The Rev Professor David Brown: First Mass Sermon

UPDATE: I was forwarded a link this morning in an email with someone letting me know that Mr. Johnson over at Reformed catholicism challenged the sermon preached by Professor David Brown that is found below. To be honest, the one thing I do not miss about many in the Reformed integrity is their fighting attitude every time an "issue" pops up for them. Mr. Johnson, in the past, has been a very gracious person who seemed open to discussion, but something of late has changed all that it seems. Nonetheless, there are a few things that Mr. Johnson doesn't understand:

1) My former ministry is changed because it lacked sacramental assurance due to the apostolic ministry of the laying on of hands by a bishop who is in Apostolic succession (from Old Catholic order). I believe bishops are of the esse of the Church and therefore was ordained to the sacred priesthood for offering the Eucharistic sacrifice for the first time. I exercised grace in my prior ordination as a Presbyterian but that ministry as grace-filled as it was lacked sacramental assurance. Therefore, for the first time in my ordained priesthood I offered the Eucharist as the Christian offering which was not the intention of my ordination in my former ministry. So, it was for the "First Time".

2) I would want to graciously disagree with how Mr. Johnson interpreted Professor Brown's sermon on signs, symbols and realities. The point was that the rituals, movements and not just words are as important as the 'words' and as a priest for Christ's church, I have the honour and privilege (NOT POWER) to perform. Those gestures bring meaning to what is happening at the altar. Mr. Johnson obviously disagrees and his argument of the priesthood of all believers has nothing to do with the sacramental ordained ministry other than it is from the laos from which I was graciously called by God and affirmed in the Church. That was clearly stated by Prof. Brown in his sermon and like Calvin, methinks Mr. Johnson protesteth too much.

3) The comment that Anglo-Catholicism is the 'cause' of what is happening in ECUSA makes a lot of sense but it is a lot of nonsense. It is elementary logical fallacies. As an example, I am one who is disgusted by many of the actions of ECUSA not to mention the province of the West Indies and a number of other Anglo-Catholic provinces in Africa who are equally put off by what TEC is doing. Mr. Johnson is grossly mistaken here and somebody else can try to speak reasonably with him on this as I am finding him impossible.

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We had the wonderful privilege last Monday of having Prof. David Brown (my PhD supervisor) preach the sermon at my First Mass Of the Holy Spirit. It was an enjoyable time for all. David's move to University of St. Andrews is a big loss to Durham and we really miss having him here. The sermon only shows you why. For pictures of the events go here and here. Enjoy.

Sermon at Jeff Steel’s First Mass

Monday, 3^rd March at 7 p.m.

The Revd Prof. David Brown

I suspect that very few of us these days, as we go about our daily business, reflect on the deeper meaning behind ‘goodbye,’ whether this be said to friend or casual acquaintance. Yet it is in fact a prayer, contracted as it is from an original, ‘God be with you’. Americans in saying ‘have a good day’ do at least retain something of what was once meant by ‘Good day’. But it is to the continent that we must turn for examples with the religious force still obvious and dominant. So, for example, in Austria and southern Germany, rather than Guten Tag (‘Good day’), even now one commonly hears Gruss Gott, ‘Greetings in God’s name.

Turn to what we do in church, and again the full force of ‘Peace by with you’ is often lost. In English we often think of peace as simply the absence of war, and so, despite some distant conflicts over the years, it is common to hear that Britain has enjoyed sixty years of peace since the last major war with Germany. Yet, what a huge loss there is in this way of speaking, as can be seen if we consider just for a moment that opening greeting of Christ to the disciples in the Upper Room. Its implications were, and are, in fact quite revolutionary. A few days earlier Peter, the chief of the apostles, had vehemently denied all knowledge of Jesus, while most of the rest of the disciples had fled. Only John, the youngest among them, and the women remained. Even then their presence at the foot of cross perhaps spoke less of the strength of their commitment to Jesus and more of the fact that the Roman imperial authorities were less likely to regard such persons as a serious threat, and so as requiring arrest. ‘Insignificant weaklings,’ they must have thought. Yet, however his immediate company behaved, to one and all alike Jesus declares: Peace. All – whoever they are and whatever they have done – all are equally acknowledged by Christ.

But it is not just a matter of acknowledgment. Something much more important is at stake. The Hebrew word involved – shalom - is among the most profound and wide-ranging words in the Hebrew Scriptures. Unlike its English equivalent it means much more than the mere cessation of hostilities. It is really about securing the flourishing of the individual concerned. So that is why in English translations you will often find a multitude of English alternatives being used: yes, sometimes peace but almost as often, well-being or even prosperity; in other words Jesus wants everything that will secure the flourishing of the other, the economic and the material no less than the spiritual.

