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Ninety years ago today, at 11.00am on the 11th day of the eleventh month, after two minutes of silence, King George V dedicated the Cenotaph, newly designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens. Then the body of the “Unknown Warrior”, one of millions of young men whose remains could never be identified after the dreadful carnage of the “Great War”, was taken in state to lie in Westminster Abbey.

It seems a happy coincidence (except, of course, that there is no such thing as coincidence under the providence of God) that today is also the feast of St Martin of Tours. He was named for Mars, the god of war, and was a 4th century soldier, of whom the legend is told that he encountered a naked beggar, and impulsively cut his military cloak in half and gave it to the man to cover himself. That night, he had a dream in which he saw Christ clad in the half-cloak; and that was apparently the moment of his conversion, the discovery that Christians have always made, that in serving the poor they serve Christ. Martin turned his back on a military career; and when threatened with imprisonment on a charge of cowardice for refusing to fight, offered to go out into the front line carrying no weapons at all; and as it turned out, the invading army turned on their heels and retreated.

Another happy “coincidence” is that the legend is neatly recorded in a relief sculpture by Eric Gill in the only building in Oxford that was designed by Lutyens. As a result of this vision, Martin became a monk and eventually a bishop, and eventually died a most impressive death, not in war, but calmly giving his soul to God on his way back from resolving a squabble between clerics in a particular parish. It is no exaggeration to say that the effects of his ministry are still powerfully detectable in his part of France, 17 centuries later.

The skills and dispositions that make a good soldier are, I suspect, the same as those that make a good saint. The readings for today give us a hint as to how it goes. In the first reading, Paul, now an old man and in prison (and undeniably looking for sympathy as part of his strategy), is endeavouring to persuade his friend Philemon to treat a fellow-Christian, who happens to be a slave, not as a slave, a thing, a possession, but as a fellow human being, a fellow-saint. It is a charming letter, read only today, alas, in the entire year of the Catholic lectionary; and it is certainly the place to start your study of St Paul. In the letter, Philemon is congratulated for “giving rest and refreshment for the bowels of the saints”. It is a most delicate, and presumably irresistible (or it would not have survived – Philemon would have torn it up and thrown it into the trash-can), piece of persuasion. What Philemon is invited to do is to see things, and people, differently, and not visit upon Onesimus (the slave in question), the violence that he is entitled to receive and Philemon to administer. And we have, all of us, to recognise inside us those tendencies to violence, those moments when hitting someone or killing them or chopping bits off them, seems, deceptively, to be the only answer.

Violence is also in the air in the gospel that you have just heard: Jesus is being badgered by Pharisees to say “When is the Kingdom of God coming?”; and his answer is that “It doesn’t come by watching”. Instead of trying to read the cosmic weather-forecast and give the definite timetable that they are looking for, he suggests to them, and to us, that “The Kingdom of God is within you”, that is to say, inside you; or “among you”, that is to say somewhere in that group of religiously-minded Pharisees, or, come to that, religiously-minded members of Worcester College, Oxford. And sometimes, Jesus reminds us, it will be obscure: “you will long to see a day of the Son of Man and won’t see it. People will tell you, ‘Look! There!’ or ‘Look! Here!’; but he will come like a flash of lightning, from one end of the sky to the other”. Then the reading ended on an ominous tone, “First the Son of Man has to suffer much violence, and be rejected by this generation”. We shiver, but should take comfort in Jesus’ certainty that God is in charge.

And what of you, who will shortly march forth from this college and university to run the world? The lesson is clear: your generation must eschew the seductions of violence; like Philemon, you must learn to see other people as human beings and not as things. Like Jesus, and like St Martin of Tours, I regret to say, you must be prepared to endure violence visited upon you. But like both Martin and Jesus, you must know that God is in charge of our world, with all its shadows and frailties and ambiguities. And, one day, for sure, you will find yourself clothing the homeless and naked beggar and discovering that it was, after all, Christ whom you were serving; one day, it will become true that in the prophet’s words, “They shall not learn war any more”.

Fr. Nicholas King
11th November 2010

Saints bother me and I’m not quite sure why.

It is not difficult to describe what a Saint is. A Saint is one

· By whom God’s Word speaks to the World
· By whom God’s Light shines on the World
· By whom God’s Life lives in the World.

Furthermore, we have little difficulty defining who the Saints are, given that they feature on a year by year/ week by week/ day by day basis in our liturgical calendar. In addition to those named there are also those who are known to each one of us as guides and mentors to us in our own journeys of faith and discipleship. They, too, are numbered amongst the Saints. By no means least, the New Testament does not shirk from naming all people of faith as Saints even if, in effect, we are simply re-cycled sinners!

All that is well and good, so why do Saints still bother me?

I think it is because we have turned them into spiritual celebrities – Christians with the X-Factor when X equals super-holy and otherworldly.

The rot set in quite early.

In the first and second centuries of the Christian era it was the way they died which determined who would be a Saint – martyrdom was the gateway to sainthood. But soon not only how you died but how you lived began to define a Saint, and especially one living a life of self-imposed hardship – a kind of living death if you like.

Then throw into the mix the belief that Saints could intercede for us in order that we may be found fit for heaven rather than hell. Now they were venerated less for what they did in their lives and more for what they could do in ours.

The Protestant Reformers generally rejected the cult of the Saints and taught people to stick to Scripture as the gateway to salvation rather than seeking to piggy-back into heaven on the backs of those who have gone before us. Typically, Anglicans chose a middle way by electing to remember year on year a hand-picked selection of pre-Reformation Saints whilst at the same time deciding not to add to their number. We Anglicans operate a sort of mixed economy when it comes to celebrating Sainthood so that we affirm the New Testament view that all Christians are Saints, whilst also affirming that some Christians are more saintly than others!

This is all a bit of a muddle, but it’s not that which bothers me – being in a bit of a muddle is what makes being an Anglican so much fun.

No, I think I am bothered because we have gradually drifted away from Saints as defined by their deaths, and recruited them to the ranks of life-coaches i.e. people who can show us how to live, when what we really need are lessons in how to die.

When sainthood was about martyrdom then it was about teaching us something about the Christian way of death. Over time it has come to be more about Saints teaching us the Christian way of life and important though that is, this shift in emphasis has colluded with modern day fear of death and refusal to talk about it. The eve of All Saints – Hallowe’en – has become a mere rehearsal for the Pantomime season, and Saints have been reduced to somewhat saccharine and anaemic mannequins in a spiritual lifestyle fashion parade.

That is why it is good to remind ourselves that All Saints Day is followed by All Souls Day – the day when we commemorate the faithful departed. This enables our death-denying and death-defying culture to recapture that full-on approach to death which the original cult of Saints managed to capture and which we have sadly lost.

So Saints bother me, or rather, the way the cult of Saints has developed bothers me. But a verse from one of the Psalms comes to my rescue:

“Precious in the sight of the Lord
is the death of His faithful servant” (Psalm 116 verse 8)

We would do well to re-capture that sense of death as precious – something to be venerated, or even sometimes celebrated as it was in the case of the early Saints, rather than death being shunted into a siding so as to be both out of sight and out of mind.

