Walbrook Talk 4

Talk 4 Standing together Humanity raised and lifted up Wednesday April 1st

We are on the way to Easter. This coming Sunday is Palm Sunday, and next week is Holy Week in which we follow the Lord through his passion to the cross of Good Friday, and onward through it to Easter morning. 1. Christ raised Christ has been raised. His resurrection previews ours and anticipates the redemption of all creation in the holy communion of God. Christ has brought us together in this single everlasting communion, the only part of which we can see, by faith, is the Church. When we identify only other people’s sin and despise some part of the Church because of it, we fail to recognise Christ. But if we look at the world through Christ’s passion, we are able to see past this sin which is ours as much as theirs, to discover that Christ has joined all these sinful people to himself, and is redeeming and glorifying both them and us. The unreconciled world divides and wounds itself away helplessly: the cross is the image of this tormented world. As it travels through it, the Church asks the world why it puts itself through this pain. The world throws at the Church whatever contradictions and accusations it does not know how to deal with, and the Church takes whatever the world inflicts on it, and in this way undergoes a long Lent, a Passover. Today we will look at how the Church stands, dwells and abides. The Church is constituted by the resurrection now and in eternity. Christ is the rock. The Church stands on this rock while the tide rages around and strips away whatever does not belong to it. Though everything else disappears, the Church remains. For these many centuries, the Christian people have stood in here in this city, while the world gathers around or scatters from it. Do not imagine that the Church was once some vast political power: in every age Christians have been, at most, the ‘salt’ and the ‘yeast’, and have very often made their contribution against great resistance. 2. Christ raises man Christ lifts man to God and God receives man from Christ. God has taken hold of man, holds him now, and will hold him finally in an eternal relationship. In this eucharist Christ raises mankind and offers him to God, who receives him so that he is sustained forever in his holy communion. In this prayer and act of elevation we have a snapshot of the eternal relationship of man to God: we are lifted up to God and received by him. We said that the first aspect of the eucharist was the gathering of the body of Christ, the second was the giving and opening of that 1

body, the third was its sending. Now the fourth aspect is that this body is raised and perfected by Christ. Christ lifts man and all creation with him, and this raising and offering is his service. Christ serves: he serves God, and he serves us. We glimpse his twofold service in each service of Christian worship. We even participate in this unceasing service of his for, in this eucharist, we are also able to offer Christ to God, and to offer ourselves to one another, and to offer ourselves to the world as his body. Christ is dressing us with his own glory. When we are gathered here in Christ, the whole communion of God and so all the Christians who have been and who will be, are present to us. Christ brings them to us and enables to receive them from him, and so he is raising and glorifying his Church. The Church that is pushed down is lifted up by Christ – mind you, only the Church that is pushed down will be raised. 3. Public service The Christian community sings the worship of God, and this involves it in periodic withdrawal from the world. Through this worship and withdrawal, Christians develop self-judgment, self-discipline and selfgovernment. We saw that the leaders of civil society clustered gathered around the Church because they knew that they benefited from the practices of self-judgment, self-restraint and selfgovernment that are practised by the Church. The love and mutual service of Christians flows out of the Church and into public service. Their self-government and public service creates civil society. Because this nation and its rulers have listened to this Godworshipping community, and received, at least at second-hand, the judgment and forgiveness of God, our national history has been a movement, slow and erratic, from tribalism and violence to unity and peace. Government is that particular form of public service that allows us to serve and provide for one another. A government preserves the conditions in which everyone of us can act well by reducing the obstacles to our own generous and public action. It does not provide for us what we can provide for one another. The Church commends our public servants and encourages them to serve us well. But the Church does not tell people to be good, or shout at governments or suggest that more funding is the solution to any problem. Christian baptism makes us self-controlled persons, no longer entirely propelled by our passions. Christians understand that, because our passions are primarily ours, each of us is our own worst enemy. No one can do as much harm to us as we can do to ourselves. As long as we blame others for not giving us what we demand, we endanger ourselves and endanger our environment too.

