CENTENARY OF THE COMMUNITY OF ST FRANCIS
SOUTHWARK CATHEDRAL
26 February 2005
See Special Order of Service
1 Corinthians 1: 18 – end
Luke 12: 22 – 34
This great occasion is one proof of the virtue of bad habits. If I had written this sermon a week or more ago, as I was taught in theological college that I should, then I would have been forced to tear it all up and start again. The Anglican Communion to which very nearly all of us belong, or perhaps thought we belonged, is not the same today as it was two days ago; that has had a direct bearing on the direction of the remarks I want to make as we gather to celebrate this very important anniversary today. Fortunately the well-prepared sermon was not written.
Bad habits are something familiar to you all – along with hot habits, smelly habits, torn habits, old habits, summer habits, winter habits and a marvellous history of discussing just how much of which precise fabric might be purchased for habits. So there seems to be the characteristic Franciscan humour in the gospel today, “Even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these.” Too right – a little exegetical proof that St Luke had never met Solomon – or a Franciscan for that matter.
Franciscans have affected my own ministry continuously since I was eighteen and met Br Jeffrey and Br Brian in the bush in Papua New Guinea, I have often said that it is to them that I owe the realisation of my vocation, and I thank God for it. Here, we rejoice, notice the pun, in the presence of your Minister General and sisters week by week, their membership of this congregation is critically valuable, it is a real gift of grace. In September last year we gained a vast benefit from the presence of Sisters and Brothers for ten days as well as their help in the previous two years of preparation. By past experience I anticipate the good results of that ten days to affect this congregation for ten years. Some of my former students from London and Cambridge have joined both the First and Second Orders. I will not bore you with dozens of stories of an interweaving encounter, suffice it to say; that if my own small life’s ministry has been so fundamentally affected by Franciscans in a relatively short time, how much more so the life of the Church at large. It is beyond our knowledge and I suspect far beyond our imagining. We are here today to thank God for the Community of St Francis and to thank God for the length and breadth and height and depth of the love of God witnessed in and by the Community.
I have something else to thank the Community for today also; this year, 2005, marks the centenary of the diocese of Southwark, and so of this church as a Cathedral. This Eucharist of thanksgiving for the CSF is the first centenary event to take place here, so I welcome you to this diocese of one hundred years as you mark your Community of 100 years and I say, long may our contemporary turbulent, dedicated, prayerful, sacramental, social, inclusive and energetic contributions to the mission of the Church prosper, that must be a prayer we share this year. And if we are a thorn in the side of the Church then remember that St Paul thanked God for thorns in the side, living in the tradition of St Francis is not about living a quiet life of uncontentious conformity. In General Synod last week Archbishop Rowan spoke about the cost of risk. Real risk carries a cost because it is only real risk if there is the possibility of failure, as we have seen this week. On the other hand real risk also carries the possibility of success, those who founded the Community of St Francis took a real risk, and they took a squat as well – long before it was fashionable. Success is as much a risk as failure; we have to learn to adapt and manage success, the results become our responsibility.
So the gospel is wise. ‘Do not worry, - about food, clothes, housing, drink, your weight – in fact anything, like all these biblical lists, whether they are sins or virtues, they are representative, they are not to be taken as shopping lists or agendas, using them specifically is abusing them – do not worry about anything. Worry is promiscuous, it is a thief, a moth, it does not care what it damages and it consumes our energy and our attention in futility. Our energy and our attention are to be dedicated to God’s kingdom. So, as we celebrate 100 years of the Community (or the diocese) and we wonder what the Community will look like in 100 years time, we are encouraged to move on, to continue to risk all and not to worry about anything, except, except, the realisation of the kingdom. That even means we should not worry about the future of the Anglican Communion – and we have had a couple of dozen archbishops locked up worrying about it all week!
One of the great gifts to the Church of the Franciscan tradition is that your vows represent that injunction not to worry. Undertaking Poverty and Chastity and Obedience is, as you all know much better than I, not simplistically about financial insecurity, a denial of sexuality or a thoughtless submissiveness. It is actually a commitment not to worry. Now, knowing many sisters as I do, I have to say I accept it is not easy, indeed it is not always successful, but it is there and it stands as a reminder that we are about God succeeding; our own efforts often get in the way.
