Ebbsfleet Festival of Faith 2003: Bishop Andrew's Homily |
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'MARCHING TO THE
PROMISED LAND, A LAND OF MILK AND HONEY ... ' SERMON IN TWO parts.
First, the Promised Land, the Land of Milk and Honey. Then a bit about the
Marching.Next time you play Trivial Pursuits, it might help you to know that there are twenty references in the Hebrew Old Testament to the land flowing with milk and honey. Of the twenty references, three quarters are in four of the books of the Law - Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy - one in the Book of Joshua, two of the them in the Prophet Jeremiah, two in the Prophet Ezekiel. There are four references in the Apocrypha but no mention at all of the land and milk and honey in the New Testament. With one exception (Song of Songs 4:11) milk and honey are always linked with the journey to the Promised Land. The first mention of the land of milk and honey is today's first reading: God - the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob - appears to Moses in the burning bush and says, 'I have seen the miserable state of my people…. I mean to deliver them out of the hands of the Egyptians and bring them up to the land rich and broad, a land where milk and honey flow. (Exodus 3:8) Just as the first mention of milk and honey is linked with God appearing, the second mention, Exodus 13:5, links the Promised Land of milk and honey with the Passover Feast. When you get to the Promised Land, the Lord says, keep the Passover as a reminder of the journey (Exodus 13:5). No wonder, then, that milk and honey remind us of the Eucharist. The Jewish Passover, celebrated once a year, has become the weekly - even daily - celebration of the Eucharist, the Christian Passover. Milk and honey, for us, are our sharing in the host and the chalice, the Lord's flesh and blood. The Promised Land is heaven and the Eucharist reaches its fulfilment in the Marriage Feast of the Lamb. But why milk and honey? Why not olives and oranges? Milk reminds us of the words of the Lady Julian of Norwich, whose anniversary was this week. Six hundred years ago she wrote that Jesus is our mother. Our mothers bear us for pain and for death but our true mother, Jesus, Julian says, bears us for joy and endless life. The Blessed Sacrament, in this rather strange mediaeval image - inevitably hi-jacked by modern feminism - becomes our mother's milk, the food that makes us grow. And we do well, in this month of May, this month of Mary, to think - perhaps more straightforwardly - of the Blessed Virgin, Mother of Jesus and our Mother too. She nursed her son at the breast as God nurses us his children. He feeds us with life-giving milk and weans us on to the solid food of his Holy Word. The fifth-century Western father St Peter Chrysologus said that Christ is the bread that is sowed in the Virgin, leavened in the flesh, kneaded in the Passion, baked in the oven of the sepulchre, kept in the Church, taken to the altars, given to the faithful as heavenly food every day. As for honey, ringing in my ears is the lovely mediaeval sequence Jesu dulcis memoria. It's there in our hymn books: Jesu! the very thought is sweet! In that dear name all heart-joys meet; but sweeter than the honey far the glimpses of his presence are. What a meditation that would make for the silence following Holy Communion or at Benediction! Such a meditation might go on to explore the hive, the place where the honey is to be found. Another image of life together, another image to stop us turning our religion into a private business. An image that understands stings as well as honey, swarming as well as marching! So much for now about the Land of Milk and Honey: in the second part of the sermon, a few words about Marching. It is tempting to see the Promised Land - 'a land rich and broad', our true homeland - as a set of political or ecclesiastical goals. Economic and scientific progress; full employment; food, water and shelter for all mankind: these are all worth working for. They all play their part - as we must play our part - in working for the coming of God's kingdom, a kingdom of justice and peace. The environment, health, literacy, marriage and family life: these are vital causes which enlist our energies and our sympathies. But they are not themselves the Promised Land: they are very much part of the march. And I would urge you, fellow Christians, not to underestimate your importance but to play your part to the best of your God-given ability, praying without ceasing that God's kingdom come, his will be done. As the Gospel today says, eternal life is this: to know the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he has sent (John 17:3). Eternal life is the Promised Land, the journeying and the destination. I am very proud - and hopeful - of the progress we have made in the Catholic movement, marching together this last ten years. We are marching today. Not marching as in rallies and demonstrations. Marching as in feasting and pilgrimage. Next year is the tenth anniversary of the See of Ebbsfleet and it is my firm intention that we shall keep it with joy and gratitude to God. The Catholic movement in the Church of England, I believe, has come of age. The painfulness of the family row between Anglo-Catholics for and against the ordination of women as bishops as priests has not gone but it's beginning to recede and even - in places - to become a new and genuine ecumenism. Those who look to the Provincial Episcopal Visitors for pastoral oversight - and those who look to the other Catholic bishops too - have begun to learn some of the skills of being a successful minority. Excitingly, we have begun in places to demonstrate some of the characteristics of one of 'the new movements', movements like Focolare, the Neo-Catechumenate, which are bringing new life to the Church. Indeed we have begun to behave more like a Church. And I want to give you today some encouragement - some vision - for the future. For one thing, we are not dying out. The number of 'C' parishes is steadily rising. As I go round, I find congregations in good heart, many of them growing. I find myself baptising and confirming adults, as well as children. I hear wonderful stories of faith. I meet people truly radiant with joy. For them the Catholic Faith is right at the centre of their lives. I take part in Masses - on a smaller scale than this one - where the cloud of God's presence, the shekinah, his dwelling in our midst, is palpable - obvious. Five splendid Chrism Masses, for example. A Christian from another tradition was present at the Funeral Mass a few days ago of Fr Graham Ball, a priest I ordained only last summer and who, to our immense sadness, died young. We celebrated the Requiem with the full privileges of the Catholic Faith. This is how the Christian from another tradition described it: What a massive and mysterious event today. 'Massive and mysterious': it describes the Faith so well. The riches of our Faith and of the liturgy are inexhaustible. Marching to the Promised Land. I think before 1992 some Anglo-Catholics were not marching anywhere. They were on individual walks and strolls in enchanted gardens of their own devising, not in the desert. Sometimes they were rushing around, sometimes on the run. Marching can only happen in groups. It doesn't work if every priest is pope in his own parish, the bishop a distant figure to be ridiculed, other Christians people to be belittled. Marching doesn't work if we are running away from Egypt. The Israelites only began to march once they had crossed the Red Sea. Marching doesn't work if we are kicking our heels in the desert, concentrating on our needs, grumbling, making golden calves. The invitation to this Festival of Faith is an invitation to celebrate Easter and honour the Mother of God together in this month of May, together and not just in our own churches. More than that it is an invitation to make common cause together, to be together a contingent of the People of God, marching towards the Promised Land, a land of milk and honey. I am not sure in earthly terms where we are heading. Present arrangements would be stretched to breaking point if we were to have women bishops. There is talk of 'free provinces' and conversations with other churches. But church politics, though sometimes essential, can be as good an example of kicking your heels in the desert as you can find. If it isn't a Golden Calf it is often enough a plague of serpents. In our march we must look to the new Moses, Jesus. This Jesus, as today's Gospel tells us, gives eternal life to all those that the Father has entrusted to him. He has given us the teaching that the Father gave to him. That is the Catholic Faith. So let us resolve to put our belief and trust in God the Holy Trinity: in God the Father who called his people out of slavery and death to life in the Promised Land; in God the Son who was lifted up from the earth 'that whoever believes in him may have eternal life' (John 3:14); in God the Holy Spirit who bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children then heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ (Romans 8:16-17). + Andrew Ebbsfleet Bristol Cathedral Saturday 10th May AD2003 |