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The ability to say ‘no’ to our own immediate desires is the irreplaceable gift given to Christians. It is the first step to freedom. Only when we manage some self-mastery, can we act well towards one another. The true judge can release us from our sin and give us mastery of our passions. Through baptism we are freed to love and to act. We can act first for ourselves, then for our families and then more widely. We may become disciples, and givers of ourselves, and freely embrace an evangelical poverty. Only through Christian baptism and within this Christian community and its discipleship are we freed to acquire this self-control. This baptism means that we are no longer driven by ‘needs’, or by resentment, so we are no longer consumers, or victims or service-users, and this has immediate and positive political, economic and ecological outworking. As long as at least some in it receive the justice and forgiveness of God, this nation will find the resources to recover from these crises. But if it has no appetite for the disciplines of self-government things will not continue as before. Without hearing this truth this nation will meander back towards violence and tribalism again. 4. Panicked society Many are ready to agree that our society is not doing very well at the moment. But who would be so tactless, so insensitive, as to suggest that societies can die? Who but us? It is exactly the job of the Church to ask our society whether it wants to live, or wants to die. We are anxious. Our leaders are concerned that we could talk ourselves into terminal decline. They want to talk us out of our fears, so they assure us that with these strong international policy initiatives and some patience, things will right themselves. They are mistaken. Things do not right themselves, because the economy is not some vast mechanism that turns around on its own, but it is just the sum of our acts. Some of our fears are well-founded. Only prolonged examination of the attitudes and behaviour of everyone of us, exposure to judgment and our repentance, can help us avoid the worst consequences of our own actions. Liberal democracy is anchored in the great tradition of Christian political thought and practice. Parts of this vast tradition are always being bowdlerised into different agendas and slogans, but it nonetheless belongs to the Church, that is, to the community of Christian discipline and discipleship. This tradition of ethics makes sense within that community. Outside, it has only a derived sense. Here we have individual campaigns against poverty, for the environment, against capitalism, for regulation. As long as we are angry about other people’s sins, without asking for forgiveness and release from our own, all our politics is mere self-disgust and shouting. Without exposure to the truth, to which the Church is

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witness, this society’s distress will increase and our passions become less constrained. The society that does not acknowledge this elementary principle of self-government does not allow its government to remain within its own proper limits. We all push government beyond its mandate. Because we cannot say ‘no’ to ourselves we do not deign to receive a ‘no’ from any other authority. Each interest group claims to be needy and neglected: it claims its bailout, and no appears on behalf of the state to be anyone strong enough to resist. As often as we go to the government we extend and over-extend the powers of government, and reduce its real authority and legitimacy, and push government and society as a whole a little further towards political paralysis and economic bankruptcy. The previously doughty capitalists of our financial industries have got in the on the act, assuming that national governments will also save them from the consequences of their actions. They have come to abandoning any intrinsic self-control and so given up investment for gambling. The unprecedented recklessness of some finance houses may have reached to large-scale fraud, so we cannot tell how truthful any balance sheet is. Our financial leaders have not only been able to interpret the codes to make their own selfregulation ineffective, but though some may have broken the law, the ‘cognitive capture’ of government by finance means that no charges have been brought. The relationship between corporations, banks and government has become so intimate that the foundational covenant of government with people is threatened by it. Without the processes that are both legal – trial, conviction and punishment – and moral – judgment, repentance, and eventual forgiveness – there will be no restoration of confidence. Since they have decided that they cannot receive, however much at second-hand, the self-government that originates with the Church, our political leaders are in a panic. The state that does not acknowledge the primacy of self-government is trying to push the Church out of the public square. It tells the Church that it is merely one ‘faith community’ among others. But the Church replies that, though there be many faith communities, there is only one that threatens us. The government that is over-extended and looks round for ideological justification for why it should become more so, is itself a ‘faith community’. Because they do not condescend to recognise the covenant from which all our many distinct covenants come, everything governments do substitutes for our own love and initiative and action. Their equality agenda attempts to flatten every specific covenant, bringing each individual into direct relationship with the state, so that the relationship each of us has with the state is more important than any other relationship that we have inherited or entered freely. Their determination to solve our problems drives

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them to do things for us and instead of us, so taking away our motivation to do things for one another or for ourselves. Christians do not encourage anyone to turn to the state, particularly when excessive demands become pillage of the state. Only the Christian finally has the resources to prevent himself from making himself dependent on the state and assimilated by it, for the sake of all others. The society that cannot restrain its demands has created this bloated and weakened state. If our demands push the state into bankruptcy, we may see an economic and political breakdown so severe that there is no state for the truly needy among us to resort to. Then we will only have each other. And the Church. 5. Communication For decades, even generations, our society has been carried forward by the momentum built up by earlier generations. Now that momentum is lost, the more ideological of our political leaders are tempted to believe that our further progress is held back by the Church, the very community through which all that momentum and social capital came. Outside the Church there are all the means of communication but less and less ability to weigh the truth, and difficulty, and joy of being human. There is plenty of technology, but little understanding of the integrity and dignity of the person. There is little to say, but much shrillness in saying it; the world jabbers feverishly. There is no end to their imprecations because they have no certainty about what they should say or that they are heard. They need to hear from you. Our politicians and media are not the experts. You are the experts, for to you has been given this gift of Christian discipleship. When you are gathered in worship, the Lord is here, all previous generations of Christians here with you, and the whole assembly of God sits in judgment to discover truth. Two weeks ago I said that the Church has to withdraw in order to receive its purification, to be restored as this holy community with its distinctive voice. We have to receive what our predecessors in this faith passed on to us. What they gave us was this Prayer Book, this Lectionary and Scripture and Hymn Book, these buildings, these practices and this discipleship, and this hard-learned gladness, this Eucharist, by which we confess the resurrection. They passed on this faith and this worship. We worship here, we sing and pray these words, and between times we may consider and practise what we sing and say in our worship. You do not need any outside expertise here. Christian discipleship is spiritual and intellectual discipleship. It is for us to name the powers. One side is fear and anger, on the other, faith, hope and love. There is war between these powers, fought in