Dying is a lifetime’s work if you do it properly, and thank God for the Saints who are those faithful servants whose deaths are precious not only in the sight of the Lord, but in the sight of those of us who are not only dying to live well, but living to die well.

May God give us grace to follow His Saints in faith and hope and love, and to follow them through the adventure of death and so join them in the eternal song of heaven:

“Hallelujah! The Lord our God, sovereign over all, has entered on His reign! Let us rejoice and shout for joy.” (Revelation chapter 19 verse 6).

May God Bless you as you seek to live your lives so that, as with the Saints of old, you will not be afraid to die.

Rt Rev Dr John Saxbee, Bishop of Lincoln
31st October 2010

How might we assess and respond to the Government’s long awaited Spending Review? Not perhaps a question that you would expect Jesus to be addressing in first century Palestine. And indeed he’s not – at least not directly. But today’s Gospel reading has a striking relevance.
Since George Osborne’s statement in the House of Commons on Wednesday a political row has been raging over the idea of ‘fairness’. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has weighed in saying the cuts are regressive. Nick Clegg responded by backing the Chancellor and saying the cuts are progressive, meaning the richest will bear their fair share of pain.
We might join in with the Teacher in Ecclesiastes who in apparent despondency brands it all “Meaningless…” But in our Gospel reading we discover what might be a more positive response.
Jesus too is embroiled in a political debate. The Pharisees we are told by the writer, have just heard that Jesus has dealt a significant political blow to their coalition partners, the Sadducees. He has also just had a couple of skirmishes with the disciples of the Pharisees and the Herodians over taxation.
There is a big discussion going on. On the one side is the uneasy coalition: the Sadducees, the Herodians and other parties who are in bed with the Romans. They, for obvious reasons, think it is OK to pay taxes to Caesar. On the other are groups such as the Zealots, who believe that paying taxes to Caesar is collaboration and tantamount to treachery.
So whose side is Jesus on? Does Jesus support the coalition or does he side with the opposition? Jesus is set a political trap, the Gospel writer tells us. And whatever answer he gives it seems, he will be damned. He’s either going to be seen as a collaborator or a dangerous subversive.
Jesus, however, confounds them with his response, and refocuses the political agenda. Cutting to the heart of the matter he holds up a coin and asks whose head is on it. It is of course Caesar’s. “Then give to Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s” he says.
In contemporary terms, it’s a bit like asking if you support the Government. Jeremy Paxman wants a straight answer – “yes, or no”. But the issues are complex, and Jesus instead refocuses the discussion. What is the basis of your question? Who is ultimately important here – is it God or Caesar? What are the values involved? What are God’s priorities? These are the kinds of questions that Jesus’ response throws up.
Theologians have debated what exactly Jesus meant on the question of taxation. But whatever was meant, it seems to have confounded the questioners. So the Pharisees have determined to lay another political trap.
And this time, it’s a bit like Osborne’s spending review. They are trying to get Jesus to set out his priorities. If he’s so clever, then what does he think is most important? Is it child benefit and working families tax credit? (Honouring one’s father and mother?) Is it the Ministry of Justice and frontline policing? (Thou shalt not steel?) Should the age of Sabbath rest be raised to 66?
Jesus once again refuses to accept the premises of their questions. He goes instead to the heart of the matter. First and foremost this should be about love – love of God and love of neighbour.
The idea of love seems ill-suited to realpolitik both then and now. But moving swiftly forward to 21st Century Britain we might conclude that contemporary debate is more or less on the right lines. The discussion about cuts after all seems to be revolving around ideas of ‘fairness’. This debate is all about love of neighbour and how we treat each other. We’re all in this together after all. The only disagreement is whether the spending review has achieved the fairness that we all hoped it would.
But all is perhaps not as it seems.
As the writer of Ecclesiastes suggests hopefully:
“God will bring every deed into judgment,
including every hidden thing,
whether it is good or evil.”
Indeed, this is what Jesus has also been doing in his responses to the questions that have been posed. He has been drawing out and revealing what really lies beneath the debates into which his opponents have sought to draw him.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies too could even perhaps be interpreted as doing God’s work, as it seeks to expose the potential impact of the Government’s cuts. It has attempted to reveal those hidden things which we might not have otherwise spotted. And there is an important tradition of speaking truth to power into which it falls.
But a closer examination of the ideas of ‘fairness’ which are being used by all sides, suggests that everyone may be somewhat at odds with a Christian conception of fairness.
When Herodians ask the question about taxation and the Pharisees ask about the law, Jesus’ response brings into sharp relief how their priorities and perspective are intimately related to how they understand God and how they treat those around them – their neighbours.
‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.'[a] 38This is the first and greatest commandment. 39And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself
Jesus brought the politics of 2000 years ago into question. If we allow him, he might bring the spending review under close scrutiny too.
In the Christian tradition, ‘fairness’, is that which is found in the character of God. The extent of our love and devotion to God is evident in how that fairness is demonstrated in the treatment of our neighbours.
Christianity holds too that all are made in God’s image. And consequently, fairness demands that there is a special and particular regard for the vulnerable, the weak, the poor and the excluded.
We are all in this together. Yes. But God’s approach suggests not simply that the rich should carry an equal, or even greater burden. When considered in God’s light the bar is raised still higher. The question becomes whether the poorest and most vulnerable should be shouldering any of the burden at all. True fairness, incorporating the Christian idea of bias to the poor, might be better seen as the poorest being protected completely and entirely. Indeed, God’s fairness might demand that the poorest emerge even better off, than before the spending review began.
So what might Jesus’ response be to a question about Government cuts? Jesus might not be drawn into the budget setting on a department by department basis. But perhaps, as was his habit, he might use an example or tell us a story.
He might tell us about a man. A man who is on the minimum wage. It’s just gone up by 13p an hour and that gives him £237 for a 40 hour week to live on and support his family. That doesn’t go far these days so he is grateful for the housing benefit and the controlled rent. Mind you, the area he lives in isn’t that great. But it’s the only one he can afford to live in. You can’t really be choosy when you don’t have cash to spare. So far there have been plenty of police on the beat to keep the anti-social stuff under control. But with the cuts in the policing budget and the freeze on recruitment, he is starting to become frightened.
He’s particularly anxious about what might happen to his children. He wants them to grow up without getting into trouble or getting hurt. He’d like to move away to an area where they’ll be safer and the schools are a bit better. The trouble is, he can’t imagine where he might go. Social housing seems to be getting scarcer, and buying is unaffordable. Even now if something were to happen to put his rent up it would be hard to imagine how he would cope. He’s already anxious about the cost of keeping the place warm this winter.
His eldest though is doing really well at school; she’d like to stay on, do ‘A’ levels, go to university. But it’s going to stretch his means. The £30 ‘staying on’ grant has been done away with so he’s not sure how he will find the money to buy her books, what with the fares for the travel into work going up, the increase in VAT and his own pay freeze.
And come to that, his job isn’t too secure either. He’s heard that benefits are being cut too. He loves kids, and would have loved to have had more, but that would have been irresponsible. He wonders what the cuts will do for his existing children’s futures? He’s concerned too what the university fees are going to be like by the time his daughter is 18? Perhaps he’d better not encourage that aspiration.
He’s grateful though that the Child Tax Credit is going up £30 a year. It will help now that the £30 a week he got to help with childcare has gone. But it might mean that his wife has to give up her job because it only just covers the shortfall as it is. And it’s just possible that she might be able to help by doing a bit of cleaning work without declaring it.
And as for his elderly mother’s care, he does wonder what is going to happen to her now that the local authority is having its budget cut so severely. What will it be like if there isn’t anyone to get her up in the mornings and wash her?
Such a story would certainly help to refocus abstract debates about fairness, and highlight the need to relieve, not increase, the loads of the already burdened.

