This Week's Homily....

7th Sunday of Easter Yr B AD 2009

"consecrate them in the truth..."

In this morning’s Gospel reading we hear Jesus pray for the unity of all those who believe in him and for unity between those who will believe after the witness of the apostles down the ages. Unity is incredibly important and yet we live in times when the legacy of five hundred years ago means that we struggle with the fragmentation and disunity that we see today. The few denominations that many of us knew in our childhood were small in comparison to what we see today – then it was bad enough, but now we see a plethora of independent churches with little, if any, reference to a ruling body with increasingly exotic names. Very often these groups spring up because of what a wise Pentecostal Minister I knew described as “a hankering after leadership.” However, there is still the much older issue of much of the disunity we experience being to do with matters of belief: of doctrine – of the matter of Truth. Truth and unity very much go together and, despite the best wishes of some, cannot be separated.

Picture the scene: an Assistant Curate has been running an interregnum in his parish as his former Incumbent has moved to another parish. He has been holding the fort, celebrating the Sacraments and teaching the Faith to God’s people and serving them in preparation for a new Parish Priest to arrive. The patron’s are dilatory in finding a new Incumbent and just before their right to present a new one expires there is a flurry of activity. However, they have worked out that the Churchwardens are suspicious of their intentions and so send the most outrageous candidate first. When the Churchwardens say “no” to him they do not bat an eyelid. However, the patron’s preferred choice is sent next as the Churchwardens suspected. He is utterly charming, he says all the right things, but the Churchwardens are deeply unsure and yet can’t find a reason to say “no”. He is brought to the Curate’s house to spend half an hour with him on his own. By convention this is just a meeting of potential colleagues, the Assistant Curate has no say in the matter of the appointment. While alone with the Assistant Curate the candidate reveals his true colours as he sits on the settee talking about the unity of the church and declares: “Well, Father, some people believe that Jesus didn’t have a body. It doesn’t matter does it?” to which the Assistant Curate replied, “Yes it does, Father.” The Curate was in a quandary, he didn’t have a say in who was appointed, but he knew that this man would be a disaster as he was not an orthodox believer. If the parish was to be kept united it needed a man who would continue to teach the Faith not someone who would regard it as all being up for negotiation.

Since the 1960’s "Freedom of choice" has been a mantra, a rallying cry that rings from one corner of our earth to the other. This freedom to choose whatever we want has brought millions of aborted babies, the deaths of many women on abortion tables, millions of broken marriages and homes, partial-birth infanticide, disregard for the marriage, and many other evils. But matters are getting worse, because there are those determined to use the force of law to say that anyone who disagrees with this mantra is committing a criminal act, if you do not believe me ask the Bishop of Chester. So those who hold to an orthodox Christian viewpoint find themselves facing the full force of the judicial system. Meanwhile, our own Church of England finds itself caught between a rock and a hard place. On the one hand it is the established church with all the baggage that goes with that, on the other it claims to be part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church. The time is coming when it will have to definitively choose which it is. It cannot continue to act like Janus in the times that are coming. Cardinal Newman feared that the Church of England could only reflect the culture of its day, I pray that is not true, but given some of the reports in this week’s Church Time’s I fear that there are those within it, in positions of influence, who would love to make it so.

Essentially, freedom is good, but freedom comes from God and is given to us so that we may freely choose to follow God’s plan of salvation. Freedom is for choosing good, not evil. Jesus Christ took on our flesh and our freedom to choose what is holy so that we can do likewise, with the constant help of his grace in the Gospel and the sacramental life.

God has fully revealed himself in Jesus and has given to us, in the flesh, a Saviour, who by his nature, his word, and his sacrifice has consecrated himself to us. This is the heart of his priestly prayer: "Holy Father...for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be consecrated in truth." (John 17: 11, 19) Because he "sanctifies" his own name, Jesus reveals to us the name of the Father. At the end of Christ's Passover, the Father gives him the name that is above all names: "Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father." (Philippians 2:9-11)

The revelation of Christ in the flesh is given that we may be "consecrated", made holy, in the truth. We have been created by God and redeemed by Christ so that we can achieve the destiny God intended for us from the beginning. In Christ, we are led to know the truth and, what is more, are called to live the truth, that is, to be "consecrated" through him with him and in him. And by this consecration we are to be delivered from evil, for which we pray in the Lord's Prayer each day. Our life of prayer furthers and deepens the life of grace, strengthens us in holiness. The Lord prays: "I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one." (John 17:15)

There is evil in our world, but it is not an abstraction, rather it refers to a person, Satan, the Evil One, the angel who opposes God. The devil (dia-bolos – from which we get our word “diabolical”) is the one who "throws himself across" God's plan and his work of salvation accomplished in Christ.

And so our freedom is for "choice": choice of the good and rejection of evil. For this we must entrust ourselves by repentance and prayer to consecration in the truth: Jesus Christ, who says to us: "I am the Way and the Truth and the Life." The Holy Spirit has been given to the Church to "lead you into all the truth." because only "the truth will set you free." Unity and truth cannot be separated. Yes, we must pray for the unity of the Church and for the reunion of the great Churches of East and West and for all the Church’s separated brethren, but this cannot be reduced to simply being about being nice to each other and being free to believe what we want. Nor can it simply be regarded as simply about being polite to each other, as if we are like members of some Gentlemen’s Club. Nor can it be simply be regarded as simply talking about unity. Unity is far more important than that, because it is about being one in heart and mind – we are to actively search for unity in the Truth that is Jesus Christ and in the Faith that he came to reveal or proclaim.

There may, at the moment be fragmentation and division, but as the secular agenda gathers pace the need for unity in the truth grows ever more important. Many of us will be faced with hard decisions if we are to be faithful to Christ and the Church which he founded. This is all the more so if particular churches continue to give way to the world’s values for in so doing they are running the risk of throwing themselves across God’s plan of salvation revealed in Christ, who is the way, the truth and the life.

We are called to live now as sons and daughters of The Church, which is called to be the teacher of truth for the whole world, so that we may live in joyful hope of true and eternal freedom in heaven.