The Word

Homilies from the pulpit at St. Olave’s:

1. Holy Cross Day: 14th September 2008

2. Twenty-first Sunday in Ordinary Time: 24th August 2008

3. St Olaf's Day: 27th July 2008

4. Sixteenth Week in Ordinary Time: 20th July 2008

5. Apostolic Succession & the Ordination of Women

6. Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time: 8th June 2008

The Triumph of The Cross: 14 September 2008

In recent weeks, television screens across the world have been littered with the images of athletes staking their claims to be the best in the world. I have heard commentators on the BBC boast that they are in the midst of broadcasting over 2000 hours of Olympic coverage; and, The Olympic Games now having ended, the Paralympics have taken their place.

As each event reaches its climax the voices of commentators rise in ever more animated tones above the cheers of the crowds urging the competitors onwards. Family, friends, local communities and countries bathe in the reflected glory, joy and effort of those taking part in the race staking a claim in the victories that are achieved. Then suddenly it’s all over, and we watch as the winners take the podium each in their proper place - third - second - first - the winner in the commanding position, standing higher than all the rest, looking over all that surrounds them.

The triumph of athletes comes, we know, only after much training and hard work; we understand their victories to be a consequence not only of their ability but also a mark of years of commitment and hard work. A victorious gold medal winner doesn’t just win the race on the day and in the moment but in all the moments he or she may have sacrificed to their chosen sport, all the early mornings of training and personal discipline, neglecting other parts of their lives for that which they hope to win.

And after it’s all over, the pundits, critics and commentators get to grips with the triumphs and failures of the race and all those involved, to examine what contributed to the victory; or the loss.

It is an age-old tale, one that has been repeated through the generations of the millennia. In the Old Testament the multitude of struggles of God’s people, as they continued on their journey to the ‘promised land’ were often far from successful. Often forgetting God in the victories they gained, by falling back on the self-reliance of their own resources, they invariably understood them to be the result of nothing more than their own military prowess. Their history, though, as we know, was also wrapped up in the plan God had for them; and on the occasions when they lost patience, one example of which we have heard read this morning, God pulled them up short.

In the story of the fiery serpents we read of God punishing his people, but also providing a remedy for them at the behest of Moses. In any defeat that the Israelites suffered there was always also an offer - the promise of salvation. In their impatience and defeats the Jews were reminded that they had failed God and an opportunity was given to them to return to the straight and narrow; such occasions were understood as an indication that spiritual change was needed - God could well turn against them if they betrayed him by their behaviour.

And later on in their history, when the Jewish nation became a divided one and their many military triumphs simply a part of their history, they began to look to the spiritual triumph over evil that God promised He would bring about for them. The suffering Servant, they learnt, would be triumphant over and through his sufferings.

For us, the Suffering Servant is personified in Jesus, Jesus being the fulfillment of these signs, who through his suffering triumphed over evil in the most perfect way: and completely. For us Christians the Cross is the means of our redemption, but from the time of our childhoods we have also known the cross to be a means of execution.

At one point the week before last, during the open meeting we had with him, Bishop Richard pulled the rather grand silver cross he wears, from underneath his suit jacket and commented upon how devalued it had become in the eyes of modern man. Now for most little more than an ornament, in Jesus’ own day the Graeco-Roman world saw the cross as a symbol of disgrace, a curse to be laid upon the sinner and the most cruel of punishments reserved only for slaves. It was a scandal for a Jew to be raised up on such a device - how on earth could salvation come through a ritually unclean and disfigured cadaver?

Today, on this Holy Cross Day, we know that there is a mystery about the cross; it is a strange and enigmatic thing. We believe and understand that to be raised up on the Cross was a necessary part of Jesus’ mission to obey his Father and to give praise and glory to him. Christ was raised up in obedience on the Cross in the same way that he was raised up from the dead. At one and the same time the Cross was the means by which he gave His life for us and the fulfilment of the prophets and the psalms.

So, Jesus said to Nicodemus, ‘the Son of Man must be lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert . . . God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not be lost but may have eternal life.’ The Cross then is the sign of what Jesus did for us; an inspiration to Christians to lead the kind of life Jesus himself did. ‘Jesus . . . emptied himself to assume the condition of a slave, and became as men are; and being as all men are, he was humbler yet, even to accepting death, death on a cross. But God raised him high and gave him the name which is above all other names . . .’