Jonathan Bartley, Co-Director of the Christian Think Tank Ekklesia
24th October 2010

Words from St. John’s Gospel: ‘You did not choose me: I chose you. I appointed you to go on and bear fruit, fruit that shall last; so that the Father may give you all that you ask in my name. This is my commandment to you: love one another.’
As I have already said, welcome back to Worcester and welcome to those who are here for the first time. As I enter my third year here as Chaplain, it seems that time, in Oxford, passes quickly and seems to become condensed somehow. I realised the other day, that this is the year when I will see third year undergraduates leave, the ones that started at this college with me in 2008. This is also, sadly, the beginning of the Provost’s last year as Head of House, and so it is a significant and poignant year. But we are not to be downcast, for I also suspect it will be a great year in many ways and it is auspicious perhaps, that today is the 10th day or the 10th month of 2010. So the numerologists, and those of a superstitious nature, tell us that it is the luckiest day of the year and likely to be the last properly sunny day. It must be true, because I heard it on the news! We shall see.
But I want to begin this first sermon of the academic year by testing your knowledge, bearing in mind that everyone here is well educated. The simple question is this. Can you tell me where this literary quotation comes from? The first one to give the answer will win a prize afterwards. If you don’t get it the first time, I shall give you a clue the second time. Here it is, and I quote: ‘It is our choices … that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities’. Anyone? Here it is for a second time with a clue inserted: ‘It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than out abilities.’ Of course it is from Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling published in 1998, p. 245. Words spoken by Professor Dumbledore.
If you did not manage to guess correctly, do not worry, for not everyone is an expert in popular culture. Next Friday I will take part in a village quiz, and my team is entirely composed of Church of England Clergy: a Canon Professor and Principal of a theological college, another College Chaplain, a Professor at Oxford who is also a clergyman, a vicar and myself. We must know something, you might think. But I tested one of them the other day. I said ‘Can you tell me, for instance, who was the last person or group to win the X Factor?’. He replied: ‘What’s the X Factor?’ Oh, dear!
But I digress. Let us examine the wisdom of another Professor, Professor Dumbledore. ‘It is our choices that show what we truly are’. If this is true, it begs a question of each one of us tonight. What decisions have we made in our lives that have brought us, by twists and turns, to where we are right now? I don’t mean simply deciding to come to Chapel this evening, although may I commend you on an excellent choice is so doing, but the hundreds of other choices that have formed us: our parents’ choice of where we were brought up and where we went to school; the choice of friends we make; the subjects we chose to take and those we decided to reject; our A level choices; our decision to go into higher education and so on and so on … And why choose Worcester College? The wonderful grounds and buildings, the friendly reputation, the teaching, the sport or the music? Or is it more that Worcester chose you: chose you to study here, or chose you for a certain sporting team, or chose you to sing in the choir as a student or as a boy chorister. And what does Worcester expect in return? What fruit are we expecting you to bear? Academic success, sporting excellence, a glittering career? Great expectations indeed. I was saying the other day that it is difficult to find the right words to describe the work/life balance needed in a place like this. One finds oneself oscillating between saying ‘Don’t worry, enjoy life and all that Oxford has to offer’ and ‘But do work hard’ ‘but don’t worry …’ etc.
But there is a different kind of choice that puts all of this into perspective. And it is not hard for me to find the words, because, as is so often the case, Christ has the words, and the gospel turns the wisdom of the world upside down. Jesus says: ‘You did not choose me: I chose you.’ I find these words very comforting, because they demonstrate to me that in the dilemmas and struggles of everyday life, I am not alone, that I am loved by God regardless of how I am feeling and that his Spirit is at work in us. It is the primary work of God’s love for us that gives us strength to do good. I particularly love this version of the greatest commandment in John 15, because it does not say ‘Love one another as you love yourself’, which is sometimes a very difficult concept, but ‘Love one another as I have loved you’. The love of Christ, self-giving and sacrificial, is not only our model, but also our impetus and our strength. We are able to love because he loved us first and, although taking the road of selfless love can often be hard, we will always be given sufficient grace for the task.
Moreover, the consequences of this love in action is the bearing of fruit: the kind of fruit that we hear about in St. Paul’s letter to the Galatians that the fruit of the Spirit is patience, self control, joy, love, peace, faithfulness, gentleness, goodness and kindness. And the consequence of this work of God is joy ‘I have spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and your joy complete.’ The consequence of our response to the love of God is life in all its fullness.
In 2006 I heard a series of radio interviews entitled: Humphries in Search of God, which have now been published as a book, in which John Humphries, the grumpy one from the Today programme, talked, as a non-believer, about faith to key religious leaders. The Response of Rowan Williams to one of Humphries’s question aptly summarizes the notion that God chose us: his love is there for us. Williams said:
‘The gift of God is there for you … God stands at the door and knocks and if you don’t fully open the door you are not fully in the company of God’. The fundamental question, Rowan said, was, can you respond to the notion that ‘you are the object of an unconditional eternal love which values you in such a way that your contribution, as you, to the world is uniquely precious to the one who made it.’
I hope that you all have a great year, and whatever you have to contribute to this college, or your school or your workplace may bring fulfilment and joy. I hope that you may find the courage to love one another as Christ loved you. And I hope that whatever choices you make, be they wise ones or mistakes, that you may meditate on the life-giving truth that, before all the complex decisions of life began and before all difficult choices were presented, God Chose You. How you respond is up to you.

Rev Dr Jonathan Arnold, Chaplain
10th October 2010

In 1989, when I came up to Oxford as an undergraduate at St. Peter’s I was told on my matriculation day, by a certain Francis Warner, an English Don there, that it was the second best day of my life. ‘Second best’? We wondered? When it came to graduation day a few years later, we were, of course told, ‘Welcome to the best day of your lives.’

Indeed, these ceremonies contained a kind of greatness in them: a sense of grandeur, pride of the achievement and of a journey completed. And, rightly, Francis was alluding to the college family that I had joined, and of which I would always be a member, just as those who leave this term, will always have a family here at Worcester.

