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A sermon preached in Salisbury Cathedral by Canon Edward Probert, Chancellor on Sunday 24 May 2009
Acts 1.15-17, 21-end; John 17.6-19
"CHANGE IS POSSIBLE"
Acts 1.15-17, 21-end; John 17.6-19
Coming to the cathedral for this service, it is hard to credit both what happened in it last night and how much it has changed since 12 hours ago. For last night’s extraordinary concert, the first ever performance of Bob Chilcott’s Salisbury Vespers, the space between the pulpit from which I am speaking and the west doors at the other end of the nave was occupied with two large raked stands, two orchestras, CCTV cameras and screens distributed so that 7 different conductors could keep in time, some 600 or so performers, and a huge audience in seats arranged at right angles to the seats at which I’m now looking. After hours, out of sight, an astonishing transformation has taken place. Change – a favourite word of the US president – is possible.
Today is the one Sunday of the little period that comes between Ascension Day and the feast of Pentecost. This structure of the Church’s year derives from the chronology laid out by Luke in his gospel and his sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. The point at which we now find ourselves carries the assumption that remarkable change is going to happen: the last words Luke puts in the mouth of Jesus before his Ascension are: ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ With this ringing in their ears, the disciples go back to Jerusalem and take stock, adjusting to these changing times.
And what do they do? They elect a new member to fill a vacancy among them. We are not told anything about the expenses package available to Joseph Justus and Matthias, but I guess that any flipping of homes they may have done in years to come had more to do with their mission to preach and with their experience of persecution, than with any urge to profit. Luke describes a remarkable election: two equally qualified candidates, much prayer, and an arbitrary choice by lots; and what follows is total obscurity – we have no idea what happened to either of these good men, except that the elected one has his own saint’s day.
I suspect that in recent weeks a good number of those who have offered themselves for election by more familiar processes have yearned for that kind of obscurity. Recent exposures have made it commonplace to put politicians somewhere on the scale of social outcasts between (on the one hand) smokers and bearers of swine flu, and (on the other) paedophiles and war criminals. As our archbishops have pointed out, this is dangerous stuff: dangerous because we humans demand evidence of change, and become pack animals, baying for blood.
I enjoyed a cartoon this week which showed one MP saying to another: ‘As soon as I saw what I’d been up to I knew the Speaker had to go.’ And if MPs have chosen a visible victim, so too have the various parties sacrificed a few of their own, and so no doubt will the electorate look for scapegoats at the coming election. It is always some comfort to know that people have got their comeuppance. A feeling which of course is right there in Scripture. Did you notice that 3 verses were omitted from this morning’s reading from Acts? These form a short excursus about the fate of Judas Iscariot, and I quote: ‘Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.’ Down the centuries readers have at this point sighed and thought ‘Now there’s justice’.
Except that it isn’t. Things may have come out OK now for the other disciples, but they had hardly shown themselves heroes. In fact it’s a fundamental Christian outlook that we are all failures, all sinful; so while it makes us feel better to see some heads (or bowels) roll, this is all too easily a distraction from the wider truth, the systemic condition. What we’ve been reading about MPs is a window on our society and upon you and me. They may need to change – but so do we.
These 10 days after the Ascension are a period of waiting expectantly for the outpouring of God; of getting ready for powerful transformation. And that powerful transformation involves us joining the apostles in (to use Jesus’ words in John’s gospel) being ‘sanctified in truth’. Which does not mean retreating into a self-righteous clique, but preparing to do what Jesus has done: sanctification goes not with being a spectator but with being sent; and it involves going into the very places where the world is at its most worldly.
We have been chosen – elected. Things will change.
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Today is the one Sunday of the little period that comes between Ascension Day and the feast of Pentecost. This structure of the Church’s year derives from the chronology laid out by Luke in his gospel and his sequel, the Acts of the Apostles. The point at which we now find ourselves carries the assumption that remarkable change is going to happen: the last words Luke puts in the mouth of Jesus before his Ascension are: ‘you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.’ With this ringing in their ears, the disciples go back to Jerusalem and take stock, adjusting to these changing times.
And what do they do? They elect a new member to fill a vacancy among them. We are not told anything about the expenses package available to Joseph Justus and Matthias, but I guess that any flipping of homes they may have done in years to come had more to do with their mission to preach and with their experience of persecution, than with any urge to profit. Luke describes a remarkable election: two equally qualified candidates, much prayer, and an arbitrary choice by lots; and what follows is total obscurity – we have no idea what happened to either of these good men, except that the elected one has his own saint’s day.
I suspect that in recent weeks a good number of those who have offered themselves for election by more familiar processes have yearned for that kind of obscurity. Recent exposures have made it commonplace to put politicians somewhere on the scale of social outcasts between (on the one hand) smokers and bearers of swine flu, and (on the other) paedophiles and war criminals. As our archbishops have pointed out, this is dangerous stuff: dangerous because we humans demand evidence of change, and become pack animals, baying for blood.
I enjoyed a cartoon this week which showed one MP saying to another: ‘As soon as I saw what I’d been up to I knew the Speaker had to go.’ And if MPs have chosen a visible victim, so too have the various parties sacrificed a few of their own, and so no doubt will the electorate look for scapegoats at the coming election. It is always some comfort to know that people have got their comeuppance. A feeling which of course is right there in Scripture. Did you notice that 3 verses were omitted from this morning’s reading from Acts? These form a short excursus about the fate of Judas Iscariot, and I quote: ‘Now this man acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness, and falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his bowels gushed out.’ Down the centuries readers have at this point sighed and thought ‘Now there’s justice’.
Except that it isn’t. Things may have come out OK now for the other disciples, but they had hardly shown themselves heroes. In fact it’s a fundamental Christian outlook that we are all failures, all sinful; so while it makes us feel better to see some heads (or bowels) roll, this is all too easily a distraction from the wider truth, the systemic condition. What we’ve been reading about MPs is a window on our society and upon you and me. They may need to change – but so do we.
These 10 days after the Ascension are a period of waiting expectantly for the outpouring of God; of getting ready for powerful transformation. And that powerful transformation involves us joining the apostles in (to use Jesus’ words in John’s gospel) being ‘sanctified in truth’. Which does not mean retreating into a self-righteous clique, but preparing to do what Jesus has done: sanctification goes not with being a spectator but with being sent; and it involves going into the very places where the world is at its most worldly.
We have been chosen – elected. Things will change.