So Jesus was lifted up on the cross; raised to life, and taken up into heaven to sit at the right hand of the Father. And these images we have in our minds eyes are used in everyday life. A successful Olympian is raised up in triumph; when someone encourages us we feel ‘lifted up’, and it is none other than Jesus who brings all these thoughts together in himself. Triumphant over evil He shows the love and care of God the Father by lifting us up to share his life.

Truly the Triumph of The Cross is that it enables us to look to Jesus in our suffering and weakness, and know that wherever we have been, are, or are going, he has been there too before us. We will never have to bear in our lives more than He already has. The Son of Man was lifted up, so that we, in our turn, may come to be with God. Amen.

21st Sunday ~ Year A 23rd August 2008

‘I call on my servant . . . and he shall be a father to the inhabitants of Jerusalem . . . I drive him like a peg into a firm place; he will become a throne of glory for his father’s house’. ‘You are Peter and on this rock I will build my Church . . . I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven’.

Two short quotes, one from this morning’s Old Testament Reading from the prophet Isaiah and the other from the Gospel of Matthew; almost a thousand years separates them, but how well they sit together.

Nothing is known of the prophet Isaiah after the year 701 BC. Tradition has it that he was brutally sawn in two under the reign of the notorious Manasseh and perhaps the author of the Letter to the Hebrews, in his roll of honour, when he writes in chapter 11 verse 37, ‘They were stoned, they were sawn in two, they were killed with the sword; they went about in skins of sheep and goats, destitute, afflicted, ill-treated.’ refers to this.

Many of Isaiah’s prophecies may not seem to have much relevance for us today but, if only for the drama they make real, Isaiah’s writing has no peer in the Old Testament. His writings, when taken together, as well as containing real power, also give a clear forward-looking vision, to a time beyond the political turmoil through which Israel was then living. He pictures a future Israel living under a just and righteous ruler in a world of peace.

The first 39 chapters of Isaiah, from which this morning’s reading comes, are well worth reading in one sitting, and taken as a whole what comes searing through them is the breadth of Isaiah’s vision of nothing less than a new creation, where the warring elements of the world of nature as well as man at last find peace. In effect his vision embodies a world in which God’s purpose has been fulfilled, where, to quote from chapter 11, verse 9, ‘the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.’

Now of course, as he wrote, Isaiah may well have had in mind some future Davidic king and a restoration of the glories of David’s kingdom, but his thoughts were surely guided towards a hope that no human monarch could fulfil and to a kingdom that reached beyond this world. It was from Isaiah’s words, which looked beyond human questing for an answer to the complexity of the human situation, that the faith of Israel came to depend upon in the painful times that lay before them.

Isaiah wasn’t interested in the sort of human questing for the answers to human ills that is debated to this day, every day, in our news broadcasts. Rather, Isaiah looked to the answers that came from God, whose will it was, and for that matter is, that men should learn to look to him alone for the answer to creation’s turmoils. And it was words, like those of Isaiah, that taught the early Christians to see in Jesus the fulfilment of Israel’s hope, and to recognize in the life of the Church that he founded, the foretaste of the new order that Isaiah had so confidently proclaimed.

In the Gospel reading this morning we read from the fourth part of Matthew's narrative that takes us from chapter 13 through to chapter 19, during the course of which he speaks about the life of the Church. By turns he writes of Jesus’ rejection by his own countrymen and the murder of John the Baptist as a prelude to the feeding of the five thousand. Then comes Jesus’ walk on the water and, after a summary of his healing acts of by the lakeside, Matthew records the controversy with the Pharisees about inward and outward cleanliness. The daughter of the Syro-Phoenician is healed and the four thousand are fed, all of which, finally, leads up to Peter’s recognition of Jesus as Messiah and his, for want of a better word, ‘promotion’ to the headship of the new family of God.

