A Sermon preached at the Diocese of California Convention's Opening Eucharist October 15, 2010 By the Dean of Grace Cathedral, the Very Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw. Texts: Jeremiah 17:7-8; Psalm 1; Romans 6:3-11; Mark 10:35-45 In the name of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. It is a great pleasure to be preaching at this diocesan convention, and it seems most fitting that my first sermon preached as the dean of this cathedral should be on this particular occasion, for it is your cathedral, and I am honoured to be called to serve you in it. Let me begin by making a confession. I’ve never been employed by the Church before. I promise you, the dean search committee and bishop did know this! I’ve worked for the church – as a curate, as an adviser to the House of Bishops and so on - but always in a nonstipendiary capacity. I’ve worked as the Dean of Divinity at New College, Oxford, for the last decade, running a large chapel and heading up the pastoral team for that community, but it was the college that paid me. So this new adventure represents a sea change for me and I am completely delighted, now I have taken the plunge into the full waters of the church, that I find myself working for the Episcopal Church here in the Diocese of California, that you are my new clergy colleagues and fellow lay workers, and that Marc is my bishop. And I am also thrilled to be joining that long line of immigrants who come have to this beautiful city over so many decades, and are still coming, in anticipation of the new. Making things new, that’s the theme underlying all our readings this evening. Paul in his letter to the Christians in Rome reminds them and now us, that if we die with Christ then we live in Christ; and so we are paradoxically given new life. Do you not know, Paul writes, “that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life.” By entering the Christian way of life, we make a decision to put God rather than ourselves at the centre of our world. That is what Christ did on the Cross, with the result that he was released from the shackles of death. The Christian life is about turning outwards and learning to trust God so that we might enjoy true freedom, and life in all its fullness. The water of baptism is a symbol of that turning of self, from obsessive self-regard to greater regard for others, from trust in self alone to trust in God. But poor old James and John don’t get it. They’re walking with Jesus on the way to Jerusalem, and they decide this is a good opportunity to ask him a favour. We can imagine them walking along, nudging each other, “come on, now’s a good time, let’s ask him.” We’ve all been in that situation, where we’re calculating when to ask the boss for something we want. And what they want is quite extraordinary: Grant us the right, they say, to sit in state
with you, one at your right and the other at your left. It’s an audacious request, and in the circumstances, Jesus’ response is gracious. You don’t know what you are asking, he says. Can you drink the cup that I drink, or be baptised with the baptism that I am baptised with? he says. Yeah, yeah, we can do that, they answer, eager for what they think is the prize. And of course their request irritates the other disciples who become indignant and selfrighteous when they realise what James and John have asked for. Maybe some of them are annoyed that they didn’t think to ask for it themselves, or they’d been planning to ask for it and hadn’t got round to it yet. They start squabbling. The problem is that they still haven’t understood that it isn’t all about them. One of my oldest and closest friends (we’ve known each other since the age of 8) is a very high powered diplomat, currently serving in Iraq, and has six children, and I am constantly amazed not only at the ways in which she runs the household with enormous efficiency, but also how extremely well adjusted all her children are. Yes, they squabble, there are six of them, for goodness sake and yes they can be naughty, but they have a remarkably refreshing outward-looking take on the world. And I can only put it down to this: that whenever they start fighting over who has what, or taking perceived slights personally, their mother Alice simply says to them, “It’s not about you.” We’re wired as human beings to think that we are the centre of the universe, so the process of unwiring that assumption is hard. But learning that it’s not all about me (amazing, huh?) and slowly, slowly turning outward that is what the Christian life is about. It starts with baptism as the waters flow over us; it’s sustained by grace; and it leads us to make all our relationships anew in the most remarkable ways. In fact, it turns our world upside down and revolutionises how we form community. And when that upside down turning happens, we begin to find, miraculously, that we need each other; we find that we need to learn from each other. We find that when one of us suffers, we all share that suffering; and when one of us succeeds then the glory of God is reflected in each of us. We find that what each of our colleagues and friends does is of value, for it is all about the coming of the kingdom of God and we rejoice in that. What happens at St. Timothy’s Danville is important for what happens at True Sunshine, which is important for St. Augustine’s Oakland, which is important for the Sojourn Chaplaincy, which is important for St. Luke’s San Francisco. Quite simply, we need each other. I need you, each one of you: I am not entirely a stranger, but I’ve left behind the land I grew up in, and am walking with you on this road where, frankly, none of us has ever been before. And I want to learn from you how you need me, and how I can serve you. I am so very much looking forward to getting to know you over the coming months, to learning what you are doing. For it is in that turning to one another that the loneliness and smallness of a life focused on self is lifted, and we find ourselves enjoying life in all its fullness - just as Jesus promised it. On Wednesday evening, I had the great pleasure of attending the installation of the new President and Dean of Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Mark Richardson. It was my first full day in California so I was pretty jet lagged and slightly disoriented as you might expect, but at the peace, when we all stood up and I walked amongst that great sea of
strangers, beloved friends, and old acquaintances and we shook hands and kissed one another, I knew exactly where I was: in the body of Christ who loves us all. And that is where we are tonight, one with another, in this beloved community. We are, like Jesus and James and John and all the disciples, on the road to Jerusalem and sometimes that will take courage and humility and getting over ourselves, simply because we are human and frail, but we have one another and we have Jesus who never stops loving us, world without end. Amen.