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part by dedicated lives engaged in a battle of ideas. For a long time we have fed off the banal and trite, ‘values’ and ‘faith’ as in ‘faith community’. But this faith brings us up before the truth. It invites us to come and die. So let us put some deep wells down to reach our aquifers. Let us draw on what has been saved up by long-ago generations, the social capital of the Church, the ‘merit of the saints’. We will need it, because British society is about to wage a long tug of war, against itself, and the Church will be in the middle. 6. The Church in London We celebrate the resurrection before London, in the open air and on the street in every festival of the Church. This Sunday, Palm Sunday, churches all over London will process through the streets. Next week is Holy Week. Night falls. The narrow defile of Lent turns into a low passageway through which we have to crawl. On Good Friday we will follow the Lord to edge of the abyss, and there we are halted. Only he can proceed. Then it looks as though even he has been stopped, as though he has met something more powerful than he. If the way is closed to him, he is buried and we are too. But come Saturday evening we look again and see that he has gone. The Lord has broken through. He is risen, he is not here. Nothing in all creation can stop him and nothing can put us beyond his reach. So Christ forges on and takes his people with him through all time. On Easter morning we will gather on the steps of our cathedral, and then process inside to receive through baptism those whom the Lord is adding to our number. Centuries long Christians have walked and sung from every church to every church in London, and from the visible form of the Church to the withdrawn form, and back again, and so the body of Christ is made visible for London. All London is our holy way. As long as the Christians process and sing, the culture of this country will receive the vital transfusion of truth that it needs, political life will revive and our economy will stagger on. As long as the Christians give thanks, their confidence will meet the morbidity of our culture and the death of this society will be forestalled. Everything outside the Church changes. But here a body of people stand, and watch and wait. We are on guard duty. We look for every sign of the reconciliation and redemption of humankind and for the coming of the Lord. We look out for the threats and dangers to this society; when new agendas pop up making our politics shriller, we issue our warning about false messiahs. This little army of the Church does not shoot back but simply takes the in-coming missiles. The world throws them because it is in pain, and will be in pain for as long as its fights the inevitability of its own repentance. But though, to the world, it never looks strong, the Church is never is broken. Shoulder to shoulder with us here, the whole Christian Church stands here for all ages. Look at the reredos, that panel

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behind the altar. It is shaped to resemble the temple in Jerusalem, at the centre of which is a door. Christ is that doorway, beyond which the whole company of heaven waits for us. East over that altar we look towards the whole company of heaven. Though we cannot see them, they see us. They are the whole communion of God, and we are that part of that communion that is presently visible to the world. Next week your bishop will be here. You will greet him as Christ. This is how you should treat every Christian, but we can make a start with this particular Christian. Take hold of your bishop and ask for his wisdom and his blessing and do not let him go until he gives it to you. On Maundy Thursday, he will get down on his knees and wash the feet of his priests, removing from them the burdens that they have accrued over the year in service to us. They and he work under acute threat from temptations to which their service to us exposes them. Like Aaron he will anoint them, so that they can carry our sins and remain pure. For your sake the Bishop is the presence of Christ made visible, Christ who has become your servant, got down on his knees before you, who washes and serves you now and will do always. The Gospel tells us that the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified, and he, when he is lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to himself. As long as the Church remains faithful, and is not conformed to the world, our society will survive. The Church will prolong our society’s life. For as long as the Church acts as the salt the world will be preserved, and as long as the Church is the leaven the world is raised. Every time we meet together we practise our gospel together and receive a little more from this resurrection. It raises us to love. The long-term political and social outcome of this love, is a society that is confident, in which people take the risk of restraining themselves so that they can give themselves utterly to one another. In anticipation of this great resurrection in which Christ raises us all to God and to one another, we will gather again on Easter morning and, for the sake of our entire society, we will say ‘Christ is risen’.

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