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The Parish of St. Mary's, Alverstoke, Gosport 'Sharing God's love in the Community' |
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40th Anniversary of Ted Goodyer’s ordination as a priest
Sermon preached by Humphrey Prideaux in St. Mary’s Church, Alverstoke, on the occasion of the 40th Anniversary of Ted Goodyer’s ordination as a priest, Sunday 20th December 2009.
Readings. Hebrews 10.5-10 and Luke 1.39-55
From our first reading: Lo, I come to do thy will, O God. It’s that writer’s focus on the reality of Christmas.
This sermon is not a tribute to your ministry, Ted. We’ll keep that for your funeral! So, God’s will and discipleship.
How many times do we reckon that Ted since 1969 has said, “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven”? I calculate twenty-nine thousand times! If he’s focused on the will of God so often – if we have – surely by now we must know what it is! Christ did the will of God, and it killed him. Mary did the will of God, and, by now a widow, she saw her son executed. Priests seek to do God’s will in the service of Christ and his people. As disciples what have we each got to do? It’s simple, “Do God’s will.” But there’s the rub!
Some of us have enjoyed the TV programmes – A History of Christianity. (Diarnaid MacCulloch BBC4, autumn 2009) For two thousand years, Christians have fought over what God’s will is. Christians have not agreed God’s will about one serious, human issue: wealth, property; peace, war; sex, divorce, family; education, punishment; worship, art, buildings; etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yes, discipleship is simple: do God’s will! Does God play a joke on us by not telling us what that is? Even here, some think it right to re-order the church; others don’t. Ted and others wanted to develop the Broderick Hall site for students; others didn’t. Forty years ago he and Liz took risks and rejected race discrimination in South Africa; others didn’t.
We claim God gives us, his people, answers. Is it, rather, he raises questions? That’s why the great biologist, Richard Dawkins, gets religion so wrong. Religion is like his own wonderful science. It’s enquiry; it’s not a text book of answers. That’s why discipleship is so uncomfortable. As humans we need comfort and security. We need to know who we are, where we stand. And that’s fine for our human need. But is it God’s way for his people, for our real needs?
Has God ever let his people get settled? If they do, as in the Promised Land, do they not get complacent and satisfied? Do they not become secure with God, and God becomes ‘my’ idol? I become the centre of my universe. Then the cycle goes round, and we cry ‘Help’. And does God help? Does God reply to our letters? Often, it seems, God does not – not in our time-scale anyway. We work in weeks. God works in decades. We think in years. God works in light-years. So the Bible poet desperately sighs, “Why sleepest thou, O Lord?” (Psalm 44.23) The Bible prophet laments, “Verily, thou art a god that hidest thyself” (Isaiah 45.15) - until Christ himself also says, ”My God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Mark 15.34).
Is that why people have always been wary of committing themselves to God’s will? Moses was reluctant; so was Amos and Jeremiah. Jonah ran in the opposite direction. The twelve disciples were enthusiastic, but their commitment vanished when the crunch came. Four thousand years ago, Abraham set out, ‘not knowing where he was going.’ (Hebrews 11.8) Ted and Liz didn’t know where they would end up – here in Gosport, seven thousand miles away from their homeland, family and friends. That is discipleship for you. Faith, yes; hope, yes; knowledge and sight, no. And faith is not the security of clinging to a rock, but launching out into the deep with five thousand fathoms beneath us. As disciples we want God’s will, yes. “We are sure we know God’s will!” Isn’t that so often the road to intolerance and exclusiveness – and, if we’ve got enough power, to violence?
An exercise: Let’s each think of a Christian we disagree with about God’s will. We kneel beside them in our hearts. At the Messiah’s banquet, God will seat us next to them, each of us purified and transformed.
Why don’t we agree on God’s will? Is it our realization that the Lord does not create obedient clones or programmed robots? They would not, could not, love him. We are free to respond in love – or not. When we do respond, don’t we find that it is not our response, but God in us, with us, Emmanuel? Is it that God seldom intervenes, but is always involved in us, in every atom? As the Quran says, ‘The Lord is closer than our jugular vein.’
Do you remember the story of the People of God lost in the desert? Food appeared. They called it ’What’s-its-name’ – manna; it was not what they expected. God’s surprise. If they got greedy and hoarded it to feel secure, it went bad. God does surprise us. What could be more of a surprise than Mary’s song, The Magnificat? When the apartheid president of South Africa died and went to heaven, he reached the pearly gates. St. Peter said to him, “Be ready for a surprise – She’s Black!” We do not see God’s way clearly. Paul says, ’Now we see through a glass darkly.’ (1 Corinthians 13.12) Cardinal Newman wrote – I do not ask to see the distant scene, one step enough for me. (Hymn ‘Lead kindly Light’) We only glimpse God’s will, and have to trust our glimpses.
The Eastern Orthodox Christians were pushed north by the Mongol armies to the cold forests of Russia. They carried with them their precious Icons. Icons are not just pictures. Human beings are created in the image of God. (Genesis 1.27) These Icons are a glimpse of God. They are the warming fire for those disciples in the new, strange, cold land. As disciples we see the back of God’s tapestry – a mess and a muddle of knots and loose ends. Only in heaven shall we see the front.
So what do we do meanwhile? Sit back and do nothing, because we don’t see the big picture? We pray, think, discuss, pray, decide, act – and sometimes fall flat on our face. We aim to love our neighbour – so simple. But how often in our love we patronize our neighbour. As disciples we are like scientists. They spend a lot of time finding what is the wrong way forward, wrong ideas, and the need to adapt to new evidence. Disciples often discover the wrong way and have always needed to adapt to changed circumstances, rejecting earlier ideas.
And where do authorized ministers, ordained priests fit in? Ted and Liz brought here with them not only their hatred of apartheid. They had the vision to be inclusive, across the divide of race, class, denomination – to open the door for a free flow between church and community. This is an unusual parish. It is not monochrome. People travel their spiritual journey in different ways. Ted appreciates and encourages these differences.
Perhaps a minister is like a team coach. Like Fabio Capello, a skilled player yes, but not as talented as the team themselves. He tries to bring out the gifts of each. Is a minister like the voice-coach who has made Susan Boyle even better as a singer than she was, naturally, a year ago? Is a priest like an artist who stands alongside students of all ages, as they wrestle to create their own work of art, their own piece of music, their poetry, their technical breakthrough, their new science insight?
The priest is the soul-friend, the coach for souls striving for holiness, to become the saints that God has already made them. The minister coaches others to glimpse, under the razzmatazz of Christmas, the reality of Emmanuel, God with us. Until one day for us it is not longer a glimpse, but we meet Christ himself. We stand ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven in heaven.
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