St Pauls Cathedral Chrism Eucharist 28 March 2024
1 Samuel 16.1-13a, 2 Corinthians 3.17–4.12, and Luke 22.24-30
It may surprise you – or reinforce your suspicions – but when I run (or stagger) across London, I do not listen to the dulcet tones of Radio 4, but rather Radio 2. In February I was running rather later than usual – the downside of this was that I encountered more people. The upside was that I caught ‘Pause for Thought’ by Bishop Helen-Ann Hartley. She was speaking about her time as a Bishop in New Zealand, and the Maori idea of ‘tūrangawaewae’.
Bishop Helen-Ann explained that tūranga means ‘to stand’ and waewae means ‘feet’. And when you put it together you get a word that means ‘the place where you put your two feet on the ground and you just know: ‘I’m home’’.
I wonder where is the place where you put your two feet on the ground and know that you are home?
For some this may be a geographical place. For others it may mean a group of people or a spiritual place.
Having moved a number of times, like many of us in ministry, my tūrangawaewae is my family. But in listening to Bishop Helen-Ann, I was struck that my tūrangawaewae is also now here. I don’t mean ‘here’ St Paul’s or even London, but after nearly six years as the Bishop of London my tūrangawaewae is here in the midst of our shared ministry, which is both yours and mine. Which first and foremost is Christ’s.
That does not mean that it has always been easy and that I haven’t made mistakes, and I am almost certain that it will not be easy in the future and I may make mistakes again. But it is the place that I have been called to put my feet, and know that I am home – and so have you.
The American spiritual teacher and psychologist, Ram Dass, once said ‘We are all just walking each other home’. I don’t think he meant literally. He seemed to mean two things: ‘home’ as in death and our ultimate place in God; and the place of ‘home’ within ourselves where we know ourselves to be loved and wholly accepted by God. In our shared ministry we hold the potential to help one another to plant our feet on the ground of our ministries and walk each other home.
But because of some of our deeply-held theological differences – or even just differences of style in ministry – there are ways in which we are sometimes deeply unhelpful to one another as clergy and find ourselves doing the opposite – jostling and challenging each other on the path and causing one another to lose our footing.
During a recent event at St Andrew’s Holborn, I reflected on Jonah’s experience of God’s hand in his life, reassuring him of his place in the world. Freed from the fear of his own failure, Jonah found the confidence to join in God’s plan: to trust the God who had saved him once and to brace himself for the hostility of the people of Ninevah, knowing that whatever is to come, God will be alongside him.
And the results are far from what he had feared. Instead of failure, spectacular success! An entire city repents! Most of us can only dream of this sort of reaction to our preaching!
But something then surfaces in Jonah which prevents him from rejoicing in the moment. It seems to be a surge of resentment, that the God who forgave him for his attempts to run away and hide, the God who rescued him from the belly of the great fish, offers the same mercy to the repentant people of Ninevah.
In Justine Allain Chapman’s Lent book, ‘The Resilient Disciple’, she writes about humility, saying:
‘Humility is the quality that all mature Christians grow into, a quality where a deep sense of inner dignity and value is palpable to others and brings them solace. It is a fruit of the Spirit, sometimes translated as ‘gentleness’ … Humble people are grounded (which means lowly, on the ground or earth). They are secure in themselves and in touch with their own vulnerability as human beings, but also fully aware of their strengths. When you are confident of your own place in the world, not struggling to prove yourself or be recognized, you can be free to take an interest in and bring out the best in others. In humility you can see the vulnerabilities of another and generously use your knowledge to support, guide and affirm that person. It is an inner quality that comes from those who are secure, mature and able to be generous with themselves.”[1]
Jonah hadn’t quite taken that next step which Allain-Chapman describes. He hadn’t yet learnt the humility which would enable him to translate his own experience into compassion for others. He still lacked that generosity of spirit. It would take the experience of the worm-eaten bush and a further conversation with God to get him there. If indeed he did get there – we aren’t actually told whether he did.
We learn humility step by step. Sometimes it’s two steps forward and one step back.
It is hard, I think, both as human beings and as clergy or LLMs and Christians, to be secure in ourselves and confident of our place in the world. We battle with our need to prove ourselves in comparison with others – or against the measure of our own, self-imposed and rather exacting standards. There are many reasons for this, both personal and professional. Society – and sadly, sometimes, the Church – have a tendency to encourage our sense of competition and our habit of comparing ourselves with one another. And so we do not always bring out the best in one another.
We are called to tend and care for one another as well as for our flocks. To wash one another’s feet. To encourage one another to find the solid ground that was our first calling. We do this by working across our differences and our traditions as co-workers in God’s Kingdom. We do it by speaking well of one another – and if we find ourselves unable to do that, finding ways to challenge one another with respect and consideration, in real relationship with each other. In the words of Cole Arther Riley, from her book ‘This Here Flesh’:
‘To be able to marvel at the face of our neighbour with the same awe we have for the mountaintop, the sunlight refracting – this manner of vision is what will keep us from destroying each other.’[2]
We are reminded that all of us – not just the ones we like or identify with, or agree with, or feel comfortable with – all of us, with unveiled faces, are being transformed into the same image, from one degree of glory to another. And that, as Paul tells us in today’s epistle, it is by God’s mercy that we are engaged in this ministry – not by our own rightness.
Six years ago at my installation, music was commissioned by Judith Bingham (b.1952) for the 133rd Psalm. Whilst I did not identify with the bit about Aaron’s beard, the psalmist reminds us that the precious oil on the head running down was like unity, pleasant and good, and this brought me, then and now, to the ground of our ministry together.
Today, we bless the oils which remind us of the diaconal and priestly ministry in which we plant our feet. The oils and the ministries associated with them lie at the heart of our vocation. They are for the sick and dying; for signing with the cross at baptism; and for baptism, confirmation and ordination. They help those whom we anoint to find their home in Christ. To plant their feet on God’s ground. As with Samuel, who took the horn of oil, and anointed David in the presence of his brothers, the spirit of the Lord – which came upon David from that day forward – will come upon those whom we anoint.
As St Paul tells us in 1 Corinthians 3, we are God’s co-workers. We are called to work with the grain of God’s righteousness – the mission Dei – to bring about the Kingdom. This is not easy, but we are encouraged by Paul’s words in today’s epistle: ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies’.
Lent and Holy Week give us the space to stop and to ask: what are we doing to work with the grain of God’s righteousness, in our relationships, our communities, our ministries? How are we using the resources we have been given? How awake are we to all that is revealed in God’s light: the things which call for joy and celebration, and the things which invite us to work for change? Those things which are the ground of our calling.
Of course, in the end, Christ is our cornerstone, the ground of our calling, our tūrangawaewae. Let us pray that in our shared ministry we will help one another to plant our feet on the ground of our ministries and know that we are at home. Amen
[1] Justine Allain-Chapman, The Resilient Disciple: A Lenten Journey from Adversity to Maturity, p135, SPCK, 2018
[2] Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation and the Stories That Make Us, Hodder and Stoughton, 2022, p36