A Sermon preached at the Festival of the Friends of Pusey House 2008
8 June 2008
For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. (Matthew 9.13)
I was reading about a predecessor of mine at the Chapel Royal, Canon James Mansell, who always said of himself that he was what in the eighteenth century was known as “a painful preacher” –one who finds it painful to prepare a sermon and one whose congregation finds it equally painful to listen. For someone like that, being Sub Dean of the Chapels Royal is a splendid job because one hardly ever has to preach as Her Majesty’s Chaplains come Sunday by Sunday on a rota. So I am now a rather inexperienced preacher and you may well think painful. Nevertheless, it is lovely to be here on Friends Weekend. I have been a Friend of Pusey since a server at Bourne Street conned me into signing the standing order which I hope is still being paid. Great mortification will ensue if I discover it’s not!
Amazing that on this Friend’s weekend we read in the Gospel about Jesus befriending the tax collector Matthew and in the process Jesus’ reputation suffers greatly.
There is a lovely story about the polish pianist Paderewski who was leaving his native Poland to play his first recital in London and asked an influential compatriot to give him a letter of introduction to a leading figure in Britain's musical world, who might be of assistance should anything go wrong. The letter was handed to him in a sealed envelope. He hoped that everything would proceed smoothly and he would not have to use it. He did not; his debut was a success and no snags developed. Some years later, as he was going through his papers, he found this letter and opened it. It read: "This will introduce Jan Paderewski, who plays the piano, for which he demonstrates no conspicuous talent."
Well now, we none of us need friends like that. So it is comforting that we find Jesus befriending someone generally despised and risking his own reputation in the process. It is good that he says he comes to call sinners. He goes and eats and drinks at the tax-collectors house – here we are gathered around his Altar to be fed with and by him.
There are words of Kierkegaard of which I am very fond. I also think it is rather smart to quote Kierkegaard!
"God . . . .picks his steps more carefully than if angels guided them, not to prevent his foot stumbling against a stone, but lest he trample human beings in the dust, in that they are offended in him. He is the God, and yet his eye rests upon mankind with deep concern, for the tender shoots of the individual life may be crushed as easily as a blade of glass."
This is how he treats us day by day at Mass. The burst of glory which takes place when the body and blood of the Lord are made present on the Altar can’t be known by the senses, nor can it be grasped by the mind. What has happened is so beyond the human realm of experience or understanding that it can only be accepted on the authority of God. It is by faith that we accept our Lord’s stark words, This is my body - this is my blood. Once we start trying to understand how this can be we get lost in endless human speculation. Faith is beyond reason, not opposed to it. Our senses and our minds remain untouched; but faith tells us that we stand before the most important event in the history of the world. We stand before the mystery of Christ – the friend of sinners. We are made present to the one who died for love of us and rose to a new life that we might live in a new way. I used to think that “to live” the Gospel meant to practise the gospel precepts, and it took me a long time to realise that to live the gospel meant to accept what Christ had done for humanity including myself through his death and resurrection and be transformed by that truth. Once we grasp this it does bring us new life. It is when we realise that the Mass is the re-presenting of the saving event to us so that its mighty power may continue to affect us that our whole worship and spiritual discipline takes on a new dimension. It has not a lot to do with ourselves being good or worthy. It is to do with what God through Christ is doing for us.
One of my favourite parts of the gospels is Jesus washing the disciples’ feet. St John does not contain the same narrative of the Last Supper as the synoptic gospels, but St John’s Gospel describes in a most vivid fashion the whole self giving, self emptying of Jesus with this story of the washing of the feet. It is a story rather outside our culture, but it sums up the nature of the Lord who comes among us as a servant. This is celebrated at every Mass as he himself provides the food of eternal life for us in the simple and humble things of bread and wine. Our part is to receive these gifts in faith, it is to allow our feet to be washed by him, allow him to serve us and love us. We can only obey the new commandment of love as we accept love ourselves. How can any of us possibly fulfil the admonitions to love as Christ loved?
The Good News is this: know yourself loved by God. This is the content of our faith. If we allow this love to fill our hearts to the brim, it will overflow on to others. The love of our neighbour is, therefore, God’s love. There is only one stream of love and it originates in God. He is the creative source of all love in this world. All the expertise of technology will not produce God. That is beyond our skill. And if we can’t produce God, we can’t produce Christian love either. That can only be given and it is given. We are communing with perfect love, that love which passes all understanding. If we don’t reflect it in our lives it is because our hearts and minds are hardened. So we who come today as Friends of this place, but above all because we believe that God himself has called us friends, sit at his altar taking part in this self giving, this sacrifice and we pray that in order to prepare a similar meal for others we may truly open ourselves to the Saviour who breaks down our limitations, our powerlessness to love and who alone provides us with the grace to be like him in our own life and actions. We open ourselves to the activity of love who is Father, Son and Holy Spirit.
The Revd Prebendary William Scott Sub Dean of Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal, Deputy Clerk of the Closet, Sub-Almoner & Domestic Chaplain