Farewell Eucharist - Portsmouth Cathedral

- Saturday 12th September at 3.00 p.m.

Readings: I Tim 1:15-17/Lk 6:43-end (set for the day)

Once upon a time, there was a little red-haired boy who was getting ready for his first day at school. He kept asking his parents and his older brother why he should go, and the reply kept coming back, ‘you’ll be able to read and write.’ Those words kept buzzing around in his head, so that when he did leave for school, they had become a bit of an obsession. By the time he got there, he was bursting with impatience, and he told everyone, again and again, that he had come there in order to learn to read and write. His enthusiasm took over the whole of that first morning. But no one was able to get through to him that it might take a bit of time. In the end, his impatience boiled over, and he was sent home at lunch-time with his brother as his minder, because he called his teacher a silly fat sausage!

You may well conclude after fourteen years that not much has changed with that little boy; and you may be right. In modern terms, it was a severe case of confusing vision and strategy. Put simply, the big picture that inspires us to get to a destination of some kind is not quite the same as how we get there. Yet the Christian message isn’t that simple, or should I say, simplistic. It’s no use saying, managerially, tell us the problems and we will solve them for you. Jesus gives us a vision. But he doesn’t tell us exactly how to work it out. Instead he tells us what it might be ‘like’. That’s a process that often involves wrestling with life. And the trouble is that instead we’ve been arriving at God’s threshold wanting everything immediately – though whether or not we dare call him what I called my teacher is a moot point.

So we’re told in today’s gospel-reading that this journey of faith is ‘like’ building a house on firm and deep foundations, to withstand heavy flooding, rather than build on ground that will easily give way. We do not have a once and for all blueprint. We’re given a vision that can help us work out the strategies of how we are to do it, whatever way of life is ours, whatever work or vocation we choose, whatever relationships form and shape us. ‘The Kingdom of God is like…..digging deep’ – descending to the depths of human life, reality, goodness, renewal, honesty, virtue, suffering, courage, and sometimes relentless questioning.

It is not, therefore, entirely straightforward. The quick-slick answers pressingly – and sometimes aggressively – put by our culture won’t withstand the floods of time. That is why the patience of God, who is immortal (ageless) and invisible (concealed in his workings), highlighted in today’s first reading, is so central to all that we’re about. Make no mistake: I do not speak from an ivory tower – patience has never been one of my vices! But the long haul, that involves risk, testing, making those mistakes that anyone breaking new boundaries knows all too well – whether in education, health, government, yes theology as well, whatever – this is the way to travel towards that Kingdom.

How can all this be summed up? I have spent years in the preaching trade scratching my head about this. Well, two words keep resurfacing – mercy and truth. They are frequently used – together – to describe the way God deals with his people, which probably means that they are also about the meaning of reality, deep down. Mercy needs truth, in order to prevent it becoming flabby and bland, otherwise there would be no justice. Truth needs mercy to prevent it becoming hard and brittle. A society that is merciless loses its soul, and if it is truthless becomes rudderless and morally corrupt. A Church that really knows the mercy of God, and can face up to his truth, may be more vulnerable, but will certainly become more faithful, and thereby avoid trying to pick grapes from bramble-bushes.

The Psalms like those two words. ‘Mercy and truth are met together’, as we shall shortly hear, from Psalm 85 (Ps 85:10), often sung at Christmas to hail the arrival of Jesus as the human face of God. And they are also part of a song of praise and pilgrimage, as we heard at the start of this service, from the end of Psalm 100, ‘the Lord is gracious, his mercy is everlasting: and his truth endureth from generation to generation’ (Ps 100:4). Yes, mercy that knows no bounds and brooks no conditions or fine print; and truth that endures, from one age to another, one culture to another, one language to another, one community to another, and from one Bishop to the next.

+ Kenneth Portsmouth