The Bishop of Beverley - Sermon for the Northern Provincial Festival

Sermon preached at the final Mass of the General Synod on 8 July 2008

The people were amazed. “Nothing like this has ever been seen in Israel,” they said. But the Pharisees said, “It is through the prince of devils that he casts out devils.”

Matthew 9 v 34

Just a week or so ago, like many other bishops, I was undertaking one of the core tasks of a bishop. I was ordaining to the sacred priesthood. At one of the ordinations over which I presided for a candidate twenty-six years of age, the preacher commented that many people were genuinely asking the question as to why on earth anyone, at this time, should want to be ordained within the ministry of the Church of England. It was, the preacher said, a very good question and it deserved an answer. To his mind, the preacher said, there was never a better time to be ordained within the Church of England than at present. For to be ordained, by its very nature, is to be called to minister within a great deal of mess. It seemed to that preacher that the contemporary church could provide a new priest with conflict, division, yes, messiness, in generous measure. What better time, then, could there be in which to be ordained?

Jesus’ ministry so often seems be within a mess, and, arguably, even to generate more of it. S Matthew’s Gospel tells us of how Jesus brings healing to a dumb demoniac. The gift of healing seems to be accompanied by instant division. The people, we are told, “were amazed”. The Pharisees, by contrast, can only see in Jesus something darkly demonic, even when He brings healing.

“It is through the prince of devils that he casts out devils”.

Jesus lives among us. Jesus is crucified, raised from the dead and glorified. This ministry of Jesus brings healing not only to a dumb demoniac but, also, to the whole creation. And, still that ministry of salvation is often followed by conflict and worse as you and I trace the story of the Christian Church through the pages of scripture and then into its subsequent history. Our human response to God’s revelation always seems to carry with it a great deal of mess. As the preacher at the ordination, to which I referred, remarked, it is a state of affairs that seems to have been around since Cain and Abel.

You and I probably handle this experience of messiness in a variety of ways, depending upon the particular mess of anyone time and how each of us is discerning the Lord’s healing hand in it. Sometimes it seems that our encounters with Jesus in the messiness of our world and of our church have something about them of the sobriety of the Last Supper, overshadowed as it is by the betrayals and denials from within the Apostolic band. It might seem, at other times, when everything feels more comfortable, joyful and open that our experience is more like sharing in that healing and enabling meal at Emmaeus. No doubt as you and I come this morning to this particular meal with Jesus, after the divisions and, yes, messiness, of the these past days, for some of us it feels more like Maundy Thursday in Jerusalem than Easter evening in Emmaeus and vice versa. What should matter to us is that both feelings are, in their way, equally valid. Each emphasis, in its way, points to the constant outpouring of Jesus Christ for His world and to His church in all their messiness. The world, even the Church, may quarrel as, paradoxically, each still continues to receive Christ’s reconciling ministry. In this Eucharist you and I seek to be there with Jesus as still He casts out this world’s demons and enables once again His word to be freely spoken.

God keeps us afloat. God keeps us airborne. The Spirit of the Lord God is upon the Church and so upon each one of us. There is confidence; confidence in God; confidence in what we are empowered to do in His name. Let us pray for the gift of such confidence, to be found within ourselves, as the Anointed One, His Self, comes to nourish us in Holy Communion.