The Commencement 2008 Sermon given by the Very Rev. Alan Jones, Dean of Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, Diocese of California, on May 13

I: THE TWO GREAT AND DISTURBING TEXTS FOR THIS GRADUATION/EUCHARIST. Exodus 19:3-8 -- Matthew 16:24-27 Their juxtaposition is as terrifying at it is glorious. The Gospel secret – life is denial self and taking up the cross -- all in the context of our call to be a royal priesthood/a priestly kingdom/a kingdom of priests. Humanity has a priestly character and, by definition, a priest is one who offers sacrifice. A life characterized by “sacrifice and delight” – a felicitous juxtaposition I first heard nearly 30 years ago from my old friend Philip Turner.

Given the perilous state of the world and the divisions in our communion and the gravity of these two texts, I thought of the comment by Father Herbert Kelly (1860-1950), the founder of the Society of the Sacred Mission who was called a Barthian before Barth. He, like Barth, preached the sovereignty of God. When asked by a brave student, “If God does everything why should we bother?” “Ah!” replied Father Kelly, “If you don’t bother you may miss your crucifixion, and that would be a pity!” Kelly, as irascible and difficult as he was, tells the truth. There is no true life without sacrifice. “Shed your blood, and I will give you the Holy Spirit!” is one of the sayings of the desert fathers. There’s no getting round this.

This deep and central truth drove Kelly to extremes. In October 1917 (note the year) Father Kelly wrote: “I want Disendowment – I want persecution. I want a few bishops shot against a wall. Priests in crowds . . . You’d be astonished if you knew how serious I was in saying that. ‘Without shedding of blood there is no remission of sins.’ Least of all sins like ours. The ‘sins’ of patronage’ cry from heaven for vengeance. The sins of gentlemanliness, the sins of professionalism, the sins of smugness and comfort . . . Mere Disestablishment might do some good but not much. You see it would leave all the dignitaries and professors, all the old gang, with their vested interests to reorganize, as near as might be, where they were before . . . . I would gladly leave the Dissenters their endowments, and ours, Churches, Cathedrals, Vicarages, and we – what was left of us – would walk but into the streets and talk about God.”

So, on this graduation in this year of grace 2008 – our vocation is to be priestly people – I’m not talking about ordination, but the vision of the fully human being as a priestly vocation. What might that look like in the kind of world and church we’re living in?

II: I CAME ACROSS A NEW WORD– “FRAGILIZATION.” The “fragilization of worldviews”. For many, it has become more difficult to believe in God at least in the old way. It affects everybody – it’s not a straightforward atheism – no-one can look at the world honestly and not be concerned and puzzled. We read about the growing army of the unaffiliated. A pressing question for us today is “What holds us together?” Something is eating away at society. Some of us would say – looking worldwide and not just here at home – that multiculturalism is a failed experiment. It has become a code-word for disintegration and ghettoization. Society needs some kind cultural identity to hold it together.

If we are to be priests – priests of the Crucified and Risen Lord – we need to recover the sacred and the holy as central to our calling. We need, in short, to accept that liberating orthodoxy which both guards and celebrates the Good News. There’s no doubt we’re in trouble. The church is wracked not so much by theological differences as a struggle for power, which makes for some strange bed-fellows. Reinhold Niebuhr wrote of the strain in American theology which “tends to define religion in terms of adjustment to divine reality for the sake of gaining power rather than in terms of revelation which subjects the recipient to the criticism of that which is revealed.”

Kenneth Leech describes what he calls “the orthodox project” (what I would call the priestly vocation) as “the holding together of apparent contradictions and ambiguities . . . . The rejection of paradox and ambiguity is the characteristic of heretics in all ages. Heresy is one-dimensional, narrow, over-simplified, and boring. It is straight–line thinking, preferring a pseudo-clarity to the many-sidedness of truth, tidiness to the mess of complexity of reality. Orthodoxy by contrast is rooted in the unknowable.” I would also insist that heresy is an attempt to avoid the imperative of the cross. All this is an indication of the nature of the Crucifixion/Resurrection to which we are called.

Rowan Williams tells us that “Orthodoxy” is an exhilariting truth that makes us happy! "To speak of orthodoxy as a truth that makes us happy is not always the first phrase that might come to mind because we have, sadly, come to think of orthodox belief as a set of obligations to sign up to, rather than a landscape to inhabit with constant amazement and delight of the discovery opened up."