Set in the context of Isaiah’s earlier writing this singular act of Jesus loudly resonates for Jews and Christians alike. As Isaiah looks beyond man to God for the answers to Israel’s turmoil, so does Christ clearly delineate in the Gospel that Peter’s understanding of who he is, is a direct revelation from God, ‘it was not flesh and blood that revealed this to you but my Father in heaven’.

So Simon Peter becomes the rock-man, the head of the new family of God and with supreme authority over it. ‘I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth shall be considered bound in heaven; whatever you loose on earth shall be considered loosed in heaven.’

And yet in the verses of this same chapter 11 that immediately follow this mornings gospel verses 21-28, when Jesus goes on to declare the inevitability of the Cross, this rock-man shows how far those, who with even the deepest insight into the mind of the Master, can fall so far short of the perfect response to God. In verse 18 Jesus declares Peter to be his rock and only five verses later, in verse 23, this same Peter is so severely rebuked, that the words still shock: ‘Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me; for you are not on the side of God, but of men.’

Are we not then bound in our own time to keep our eyes always fixed upon the things of God? And are we not to be on our guard at all times, even the best of us, lest we fall into the sin of doubt? To doubt God is to let Satan into our lives.

And know that despite the assaults of an all too faithless age that we are right and that they, all of them, are wrong. Amen.

St Olaf's Day 27 July 2008

Over the years I have been Vicar here, you will have all heard Fr. Roy and me (and no doubt Fr. Gordon before me) deliver on Patronal Festivals sermons about the whys and wherefores of St. Olave’s life, his patronage of Norway, why he is particularly associated with London, of the nature of sainthood itself and of the importance of the legacy of the saints for us who in our own generation seek to follow the narrow way of Christ. And during the week, while wondering what to say this morning, it struck me afresh just how many saints there actually are; far more than there are days in the year.

It’s wonderful that there are so many of them but beyond the top ranks of saints whose feasts we regularly remember each year and with whose lives we have at least a passing familiarity, there are countless others of whom we rarely if never hear. With that in mind I had a dig around in my books to try and discover how many other saints share their feast day with St. Olave and I thought it might be fun to briefly examine their lives as we honour our patron today.

As far as I have been able to discover, the 29th July, St. Olave’s Day, is also the feast day of four other saints, a couple of which I suspect you will never have heard of, one of which you may have and one who is, in the terms of our faith much, much, more well known than Olaf, and who famously appears in the New Testament in both the gospels of Luke and John and was an acquaintance of Jesus himself; more of whom later.

The first saint to share St. Olave’s feast day is St. Lupus. His actual date of birth is unknown but he was born in the late 4th century and died in the year 478. Becoming known as Lupus of Troyes, he was to become its bishop. Whilst being French born, he became known in England because of his association with St. Germanus, who on his two visits to England, it is recorded, spoke very effectively against the Pelagian heresy. Throughout the history of Christianity, even in its earliest days, there have been those who by rumour and disinformation have tried to pervert the Christian faith. Pelagius was one of those who preached a false doctrine, and was particularly effective in unsettling the Christians of his own day.

Simply put, Pelagianism is the heresy that teaches that a man can take the fundamental steps towards salvation by his own efforts, apart from Divine Grace. Of Pelagius himself little is known except that he was British by birth and taught in Rome in the late 4th and early 5th centuries. In his time St. Augustine was particularly vocal against Pelagius and after the Council of Carthage in 418, where the African bishops in particular stood firm against him (interesting, isn’t it, that it is also the African bishops in our own day who are standing firm against the insidious liberalism now rife in the Church), Pelagius had little inclination to continue to press his views and he disappeared from history, his subsequent fate unknown. Though Pelagius himself gave up on his treatise, his heretical ideas persist and I meet people every week who live their lives (never having heard his name), according to his ideas.

Lupus, then, is honoured today as one of those took on Pelagian thinking, teaching those who had been persuaded to it the error of their ways. He had an up and a down sort of a life did St. Lupus. He was born in Toul, in France and as an adult fell in love with and married the sister of St. Hilary, but the marriage was doomed to fail and after six years, by mutual consent, they parted company. After the failure of his marriage, he sold his lands and estates, becoming a monk, and was later appointed Bishop of Troyes.

