Recent talks/addresses

Farewell to Archdeacon of Doncaster

Last Updated on Thursday, 15 December 2011 10:39

The Long Friendship
Farewell service for the Archdeacon of Doncaster
14th December, 2011, Doncaster Minster
1 Corinthians 2.1-10; John 14.8-23
St. John of the Cross

It seems appropriate somehow to begin this sermon with a series of truly awful puns.

I don’t know why this should seem appropriate.  Puns are not really a fitting way to celebrate St. John of the Cross who was not known for his one liners.  He is the saint who talks so beautifully about the dark night of the soul.  But perhaps the saint will forgive us this evening for somehow it just feels the right thing to do.

Feel free to groan aloud.  I certainly will.

I wondered why the baseball was getting bigger.  Then it hit me.

I’m reading a book about antigravity.  It’s impossible to put down.

He drove his expensive car into a tree and found out how the Mercedes bends.

Did you hear about the guy whose left side was cut off.  He’s alright now.

Mercy I hear you cry.  Have you had enough yet?  One more.

Why did the guru refuse anaesthetic when he went to his dentist.

Because he wanted to transcend dental medication.

I shall probably get letters about that one and there will be no archdeacon to pass them on to.  There’s probably only one person in the church taking notes and trying to remember them for later.

We are looking back this evening and giving thanks for a particular ministry and a particular person.  Puns aside, I will reserve any remarks about Bob himself to the end of the service.  But this is a good moment for all of us to reflect on what it means for us to serve God and what it means to love God and what it means to be loved by God.

I offer you these reflections whatever your occupation, whether you are lay or ordained, whether you work for a living or are in retirement.

If St. Paul was here this evening he would remind us that serving God is seldom easy.  He looks back on when he first came to love and serve the Church in Corinth.

I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power.

Those words are a great comfort to you and I today but it cannot have been easy at the time.  In many other places, Paul, the greatest of the apostles, writes about the difficulty of ministry.

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed.  Perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted but not forsaken, struck down but not destroyed.

On the outside Paul experienced huge difficulties.  Yet we have the sense even so that his main struggles were within: with his own fear and doubt and worry and imperfections.

We have this treasure – the gospel of Jesus – in clay jars – that’s how he describes himself – so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.

We have this treasure in clay jars.

So Paul would remind us that all Christian service and ministry is very difficult.  It cannot be otherwise.  I think he would remind us as well that all Christian service and ministry, including the ministry of a priest, is immensely rewarding and fulfilling.

At the same time as we know suffering in ministry so we also know immense satisfaction and fulfilment in the service we are able to offer, costly though it may sometimes be.  There can be immense satisfaction in doing the job God has called you and fashioned you to do.  There is immense fulfilment in finishing the race, in completing the task we have been assigned and in then handing it on to others who will take it forward.

But Paul would also remind us of something else even stronger and deeper.  He would remind us that our ministry, the work we do, is not to be the most important thing in our lives, or the last thing or the first thing.

I think he would remind us that the last and the first and the most important thing is to understand that we are loved by Christ and that we love Christ in return.

In Philippians we read these words:

For his sake I have suffered the loss of all things and I regard them as rubbish in order that I may gain Christ and be found in him....I want to know Christ......I want to know Christ.

Knowing we are loved by God and loving God in return – this is more important by far than any service or work which may offer.

If St. John of the Cross could be here this evening, he would remind us of similar themes.

He would remind us that ministry is often difficult.  John was called to suffer for his fate.  He lived in sixteenth century Spain and shared in one of the great renewal movements of the Roman Catholic Church with his friend and associate St. Therese.  John was imprisoned and kept in solitary confinement for nine months and suffered terribly for his faith.

John would remind us I think that as well as being difficult, ministry is often deeply fulfilling.  He spent the rest of his life as a teacher and spiritual director and a leader in the renewal of the Church.

But he would remind us most of all and most clearly that the first and last and most important thing is that we are loved by Christ and that we love Christ in return.

Knowing we are loved by God and loving God in return – this is more important by far than any service or work which may offer.

John makes a wonderful study of the inner life – of the challenge of knowing that we are loved by God.  He writes much about the difficulties of knowing God’s grace by his presence but also knowing God’s grace in his absence: the dark night of the soul and the wonderful gifts which can grow in those difficult seasons.

John writes powerfully of the long journey the soul makes to draw nearer to God, the challenges along the way, the outward changes and the inner challenges and tests.

He would have much to say, if he lived today, about the spiritual challenges of retirement, which was of course largely unknown in earlier generations.  I guess he would talk about the sharpest test of all: the test of laying down the work you have done for God and taking up again the soul’s deepest quest to know God himself and to be united with him in love and affection and contemplation and peace.

Michael Ramsey was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1961 to 1974.  Many here will remember him or know his writings.  He had a long and full retirement. The last story told about him in his biography is this one:

A young Muslim from Bangladesh who kept the post office across the road where he used to buy stamps came to visit him and asked him how long he had been ordained.  He said “Nearly sixty years”.  The young man said:  “That’s a very long friendship” and Ramsey repeated the phrase more than once, savouring its memory and smiling.  “That’s a very long friendship”.

Christians are called to work and to service and to fruitful labour.  Much of that may be very difficult.  Much of it will be very fulfilling.  Sometimes it will be both.

But we are called also, and more deeply still, to a very long friendship with God.  That friendship is not based on striving but on resting and receiving and being changed.  Jesus says in our gospel reading:

“Those who love me will keep my word and my Father will love them and we will come to them and make our home with them”.

Our friendship with God rests not on our restless strivings but on God’s grace and love and regard, made possible through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Every one of us is invited into that long friendship with God.  It is a friendship for youth and for mid-life.  It is a precious friendship which endures beyond retirement when we find a new place in the world.  It is a friendship which lasts beyond death itself to a time when in the words of another great saint:

There we shall be still and see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise.  Behold what will be in the end without end!  For what is our end but to reach that kingdom which has no end.  Amen.

+Steven