Bishop Michael's Sermons
The Liturgy of the Foundation, 19 July 2009
Winchester Cathedral
“Fear not, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure, your Father is glad, to give you the Kingdom” (Luke 12.32, 12.22-32).
'City Bonuses' are again in the news. But it is a complete mystery to me why anyone should be paid a 'bonus' for doing well the job that they are paid to do – and still more so when those who receive bonuses are mostly paid more than the rest of us already! The train-driver who gets me and hundreds of others safely to Waterloo tomorrow won’t get a bonus for doing so; nor is any bonus coming to anyone who receives a salary or a stipend from the Cathedral, the Diocese or the Church Commissioners for performing well what we are appointed to do. A colleague, whom I’d justly complemented, said to me a week or so ago, “My father always taught us to do our best”.
If there were bonuses for those serving in this Cathedral, for what level of 'performance', for excellence in what, would they be offered? Three times in the next few minutes you will hear me asking you, as Bishop and Visitor, 'Will you do all you can...?'
It is not only today’s occasion that provokes these questions, but the Gospel that we have just heard. Jesus is on to something crucial, and he is teasing us too: “I tell you, don’t worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear...Don’t keep striving for what you are to eat..., don’t keep worrying.” (Luke 12.29)
Now the Gospels show us that Jesus understands that we 'worry' in front of the larder or the mirror, or when we lose something, or when we want a meal to be 'just right' for friends; he understands that food and clothes are necessities, and not simply (though they may be) matters for extravagance or greed or pride. And the Gospels show us, too, that Jesus understands that we humans have to work, have to expend effort, to 'strive…'. So there’s nothing wrong with the repeated 'Will you do all you can…..?' in the next part of this Service, especially if it sets you thinking how to respond, you who in all sorts of ways 'deliver' the Cathedral’s Mission and ministry, to my implied question, "What would be 'excellence', bonus-worthy, for you, your team, your department?"
But the Lord means each of us to hear and to be brought up short by his counter-intuitive "don’t keep worrying and striving" about the everyday things "that the Father knows that you need.'
'Instead', he says, 'strive for God’s kingdom' – make it your priority, the thread running through everything you do and say, to have Jesus as the Lord and King of your life, and to see everything in the world around you as God’s, God’s doing, God’s gift, in which God’s ways will work quite beyond your expectations. 'Strive' still more for what St Paul (Romans 14.17) calls, speaking of God’s Kingdom, 'righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit' than you strive for excellence in the raising and managing of money, in the phrasing of a line of music, in your or my preparing to preach, in welcoming people into the building and selling them a ticket, in replacing a weathered stone...; 'and all the rest', all the other things we strive for, 'will be given you as well'. Your masonry repair, your welcoming, your preaching, your line of music, your management, your fundraising, will by God’s giving be as fine or finer still; and also by God’s giving, there will grow decent, less competitive relationships whether between departments or between individuals, better communications, deeper appreciation of others and their contributions, a sense of being, and of being part of, a single organisation… and other flowers too, other 'fruit of God’s Spirit' (Galatians 5.22) as you 'strive instead for God’s Kingdom.'
But there’s a last teasing twist – and the most Godly twist of all, because all this is beyond us, pressing us to despair, if it just depends on us. So the twist begins with Jesus’ characteristic 'Don’t be afraid'. Then with gentle, re-assuring understanding he calls us 'little flock' – because that’s how it feels often to be a Christian where Lou and I will be, in the Eastern Congo, in nine days time; and how it increasingly feels to be a Christian in this country, too, in the face of so much, and so much increasingly institutionalised and politicised, disbelief. 'Don’t be afraid, little flock; your Father is glad to give you the Kingdom!'
Which is to say, still more counter-intuitively: don’t even 'strive for, strain after', 'righteousness, peace and joy in the Holy Spirit'; because it is God’s delight to give all this to you – to make it all possible for you day in, day out.
'Will you do all you can' to receive God’s gift?