Somewhat fascinatingly, later in his life, when Attila the Hun was ransacking Gaul, Lupus went to meet him and persuaded him to spare the province, but at the cost of himself becoming Attila’s hostage. When Attila was finally defeated, public opinion turned against Lupus and he was accused of having helped the tyrant to escape, the upshot of which was that he was forced to retire to the mountains as a hermit. Eventually, when everyone’s tempers had calmed, he resumed rule in his diocese, where he lived until his death.

Next up is St. Sulian (Silin). Now things start to get a little complicated, because history records three St. Silins, one French, one English and one Welsh. Some commentators think that the English saint and the French one may well be the same person and it is known that the life story of the Welsh St. Silin was pirated from him for the French one, so all is confusion. In any event our St. Silin or Silins were born a couple of hundred years after St. Lupus, in the 6th century, and what is known is that St. Silin was founder and abbot (but not patron) of Luxulyan Priory in Cornwall.

Slightly better known than Lupus and Silin was St. Simplicius, whose martyrdom on the road to Porto in Rome in the year 304 was recorded by St. Jerome. Simplicius was martyred with three others, whose names we know, because in 1868 the cemetery of Generosa by the side of the Porto road was unearthed by archaeologists. In it there is a small church with frescoes and inscriptions that date back to Simplicius’ day. On them it is recorded that he was martyred for his faith along with, Faustinus, Beatrice and Rufinianus. Tradition records that Simplicius and Faustinus were brothers and that they and their companions were put to death for refusing to offer sacrifices to pagan gods. They were buried by their sister Viatrix, who herself was later denounced by a neighbour who coveted her property. Viatrix was strangled in prison and buried with her brothers. After the discovery of the cemetery, their relics were translated to the Basilica of St. Mary Major, where they rest to this day.

So, to our final saint who shares in St. Olave’s feast day. In the orthodox calendar, though not in ours, she shares this day with her siblings Mary Magdalene and Lazarus. She is, of course, Martha – today is St. Martha’s Day. In the Gospel of Luke it is recorded that Martha received Christ into her household at Bethany, which was especially loved by him, on which occasion he gently reproved her for her complaint that her sister Mary didn’t help her enough in getting everything ready. Christ’s words on that occasion are traditionally represented as indicating the excellence of the contemplative life (represented by Mary) over the cares of an active life (represented by Martha). In the Gospel of John, Martha also appears on the occasion of the raising of Lazarus, where her faith in Christ’s divine power was the occasion for the famous words ‘I am the resurrection and the life.’ Martha, I suppose it is not surprising, is the patron saint of housewives and lay sisters and her attributes are by turns, a ladle, a broom and a bunch of keys. In medieval times she, along with Mary and Lazarus, became associated with the evangelisation of Provence, in France, where legend has it, mimicking our own St George, she tamed a dragon by splashing it with holy water and wrapping her sash around its neck, before leading it off to be killed.

So there we have them, Lupus, Sulian, Simplicius, Martha and our own St. Olaf. God has renewed his Church in every age by raising up men and women outstanding in holiness, who have been living witnesses of His unchanging love. And on this day, marking our patronal festival, ‘they inspire us by their heroic lives and help us by their constant prayers to be the living sign’ of God’s saving power.

Long may their names continue to be honoured for the faith they brought to the people of their own day and the inspiration they still have for us. Amen.

16th Sunday Year A 20 July 2008

Matthew 13.30 ‘Let them both grow till the harvest.’

A horticultural theme in this morning’s parable - today I am going to talk about weeds. Those who know and love me will be aware I have no time for gardening. As far as I am concerned it is akin to painting the Forth Bridge; after much time and effort you finally finish the job only to discover that you have to start all over again. I can remember my parents, when my Dad was alive, coming into the house after an afternoon’s gardening. ‘How are you?’ I would ask. ‘Worn out’, they’d always reply; ‘We’ve just spent the last few hours weeding’.

I’ve often wondered why we have weeds, irritating pointless things that sully the beauty of our surroundings. The darnel we read about in this morning’s gospel is, of course, of the same order and prompts a much bigger question that has plagued mankind in all its generations: why is there evil in the world? Why suffering? Why pain? Why crushing disappointment? Why marriages that go wrong? The babies who die before they are even born? It’s the volume of suffering that baffles. Since the world began, life has been for millions and millions of people little short of a slow death.