But I have to admit that, like many of you here I am sure, the days that are supposed to be the best are often not so. I have many happier memories of Oxford than matriculation or graduation, fine though they were, and many happy memories from my time before and after being a student here.

In fact, the happiest and most significant times in life steal upon us from nowhere and we find ourselves in a state of joy or peace or happiness, only realising the fact just as the moment slips away.

One such moment is beautifully captured in Evelyn Warre’s Brideshead revisited, when he tells the story of Charles and Sebastian’s impromptu drive into the countryside with wine and strawberries as their only provision. When Sebastian suddenly turns the car into a dirt track, a moment, seemingly insignificant, becomes very special: Charles recalls the moment when he is older:

‘We ate the strawberries and drank the wine. As Sebastian promised, they were delicious together. The fumes of the sweet golden wine seemed to lift us a finger’s breadth above the turf and hold us suspended.

‘Just the place to bury a crock of gold.’ Sebastian said, ‘I should like to bury something precious in every place that I have been happy. So that when I am old and ugly and miserable I could come and dig it up, and remember.’

We may have experienced such moments whilst here in Oxford or elsewhere. I’m sure all of us can relate to that fleeting feeling of being lifted slightly out of the ordinary, only to find that the moment is gone. But, although our lives may be linear, and that an ending in one place only serves to bring about a new beginning in another, it is perhaps worth remembering that our experiences also combine within us so that our present selves, in the here and now, are a culmination of the all that we have been, what we are, and all the potential of the future. This is captured in T.S. Eliot’s poem ‘Burnt Norton’ from the first of his Four Quartets.

“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.”

In these long poems Eliot explores the nature of time and how all existence, past, present and future is only explicable in the eternal. Therefore, the true way of living is to recognise the present – the reality of the time we are in. The past is a living memory within us, the future is our potential. But, now is the only time that matters, for it is the only time we have.

To engage with God is to engage with timelessness, that our present experience now encapsulates everything that has gone before and everything that is to come, because God, timeless creator of time and our creator, is the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.

This last week of term will mark a parting of the ways, like that of Abram’s words to Lot: ‘If you go to the left, I’ll go to the right; if you go to the right, I’ll go to the left.’
But I implore you also to remember the words of Jesus tonight: ‘Do you bring in a lamp to put it under a bowl or a bed? Instead, don’t you put it on its stand?’ For what we have learned here at Worcester College, whether that be through good times or bad, is not just for our own edification, it is for the good of those who are less fortunate than ourselves: the poor, the sick, the outcasts in society, for those who have not received an education. This does not mean that everyone will enter into a so-called caring profession, but it is incumbent upon every one of us to take what has been given to us and use it for the good of our neighbour and to the glory of God.

With the privilege of belonging to the family of Worcester College, comes the responsibility to help others, to let our light, whatever that may be, to shine out in the world. Therefore, I urge you, to remember to bring all that you have to each present moment, of how you and others exist within it and how you can help those in need, knowing that, just as the eternal Christ came before us, and lived among us, he goes ahead of us in all that we do.

All we need to do now is to bring our whole selves as we are to God with the intention of meeting the eternal God in this very moment, in this very Chapel where many of you have worshipped for the past few years.

As T.S. Eliot puts it in the last of his Four Quartets, ‘Little Gidding’:

If you came this way,
Taking any route, starting from anywhere,
At any time or at any season,
It would always be the same: you would have to put off
Sense and notion. You are not here to verify,
Instruct yourself, or inform curiosity
Or carry report. You are here to kneel
Where prayer has been valid.

I pray that, as you journey onward, we ask forgiveness where we have failed you; we give thanks for all you have given us; we assure you of our love and prayers. As you experience the pain of change, and the insecurity of moving on, we pray that you may also experience the blessing of inner growth. And, as you meet the poor, the pained, and the stranger on the way, we pray that you may see in each one the face of Christ. As you walk through the good times and the bad, we pray that you may never lose sight of the shelter of God’s loving arms and that the peace of Christ may reign in your heart.

Amen.

Rev Dr Jonathan Arnold, Chaplain
13th June 2010

Today’s feast is, you may feel, a very Catholic one, associated with some very kitsch art, and some undesirable sentimentality, and not at all appropriate for the setting of a university given over to the things of the mind. But in fact I’d like to suggest that it is a feast that speaks to you precisely in your search for truth (and I hope it is that, and not those elusive alphas, that you are seeking in your weekly essays). The devotion to the Sacred Heart, often linked with a devotion to the Five Wounds of Christ, goes back as an individual devotion to 11th Century, received great impetus from the visions of Margaret Mary Alacocque in the 17th century, and has been universal in the Catholic Church since 1856. And it is, let us be clear about it, a feast about love, not sentimentality; but in the course of its history it has provided a corrective, and should for us today provide a corrective, to the austerities of purely intellectual pursuits, which can turn into a rather dangerous and unlovely power game.

What the feast does is to celebrate God’s passionate pursuit of the human race, God’s com-passion for suffering humanity, the power of love in an age that drearily exalts the intellect. That passion of God is beautifully expressed in the first reading that you have just heard. The context is that of Ezekiel’s terrible condemnation of the “shepherds of Israel” (by whom he means the political and religious leaders – and you might ask yourselves whether he would not say the same today), who have fed themselves rather than their sheep. In response, Ezekiel hears God say, “I will search from my sheep, I will bring them out, I will gather them, I will feed them, I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the crippled and I will strengthen the weak… I will feed them in justice.” These are words to make us quail; for this is a God who will do what society’s leaders should be doing, and who will then demand an account of us for how we have exercised their leadership. And it is no good nodding wisely and saying, “Yeah – right on, Ezekiel. You just tell those bishops and cabinet ministers where they get off”. For it is every one of you here tonight to whom those words are addressed, for it is you, because of your expensive education, who are challenged to look after the strayed and the weak and the crippled and the lost. The challenge will not be “Did you get a First or a Blue?” but “Did you look after my special ones?” And who are the special ones? They are those who fall through the net of our society, the homeless whom we rush past on the streets, the drug addicts whom you saw making their transaction today in Bonn Square, the person in your college whom no one will talk to.

And we mutter guiltily to ourselves, “That’s really not my problem – it’s all their fault, anyway.” But that simply won’t do, as that beautiful second reading makes clear, for Christ died for us when we were precisely in that condition of weakness: we are God’s “special ones”. It comes from that bit of the Letter to the Romans when Paul has worked through a good deal of the difficult argumentation, and is now trying to give us, and that divided church in Rome, our grounds for hope. And our grounds for hope are precisely what God has done in Christ. The measure of it is Christ’s death: and there is nothing easy about death, especially, as Paul remarks elsewhere, that appalling death on the cross, and especially when it is done on behalf of no-hopers, people who are a waste of space. For it is they who are God’s special ones, who have been, in the terms of the metaphor which surfaced three times towards the end of that reading, “reconciled”. Our sanest response to the situation in which we live is, quite simply, gratitude. And once we see that, then at last we grasp who the no-hopers are, those whom we so readily avoid. They are ourselves, and any human who ever felt pushed out of the centre where it all happens. They are there before us, these special ones of God – for they are ourselves.