I admire Rowan Williams not only because of his articulation of theology as a converting conversation with mystery but also because he is deaf in one ear. He has to listen carefully –a priestly characteristic. Peter Cornwell comments:

“The archbishop is not at ease with shouted certainties. There is always in his theology a stammer, not because he is in doubt whether there is anything there but because he knows there is too much. Theology for him is always an encounter ‘with what cannot be mastered’. Christians have to stay together patiently in love, resisting the urge to parade convictions and go off to do their own thing with the likeminded. Instead they should listen to one another.” That seems to be an art we have lost. I am troubled by our passionate dislike of each other. A title of recent Italian movie: My Brother is an Only Child! Our disowning of each other – the growing list of people I dismiss – those who don’t want to know me and I don’t want to know. Appalling.

III: SO WHAT ARE THE MARKS OF PRIESTLY IDENTITY: Austen Williams former Vicar of St Martin’s in the Fields, kept on his desk a handwritten copy of the poem ‘Final Instructions’ by his friend Cecil Day Lewis. It is about the artist but it could almost equally well be about the priestly encounter with God. Imagine a old priest of some pagan rite leaving some advice for his student.

For sacrifice, there are certain principles-
Few, but essential.

I do not mean your ritual. This you have learnt -
The garland, the salt, a correct use of the knife,
And what to do with the blood:
Though it is worth reminding you that no two
Sacrifices ever turn out alike -
Not where this god is concerned.

The celebrant’s approach may be summed up
In three words - patience, joy,
Disinterestedness. Remember, you do not sacrifice
For your own glory or peace of mind:
You are there to assist the clients and please the god.

It goes without saying
That only the best is good enough for the god.
But the best - I must emphasize it - even your best
Will by no means always be found acceptable.
Do not be discouraged:
Some lizard or passing cat may taste your sacrifice
And bless the god: it will not be entirely wasted.

But the crucial point is this:
You are called only to make the sacrifice:
Whether or no he enters into it
Is the god’s affair; and whatever the handbooks say,
You can neither command his presence nor explain it-
All you can do is make it possible.
If the sacrifice catches fire of its own accord
On the altar, well and good. But do not
Flatter yourself that discipline and devotion
Have wrought the miracle: they have only allowed it.

So luck is all I can wish you, or need wish you.
And every time you prepare to lay yourself
On the altar and offer again what you have to offer, Remember, my son,
Those words - patience, joy, disinterestedness.

There’s much there for us. I suppose we would substitute “grace” for “luck”/fortuna – but the deep truth is there for us. The sacrifice and the delight in being open to God to allow the divine to use us - patience, joy, disinterestedness. Surrender, deep joy, and knowing that we are passing through. The priest simply as witness. Dom Helda Camera, former Archbishop of Recife, Brazil, once said that the only authority the bishop has is martyrdom! Witness. You may miss your crucifixion and that would be a pity.

IV: WHAT DOES THE LIFE OF GRACE TEACH US? There are two signs of “martyrdom”: first, solidarity in sin and solidarity in glory; and, second – the amazing gift of connection and communion. First – solidarity .

In Sebastian Faulks’ novel Human Traces – there’s a story about a parish priest around 1850 in France . “The Curé’s own education had been interrupted . . . just before he was able to complete his medical studies. He had been driving in a coach late at night . . . when he received the call of God. . . a fellow passenger began to speak. She was a coarse woman in plump middle age with a greasy bonnet who told a story of how she had been abandoned by her husband, taken up by another man, for whom she had borne a child, then deserted once more. It was not an unusual or particularly interesting story . . . He looked back to the woman in her dark corner of the coach and felt a profound and disabling emotion pour through him. He had lost his sense of her as a second person, a source of minor irritation, and experienced a sudden and irresistible feeling of identity with her. It was more than sympathy, something far less polite; it seemed as though his blood were in her veins and that her despair was the charge that animated his perception of the world. Her position was hopeless; he was obliged to bear her pain; both of them were connected in some universal, though unseen, pattern of humanity. His obligation was not to diagnose her but to love her; while his greater duty was to the larger reality, that place outside time where their connection had been made, the common ground of existence into which he had been granted a privileged glimpse.” This is the gift of solidarity. We are all in this together. Not to diagnose but to love – bloodless Martyrdom.

SECOND; THE AMAZING GIFT OF CONNECTION. Carol Hofstadter – aged 42 – died of a brain tumor when her children were 5 and 2. A few months later, her husband Douglas was looking at a picture of his wife, Carol. “I looked at her face and looked do deeply that I felt I was behind her eyes and all at once I found myself saying, as tears flowed, ‘That’s me. That’s me!” His suffering deepened his understanding of who we are. What makes this even more deeply important is that Hofstadter is a professor of cognitive science at Indiana University . What happens when a scientist asks a personal question like “What kind of creatures are we?” His discipline is teaching him that the mind is not a centralized thing and we send little flares into each other’s brains. “Friends and lovers create feedback loops of ideas and habits and ways of seeing the world.” We flow in and out of each other more than we realize. We are permeable. We are profoundly shaped by relationships and by what we pay attention to.

