Full text of sermon
If I were to give a title to this sermon it would be ‘The Gutter and the Stars’. It was Oscar Wilde who famously connected these two when he said “We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars”. Tonight I want to speak about being a priest. I have chosen to preach myself because I don’t trust anyone else not to make this slot into a (hopefully) very premature funeral oration. A priest needs to know the gutter and the stars. He/she needs to have glimpsed the stars, the Glory of God, by the Grace of God and ALSO to know himself/herself well enough to realise that the gutter is a reality within. Let me give you two examples.
It wouldn’t do for me not to mention on this occasion particularly, my favourite saint, Seraphim of Sarov. For most than most followers of Jesus he glimpsed the stars and his life was filled with joy, so much so that he became joy and was joy to all he met. He literally radiated holiness and was transfigured by inward light. The story goes that a man walked 300 miles from Moscow to seek him out. He was burdened and deeply troubled and wanted the Saint’s help and advice. Seraphim lived alone in the forest of Sarov and the man came across him asleep on the ground.
On seeing him, the man’s burdens melted away. He didn’t wake him, he didn’t need to. He returned home free of his burdens. Seraphim’s most famous saying is “Have peace in your heart and thousands round you will be saved”. Only someone who had glimpsed the stars could have that effect on those he meets, all of whom he addressed as “My joy, Christ is Risen”. Yet he also knew near despair. He spent most of his life in silent prayer and for almost three years prayed day and night, sleeping only briefly and sporadically. He faced the demons within himself which most of us spend a lifetime trying to avoid. He stood on the edge of the abyss of nothingness, emptiness, faithlessness and despair, but ended up for the last five years of his life knowing the Glory. Most of us poor priests cannot pretend to emulate Seraphim, but to glimpse the stars, maybe only once in a lifetime, is necessary if we are to be joy and to bring joy to those we serve.
No joy, no Gospel. A joyless Christianity is no Christianity at all. Remember prayer AND parties are what we all need more of if we are to be a church worth joining. A priest needs a joyful heart for the praise of God.
My other example was not a priest, but was priestly. William Cowper, the poet, the author of the hymn we have just sung, glimpsed the stars; he writes about the moment as follows:
“In a moment I believed and received the Gospel. Unless the Almighty arms had been under me I think I should have died of gratitude and joy. My eyes filled with tears, and my voice choked with transport, and I could only look up to heaven in silent fear, overwhelmed with love and wonder.”
But it was only a glimpse. For most of his life William Cowper lived in despair. He died in despair, in the gutter, but his biographer, David Cecil, writes of his dying, most movingly:
“At five in the morning he became unconscious; twelve hours later he ceased to breathe. Then, and then only, was Johnny’s wish granted. As he took a last look at the still face, he noticed with awe and amazement that on Cowper, the healing hand of death had wrought a change. The strain and the apathy which so long had marked his wasted features were gone, and instead they lit up with a rapt, unearthly wonder, “a holy surprise”.
Was it a mere chance effect of dissolution? or could it be that during those hours of unconsciousness a momentous event had taken place in the unseen territories of Cowper’s spirit: that on the very threshold of the grave it was vouch-safed to him, for the second time, to behold the supreme vision and gazing with unveiled eye at the Beatific Glory, he learnt that, after all, his despair had been founded on delusion?”
The best priests I have known have touched the heights and depths; the stars and the gutter in their own lives; in their own hearts.
Priests are not essentially, teachers, preachers, pastors, leaders, prophets, strategists or managers, though they may be called to be any or all of these. Priests are justified only by their being and their seeing; by standing in that place which holds the stars and the gutter with a joyful heart for the praise of God and a big capacious heart for the pain of the world. There is no other place to stand for a priest.
Only such a priest meets the needs of a world thirsty for God. Only such a priest meets the needs of the old lady who, as she approached death, her final journey, said to her priest most movingly “I know that you cannot accompany me on my last journey, but I would be so grateful if you would buy a platform ticket”. There is no greater privilege in life than that, no greater accolade that can be given to any human being and it is given readily only to those who know the gutter and the stars.
On this day 40 years ago I was ordained a priest in the Church of God, the beginning of a journey with many ups and downs. It was also the end of a journey, for when I was not yet 15 years old on my first retreat to the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield, the priest who was leading the retreat asked each of us to find a quiet place to pray and to ask God what he wanted of our lives. I did and knew then that I was being called to be a priest. I have never for a moment, even at the worst of times, even though the Church is in a mess and I am in a mess, regretted my ‘yes’ to that calling and all this wonderful fuss tonight will have been all the more worthwhile if just one person who hears these words hears not me, but the call of God for themselves. Simply I ask, is God calling you to be a priest, to stand in the gutter and reach for the stars? It is said that the composer Franz Schubert did not know whether he belonged in the gutter or the stars. He certainly knew both, otherwise this genius who wrote more than 1,000 pieces of music and yet died at the age of 31, quite possibly of syphilis, could not have written with such sorrow, such joy and such longing. Let his music be my last word. It says all I want to say and much much more about the gutter and the stars, about the gift of priesthood for which I daily thank God.
Click here for Bishop Jack's interview for The Diocesan web site
