Sermon: St John's Leatherhead

Preacher:

Date:

Sunday 22nd June 2014

Venue:

St John's School, Leatherhead

Readings:

Romans 6.1b-11

Matthew 10.24-39

Thank you for inviting me to preach this morning it is a real honour to be here and I bring greetings to St John’s from the Chapter and community at Guildford Cathedral.

One of my family is currently busily rehearsing for a production of Shakespeare, and the speech he will be reciting is Henry V’s famous, ‘Once more unto the breech, dear friends’ speech at the storming of Harfleur. That speech, like the one on the morning of the battle of Agincourt, still has the capacity to send a shiver down the spine; it can ‘stiffen the sinews and summon up the blood’. No doubt it’s something Field Marshall Montgomery did in his time. Perhaps not what Roy Hodgson and Steven Gerrard managed in the last two games of the World Cup. These speeches send people out with a task. In the life of this school, today is, in part, about sending out. You are sending people out, the upper sixth, just as all of us will be sent out from this chapel with the words, ‘Go in peace to love and serve the Lord’.

For a school such as this, with its Foundation, the sending out words of Jesus are as significant, if not more, than any others. It seems to me having spoken to Johnians past and present that the Chapel still serves as the beating heart of the school, the vital organ that pumps distinctive life about the place. The round of worship, contemplation and care that this chapel generates equips pupils for their life now and in the future.

No doubt those of you leaving this school with your talents, education and skills will be given stirring words of encouragement and wise warnings about the big, bad world outside before you go. OJs present: you will be all too aware of what a precious time school was and will reflect on words from teachers as you left; words that were taken on board, and those totally ignored (after all, at some point when we go out we have to make our own mistakes).

But there is something distinctly uncomfortable and unpalatable thinking about great stirring military speeches, not least as this year we commemorate 100 years since the outbreak of WWI, 70 years since D-Day and seeing today horrific fighting in Syria and Iraq. Violence, warfare and strife still dominate our world.

That takes us to our gospel reading this morning. Just before the bit we heard, Jesus has called his twelve disciples. If they thought that this was about some promotion, the glamour of playing for the first team, they were soon to have their expectations changed. Jesus gives them a pep talk, or what you might call an eve of battle speech, and he uses military imagery, leaving us wondering about his title ‘Prince of Peace’. He is preparing them and equipping them to go into a world of violence, pain and anguish. But there are haunting phrases: about not coming to bring peace but a sword; about impending division between father and son, mother and daughter; about not being worthy of Jesus unless loving him more than our nearest and dearest. What’s going on here?

This text could be heard as saying that Jesus is adding a new group to the competing forces of power and violence in the world, and mixing that new group with the toxic ingredient of religious motivation. That’s how someone like Richard Dawkins might hear it, and as many people see it, that religion is the cause of all violence.

Different groups and factions, or as Jesus calls them ‘houses’ add to the competing powers in our world. It all depends on the master of the house and the way in which the master’s disciples are formed and shaped. Now, I’m sure house masters and mistresses have been called many things in the school context, but Beelzebul, Satan, would be a quite extreme one. The point is that any household rooted in envy, rivalry and blame will shape its members in the same way.

Within the household of Jesus a new and radically different way of relating to one another is being shaped and formed by word and sacrament, especially in the Eucharist. Jesus shapes his household from the stance of being the victim without revenge. The power games, manipulations and rivalries of the world lynched him, raised him up on the cross, somehow thinking God would be pleased. In the Gospels we learn that God is not pleased when we make victims, because sacrificing another person, or thing, only makes a temporary truce and doesn’t bring real peace.

We are barely aware of how radical all of this is. We fumble away trying to get it right, and so often get it wrong. We find that in endeavouring to live peace more anguish is generated: people don’t want to let go of their comforts and tranquilisers based on putting others down and shutting them out. So Jesus’ message is not an instant fix; it is a long, patient waking up to God’s dissatisfaction with our preference to create groups and factions, tribes and family loyalties that exclude and create victims.

That is what the disciples are sent out with, as witnesses of Jesus Christ. They are sent out ‘to seek [and make known] the things which are from above’ - Quae Sursum Sunt Quaerite. Having been shaped again in the ‘Jesus Christ house’, in this house of prayer may we, leavers, OJs, Foundationers, staff, pupils, families, each one of us, be sent out to love and serve the Lord, and constantly return to Christ, the forgiving victim, and make his kingdom of peace, justice and love known in all the world.