There cannot be one person here who hasn’t pondered at some time, when trying to do the right thing and the outcome has been exactly the opposite, upon the sheer cussedness of life. There always seems to be something lurking in the shadows, someone bent on spoiling the good things we try to fashion. It is the heartrending question of this morning’s Gospel; ‘Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so, where does the darnel come from?’

Through the eyes of some the human condition is tragic; we are the playthings of capricious gods and it is capricious fate that is the explanation of the weeds, the darnel, in the field of life. It is a point of view that is tempting to embrace when things are not going well. Personally, I have always appreciated writers like Teilhard de Chardin from our own Christian tradition, who sought to explain the incidence of earthquakes, typhoons and flooding on a vast scale by pointing out that we are still part of an evolving world, and that these events are part and parcel of the world’s continuing growing pains.

The difficulty of de Chardin’s view is that it fails to take into account the devilish nature of mans inhumanity to his fellow human beings - be it slave labour, the holocaust of war, discrimination against minorities or the casual violence that brings about the stabbing of a young person on a London street. In face of such wickedness it is not surprising that some seek an explanation in the existence of dark and evil spiritual forces

What is the explanation for the existence of darnel, for the existence of evil in the world? Perhaps the three theories I have spoken of all have something in them, but isn’t our real worry not so much about the origin of evil, but what to do about it, how to counteract it? It is that which is at the bottom of the government’s recent announcements about street violence.

All of which brings me back to this morning’s gospel: ‘Sir, was it not good seed that you sowed in your field? If so where does the darnel come from?’ ‘Some enemy has done this,’ he answered. ‘Do you want us to go and weed it out?’ Quick ruthless action was what they were calling for as a way to tackle evil in the world. Root it out! It seems reasonable enough and men have tried it; some still do. Stalin once said, ‘If you remove the man you remove the problem.’ It was his way and it was the way of Lenin, Chairman Mao and Marxism generally. Never mind the means, it is the end that counts. So, the killings, the deportation, starvings and forced labour camps. Ruthlessness is the way. Ruthless uprooting. ‘Do you want us to go and weed it out?’ The answer he gave was, ‘No’.

Why did Jesus say ‘No’? Well, it’s about darnel and wheat and what you may not know, that, when they begin to grow, they are almost indistinguishable from each other. So if you go for ruthless uprooting you are bound to ruin what you are most keen to preserve. The process of separation is only safe at harvest time by winnowing the crop. So the servant receives a categorical refusal. ‘No, because when you weed out the darnel you might pull up wheat with it.’ Fair enough, you say, in a cornfield - but what about the field, which is called the world? Do we let evil rip? Do we sit back and do nothing?

There are some lessons for us here. The Church should never involve itself in campaigns whose declared aim is the uprooting of specific ills in society. Recognise them, yes! Lift our voice up against them, yes! But ruthless uprooting, in the words of Jesus: ‘No’! It is why the Church must be very careful about how it becomes involved in any kind of political action in any part of the world.

Consider the life of Christ: were there not plenty of social abuses in his own day? Oppression by a foreign power; the grinding of the poor; crippling taxes and slavery. Yet Jesus didn’t join in, or even verbally ally himself with any of the liberation movements of his day; be they Zealots, Herodians or Essenes. He did not support their policy of ruthless uprooting and nor, I would suggest, should the Church, which professes to follow him.

Law and order must prevail. But if it pursues a policy of ruthless suppression it will destroy more than it creates. It is a truism that suppression does not lead to liberty, nor violence to peace. Some might feel in a particular circumstance that taking up the sword is a necessary evil (I have heard two archbishops, Desmond Tutu and John Sentamu both advocating such action during the last month), but an evil it nonetheless remains.

This morning’s gospel, if it teaches anything, teaches us that God himself is not ruthless. Whatever evil there may be growing in the world, or for that matter, growing in us, he will not pursue a course of ruthless action to uproot it. If he counsels against it for his servants, he will not engage in it himself.

