The Bishop of Beverley - Sermon for the Northern Provincial Festival

Sermon Preached at Westminster Abbey on 22 July 07

S Margaret of Antioch

For I am certain of this; neither death not life, no angel, no prince, nothing that exists, nothing still to come, not any power, or height, or depth, not any created thing, can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Romans 8 v38-39

One of the great Christian thinkers and preachers in the second part of the Twentieth Century was Sidney Evans, Dean of Salisbury, who at one stage of his life endeavoured to teach me theology. One of his great achievements was to install in Salisbury Cathedral a new East Window.

The theme of the window was one dear to Sidney Evans. The window was to stand as a tribute to all prisoners of conscience. Prisoners of conscience were a particular concern of Sidney Evans. On one occasion he was to preach a famous sermon concerning them. Sidney Evans claimed that of all the people who might be chosen to represent the Twentieth Century he would chose a prisoner of conscience. True, he conceded, there had been such people in every century, but Sidney Evans reckoned that such a truth only served to reinforce his point. The Twentieth Century, now passed into history, was so proud of its great advances in the many fields of human learning and scientific advancement. Yet, in the midst of it all, men and women were just as unrespecting of conscience as in any other age. The age of space travel and science which provided the possibility of eradicating so many diseases that have plagued us for centuries was also the century of Bonheoffer, Solzhenitzyn, and Mandela. As you and I have moved into a new era, we have done so aware of a continuing vast list of prisoners of conscience to whom the faithful and attentive work of such organisations as Amnesty International ever continues to point us.

It is worth recalling on this day, the feast of S Margaret of Antioch, patron of this church, that she was, in essence, a prisoner of conscience. Poor Margaret is often caught up in bizarre stories of legend and romance. At the heart of the story, though, is the young woman living in a regime which cannot cope with her integrity. Margaret’s commitment to her conscience which caused her to hold on to allegiance to Christ, in a world where women existed to do what men told them to do, was to cost her her life. It is a story which has strong echoes in the horrors of Darfur and for women at the mercy of the Taliban in our own day. We English, likewise, can often be superficially impatient of difficult minorities, especially if they are vociferous in challenging our many sacred cows. Yet hand in hand with that impatience has often gone an admiration, at least with hindsight, for such people as Thomas More, John Bunyan, or the pacifists in wars when others of us would have thought overwhelming the rightness of using force against a cruel enemy. Margaret, determined maiden, embodies in her age, a concern for freedom of conscience and what we would recognise as the protection of basic human rights.

There is a freedom which is even more precious than physical freedom. The accounts of the many Middle Eastern hostages from recent years witness to it. Such diverse characters as John McCarthy, Terry Waite, or, in our own day, Alan Johnstone, tell us that holding on to their inward integrity, the freedom to hold a world view different from their captors was an essential part of their survival. Once our world view has been superimposed on us by others and not freely made our own then the core of our being is destroyed. Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty Four is an awful description of what such a world might be like.

None of this should come as a surprise to those of us who worship a crucified Saviour. The life, death, and resurrection of Jesus can be viewed as the ultimate attempt to challenge the loving integrity of God with every possible form of evil. When Jesus cannot be drawn into the vicious circle of hate then there comes the ultimate attempt to blot out his goodness by killing him. Yet, even on the Cross, Jesus dies receiving all this hate but never compromising his own integrity, his commitment to live to his last breath showing the love of God.

Father forgive them. They do not know what they are doing. Jesus’ death on the Cross is the moment of his triumph. So it is that every martyrdom, every sharing in that pain of Jesus in some sense is to be drawn into the mystery of Divine Love or, as S Paul says, to contribute towards making up the sufferings of Christ.

The celebration of our patron saint, S Margaret, reminds us to take seriously issues of conscience.

If conscience be so important, we who claim to value and protect it should be careful in nurturing it. It is ridiculous, even blasphemous, to talk about taking a moral stand when we have done little to inform our consciences. One of the easiest ways of keeping our consciences clear is by not doing much to find out the facts concerning the matters before us. It is easy to be morally clean if we have not asked the awkward questions about homelessness, crime and punishment, or nuclear weapons. An inner freedom to differ commands little respect if it is based on deliberate and even prejudiced ignorance.

Our consciences should be exercised and others’ consciences respected when it is about something that really matters. That great Russian Archbishop, Anthony Bloom, once commented: In Russia we have learned to die for Christ and not for incense.

In a world where such a cosmic issue as the future of the planet is at stake we should be careful not to trivialise what does or does not become important for us. There is a damning moment in Hardy’s Jude the Obscure when Jude’s oldest son has just murdered his brothers and sisters and then hanged himself. The children’s mother is seeking solace from Jude, upset that everyone in the town in talking about their tragedy. And then the couple hear two more people apparently talking intensely about them. Jude pauses to listen and tells his partner not to worry. It is only, he says, two clergymen arguing about the merits or otherwise of the eastward-facing position at the Eucharist. How often, to our shame, have we church people exercised our conscience on such trivial issues, busy as it were rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic of the world.

Nothing … can ever come between us and the love of God made visible in Christ our Lord.

We need to remember that Jesus broke the tyranny of persecution and hate by consistent love. It is hard for us to practise, yet the attempt to quench Our Lord’s conscience was not resisted by his fighting back but, rather, by His costly, forgiving love. Our Church does itself few favours in its handling of internal disagreements over which some of us may well have strong held views when one group is beguiled into snapping back viciously at another viewpoint, not least when people feel misunderstood and unjustly treated. As in any issue of conscience, attempting to diminish the integrity of the other is only to risk losing one’s own. Easter Day points us to the vindication of Jesus, the ultimate prisoner of conscience. It is His integrity of love that endures for ever. Pontius Pilate and the thousands of persecutors since are, after all, only kept alive in our memories for those they have persecuted, and never for themselves.

To know and to trust in Jesus, the prisoner of conscience, is to find freedom amongst the many varied ways in which others try to manipulate our minds, be it trivially, though biassed newspaper reporting, or acutely, through violent persecution. That is what Margaret our patron found and so knew freedom even through her martyrdom. It is that Jesus to whom we ever seek to open ourselves and be formed in his likeness, the Jesus who draws us to Himself in the mysteries of the Eucharist on this festival day.