And it is to such a ministry of reconciliation that we are all called. As Christ, declares, ‘As my father sent me, even so I send you.’ As Paul made clear in our epistle reading (I Cor. 12.3-7), each of us has been given his or her own characteristic gifts, and these can all make their own distinctive contribution to the true flowering of humanity. It is all part of what Luther and Calvin at the Reformation called, following I Peter 2.5, ‘the priesthood of all believers’.

Yet, despite that universalism, we find Calvin repeatedly retreating to expressing that contribution narrowly and exclusively in terms of words. So, for example, in expounding the final verse of today’s gospel (‘Whoever sins you remit, they are remitted; whoever sins you retain, they are retained’), he is adamant that this has nothing to do with sacraments. Instead, as he puts it, (Institutes 4,11.1) the only ‘interpretation’ that is ‘not subtle nor forced nor distorted’ but ‘natural, fluent and plain’ is to see matters exclusively in terms of ‘the ministry of the Word,’ in terms of what is said or proclaimed. Methinks, the man protests too much! The obvious sense is surely that it mattered to Christ that it was a ministry entrusted to one particular set of individuals, namely those who had themselves experienced that liberating and forgiving peace that Christ has just accorded them.

So how and through whom the sacrament is conveyed was no less important than the actual words used. To its shame it is a truth that the Catholic Church itself forgot in the medieval period, as the retaining of sins in excommunication ceased to be a ministry of healing and instead one deeply embedded in the abuse of power. Whole nations, including our own, were placed under interdict in the papacy’s determination to hold onto the reigns of absolute power.

By now, with all my talk of Calvin and the Reformation, and critique of the medieval Church, you may well be wondering if Father Jeffrey has not after all invited the wrong preacher! A rabid Protestant! This long pre-amble has in fact been offered for two good reasons. First, Fr Jeff was first ordained as a Presbyterian or Calvinist minister; so it is important that his past be acknowledged as he now embarks on a new future. But, secondly and more importantly, in Fr Jeff’s case at least it is possible to detect an underlying continuity, one in which his new role as an Anglican priest builds on rather than totally subverts that past.

Those who know Jeff may perhaps by now be fed up with the name of Lancelot Andrewes (the subject of his thesis), but nowhere in fact can one see better that continuity than in an Easter sermon of Andrewes from 1609. All those points I was making earlier about the meaning of peace and its part in the vocation of each and every one of us is to be found in the first half of the bishop’s sermon. As Andrewes himself puts it, unlike other resurrection appearances this one is to all the disciples; not only that, ‘Christ made no distinction among them even though some had denied and deserted him.’ And so all are summoned to respond. Peace as the vocation of us all, and mediated through a word. Pure Calvinism.

But then comes a change in the second half of the sermon that marks Andrewes out as no mere card-carrying Calvinist. It is ‘the peace-offering given to us in our hands’ in the Eucharist that we are told best encapsulates, best sums up, that peace, which is why ‘these sixteen hundred years this day has not passed without a peace offering’. Symbols for Andrewes matter, and not just words. Those who have cleaned and hovered the church for this evening, those who have provided and arranged the flowers, those who have ensured that there is enough to eat and drink afterwards make a contribution that is no less important than the priests who will in due course join in this con-celebration. 0f course Christ will still come to us in the mass even when the liturgy is said hastily and without any obvious sign of commitment. But liturgy well performed does make it so much easier for communicants to experience that reality in all its fullness, and the same is no less true of a beautifully ordered and cared-for church. In a similar way it is not just the words of the minister visiting the sick that count. No less important can be the gentle reassuring squeezing of the hand or hug round the shoulders that those less articulate can offer to those in pain or to the dying. In other words, symbols can convey just as much as words, and sometimes so much more.

So the eucharistic sacrifice that Father Jeff offers for the first time this evening is not just about the power of words, or about symbols as an alternative way of conveying words - enacted sermons, as it were , as Calvin chose to put it. It is equally about the way in which Fr. Jeff does things, the gestures he makes, the care with which every act is performed, and so on. For what he has gained is not primarily a power but, much more basically, a privilege: a privilege that can renew that first gift of peace in the Upper Room. Through Fr Jeff and the way in which he helps unites us with all Christians past and present, we come once more into the presence of Christ, once more into that room where the doors were shut in fear, but where we too, as with those first disciples, can now encounter the living Christ, present in our midst, once more liberating us from our fears, once more making reconciliation and peace for us.

All of us stand naked before God as sinful, foolish, vain and incompetent, but no, says Christ, my peace is once more yours, sin and enmity overcome, and you can be reconciled to God and neighbour alike. Spirit in Greek also means breath. As Jesus declares ‘receive my spirit’ you can almost hear the audible intake of breath as the disciples let out a great sigh of relief as they heard Christ declare their failures forgiven and a new beginning vouchsafed. It is that new beginning that Fr Jeff offers to us this evening, as he too stands in your presence and in Christ’s name declares, Peace – peace not just in a word but in a sacrament, body no less than soul reconciled, the totality of us and all our world now caught up in the peace offering that he mediates for us. Amen.