Douglas Hofstadter looks at the photo of his wife Carol: “I looked at her face and looked do deeply that I felt I was behind her eyes and all at once I found myself saying, as tears flowed, ‘That’s me. That’s me!” This is the gift of connection. We are all this together. Refusing each other is to miss our Crucifixion and Resurrection.

V: HOW EXACTLY DID WE LOSE TOUCH WITH OUR GOD-GIVEN PRIESTLY CHARACTER? How did we end up here – out of touch with patience, joy and disinterestedness? For one thing, the shift from character to personality has been going on for decades. Daniel Bell wrote of: “a shift in emphasis from “character,” which is the unity of moral codes and disciplined purpose, to an emphasis on “personality,” which is the enhancement of self through the compulsive search for individual differentiation.” Bell ’s view of the 60s (and mine!) – “a longing for the lost gratifications of an idealized childhood.” Many people are attracted to the freedom of our tradition but know nothing of its disciplines. Over the past 40 years, we moved from life to life-style. Now even that’s broken down? Our grasping after life-style has got too expensive. We are defaulting on our payments. – spiritually as well as economically.

Don’t misunderstand me. It was great while it lasted. The modern world is a wonder. It’s been a terrific ride, but now it’s the morning after and we’re blindly groping for that first cup of coffee. It’s time to pay up. For one thing, we’ve lost a sense of the sacred. Our world view has become fragile. We’re not sure what holds us together because there doesn’t appear to be a shared moral order. We’re flying blind. Sure we have religion and spirituality but they are now largely commodities, which we buy and sell – a way in which to fulfill our “personhood” rather than develop and deepen our character.

The great and terrible thing about true religion is that it presents us with a wheel of questions that brings us back to the Big Issues of existence. We are mortal and there are inexorable limits to our power. The good news is that “a culture which has become aware of the limits in exploring the [tiny world of its petty concerns] will turn, at some point, to the effort to recover the sacred.” Daniel Bell.

VI: I BELIEVE THE RECOVERY OF THE SACRED – THE GROUND OF OUR HUMANITY – IS THE CENTRAL SPIRITUAL TASK OF OUR DAY – it fuels our passion for justice and our care for the environment and it shows up just how naïve and irresponsible it is to think that secularism is benign and religion is not. The “new” atheists underestimate the undertow of nihilism. Martin Amis writes: “Secularism carries no warrant for action. One can afford to be crude about this. When Islamists crash passenger plans into buildings, or hack off the heads of hostages, they shout, “God is great!” When secularists do that kind of thing, what do they shout?” Marjorie Perloff in the TLS – February 15, 2008 – pointed out that they shout something like “Heil Hitler!”

On top of this, the planet is answering back, demanding a recovery of the sense of the sacred. The degraded environment is rising up. What we used to call the “natural world” from which we think we escape is making a spectacular come-back. Haven’t we come to the end of thinking that technology will solve all our problems? Hasn’t the idea of unlimited progress become discredited? Fiddling around with interest rates might help a little but they do not address the deeper issue – our blindness to our need for the sacred. Patience – Joy – Disinterestedness.

VIII: WE RESIST THE CALL TO PRIESTHOOD BECAUSE IT EXPOSES OUR FRAGILITY – OUR MORTALITY . It confronts us with limits. No wonder we cling to beliefs that don’t make a difference except in making us feel good. The promise of new life comes as a shock! It shows up our cheap optimism - our fallen state. We need an assault on our fatal blindness to recover our capacity to be surprised.

• The shock of catching sight -- as in a mirror -- of our evasions, tricks and clichés.
• The shock of sensing something of your own vast and untapped resources.
• The shock of being called to a life of absolute dedication. A kind of martyrdom – a palpable dying and rising.

In short, the shock of the awesome mystery of the sacred at the heart of things. Patience – Joy – Disinterestedness.

Joy, patience and disinterestedness. Why bother? “If you don’t, you may miss your crucifixion and that would be a pity.”

footnotes

Rowan Williams," To What End Are We Made”, an unpublished address, April 7, 2005

Peter Cornwell, The Tablet, 19 July, 2003.

Sebastian Faulks, Human Traces, London: Vintage/Random House, 2006, p. 15.