Sermon for the 30th of June - Feast of Peter and Paul - Fr Kevin Morris
When I first came to work in London, I met an old priest who told me a story from his days in theological college, a rather Spartan and austere monastic establishment called “Kellum”. The ordinands were let out one weekend a term and when they returned the Abbot asked this friend of mine how he had spent his time. “I’ve been to the seaside” he said, “and oh, I have enjoyed myself!” At this the Abbot wrinkled up his face and said, “Oh John, what a terrible thing to enjoy!”
I hope we who are here this morning do not share the Abbot’s opprobrium. The Christian Gospel reveals that is it the nature of God to delight in flesh and blood and to make Himself known through it: “God so loved the world that he gave His only Son” proclaims St John in his Gospel. As we come to celebrate God’s love in Jesus in the Eucharist this morning on this great feast day of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, we celebrate Christian ministry, and not in some vague abstraction but as lived out in the lives of certain people who are rejoicing in certain anniversaries: Fr Peter’s 10th anniversary of ordination, your Vicar, James’s tenth anniversary of incumbency, Clare’s tenth anniversary as a licensed minister here, Dana who was called to ordination 40 years ago and next year will be Bishop Michael’s golden jubilee of being made a Bishop.
I’m not sure what the collective noun is for a group of anniversaries, but I shall call them an ‘exuberance of anniversaries,” which suggests a quality of being full of energy, excitement, cheerfulness, and luxuriant growth – all of which I pray God will bless you with spiritually in Christ Jesus our Lord as you continue to serve Him. Amen.
My text this morning is taken from the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy Kingdom come; thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” I wonder if you can remember the first time you said the Lord’s prayer and who taught it to you, and I wonder whether you have prayed it once or twice a day ever since. If not, why not? I wonder too if you have ever thought that those same words were also on the lips of St Peter and St Paul.
Outside of St Peter’s in Rome, in the great colonnaded square, there is a 4,000-year-old Egyptian obelisk It is made of 330 tons of Aswan granite and is 25 metres high. It was moved from its original location in the Vatican to where it now stands in 1586 and apparently it took 900 men, 75 horses and 40 winches to carry out the work. It had been brought to Rome by the Emperor Caligula in 37AD and placed at the centre of the Circus of Nero about 800 feet away from its present location. It was here that Nero had many Christians executed including St Peter himself who, tradition has it, was crucified here upside, and was then buried nearby, where the great basilica of St Peter’s stands today. This obelisk would have been one of the last things that St Peter saw before he was martyred. And if you visit the Vatican, you can know that you are eyes fall upon the same object that St Peter’s did.
What St Peter saw though was a symbol of oppressive and violent power that the Roman Emperors wielded to subjugate and control the many nations and peoples of the world. And yet, what Peter also would have seen with the eyes of faith have now been carved into that obelisk: “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus imperat” (Christ conquers, Christ reigns, Christ commands). St Peter knew deep within his heart as a follower of Jesus Christ, that ultimate power and authority lay not with the Emperor but with God, whose Kingdom Christ came to bring in.
In fact, the Kingdom of God is the first thing Jesus talks about in the Gospels.
So, what is this kingdom for which we pray? Well, it is not a land or territory, a geographical location, neither is it something we experience only when we die. A kingdom consists of people and the roadway to the Kingdom of God runs through the human heart. Remember how Jesus says in St Luke’s Gospel, ‘The kingdom of God is very near to you,’ and also’ The kingdom of God is in the midst of you,’ which can also be translated as ‘the kingdom of God is within you.’ That’s how near it is. The roadway to the kingdom of God runs through the human heart – yours and mine.
In his poem, ‘The Kingdom,’ the Welsh poet- priest R.S Thomas put it like this:
It’s a long way off but inside it
There are quite different things going on:
Festivals at which the poor man
Is king and the consumptive is Healed;
mirrors in which the blind look
At themselves and love looks at them
Back; and industry is for mending
The bent bones and the minds fractured
By life. It’s a long way off, but to get
There takes no time and admission
Is free, if you purge yourself
Of desire, and present yourself with
Your need only and the simple offering
Of your faith, green as a leaf.
You see my brothers and sisters, the Kingdom of God is not a place or a system, it is as Rowan Williams describes it, ‘a state of affairs’ when God is in charge. It’s the kingship of God if you like. It is what we see in Jesus, who goes about healing and forgiving and giving life and peace and challenging corruption and in justice and all that prevents human flourishing. It’s the state in which God really is acknowledged to be directing and giving meaning to everything. And St Peter looking up at that Egyptian obelisk, the symbol of domination, knew in his heart of this different kingdom as He went to meet His death. “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus imperat”
Of course, Jesus tells us that the Kingdom comes in unexpected ways; it does not tend to present itself with a dramatic thunderclap and a great booming voice from heaven. It grows in our midst secretly. It comes through in little moments when people do extraordinary things and overwhelm us with self-sacrificial love, kindness, faithful service and heroic hope. And Jesus’s parables tell us of people who give up everything because they have had a glimpse of the Kingdom, when they catch sight of God’s beauty.
My friends you will have felt the closeness of God’s kingdom affect your life in various ways. In this parish, in your communal worship, in the support of loving friendship when you have been in need, in loving hospitality, in joyful celebrations and in the sharing of sorrows, in pastoral care, in music, in the encouraging word and in that great sense of belonging. And I hope and pray at every Eucharist.
I remember the late and wonderful Canon Eric James quoting a beautiful phrase to describe Christ: ‘He pushes back the horizons of the human mystery so that they can open onto the divine mystery.’ Isn’t that a marvellous phrase and using this Eric went on to say to his priest friends, but it has relevance dear friends to all of us.
‘you have held a baby’s head in the cup of your hand, as you have baptised it, you have sometimes been overcome with a sense of the incredible miracle of existence; and the human mystery has opened up on to the divine, or sometimes a young man and woman have stood side by side before you and taken the marriage vows with utter sincerity to God Himself, the human mystery has opened on to the divine. Or you have stood in a hospital ward or some other room of death at the bedside of someone leaving this world and all they love, and you have stood with them and those they love, it has been the human mystery opening onto the divine of which you have been conscious, indeed have been overwhelmed by and you have experienced the enormous privilege of ministry.” And I would say too, the enormous privilege of glimpsing signs of the Kingdom of God in our midst
Every celebration of the Eucharist is a sacrament of hope for the Kingdom, a glimpse of the Kingdom now in our midst. Christ Himself was that Kingdom. It is no accident that just before we receive the Holy Communion of the Body and Blood of our Lord that we say together the Lord’s Prayer. We pray that God’s kingdom may come on earth as in heaven, a kingdom of justice and peace, so that everyone may receive their daily bread and where forgiveness is the hard currency that is spent lavishly. Every eucharist is a celebration of our trust that, in Christ, meaning will triumph in ways that we cannot guess or anticipate.’ “Christus Vincit, Christus Regnat, Christus imperat.”
When you and I pray ‘Thy Kingdom come,’ as did St Peter and St Paul and all who have gone before us marked with the sign of faith then we are committing ourselves to working for the Kingdom of God and recognising it in our midst. We are saying, says Rowan Williams, ‘let the world open out to the depth of God’s love that is really at the root of it all.’ The Kingdom of God was at the heart of Jesus and is at the heart of all Christian ministries and the heart of all Christian celebrations.
Let us open ourselves to the inbreaking of God’s Kingdom in the Eucharist this morning that the work of Christ may continue in us and that we may be bearers of His Kingdom as we say: Thy Kingdom come; Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. AMEN