That is what is going on in the gospel reading that you have just heard. The setting is that astonishing 15th chapter of Luke’s Gospel, with its three stories of parties being thrown in heaven to celebrate the recovery of what had been lost. You know them all (and if you don’t, then I suggest that you read them tonight before going back to the demands of your essay): the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Lost (or Prodigal) Son and his Unfortunate Elder Brother. And we should notice the setting: good religious people have been complaining about Jesus’ terrible friends: tax-collectors and sinners (Shock Horror). We might think of our own equivalents: who are the people, in your view, for whom God cannot possibly have any time? They might be immigrants, or the homeless, or pederasts or murderers, or the Cambridge Rugby team. Whoever they are for you, Jesus is here telling the story of a God who goes looking for precisely those who are on the margins of society, including, as in this evening’s gospel, the one idiot sheep that gets lost, as opposed to the ninety-nine who are comfortably, not to say complacently, ensconced in the JCR or the Library – or the Chapel. And what happens when God finds that one? He throws a wild party! This is not a God whom we can easily control, this God of love for the unlovely.

So what we celebrate today is the compassion, I have to say the absurd compassion, of a God who loves the poor and the oppressed and the marginalised. But there is more to our celebration; and this is where you come into it. For your task is to be the hands and eyes of God in our world. Your Oxford education has, believe or believe it not, put you in a place of power. But the training you have received here has given you an unparalleled ability to see through weak and specious arguments, to unmask the deceits of the Evil One, to bring to the light the dangerous allurements of power and privilege and pleasure that are so readily available, here and in the glittering careers that lie ahead of you.

and the other thing that your education has given you, or should have done, if your tutor is doing her job, is the possibility of imagining our world in a different way. If you can do that, and resist the very Oxford temptation of regarding all change as change for the worse, then something rather remarkable will happen. You will find, possibly only in retrospect, not really noticing it at the time, that you are or can turn out to have been, the presence of the compassion of God in a broken world, reaching out for the lost and the weak and the hungry, not out of useless guilt, but because they matter to God, and because when God’s special ones are brought home where they belong, then the world is a better place because it has become the world that God wants it to be. And that is what we are celebrating on this great solemnity of the Sacred Heart of Jesus.

Fr. Nicholas King
10th June 2010

We have had a wonderful year of chapel music. So, as we approach the end of this academic year, it seems appropriate to say something about the relationship between music, faith and worship. In part this is a way of thanking the choir – and the chaplain – for all they have given those of us who come to sit, listen and pray. In part it is to help us all reflect more on how music evokes a faith in quite a different way from any exhortation dependent upon the abundance of words.

So I start tonight with a visual aid: this is our alabaster candlestick which serves as a lectern, quoted by one art critic as representing an upside-down melted candle. I wonder how many of you have ever looked closely at it. This was a gift from the scholars of the college in 1865: you can see it in the writing on the base: ‘D.D. Scholares Coll. Vigor.n. A.D. MDCCCLXV’. The silver-bound lecterns on each side were also a gift – in this case, from one Charles Henry Olive Daniel, a great supporter of Burges and a Fellow of the College who was later to become Provost. The candlestick was finally placed in its present position when the work on the mosaic pavement had been completed: you can see the way it neatly separates the twelve saints of the English church from the four earlier saints of the Western church. Once situated where we have it now, it has become all but immoveable; it was taken aside when the refurbishment of the chapel took place in 2002, but other than then I have never seen it other than approximately halfway between the two pillars at the West End and the two pillars at the East end. For some, it interrupts the aesthetic sweep from the narthex up to the chancel; and for others, it is a real practical nuisance when it comes to liturgical processions and dramatic and musical performances. But it does imitate rather well the two axes of the chapel: the vertical axis is represented not only by the pillars, but also by the downward sequence of the seven scrolls and seven windows, with the fourteen frescos on each side and the seven friezes underneath; whereas the horizontal axis is represented by the words of the two canticles, one running right around the cornice and the other around the back of the benches. The candlestick has been placed more or less at the very centre of this axis right under the dome. It echoes our cross-shaped faith, pointing us to the crucifixion window at the East end.

But I wonder how many of you have really looked at this in detail. William Burges, the chapel’s architect, left us his sketch of it, in silhouette form, and it is now in the College Library. Burges had eclectic tastes, and one of them was for Renaissance Art and Architecture. He had entered competitions for designs for a church in Florence, for example, and the designs for the candlestick were undoubtedly influenced by that Quattrocento style of fourteenth century Florence – a style which in turn imitated Greek and Roman classical forms. If any of you have ever been to the Duomo in Florence, you might have seen in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo a work by Luca della Robia, dating from 1428-31, entitled ‘Cantoria’: it was built as one of two marble ‘organ pulpits’ over the two sacristy doors in the Duomo (the other was designed later by Donatello). ‘Cantoria’ comprises ten reliefs of children playing, singing and dancing Psalm 150, set on three different levels. When we were in Florence, I found these different cameos, taken as a piece, incredibly moving, for they suggested the unconstrained, jubilant nature of children’s praise, which to my mind is a most apt way of depicting Psalm 150, with all its calls to praise God with trumpet, lute and harp, with tambourine, dance, strings and pipe, with clashing symbols and with one’s voice. The choir’s earlier rendition of Psalm 150, to that familiar setting by Stanford, with the trebles more than playing their part, did full justice to this psalm.

If you look closely at our candlestick you will see that around the upper base we have a group of eleven youths – I’ve no idea where the twelfth singer has disappeared! – who are perhaps a little older than the children in Luca della Robia’s work, and older too than our choirboy trebles, but not much – and they are singing diligently from six different books. Perhaps it does not have quite the vibrancy and joyful spontaneity of of the 15c. Florentine work, but it has undoubtedly been influenced by Luca della Robia. The sculptor responsible for transforming Burges’s sketches into reality was Thomas Nicholls. Nicholls – who had worked with Burges on previous projects – was responsible for the three different sculptural projects in the chapel – firstly, the animals, in walnut wood, on top of the bench ends; secondly, the four statues of the Gospel writers, inlaid with gilt, in each of the four niches in the corners of the chapel; and, third, this candlestick, carved from alabaster. The statues of the four Gospels produced the most controversy, because some of the Fellows thought they were too close to what they saw as the idolatrous practices in the Roman and High Anglican Churches growing around Oxford in the 1860s, encouraging devotion to images.

