Institution of Carrie Thompson at St John’s, Forton

28th January 2008

Readings: 1 Cor 2:9-16/Jn 16:12-15.

‘This is a parish that enjoys itself’ is what appeared in the advertisement for St John’s last summer. And the result is Carrie Thompson! I’ve never before known such a description of a community, but I wish it was used more often. All too frequently, a parish asks for someone who is good at everything, and who will be an effective manager. What Carrie’s weaknesses and strengths are you have yet to discover. You’ll enjoy her many strengths, but don’t be put off by anyone’s weaknesses, and points of vulnerability. They help provide the overall picture of a human being, standing in need of as much divine grace as the next person.

However I don’t want to talk tonight to you about your new parish priest, but about another woman. It will mean travelling back in time to when the Gosport peninsula was thinly populated, with one major parish church, at Rowner. The woman’s name was Juliana, and she was born in the late 1100’s near the city of Liège, in what is now Belgium. She was an orphan, brought up by nuns, and she quickly showed a ready grasp for learning through a remarkable memory – and that included memorising famous sermons. Like many other people of the time, she had a strong devotion to real presence of Christ in the eucharist apart from the service itself, which developed as a result of very infrequent reception of the sacrament, and perhaps to compensate for it. As an eighteen-year old, she had a vision of a full moon with a small part missing: this, she believed, was the missing gap in the Church year – what soon became the feast of the Body of Christ, Corpus Christi as it became known as. She even composed, with the help of a local priest, a form of service for the occasion. This was soon superseded by something grander and more lasting, written by the great theologian of the time, who is commemorated today, Thomas of Aquino, or Thomas Aquinas as he is known.

Juliana represents for us the importance of women in the life of the Church, long before we thought of ordaining them. She did not give up in her quest of adding this new festival, soon kept in the early summer, on the Thursday after Trinity Sunday. It is not a major event for many Anglicans, partly because receiving the sacrament is now much more frequent and widespread than it was in her day, and partly because such practices as Benediction of the Blessed Sacrament that go with it are not everyone’s cup of tea! But I know it is an important day in the life of this parish, and an occasion when the whole Gosport Deanery is invited to come here, and perhaps experience something more exotic than they are used to. Well done, Gosport Deanery, in your vigorous life and work of collaboration in your ministry and mission!

And that, really, provides the link between Juliana in Liège (or Mother Juliana, as she became known as) in the 1230’s, and Carrie Thompson in Forton in 2008. There is no point in revelling in the past, if it does not have life in the present. St John’s has a vital part to play not just in the life of its local community, the church school, St Vincent’s College and all. It has a place to take in the future of Gosport, and the life of the diocese as a whole. A vigorous parish life – enjoyed to the full, and fed on the regular gathering of the People of God around the Lord’s Table – is the best and most effective vehicle for mission that I know. Juliana’s life was people-based and prayer-fed; and Thomas Aquinas, who gave full expression to how we put into words what the eucharist means, was known in every locality where he worked as a preacher, a vocation he would never undervalue. You cannot have Sacraments without the Word of God.

Our words are therefore important. But we can’t put absolutely everything into them when we speak the Christian message, as tonight’s two readings make clear. We keep having to rediscover this in every generation. It is the Holy Spirit, not human wisdom, who enables us to speak of the things of God, as St Paul reminds the Corinthians. And it is the Spirit who will show us Jesus, and the things we cannot bear now, or are not appropriate for us to attend to now, as we learn from St John’s gospel. That patient, waiting upon God for glimpses of the truth stands in something of a contrast with today’s impatient desire for everything to be obvious and transparent in as short a space of time as possible. It’s a deeply-ingrained part of our culture that goes a long way to explaining why we tie ourselves in knots over how we conduct our public discussions, in case someone is trying to conceal something from us.

So, Carrie, we wish you well in your new calling, and we look forward to the many good things that will flow from your ministry. Wherever you are, whether it is standing at the altar here in St John’s, or visiting the sick, or spending time at the College, do not forget either the rich and often neglected memory of the work of women in the Church down the ages, or the simple, tantalising truth that our words, important and vital as they are in the work of the Gospel, will always be provisional, however boldly and powerfully we may speak them. They will never, thankfully, quite match up to the depth, and the majesty, and the love, and the vulnerability of God.

+ Kenneth Portsmouth