As this week has progressed I have thought about you more and more and the contribution that you have made and may make to the Anglican Church. On the face of it your lifestyle is extremely foolish and it is self-evidently counter-cultural. ‘God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.’
It seems to me that this weekend we are presented with three sorts of Community. I live in a family, in fact, by definition all of us know what family is because we have all had a father and a mother, even those whose father and mother disappeared or disowned them, for those people Christian Scriptures have a lot to say about the sacred role of adoption and fostering which is perhaps better understood within Religious Community than the world at large. I chose my family – well I chose the person with whom I wanted to spend the rest of my life, I sort of chose my children, although often I wanted to put them back. Those who live in Religious Communities have no such luxury, you embark on the discipline of living with people whom you didn’t choose: that is when poverty through sharing; chastity through the constant requirement to keep on working on relationships, living with people whom you don’t even want to like; obedience to the common mind of the whole community, subsuming the self and the individualism ‘my ministry’ in the greater endeavour; that is when all these really witness to the Church. All these are so much more than we who have secular relationships to work on have to encounter. The public image of Religious is that they have abdicated the world; the truth is that they have fully engaged with the world. The common image of vows is that they are about giving up, abstinence and negative, whereas they are diametrically opposite to that, they are generous.
Which brings me to say that I welcome sisters from other parts of the world today, and I want to say, here, in this church, this week, today, I extend a particular and especially welcome to the sisters who are members of ECUSA. You who live in generous community must be wondering what has happened to the generosity of the Anglican tradition. You who live as sisters and brothers with a worldwide perspective and Order must be wondering what sort of communion you have with your sisters and brothers across the ocean when you are told that you have an impaired communion that you do not even recognise. If God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom how much more is God’s foolishness wiser than human foolishness. We have to believe that God will be at work in our weakness, that is the faith of the cross with which Francis was so indelibly and painfully marked. I do not say that as a platitude either, I believe there is ample evidence.
I offer you an example. This centenary year marks also the 450th anniversary of heresy trials in this Cathedral Church. This month we observed the anniversary of the martyrdom of the victims of the most famous of those trials. Convicted by Bishop Stephen Gardiner, bishop of Winchester, seven men were burned to death in various parts of the country, two were diocesan bishops, another was John Rogers a close associate of William Tyndale, dedicated to getting Holy Scripture translated and disseminated in the English language. In February 1555 it must have seemed that the risk they took in the Reformation was a failure, the cost was ultimate defeat, they were burned in hell fire to frighten others off the dangers of damnation. John Rogers is there on the High Altar Screen – bottom row, extreme left. In 1555, that same year, 450 years ago, a boy was born not far from here, he grew up with a prodigious intellect, spoke fifteen languages and fluently translated five classical languages. He translated the first five books of what we call the Authorised Version of the Bible in to English and co-operated in much more of the work, especially the historical books. He steered the councils of the Church through the stormy seas of four later Tudor and early Stuart monarchs, he was part of the creation of a stable, broad and generous Anglican tradition, his name was Lancelot Andrewes, he too was bishop of Winchester and he lies there beside the High altar. So in 1555 as the risk seemed to falter, progress and reform suffered defeat in the face of reactionary narrowness, a bishop was born who saw the scriptures proclaimed in English to the nation and saw the Church emerging both catholic and reformed, a unique gift to God’s kingdom and a unique act of grace by God’s goodness.
The controversies and fights of our domestic families are replicated with remarkable identical features in the controversies and fights of Community and the controversies and fights of Communion. Just as every one of us had parents and our make up is in origin their combination, so as Anglicans in disagreement we are called to remember we have our baptism and it is the recognition of a sacramental and indissoluble unity in baptism that holds the key to the resolution of our distinctions. No one can be asked to temporarily withdraw from their baptism and in that unity the Community of St Francis can stand as a sign for all the Church of what the Church should better be and become.
So I thank God for you all. I thank God for the example you offer of positive commitment and generous vows. I thank God for the great gift that the Religious Life is for the Church and pray for more and more vocations. The CSF of 1905 would not recognise the CSF of 2005 and I hope you will not recognise the CSF of 2105. Francis was about risk for the Lord, it is to that risky vocation that I commend us all, trusting in his eternal graciousness, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. AMEN.