The carvings and candlestick were not controversial, and you can see the way each project has been integrated into the heart of the chapel. For example, look at the cornice of the chapel: you will see, in twelve sections, that morning canticle called the Benedicite, which calls on all creation to give praise to God – the light and darkness, the green things of earth, the fowls of the air, the beasts of the field, the fish of the sea, the mountains and hills. In the carvings of the animals all around you Nicholls has focused particularly on the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air which, implicitly, are giving their own praise to God their Creator. Now look, if you can, at the backs of the pews against the chapel wall: there you will find, rather more hidden, the other morning canticle, the Te Deum,. which is split up so that one word runs into another. This is a call to the angels and saints in heaven above to join with the choir and saints on earth below in praise of God: ‘We praise Thee O God, we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord; to thee all angels… continually do cry, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God of Hosts’ . Just as Nichols carved out the animals to illustrate more of the Benedicite, so too he carved out this alabaster candlestick-lectern, in Florentine Quattrocento style, to echo the Te Deum. So it is not of Psalm 150; and although marble has worn somewhat thin to give any indication on their song books, our library sources tell us that this anthem is, as appropriate for our chapel, the Te Deum.

Worcester Chapel is by far the most visual and sensory chapel in Oxford. Every available space has been taken up with highly symbolic drawings, covering the walls by way of frescos, windows, murals, and using every available inch of the ceiling and the floor. But Burges and Nichols – and Henry Holiday, who was responsible for the windows – did not intend this to be a chapel where the praise of God is only encountered visually. As well as the two canticles, and as well as our singers on this candle, there are several other instances where Burges points us to how we can encounter God not only by what we see but by what we hear. Look first at the frieze on the north side, immediately to my right – there you see the heavenly host of angels making music to God – Uriel, Raphael, Gabriel, Michael, and the Choir of Eight. (It was pointed out to me recently by Matthew Salisbury that one of these angels is holding a book with exactly the same psalm chant on it as the chant running across the organ bench.) This frieze conveys to us the music of the heavenly host, of which not only the Te Deum but also the Benedicite speaks: if you look up you will see the writing above this frieze which reads “Oh ye angels of the Lord, bless the Lord: praise him, and magnify him for ever”. This fits with the sculpting of four angels at the base of the candlestick joining the choir of eleven in the ‘Te Deum’. So heavenly praise intermingles with earthly praise and raises it back to heaven. Earthly praise is of course important: look now at the gold-plated frieze further down the chapel, and you should see David, the founder of Hebrew psalmody, playing on his harp, along with Solomon his son, the founder of the Temple, carrying a model of it in a typical Medieval pose. Then at the other side of the chapel look at the frieze just along from the Provost’s stall, which is of the martyrs of the Christian Church, where you can see St. Cecelia of Rome, the founder of Christian music, with her pipes, here with St. Catherine of Alexandria (and her wheel). And then, on the floor, you see in the mosaics St. Wilfrid, holding his psalms scroll.

So despite its intense visual impact, we also have a chapel which is about hearing as well as seeing the praise of God. Furthermore, we are reminded that we in what has been called a ‘Temple masking a Church’, where, like the Temple of Solomon, heavenly mysteries are made incarnate on earth and earthly realities are transformed by a vista of heaven.

I deliberately chose tonight’s readings with this idea of earthly praise and heavenly praise in mind. Our Old Testament lesson told us about the celebrations after the completion of the Temple of Solomon. Here we read that the celebrations focussed not on sacrifice but on processional songs. We read how the Levitical Singers took their cymbals, harps, lyres and trumpets ‘and other musical instruments’ and sang praises to the Lord, using a song found in many psalms, especially 118 and 136: “For he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!”. After they had sung, the mystery of the glory of God filled the Temple. So music preceded sacrifice, and it was the praise to God in music and song which apparently drew the presence of God into the midst of the sanctuary. This is a typical example of how the gift of music attunes human hearts to the hear and see the glory of God.

Our New Testament lesson spoke of earthly praise and heavenly praise in a reverse way. The setting for this reading was of a heavenly Temple, and the assembled company included the twenty-four elders, each holding a harp, singing a new song of praise to the Lamb of God: “You are worthy to take the scroll and to open its seals, for by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation”. The praise of these heavenly saints was augmented by the praises of many angels, singing “Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might and honor and glory and blessing!” At this point the praise in heaven moved down to earth, with the whole company in heaven and earth singing “To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb be blessing and honor and glory and might forever and ever!”. This is what John in Revelation both sees and hears: here the gift of music from angelic voices attunes those on earth to hear and see the glory of God.

I started by saying that I wanted to speak about the music of the chapel, and I have tried to show how music is to be found in the chapel already, even before the choir adds their own voices to it. I also said I wanted to reflect on how music gives rise to faith, often surpassing what words can do. I realise now this latter aim is really a contradiction in terms: how can I use mere words to describe music and faith when I am saying music and faith transcend them? This is the point at which I think music and theology, my own subject, are really about the same things. The score of music, like the text of Scripture, is a prism to help us encounter the divine, but it only comes to life when we move beyond the notations of the musical score (or beyond the words of a scriptural text) into some sort of performance. The score on its own, and the text alone, need to be brought to life. Music has the capacity to offer to us ‘a little incarnation’ as we perceive through a performance the presence of God within us and beyond us. T.S. Eliot once said that poetry was ‘a raid on the inarticulate’.

I think this also applies to music as well. So- ‘thanks be to God’ for those who have sung so wonderfully throughout this year, not least for their ‘raid on the inarticulate’ which has lifted our hearts to God and also brought God down to us.

Dr. Susan Gillingham, Reader in Theology, Tutor and Fellow of Worcester College, Oxford
6th June 2010

‘The letter kills but the Spirit gives life.’ Three weeks ago I was sitting in the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester soaking up the exhilarating sounds of Mahler’s Symphony of a Thousand. Now you wouldn’t expect me to speak for long here without giving a little BBC plug – so I have to tell you straightaway that you too can hear this extraordinary performance – ‘cosmic’ as one critic described it – tomorrow evening on Radio 3 when it will be broadcast as part of the Mahler in Manchester series. Any rendition of Mahler 8 is an occasion of course. It was first performed almost exactly 100 years ago in Munich with over 500 voices, an orchestra of over 150, a children’s choir of 350 and 8 soloists – so it’s no wonder it became known as the Symphony of a Thousand, a title deplored by Mahler himself because he thought it suggested a circus!

Mahler was a deeply religious man, more by temperament than faith. Though he was Jewish by birth, Judaism held little attraction for him. He was more drawn to Catholicism, though his Catholic conversion at the age of 37 was more a pragmatic necessity in order that he could be eligible for the post of Director of the Vienna Opera. He put his religious ideas into his symphonies, three of which, the Second, the Third and the Eighth, present a comprehensive spiritual view of life. But it is the Eighth which seems to sum up his central belief in the aspiration of every creature towards God. His wife, Alma, looking back on her husband’s life saw it almost as a mission. ‘His battle for the eternal values,’ she wrote, ‘his elevation above trivial things and his unfailing devotion to truth are an example of the saintly life.’
Now you may think I’m putting Gustav Mahler on too high a spiritual pedestal, but it struck me three weeks ago, when listening to that performance – and on the two occasions I’ve sung the symphony too – how Mahler’s musical inspiration is no mere contemplation of an idea. It’s a strongly willed plea for a renewal of the inward fire from the source of all life and light. And that’s why it’s appropriate, I believe, to draw your attention to it on Pentecost Sunday – not least because the first movement is a setting of the ancient hymn for Pentecost ‘Veni Creator Spiritus’ – that great invocation to the Holy Spirit as creator and inspirer with its central prayer: ‘Accende lumen sensibus, infunde amorem cordimus’ – ‘Guide our minds with your blest light and with love our hearts inflame.’

