AY I SAY how pleased I am to see you all today? It's particularly good to see many lay people here, supporting your clergy. Though the Mass today - as always - is a celebration of the whole People of God, I am going to speak particularly to the clergy in this sermon. The Chrism Mass is meant to equip the clergy for the tasks ahead. It is the occasion on which some of the clergy's tools of the trade - the oils of exorcism, healing and chrism - are blessed and consecrated. It is an opportunity for the renewal of the clergy's ordination vows. It is - most importantly - a preparation for the clergy - bishop, priests and deacons - to lead the whole people of God in the renewal of baptismal vows during the Easter liturgy.

It is an opportunity for the bishop to teach rather than 'just say a few words'. So I make no apology about talking primarily to the clergy - though I hope what I have to say is of general interest too - and for taking a little longer than usual on this important occasion. In fact, like an ordinand or junior curate, I am going to preach what are effectively two sermons in one, one after the other, but deliberately.

Christ has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.
Revelation 1

My Lent book this year has been Dermot Power's A Spiritual Theology of the Priesthood. Sub-titled 'The Mystery of Christ and the Mission of the Priest', this book is built on the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar, the pope's favourite theologian. One of its tasks is to investigate the relationship between the priesthood of the ordained ministry and the priesthood of all believers. We all know what happens when the relationship between these two priesthoods is out of kilter. On the one hand we have had phrases like 'going into the Church' as a description of getting ordained - as if lay people weren't members of the Church. On the other hand we have had the notion that the minister in the pulpit or the clergyman at the altar is no different from anyone else. This leads, not least, to ideas of lay presidency at the Eucharist.

False distinctions between ontology and function have been drawn. How can you be something without having specific tasks and responsibilities? How can you do a series of different things without being the person who in some sense is set apart to do them?

Part of the glory of the Catholic faith is that we Catholic priests, by and large, don't spend our time wondering who we are or what our job is. We know that we are called to share in the priesthood of Christ. We are called in the very specific sense of being the priest, the person who presides at the celebration of the Eucharist, a service which itself commemorates and represents the sacrifice of Christ - the meal, the death, the resurrection and the exaltation.

And, of course, we know that a priest must be a man ... . The story the priest ritually acts out is that of a young man dying a violent death, a man whose death challenged and refocused male heroism, a man whose self-offering redefined and gave new meaning to sacrifice. The sacrifice that had been offered by priests in the past was a virile, bloody business with the life-blood of bulls and goats. The sacrifice offered once for all by Christ our High Priest was the pouring out of his own life-blood. What a different religion ours would be if a female priesthood were to give birth to the Messiah's body and blood on the altar! Instead we have the sacrificial breaking of the body and the pouring out of the blood. In the words of Pope St Leo the Great we have 'a full, clear sacramental rite' in place of 'what was done only in the Jewish temple and in signs and shadows'. We might like a religion of birth and re-incarnation. We have instead a religion of death and resurrection.

Louis Bouyer explores the relationship of priests and people in these words, quoted by Dermot Power:

When we see the priest in the midst of his brothers in Christ celebrating the Eucharist with men, it should be manifest that this ministerial priesthood, the sacramental sign in our midst of the one priesthood of Christ, far from making useless or void the royal priesthood of all believers, has no other meaning or object but to make it fully actualized.

The text I used at the beginning of this sermon is applicable equally to the priesthood of the clergy and to the priesthood of all the baptized.

Christ has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.
Revelation 1

Both meanings of priesthood apply to other parts of today's readings, for instance these words of Isaiah:

You shall be called the priests of the Lord, men shall speak of you as the ministers of our God.
Isaiah 61

and these words of the Lord in the Gospel:

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.'
Luke 4

Clergy and all the baptized are 'ministers of our God'. Clergy and all the baptized have been freed from their sins by Christ's blood and have been made a kingdom, priests to his God and Father. Clergy and all the baptized have the task of proclaiming 'release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind', setting 'at liberty those who are oppressed' and proclaiming 'the acceptable year of the Lord.' To this end clergy and all the baptized have been anointed to preach by the Spirit of the Lord.