Though I have been speaking of darnel and how to deal and not deal with it, I would rather leave you thinking about him who told the parable. There is no doubt that Our Lord was a strong character and could be very disconcerting. But… he never treated anyone roughly, not even notorious sinners. All of which encourages me to believe that, when my time comes to meet him face-to-face, tenderness and patience, and not ruthlessness, will be the order of the final judgement day.

It is for me nothing less than the good news of Jesus Christ. Amen

Apostolic Succession & the Ordination of Women 22nd June 2008

I spoke last week during the notices at Mass and again afterwards about the changes that will be coming to our Church with the ordination of women to the episcopate and what they will mean, in particular to ‘traditionalist’ parishes like ours. I prepared a handout outlining the issues for those who were there and I think there are still a few copies left for those who had to leave early. Broadly speaking, there are three points upon which the debate turns which I set out in the handout. The second two are self-explanatory, concerning themselves with this developments assault on the unity of the Church of England in particular and the Anglican Communion in general, to say nothing of the wedge it will drive between us, and the Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches.

This morning, as I said I would last week, I want to spend a little time with the first and most significant point of objection that can be raised against what is about to happen; namely that: ‘It is a practice contrary to the scriptures as they have been interpreted by the two thousand year tradition of the churches of both East and West’.

I want to begin with one of the quotes I used last week, from the latest edition of ‘New Directions.’ ‘Both sides (i.e. those proposing the change and those of us who object to it), must recognize that, for all their convictions, they are in the minority. The publicly declared opponents of women bishops are a very small minority within the Church of England and the proponents of women bishops are a very small minority within the worldwide church’.

The difficulty of dealing with the issue is doubly complicated because it has become coincidentally and almost inextricably, bound up with the other great issue the Church of England is currently struggling with, namely that of human sexuality, which as you know, hit the headlines last weekend, when, at St. Bartholomew the Great in the City, the civil union of two male priests was blessed by the incumbent there.

The world is struggling to come to terms with what it understands sexual equality to be and how that equality is to be given expression to, in personal relationships, the wider community, under law, spiritually, religiously and theologically. That aside, as I said, it is time to expand upon the first point, which turns upon the nature of what we understand ‘apostolic succession’ to be and why it is so important.

Simply put, ‘apostolic succession’ concerns the continual and unbroken practice, since the days of Christ himself, of the pastoral charge given personally by him to the apostles. And to begin at the beginning we need to look to scripture. We all know the quotation, ‘You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.’ In saying this Jesus himself personally confided to Peter alone, as the first of the apostles, his continuing ministry, which through history was transmitted in turn to his successors as the permanent office and sacred order of bishops. Our bishops have through the millennia taken the place of the apostles as pastors of the Church, and, by extension, tradition has it that whoever listens to a bishop, is listening to Christ.

Holy Office then, has been vested in the maleness of Christ, since the days of Christ himself. All four gospels are unanimous in their witness to the fact that Jesus formed a special group of twelve disciples, all male, during his ministry (you heard the story of their commissioning in the gospel last Sunday). Read Matthew ch.10, Mark ch.3, Luke ch.6 or John ch.6 and you will find the same description and definition. Additionally, all four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles witness to the belief of the early church that these men were sent out by the risen Christ, with a mandate to make disciples through witnessing to his resurrection. The mission of Christ, though, doesn’t only end with the sending out of the apostles; there were others to whom the risen Christ appeared who were given the same mission, prominent among them, the man often described as the ‘first theologian’, St. Paul.

The apostles then, uniquely, were the founders of Christ’s mission and the church, and whilst succeeding generations of Christians couldn’t re-found what had already begun, they did have the mandate that Christ gave them to teach, baptise, forgive sins and be pastors to the congregation; a ministry, vital to the life of the Church which was to be passed on. During their own lifetimes, the apostles shared their ministry with others, meeting the needs of the Churches under the guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The New Testament describes two different kinds of associates who augmented the apostles’ work: there were missionary co-workers who helped to found new churches, and the resident leaders of local churches, whose work it was to carry on the work of the apostles in the generations that followed.