And that’s what the Apostle Paul is wanting for his friends in Corinth, as we heard in the New Testament reading tonight. ‘The letter kills but the Spirit gives life,’ he says. He compares the old written covenant that God gave through Moses (our first reading tonight) with the Gospel – not contrasting bad with good but good with better. The new covenant isn’t a matter of written words alone, but the word is animated, brought to life, by the activity of God’s Spirit. Real encounter with the Christian Gospel changes us on the inside – and what Paul is doing is urging his readers to see God in a new way, to recognise the glory around them and allow that glory to infuse their inner being. So how do we do that?
I remember when I first joined the BBC a few months after leaving university, one of the programmes I worked on as a sound engineer that made a deep impression on me was a series called ‘Priestland’s Progress’ – one man’s search for Christianity – Gerald Priestland, then the BBC’s Religious Affairs Correspondent, armed with his tape recorder interviewing nearly a hundred people about their experience of God. It had a huge following. Strangely enough what I recall most about the series was the ritual, repeated nearly everywhere we went, of concluding each interview by recording at least three minutes of the silence of the room – whether it was a bishop’s study or a suburban front parlour. Each time we explained our curious custom and told our victims that they were free to go and put the kettle on. Almost without exception though they chose to stay – and I mean no disrespect to their eloquence when I say it was usually the best part of the interview! Words about God are not to be despised. But when the words are done, there’s still more, unsaid, in the silence.

I really ought then to finish there! But let me spend just another minute or two trying to define the recognition of the work of the Spirit in our lives by citing one of Gerald Priestland’s most perceptive interviewees, the saintly John V Taylor, one time Bishop of Winchester, who over twenty years ago led a Mission to this University and gave five memorable addresses on consecutive evenings in the Sheldonian Theatre. I remember him talking about ‘bumpings into God’ (an expression which annoyed the atheists) – those experiences which are very common to us all – experiences of recognition, sudden insight, an influx of awareness when you wake up and become alive to something. It may be another person or the solution to a problem – and suddenly the penny drops. Every time a human being cries ‘Ah! I see it now.’ That’s the work of the Holy Spirit – what the Christian creed calls ‘the Lord, the Giver of Life’. And that Creator Spirit has always been quietly, anonymously at work within every human life, within me, within you, drawing our attention to this, to that, opening our eyes, awakening all that is truly human in us, all that is most real.
Of course we can resist the Spirit. Sometimes it’s too painful, too disturbing, to be made fully alive. It’s more comfortable to be a bit insensitive, a bit dead. There are times when we’re stirred with the excitement of a new project, a different interest, an issue of justice that calls for support – but it’s too much trouble to make room for it. Then there are the moments when something strangely beautiful claims our attention, demands that we stand and stare – but it’s too embarrassing in front of our friends. When, unexpectedly, God has become more real, we can’t let ourselves stay with it. These experiences are common to every life, whether they’ve taken a religious form or not. But thank God that his Spirit isn’t easily rebuffed for it’s the Spirit of love, the Spirit of life, striving with our dull, frightened spirits to bring us alive.
‘The letter kills but the Spirit gives life,’ says Paul. He was speaking of what he felt constantly, that what Jesus had brought into the world was a life, an energy and a transforming power. And on this day, the day of Pentecost, we can know this power for ourselves. For this isn’t something that happened in the past and has now died down like a mere gust. The question is rather whether the world will allow this Spirit of God to transform the way we live, or fail to grasp what is possible for us with God. There are in truth innumerable books to read, and vast amounts to learn if we wish. But it’s all vain and stultifying if the Spirit of God doesn’t fill our lives. Come Holy Spirit and fill the lives of those who without you are dead! And teach us to lift our hearts to life with you! Amen.

Canon Stephen Shipley, Senior Producer, Relgion, BBC
23rd May 2010

At this time of year, the Christian church celebrates the Ascension of Christ, and it’s a season that always takes me back. In this particular environment, I hardly need remind you of the importance of good teaching. Those who teach are in particular positions of authority. We rely on our teachers both to be able to pass on genuine knowledge, and to stimulate interest in the application of that knowledge. Unreliable teaching is a very dangerous thing. Those of you studying history would be surprised to be told in a tutorial that the English Civil War was basically a dispute between people who disagreed about fashion. Medics would be rightly suspicious of a lecturer who told them not about hormones, but about humours. And so on.

Theological teaching might wrongly be thought to be above reproach. Certainly, if you study theology in this college, your teachers are unimpeachable. Or at least, I am. But when I was studying for the priesthood, I was bemused to discover at my theological college the following annual practice: each year on Ascension Day the pews would be removed from the chapel. We would have to sit on the floor, or cushions, or whatever, for the rest of term. And this was done to remind us of – and I quote – “the goneness of Christ”.

Now first of all, that is absolutely daft. But far more dangerously, it is also absolutely wrong, because the doctrine of the Ascension of Christ is not about absence, it is about presence. Jesus has “gone” only in one very limited sense, that is that the flesh and blood of the human being Jesus of Nazareth are no longer walking around this earth in the way that you are and I am. But that is the case precisely because the presence of Jesus has been transformed into something which cannot be contained. What Christians call the Ascension takes Jesus not from here to there, but from here to everywhere.

Even the transformed presence of Christ is not enough, however. Where Westcott House went so profoundly wrong in its understanding of the Ascension was firstly in its assumption that the doctrine teaches the absence of Christ, rather than his presence: but also in its failure to understand that there is another presence central to the Ascension, at that is the presence of humanity at the right hand of God. It is not so much Christ who has gone, as we, because humanity is changed decisively by being drawn into the perfect life of the Trinity.

What does this really mean? Well, something like this. Christianity teaches that the reality of God is what we call the Trinity, the perfect self giving of Father, Son and Holy Spirit. There is nothing in the life of God, which is not always and eternally being given in love. Human beings are created in the image of God, they are created with this capacity, the selfless love, but all too often they fail to realise it. We recognize this in our own experience. However well we would like to do, the fact is that most of the time we human beings are not very good at being loving, but all too good at being selfish. But God’s will for us is so much more. The love of God which overflows in the life of the Trinity, pours itself out in the creation of the world, and will recreate that world. In what Christians call the doctrine of the incarnation, the taking on of human life by God himself God-made-man transforms humanity, because he lives on earth the life of God himself, a life of perfect self giving. This selfless love is, of course, not quite what we expect. It is challenging, unsettling, disconcerting. And so we try to do away with it, we condemn it to death, we remove it from our sight and shut it up in the cold sterility of the tomb. But Love will not be contained, and the life of God, which is love incarnate, bursts forth at Easter, bringing the new life of the resurrection to all. The doctrine of the Ascension forms part of this teaching. By uniting himself to humanity, God draws it up into his own life, so that the perfect offering of love which we are unable to make for ourselves, is made for us by Christ, who represents, who re-presents, human life in the life of God himself.

