Chrism Eucharist 2006
Readings: 2 Cor 3: 17-4:12/Lk 22: 24-30
Every autumn I sit down and try to think through what the ‘shape’ of the coming year might look like, and that includes what I am going to say on this annual occasion. Ideas start floating around, and I test them out on folk I meet, including the week-by-week contact with the clergy, parishes and communities of the diocese. Whether it bears much fruit or not is for others to say. This particular year, things are obviously a bit different. My contact with you has been, shall we say, of another order. But don’t run away with the idea that I haven’t found out what’s been going on: you’d be surprised at just how much got back to me, especially in hospital!
As I look back on the past year, it all begins to blur a bit. There was the usual, active Easter season, with the Confirmation tour, parish visits to see how the KAIROS process of renewal was faring; another clutch of bumper ordinations; a General Synod I managed to survive on a certain kind of liquid refreshment; a fascinating Conference in Finland (a genuine meeting of East and West); and then, almost immediately after the summer-break, the bombshell news that laid me off (or rather, tried to lay me off!) for six months. Feeling utterly useless has been a sobering experience. Being actively passive through the treatment, in order to let others take me over, has had its many blessings. And having the chance to think about my faith, my life (how long might it last?), and what I might do with it all on return, is an opportunity I never really thought would happen in quite this way.
So I can’t really face this morning’s readings (and they’re the set ones for this year, I’ve not played any of my tricks this time!), without ‘reading’ them in a different light. For example, I can’t say psalms that mention bone-marrows, or counting the hairs on my head (though I managed to keep most of them!), nor can I think blood and water, because I now know about the importance of the right balance of fluids in the body, without seeing all these images in a very different light. Moreover, today’s readings provide us with two deep contrasts. Paul’s image of the ‘clay jars’ (or ‘earthenware pots’ in an older translation) sits uneasily with the disciples arguing about who is the greatest – which Luke uniquely places during the Last Supper, just to make the point that it’s a stupid, inappropriate quest; and all the more stupid and inappropriate to do so immediately after sharing the eucharistic meal with the Master. Paul sees human fragility in those clay jars, which in spite of everything still contain heavenly treasure. But it’s a treasure that we don’t always see for what it is, and it’s a treasure that is a far cry from brittle ego’s about status and league-tables in discipleship outputs.
How do I ‘read’ these images? One way is to think back to the quiet, disciplined people who helped to give me back my life. If there is one thing that will remain with me for ever, it is the deep-down nursing instinct that sets out to treat what is there, the presenting symptoms, the person as they are at that moment time. There are no ‘if only’s’ or ‘what if’s’. No instant regrets expressed about what could have been done to avoid the infection, the downturn, the diagnosis. If they were ever said, then it was behind locked doors. What counted was how I was on a given day, at a particular time. I was a fragile clay jar, not a Church leader wondering where I was in the pecking order. In our discipleship, as well as in our endless ecclesiastical meetings, nostalgia, often bred by a certain amount of anger, can take over. ‘If only…….’ and ‘what if…….’ become the underlying words that are either said or assumed. And the trouble with nostalgia is that it has a cancerous way of killing any sense of reality, what life is like not then, but now. ‘If only’ we weren’t made of clay. ‘What if’ I or someone else were really properly in charge. God help us! Whatever ministry God calls us to, and there are many here this morning, ordained and lay, it is God who is in charge of us, not the other way round.
Another way of ‘reading’ these texts is to look at how we function. Getting on for twelve weeks, with a few breaks, I was a hospital patient, bathed in the prayer of the Church, but very much on its outer edges. I inhabited a world I’d only seen from the outside, a world which tends to regard religious faith as something some people have, and others don’t, and one must respect both; a world that is light years from many of our preoccupations as a Church. Of course that has to be true – up to a point. Running a hospital is a bit different from trying to run the Church. But I kept being struck, and am still struck now, by the need for us sometimes, just sometimes, to see ourselves as we are seen by others. Overconcerned about self-preservation, gender and sex are the way we are frequently misportrayed in the media, but we don’t always do as much as we can to dispel that caricature.
So what am I going to try to do about it? Well, I am going to look at how I spend my time, and how synodical agendas are compiled, so that there is a better balance between housekeeping and mission; between servicing the clay jars of the community of faith and making sure that we clay jars contain the heavenly treasure, and are not overfilled with more human, mundane concerns. Getting that balance better will go some way towards a greater self-awareness in the gospel (which is what Paul is asking the awkward Corinthians to reconsider), and to avoid being so self-obsessed that we become oblivious to the world around us (what Jesus suddenly confronts – of all places – at the Last Supper). We’ve spent too much time on housekeeping methodologies, and not enough on how we can be stronger communities of faith, where we are, how we are, in manageable (not nostalgic) ways. That’s a very ‘KAIROS’ statement, I know, but it’s been borne in on me with something of vengeance these past months. Of course the gospel cannot be driven by public opinion, and there are horror-stories in history to warn us of that trend. But the gospel cannot ignore the realities of where people are, with real questions about faith and life, about providence and chance, about how I can survive in a sometimes quite alien world – in which the community of faith often seems uninterested.
A third way of ‘reading’ these texts is to look at how we pray. I suppose I long ago learnt that the Greek word, ‘pharmakon’, means both medicine and poison. But it’s only recently that I’ve been able to live that experience, with my body being pumped full of drugs (a form of poison) specially put together to fit the kind of illness I was suffering from. That word ‘pharmakon’ – from which we get ‘pharmacy’ – soon migrated into the vocabulary of the Church, and was used as a way of describing the effects of the death of Jesus, and then the eucharist, the observance of Lent, and much else. That purgative, cleansing image mixes well with clay jars, fragile people, on their pilgrimage of faith together. Perhaps when we turn to the business of praying, we can begin to see how lucky we are with what we have got, how much time we waste trying to make the words somehow ‘accessible’ when what they are pointing us to is ‘inaccessible’; we could well use fewer words but allow them to go further.
I didn’t have (or want) the luxury of deciding which bit of the religious supermarket I wanted by my sick bed, nor did I have the energy to make it all up as I went along: I learnt to make do with a bare minimum of what was given me. Had I surrendered to consumer religion, or the pervading culture of righteous autonomy, and only prayed ‘when I felt like it’, or ‘when God really speaks to me’, there can be little doubt that I would have given up altogether. But I didn’t give up – thanks to your prayers. I prayed through God’s apparent absence, and I shall never forget it.
So are we here because we want our ego’s somehow affirmed by Jesus? He will surely refuse to do that, especially this week. Or are we here because we can face up to the full implications of being clay jars, like the bottles containing the oils of healing, baptismal preparation, and chrism shortly to be blessed? It is in vessels such as these that the heavenly servant, betrayed, crucified and risen, places his heavenly treasure.
+ Kenneth Portsmouth