I could spend the rest of the sermon continuing to investigate the relationship of the ministerial priesthood with the priesthood of all the baptized. Instead I am going to assume that, thanks not least to Lumen Gentium and Presbyterorum Ordinis, the relationship between the ordained ministry and the ministry of the whole People of God has never been so clear. I am going to move on, then, in part two, to ask how we can and should proceed in what I like to call 'the apostolic district of Ebbsfleet', the community of those who look to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet for 'extended episcopal care'.

And here I have a number of points to make - seven in all, each very short:

First, we have not withdrawn and are not withdrawing from the structures of the Church of England. We continue to take part in chapters and synods, to sit on diocesan committees, to contribute to the ecclesiastical context in which we have a place. We are not a 'continuing church' or a new church but, we believe, the authentic expression of the Church of England - a church which looks back to Augustine and Ebbsfleet and which continues to minister to English people in and through the parochial system. We lead by example and not by separation, and I applaud those of you who are realizing this. By all means arrive late to things and leave early, but do go!

Second, there is a community of priests, deacons and lay people which looks to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet for oversight in spiritual matters. In these churches - the Resolution C parishes - the president of the Eucharist is normally but not usually the Bishop of Ebbsfleet, on whose behalf his deputies the priests usually but not normally preside.

Third, there is a very large number of people - priests and people - who are not in Resolution C parishes but who - wholly or partly - look to the Bishop of Ebbsfleet for episcopal care. Some are helped by me being an assistant bishop of this and that diocese. Others have a more fragmentary and partial access to extended episcopal care. But, let's be clear, some of the most valuable ministry we do is in places where hell will freeze over before any resolutions can be passed.

Fourth, we are now into what I like to call 'the second generation of PEVs'. (In this sense I believe that I am continuing with Bishop Michael's vision rather than inventing my own). Our task is to call the constituency to community, to a renewed ecclesial life. We need to become nothing less than 'the local church', as that is understood in catholic ecclesiology. How else can we develop ecumenical and fraternal relationships with other local churches? We must not be a gathering of the disaffected. We must become a 'local church' in the classical sense of that phrase.

Fifth of my seven points: this renewed ecclesial life will require another look at structures. Some of you meet in alternative chapters, others under the flag of Forward in Faith, the SSC, the FCP, the Boys' Brigade or the Church Union. All this is very good but there is less clarity than I should like to see. I want to see nothing less than a comprehensive network of Ebbsfleet chapters for the clergy and a representative Lay Congress for the laity. The Ebbsfleet chapters will include Resolution C incumbents and curates as full members and other clergy, stipendiary and retired, as associate members. The Lay Congress will not be a legislative body but a place of meeting, a place of encouragement, a place of learning and mutual up-building - a new model for lay synodical participation. Just as the Council of Priests emerges from and sustains the Ebbsfleet Chapters, a lay council will emerge from and sustain the Lay Congress. My Priest Secretary, Fr Spilsbury, is charged with setting all this up for me.

Sixth, I think we need to intensify our efforts to persuade the Resolution A and B parishes in our church to move on and become Resolution C parishes. This is not because we necessarily need more and more parishes. It's because we need to be able to say to folk up and down the country, 'This is where you can go to church and be confident that the preaching is biblical, that the sacraments are Catholic sacraments'.

Lastly - and perhaps most important of all - the second generation of Provincial Episcopal Visitors will be looking to you to move on from a time of bitterness and grief. It is time again to 'Rejoice in the Lord' who is doing marvelous things through us. Our priorities should not be the Women Bishops' Debate, the running out of the Roman Option Fast Track or the ending of the special provisions for those who resign under the Priests (Ordination of Women) Measure. If we are to become truly a local church, a branch of the Church Universal, we must move beyond politics and on to the business of being authentically the ordained ministry and the priesthood of all the baptized. Our priority must be to preach the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. This priority is served by evangelism, catechesis, spirituality and the faithful celebration of the sacraments. I want the Ebbsfleet parishes to be shop-windows of worship, power-houses of preaching, exemplars of Christian love and places where people know their Faith and are unafraid to share it with others.

In short, and to return to the point at which this sermon began, I want the Ebbsfleet parishes to be models of how the ministerial priesthood and the priesthood of all the faithful work together with mutual up-building for the fulfilling of the kingdom of Jesus Christ.

Christ has freed us from our sins by his blood and made us a kingdom, priests to his God and Father.
Revelation 1

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