Homily preached by
The Very Rev Michael J. Pitts
At the Induction of The Rev Dorothy Samuel as incumbent
Of the Parish of St Lawrence, Lasalle.
The Feast of St Philip and St James 2007
Isaiah 30:18-21
2 Corinthians 4:1-6
John 14:6-14
Today is a day with many names and functions. In England it is May Day, when the choir of Magdalen College Oxford enchants the spring by singing madrigals from the tower. Elsewhere in England, in a ceremony going back to the mists of druidical time, people dance round the Maypole, a symbol belonging to an ancient fertility religion. In Eastern Europe it is a day to celebrate the workers. I served in Moscow, in the days of the Soviet Union, and early in morning groups gathered in the suburbs bearing the icons, not as in older times, and perhaps again today, of the saints, but of Brezhnev, Andropov or Chernekov. They marched to the great May Day rally in Red Square, where there were more icons, of Marx, Lenin and Trotsky. The west chose to have Labor Day later in the year, lest there be any confusion!
In the western church, today is the feast of St Philip and St James, and to this I shall return, but while I am still walking down memory lane, let me tell you of another time in my ministry when I was in France, serving with the church’s mission to seafarers. Sometimes I got the chance to sail on a ship, often on the bridge, and one of my memories of that time is of the captain coming on to the bridge and announcing to the crew “I have the bridge”, an almost liturgical way of saying that he was in charge. Of course the captain did not actually sail the ship, not even steer it. That was the responsibility of a whole team, navigation officers and deck crew, cargo officers, engineers and greasers, not to mention the cook-stewards who made sure that the workers were fed. The steering was normally done by quite a junior member of the crew, who in most ships, by the way, did not have a wheel, but a little joystick looking like something from a video game. But everybody reported to the captain, and there could be only one captain on the ship whose authority ensured the total coordination and cooperation of the team. In ancient folk-lore, only the captain was allowed to whistle up the wind, and there was good reason for that. When the storm began to blow, it was the captain’s responsibility to ensure the safety of the ship, her cargo and her crew.
I think there are a number of parallels between a ship and the church. You will know, of course that word nave is derived from the Latin word for ship, reflecting the fact that in both structure and appearance a gothic church tended to look like an upside down ship. But I was thinking more about the idea of authority and team work. For our church, whether at the level of the diocese, or of the parish, operates as a team of people with many different gifts and skills to offer. The church could not function without all those professional and lay, paid and volunteer, members who form locally the Body of Christ. But neither can our church function without a central person from whom flows the authority to co-ordinate the team and facilitate the cooperation through which our mission is accomplished. In the diocese that person is the Bishop. In the parish it is the rector or priest in charge.
Of course the missions of a ship and a church are rather different. In the case of a ship it is to deliver the cargo safely to the port where it is meant to go. If we want to know the mission of the church we could do worse than to examine the biblical readings for this feast of St Philip and St James. But let’s start with a few comments about the two saints. Their twin feast day is a historical accident. At some point in the sixth century their remains got mixed together in the same box, and a church was built to house this reliquary. The consecration of the church took place on 1st May, and that is how it all got started. We don’t really know much about either of them. In the case of James, we don’t know which he was of the several Jameses mentioned in the Christian scriptures. Philip is also a puzzle, because, while he is known only as a name in the synoptic gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), in John, he plays a more important part. He is the first disciple to be called by Jesus (Andrew and Simon make their own way). He is involved in the miracle of feeding the crowd, and he is the one approached by the Greeks in that important turning point in Jesus’ ministry. Towards the end of the account of Jesus’ ministry he is involved in the dialogue which was our Gospel reading this evening. After that he disappears. The Philip in the Acts of the Apostles is a different person.
So let us turn from the saints themselves to the traditional readings for their feast. The Gospel dialogue about Jesus as the Way is set between the final supper of Jesus with his disciples and his arrest in the Garden. It is therefore a very intimate discussion with the very closest group of followers. The interventions of Peter, just before our passage, and Philip, in our reading, have very much the same quality as the intervention of disciples in Socrates’ dialogues, as given to us by Plato. They are a narrative device to enable John to develop the theme. The two parts of this passage then, contain one theme. In Jesus, the disciples have encountered what is ultimately and truly real. But what is ultimately and truly real is, in itself, beyond human comprehension. We can only glimpse something of it in the life of Jesus, and specifically in his works. As we look on Jesus feeding the hungry, caring for the poor, the sick and all those rejected by society, stretching the minds of his followers and challenging the rich and powerful, we can see something of the nature of reality.
This is echoed in our first reading from Isaiah:
The Lord is a God of justice. [i]
This is a common theme in the Hebrew scripture. It sometimes refers to what we call retributive justice, the good and the bad getting their due rewards. But more often, and especially in the prophets, it is distributive justice which is being proclaimed and demanded. Distributive justice is about all getting their share of the good things, both material and spiritual, which are freely given to humanity. The justice of God and the justice demanded of his people are therefore very much the same as we see acted out in the works of Jesus, so important to John.
In our epistle reading Paul brings this all together. By God’s mercy we are engaged in ministry. (In the Greek text the word is diaconate: we are all deacons called to service). The ministry is about bearing witness to the revelation of the ultimately and really real in the person of Jesus Christ. The ministry, Paul tells us, is not about ourselves and our importance. We are merely clay vessels, and act as servants. In taking on the ministry we renounce the shameful things which one hides, deceit, cunning, gossip, power seeking or manipulation. We are to work with openness and truth. This ministry, or diaconate, is, again, to carry on the works of Jesus in being truth-bearing just and compassionate, and demanding truth, justice and compassion in our world, as a way of showing the Father. This is the ministry in which you the people of St Lawrence, are called to carry out in this parish. Tonight we are here to celebrate the coming of a new leader for you in this mission and ministry, Dorothy Samuel.
I think I was the first person in our diocese to know Dorothy. She arrived here as a refugee from religious persecution in her own country. For a time, until her own parents were able to come here as refugees, I acted as a kind of honorary father, and I still think of myself as an honorary grandfather to Rhemika. Her real father is a priest of the Church of Pakistan, a church which is part of the Anglican Communion, and he is now a much beloved pastor in our church of St Ignatius in Montreal North. In my very first conversation with Dorothy, I saw her eyes light up as she discovered that women could be ordained in Canada. From then on she worked with determination and commitment, first to establish herself so that she could sponsor the rest of her family, and then in the process of studying, leading to her ordination. Dorothy and I have certain things in common. We both come from a foreign country. We are both married to a spouse who is a pastor in a different church, and we both have a daughter, though mine is a little older and so am I!
You have as your new pastor a woman of intelligence, compassion, skill and determination. If I were a member of your parish I could not think of a person I would more like to be my priest. In a few moments, Dorothy, when we have gone through the formalities, you will have the bridge. With it you will take on all the tasks of coordinating this team and taking on the authority to enable cooperation both internally and within the diocese. And you, the people of St Lawrence are to accept that authority among the servants of God, in order to carry out, effectively and together, the mission and ministry of the church in this place.
[i] Isaiah 30:18