservative
coalition cobbled together in the aftermath of an inconclusive general election
which left the UK with a ‘hung parliament’ — has been hailed by most of the
pundits and 60% of the population as strong, stable and consensual…the new grown-up politics of compromise.
It all reminds me of that other
established institution, the Church of England…when I was in training for the
ministry at
In
In the space of a week we will have
witnessed the world’s oldest parliamentary democracy strive for and achieve
improbable unity of purpose in its government while its established church —
and the worldwide churches it
spawned in the fit of empire — move in the opposite direction towards disunity,
fraction and schism. But one must remember that the politicians are not relying
upon a few short verses from the Bible as their roadmap.
As
Perhaps that's part of the message. Unity
is like that. All our attempts to be similar are like that. When we try to be
"one" we soon run into situations we may not like. If being
"one" means conforming to a set of rules, some soon become uncomfortable.
When the rules are broken or when they change, others feel excluded.
A former student at a Roman Catholic
convent school tells a story about a day at the school when a Papal Nuncio came
to visit. It was Friday. All of the students were deeply impressed by this imposing
but nice Italian prelate in his purple cassock and biretta, and even more so
when he dispensed them from the “no meat on Fridays” rule.
Of course, all of the students wanted to
have meat for lunch that day, but they were too nervous to do it. Did anyone,
even the distinguished visitor, have the authority to decide that eating meat
on Friday was okay? What if their immortal souls would be placed in terrible
danger by having meat for lunch? The students discussed this anxiously
long after lunchtime was over and the car bearing the visitor had disappeared.
For one boy the tension was simply too much. He threw up! Those students with a
legalistic turn of mind debated long into the afternoon as to whether,
technically, he had actually eaten meat, or not.
The strict Friday abstinence is a thing of
the past, but dogma remains in other guises. It satisfies the cravings of
people who need rules to follow, explanations to quote, and implacable
authorities to respect. Fine for them, but there is an opposite end to the
scale and there are many points in-between.
You may say there is more merit in being
one who needs rules to follow, and faithfully follows them, than being one who
despises rules and ignores them. For the sake of order that is probably true, but
there used to be very few Anglicans to be found at either extreme end of the
scale. Our delight was being in between. Not necessarily in accord, of course,
and probably tending towards one direction or the other, but nevertheless
avoiding the end zones. Can a people who count among their good traits
the phrase "comfortable with ambiguity" also claim to be
"one?" Jesus prays today that we be "one," but does this
mean "the same?” Unity does not mean sameness. It means similarity
of purpose, of intention, of allegiance and of behavior towards one another. It
means accepting. For those who believe, it means gathering under the canopy of
creation and being part of a great singleness of purpose.
"You loved me from before the
creation of the world" Jesus says. The God of the early inhabitants of the
earth was known through nature and the surprises of the climate and weather.
This was also the God of Attila the Hun, of the Borgia popes, of the despot
queen or king, and all who compromise the broad understandings of what is right
and good. The same God of the desert fathers, ascetics, philanthropists, saints
and scholars, and the tireless caregivers for the poorest of the poor, indeed
all who pursue the broad understandings of what is right and good.
Does this mean that God is not immutable,
that God keeps pace with us, is evolving as we do and will keep up with us even
as we move from fantasy into the reality of exploring in space? It is an
arrogance to think that God is keeping pace with us because who knows if
"us" is all there is?
If God is immutable, however, can nothing
ever change? We know that to be patently untrue. Theologians have a lot to say
on these subjects and I suppose the most straightforward answer is that God and
creation are always "one" no matter what part of creation we are
looking at, or the era we are considering.
The elegance of the wording of our passage
from John leads us to an appreciation of the elegance of God's purpose for us.
Creation is an evolving, changing, and developing phenomenon that attests to
the dazzling finesse of our God and the exquisite perfection of the
relationship that we share with God in Jesus Christ.
That this relationship could exclude
anyone is beyond imagining. To those who might wonder if the majority always
represents what must be right, to the exclusion of others, Jesus points out
that the world, with its myriad expressions of diversity, is the object of
God's love, and that all those who comprise the world — in the there and then,
as well as in the here and now, share equally in the opportunity to bathe in
the radiance of that unity for which he prays.
These are thoughts to hold close in times
of division, when deep misunderstandings keep faithful people of differing
persuasions at arm's length, when honest beliefs stray from reality and when
home-spun science collides with authentic research. It is easy to find ways to
despise what we do not understand, to hate what does not resonate with our own
experience, to fear what seems alien. We support these convictions with
anecdotal evidence and with snippets of scripture. It is harder to seek ways to
understand, to broaden our experience and to look with fresh eyes at those who
differ from the majority in any number of possible ways. It is hard to accept
that each and every one of us is a minority of one kind or another.
Yet the eyes that are sometimes fresh to
us are the experienced eyes of Jesus Christ, who calls us to unity greater than
the sum of our selves. It is a unity made both possible and perfect by the
extravagant and abundant love of God. Amen.