The tango, the backpacker, and the priest | Fourth Sunday after Trinity

Fourth Sunday after Trinity (and Catherine Edenborough’s first Eucharist) | Sunday 27 June 2021 | The Very Revd. Dr Anthony Cane

Sometimes Scripture expresses beautifully what we might otherwise struggle to put into words. This morning, for example, following Catherine’s ordination to the priesthood yesterday afternoon, the opening words of our second reading distill the feelings of the Cathedral community towards our Curate, as this new phase in her unfolding vocation begins, and she presides at the Eucharist for the first time: ‘You excel in… faith, in speech, in knowledge, in utmost eagerness, and in our love for you – so we want you to excel also in this generous undertaking.’

In that reading, the phrase ‘generous undertaking’ is paired with ‘the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ That puts a very particular perspective on priesthood, and indeed all Christian ministry and discipleship. While the language of ‘excelling’ is perfectly appropriate, all of us are going to fall short when our measure and standard is the one who healed the woman suffering from haemorrhages, the one who brings Jairus’ little daughter back from the point of death. And having referred to today’s Gospel, I might point out that neither it, nor any other of our readings today, say anything explicitly about priesthood. The theologian and archbishop Michael Ramsey liked to point out that in the New Testament, apostles, bishops, presbyters and the like are never called ‘priests’. What we do find is Jesus himself described as a priest, and the whole church described as a priesthood.

Bishop Rob, our Commissary Bishop, echoed these sentiments when speaking last week at the ordination rehearsal, speaking of the priesthood of all believers and the priesthood of Christ. Jesus Christ is the high priest who has opened up the way to God. His priestly body, the church, stands before God - on behalf of humanity - to celebrate God’s goodness (our first reading today uses the word ‘wholesome’) and to engage with the suffering of the world. The ordained priesthood focuses and represents this priesthood of all the baptised. It is never appropriate to speak of ‘my priesthood’, or even ‘my vocation’, as if these were private possessions. Priesthood is for others, and for God. A priest is a public representative of God’s Church, a means of grace whereby God enables the Church to be Church. A priest is who she or he is because of what the Church itself is called to be, and what Christ for ever is.

Catherine, then, is to have her ministry shaped by the priesthood of Christ, and she is to serve the priesthood of the whole people of God. So what might we learn about this from that long Gospel reading, with its two intertwined stories? What particularly struck me about the passage as I reflected upon it last week, was Jesus’s astonishing ability to respond to the unexpected. Chapter 5 of Mark’s Gospel begins

with Jesus, having just calmed a storm, sailing to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, where he is met by a demoniac howling amongst the tombs. With the aid of a herd of pigs, Jesus heals the man of the unclean spirits that have possessed him. He then recrosses the sea, and the events we heard earlier begin. He agrees to help Jairus and his sick daughter, but on the way his progress is interrupted by an encounter with a woman who has been sick for twelve years.

Not a single one of these meetings was planned. Perhaps one of the twelve disciples looked after Jesus’s diary, and booked in his appointments – if so, they must have had a very hard time of it! Jesus does not appear to be thrown by the incredible variety of people who came his way, and the huge variations in their need. He is flexible and creative in his response, and has a great capacity for improvisation.

And as soon as I use that word ‘improvisation’ it makes me think of Catherine, and her love of the Tango. And indeed of the second ever Pompey Sundays, our new service aimed at newcomers and families, where Catherine explained that the movements of the dance are not fixed, but require each couple to pay careful attention to the other, and respond to the movement the other makes. Indeed Jesus pays such careful attention that he is aware the sick woman has touched his cloak, even while a crowd surrounds him.

And just as the improvisation of the Tango takes place within a clear framework, Jesus is not just making it all up as he goes along. His ministry begins with a proclamation of the Kingdom of God, and the calling of disciples to follow him. He teaches that whoever does the will of God is his brother and sister and mother. But his disciples have to learn that following Jesus is not about a clear list of instructions, or following a detailed rulebook. Rather it is about love and relationship: loving God and neighbour, attending to both, and acting accordingly, with flexibility and improvisation.

The theologian Ben Quash expresses this with the image not of dancing the Tango, but of walkers on a pilgrimage. Each walker has a backpack, which contains the givens of our faith: its central teachings, the Bible and the creeds. But, says Quash, God not only stocks our backpack, but also ‘places things in our path’. On the journey of faith, the walkers must respond to what and whom they encounter on the way. In so doing, with flexibility and attention, they will come to a deeper understanding of their faith, and learn what it means in practice to live in the light of Jesus Christ, as a member of the wider people of God. Austin Farrer talked about the priest as a ‘walking sacrament’ of the grace of God, an embodied reminder of the presence and calling of God in every place and situation.

So, Catherine, the image of the improvising dancer that I’ve learnt from you, and Ben Quash’s picture of a backpacking pilgrim responding to what happens on the way, are both fine images of what it means to be a priest. You have already shown great capacity for flexibility and innovation over the past year, as we as a Cathedral have had to reimagine many aspects of our life: not making it all up from scratch, but improvising with the givens of our faith and our worship.

I’ve tried to say something about how your priesthood must be shaped by Christ, and serve the priesthood that is his body, his Church. In presiding at the Eucharist this morning, you are doing just that, for the Eucharist is at the heart of our faith, a gift of God in Christ, that nourishes us and better enables us for the improvisation required of faithful disciples in their day to day lives. I pray for you at the beginning of your priestly ministry, and ask you to pray for me in mine. And finally I say to your congregation – you are a royal priesthood, and your calling is high one. You can expect much of your priests, but they can rightly expect much of you. All of us, to go back to the text with which I began, are called to ‘excel in this generous undertaking’; the undertaking of responding to ‘the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ’ who walked and danced and loved and healed in the midst of us, and ultimately poured out his life for others, so that ‘by his poverty [we, and the whole of God’s world] might become rich’. AMEN