I am rather fond of the Victorian poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, whose remarkable sonnet beginning “As kingfishers catch fire”, contrasts the world of me, mine and self with the world of gift with which we are entrusted in creation. “Each mortal thing does one thing and the same, selves, goes itself, myself it speaks and spells, crying, what I do is me, for that I came.” Rather than this individualistic world, Hopkins sees another: “I say more. The just man justices, Keeps grace, that keeps all his goings graces, Acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is – Christ.”

For Hopkins, as for Christian orthodoxy, creation and redemption are not to be held apart. I am redeemed because, in the incarnation, death, resurrection and – importantly- the ascension of the Lord, Christ has become my humanity, Christ has transformed my nature so that when God looks on me in my sin, what he sees is Christ in his love.

The ludicrous ignorance of my theological College might well be improved were it to read more Hopkins. Indeed, were it just to read more theology. For the Ascension of Christ is not about absence. It is about the presence of Christ in you and me and the presence of you and me in the worship of heaven itself. The just man, Hopkins writes, “acts in God’s eye what in God’s eye he is”.

The doctrine of the Ascension teaches us that we – as human beings – are present and active in the worship of heaven because the perfect love of Christ has transformed humanity into something which can at last stand and live in the presence of God, because humanity has been, and is represented, re-presented, by Jesus Christ the Word made flesh. When God looks on you and me in our sin and our weakness what he sees is Christ in his selflessness and love “for Christ plays in ten thousand places,/ lovely in limbs and lovely in eyes not his / to the Father, by the features of men’s faces”.

Rev’d Dr. Peter Groves, St. Mary Magdalen, Oxford
16th May 2010

An Anglican priest and a Methodist minister, both wearing dog collars, were hammering a sign into the verge of a road. The sign read “The end is Near! Turn yourself around now before it is too late!” Almost immediately, a car drives past and a voice from the car window yells, “Leave us alone you religious nutters!”. The car speeds on, there is a screeching of tyres and a splash. The priest turns to the minister and says: “Oh dear! Do you think the sign should say: Danger Bridge Collapsed?”

I mention this story to illustrate how it can sometimes be a dangerous thing to wear a dog collar in public, especially at a time when the image of a male priest might not conjure up the happiest of associations. To walk down Cornmarket or travel on a train in clerical dress is to risk a few stares, bizarre conversations about religion, being asked to give someone or something a blessing, or even receiving verbal abuse from a disaffected church-goer or sometime believer. I remember a former Chaplain to the Bishop of London, Mark Oakley, telling how he went to work in an ordinary shirt and tie, instead of dog collar one day. When the Bishop asked him what he was doing, Mark simply said that he was fed up with travelling on the tube dressed as a priest and being stared at or harangued. The roadside story might also point to how religion, especially religion that calls you to repent and turn your life around, in western secular society, is seen as a minority and unpopular interest, and I want to explore why this might, paradoxically, be a really good thing.

This Sunday is vocation Sunday, when you might think we celebrate and pray for those who have been called to the increasingly rare vocation of ordained ministry. But I think it is particularly appropriate, at the beginning of Trinity Term, when so many students are thinking about their future lives and careers, that we remember exactly what vocation is, and who it affects and I have chosen the readings for the eve of the feast of St. Mark deliberately to illustrate that vocation is something that relates to us all very deeply regardless of our occupation.

The readings from the prophecy of Isaiah and Mark, demonstrates how blessed is the person who witnesses to the gospel of peace and heralds the good news of Christ in their lives. The beginning of Mark’s gospel also places baptism as a central act of faith, a seal of the commitment to follow the calling of Christ: a vocation. Following this call can be done in many ways: John the Baptist fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy and came preaching a baptism of repentance and forgiveness of sins and is arrested and imprisoned for his troubles. The history of an unpopular and persecuted Christian faith has its origins at the very beginning of the life of Christ and unpopularity has always been, to some extent, part of the Christian story.

I found this illustrated recently in the most unlikely of people. I have known the work of the comedian Frank Skinner for many years. But, until recently, I hadn’t realised that he was a commited Roman Catholic Christian. And this I found out through reading an article that he wrote in the Times a few weeks ago. It was entitled: ‘Persecute me, I’m after the brownies points.’ In the article he wrote about how Christians should not be ashamed of who they are in an increasingly secularized country and shouldn’t worry about being laughed at.

‘To many British people’, he writes, ‘Christianity seems like a weird but unexciting theme park. Personally, I like our ever-dwindling status. I even like our ever-dwindling numbers. There was a time when social pressure made people go to church. If anything the reverse is now true. Most adults you see in church nowadays are there because they want to be there. That’s not decline, it’s progress.’ He goes on, ‘Christians have always worked best as an unpopular minority. We were surely at our most dynamic when we knelt, eyes to Heaven, hands clasped in prayer, with a Colosseum lion bounding towards us. … Surely the central image of Christianity is someone who can shoot fireballs out of his fingertips allowing himself to be nailed to a wooden cross — submission as the ultimate show of strength — love as impenetrable armour. Most British Christians are badly dressed, unattractive people. We’re not pushy and aggressive members of society. We’re a bit like Goths — no one can remember us being fashionable and we talk about death a lot. I love the glorious un-coolness of that.’
Christians tend to save their best work for the “voice in the wilderness” genre. We are most impressive when operating as a secret sect, kneeling in small, candle-lit rooms and scrawling fishes on walls. I’m enjoying this current dose of persecution. It’s definitely good for the soul.’

Sometimes being a Christian is hard, and the minor inconveniences we may experience from a lack of tolerance in this country are nothing compared to real persecution that people of faith in other countries have to endure, but whatever difficulties we go through for our faith, we, as followers of Christ, have a calling, a vocation, to remember, that Christ’s victory has already been won. In this Easter season witness to the gospel that Jesus’s death and resurrection are the ultimate demonstration of love and that love is victorious. If we are to acknowledge the vocation that we all share, we must remember that our armour against the persecution, or mockery of the world, is to be love – love for God and love for one another.

At the beginning of this Trinity term, which may be the last in this college some, questions of what is the right path for the future may loom large. But whatever we do with our lives, let us all remember our primary calling to serve Christ in love, a vocation sealed at our baptism, into whatever denomination. Whatever you do, if you have faith, I urge you to cherish it, and nurture it and not to be ashamed of it, regardless of whether it happens to be popular or not. It is the greatest gift you have and the greatest gift you will ever have. Amen.

Rev’d Dr. Jonathan Arnold, Chaplain
25th April 2010