As time moved on, the New Testament indicates that the apostles and their co-workers established a collegial form of leadership in the churches they founded. A number of men, either called ‘elders’ (presbyteroi) or ‘overseers’ (episkopoi) had the ministry of presiding and teaching in the local communities. According to the writing of St. Clement, the first generation of such men had been appointed by the apostles and the second generation by ‘other eminent men’, following the rule the apostles had laid down to provide successors in this ministry. Two decades after St. Clement, St. Ignatius testified in his writing that in Syria and Asia Minor each church was led by a single bishop, assisted by presbyters and deacons.

Slowly during the first half of the 2nd century, the change from a local collegial form of leadership to the eminence of a single bishop gradually took place and in Christian writings from the late 2nd century onwards, there is consistent testimony to the belief that these bishops were the successors of the apostles, and were therefore, the authorized witnesses of and to genuine apostolic succession.

This principle and belief was used, notably by both St. Ignatius and St. Tertullian as well as others in their day, to counter heretical attacks on the church. Ignatius and Tertullian emphasise the teaching role of bishops, succeeding one another in the leadership of the apostolic churches, as witnesses to the true apostolic ‘rule of faith’.

Hippolytus (c 215) sheds yet more light on the subject, describing how a bishop was ordained for his church by the bishops of neighbouring churches, reflecting the conviction that in order to share in the apostolic mandate, one had to be ordained by those who already shared it. He records as well an ordination prayer, expressing the belief that bishops participate in the powers given by Christ to his apostles, and that the Holy Spirit equips them with the gifts needed for the fulfilment of their ministry.

The argument for divine institution, then, is based on the belief that this development, this ‘apostolic succession’ has been guided by the Holy Spirit, as part of God’s design for the Church. A sound reason for believing this to be true is the fact that, as early Christian writing proves, from the second century onwards, Christians everywhere accepted the teaching of their bishops as normative for their faith.

It is a basic article of Christian belief that the Holy Spirit maintains the Church in the true faith and a Church that is divinely maintained in the true faith could not have been mistaken when it determined the norms of its faith. Having then good reason to be confident that it was the Holy Spirit who guided the Church in its acceptance of bishops as successors of the apostles, whose ministry was founded in the ‘maleness’ of Christ, I am confident that both the ordination of women to the priesthood and episcopate is ‘a practice contrary to the scriptures as they have been interpreted by the two thousand year tradition of the churches of both East and West’.

Of course, what I have just been explaining isn’t going to change anything; women will be ordained to the episcopate very soon now. The conclusions drawn up in the Manchester Report, which has already been considered by the Bishops, and will come up at General Synod in July, offers what it calls ‘four variations’ for consideration, three of which allow varying degrees of autonomy for ‘traditional’ parishes (none of which all traditionalists agree are ideal) and one of which (which it has been reliably reported that the House of Bishops currently favours), does not. If this first variation of the Manchester Report is accepted by General Synod, which states, ‘Parishes will not be allowed to opt out of the ministry of women priests and bishops on theological grounds’, no one will ever be allowed in future, to share the truth of what I have just shared with you, with anyone else. In fact I would go as far as to say that this first variation implies that the past 2000 years of ministry have been nothing but a giant hoax, a lie conjured up by men to do nothing but discriminate against women.

Whilst the ordination of women may appease those whose agenda is solely founded on the world’s concerns about the recognition of human sexual equality, there is something far deeper and more important going on here that does not concern itself with mankind’s temporal concerns. This is about nothing less than the will of God for his instrument upon earth, the Church.

To paraphrase the ‘Consecrated Women?’ report published in 2004, I do not accept that the question of the ordination of women is in any way about equality. The Church, as scripture directs, is called to reflect upon the diversity of gifts, graces and ministries which God has given us. The Church is not patterned on sameness and the erosion of difference, but on the celebration of God’s providence in creating us male and female. The Church has a particular calling to honour the distinctive gifts and callings of men and women, in the face of the dictates of a secular (and largely atheist) contemporary society.

The ordination rites of St. Hippolytus, whom I mentioned earlier, turn on the image of the bishop, not as father but rather as alter Christus, another Christ. How then can we with any real justification, ordain women to the episcopate?

Tenth Sunday in Ordinary Time 8th June 2008

Today’s readings are all about the clash between adherence to the law and adherence to faith; which of them is closer to God’s heart, and which of them seems, so often, to be closer to man’s. It is a perennial debate and one which so often separates the people we are.

Our lives are dominated by rules and conventions of one sort or another. Almost every day it seems we are assailed by the announcement of a raft of new legislation – this last week headlines have been full of the Prime Minister announcing new rules to curb the increasing threat of knife crime; I see I’m going to have to leave the penknife I have habitually carried in my pocket for decades, and which has often proved so useful, at home.

The difficulty of applying new laws, even if they are successful, is that they are not necessarily going to change who we really are. I might decide, because of the risk of prosecution and in adherence to the law, to stop carrying the flick-knife I own, but my heart may well still be full of violence – such subservience serves no real lasting purpose if we as people do not fundamentally change in and of ourselves.

As is the case in 2008, so was the case in the days of Hosea the prophet, encouraging the Jews of his time to ‘set ourselves to know the Lord’, understanding that a slavish devotion to the prescribed laws of their time actually meant nothing when the love they had for God was, ‘like the dew that quickly disappears’. ‘What God wants’, Hosea encourages, ‘is love, not sacrifice; knowledge of God, not holocausts.’

Hosea wrote his prophecy during the last days of the northern kingdom. At the time Israel and Judah were still intact and the exile was yet to come. That said, the people of Israel had got themselves, to quote the cliché ‘into a right royal pickle.’ To put Hosea into historical context, the 8th century had been studded with the illustrious and creative prophecies of Amos, Hosea himself, Micah and first Isaiah but at the same time Israel’s enemy, Assyria was on the rise and in 722 B.C, because of its assault, the northern kingdom, to all intents and purposes ceased to exist.

It was in the middle of the century, 750 B.C, that Amos first astounded the people of Israel by the vigour with which he condemned his countrymen for their crimes in the church and the state and announced their impending doom in the name of God. Amos’s conviction that the outraged righteousness of God would no longer look mercifully upon Israel’s many shortcomings didn’t allow him the opportunity to offer God’s people an easy way out of the mess they had got themselves into – they must pay the price. As far as Amos was concerned there was nothing left for them but to accept the last judgment of God and face extinction at the hands of the Assyrians.

It was left to Hosea to proclaim that actually this wasn’t God’s last word and it was his insight into the mercy of God, that makes him both a greater prophet than Amos and (in his faith) very close in heart and mind to early Christians like Paul and Matthew, from both of whom we have heard this morning.

As Hosea was writing, the prosperity that the people of his time had known, even during the time of Amos, was fading, and the tenure of successive kings was becoming shorter and shorter as the country hurtled towards its doom. The inevitability of Israel’s downfall became a nightmare of political debate – has a familiar ring, doesn’t it? One day they tried to circumvent the inevitability of it and, the next, come to terms with it.

Hosea condemns them for their vacillation, in chapter seven describing them, which I really like, as a half-baked bun, neither one thing nor the other, a silly dove fluttering about; one moment looking to Egypt for an alliance and the next to Assyria in the hope of appeasement. It is characteristic of Amos and Hosea that, whilst Amos sees no prospect for Israel but extinction, Hosea cannot believe that love will be defeated. Hosea is convinced that the love of God is greater than death, and, beyond the imminent catastrophe that he recognizes, looks forward to the day when Israel will come to her senses and return to the proper and pure service of God.

There are close links in the attitudes of Hosea and today’s gospel writer, Matthew. As far as Hosea was concerned, God had chosen Israel for his son and proved it by leading him from the living death of Egypt to the new life of the Promised Land. For Matthew, Christ, the new Moses, had under God, delivered Israel from greater bondage than Egypt into the promised land of life in his risen presence.

‘What God wants’, Matthew tells us, paraphrasing Hosea, ‘is mercy, not sacrifice.’ They are words as relevant today as they were 450 years before the birth of Christ. Society will not change for the better by the application of, and adherence to, laws. It will only ever change for the better when we all embed the love of God in our hearts.

Amen.

St Olave's Church, Church Walk, London, SW16 5JH

Fr Paul Ensor
St Olave's Vicarage, Church Walk, Mitcham, Sw16 5JH
Tel: 020 8764 2048