The Venerable Peter Sutton
The Sermon preached at Choral Evensong on Sunday 15th May
The Venerable Peter Sutton
There is something painfully familiar about the story of Daniel. The outsider of good character rising high in the world until the jealous insider’s plot to bring the outsider down. The gifted outsider, an outsider by nature of faith and yet courageous enough to remain faithful to God so that neither the lions in the den or the ferocious insiders around King Darius got the lunch for which they’d hoped.
The story is a reminder that faithfulness to God is the better way. When Daniel was told he must choose between God and King he put God first. He carried on praying with the window into his world quite literally wide open so all could see his unbreakable faith.
A common feature between the story of Daniel and the burial of Jesus …. both are put into an enclosed space and a stone is rolled across the entrance to make it secure. And the point? That there can be no escape, no way out - except that the writers of both stories knew that God could bring about an outcome other that death. God is the life-bringer.
Daniel was faithful to God. Jesus was faithful to what he was called to be. These are both faith affirming stories.
But the world is a difficult place in which to be faithful. A difficult world and a post Christian Country challenges our faithfulness. But for Daniel and for Jesus it was the self-interested insiders of their own institutions and traditions that made killing the outsider a palatable option.
The most important influence for me in my journey with Christ was my father who as a teenager boy before the war worshipped here in the cathedral. He was about the age of Arty and Jasper, Head Choristers. My father’s father worked on the railways at Fratton, and when he died, still a young man, my father was sent to an orphanage. It was an orphanage established by the railway unions and the Church of England (Now there are some words you wouldn’t normally expect to hear in the same sentence!).
But when back in Portsmouth this is where he came to church … until someone invited him along to Trinity Methodist Church in Southsea … and he became a Methodist. Methodism at the time, with its passion for helping the poor, for young people and the outsiders of society became his passion. And as communities around Havant and Leigh Park were developed after so much bomb damage in the city, my father played a part in building and establishing new churches for those growing communities.
So I was born into that. But because working ecumenically for the kingdom was more important than preserving an ecclesiastical tradition my father was perfectly happy when I made the return journey from Methodism to Anglicanism. At the age of 14 the youth group at St Thomas’ Bedhampton announced they were going to put on Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Dream Coat – that was enough for me – I became an Anglican courtesy of Andrew Lloyd-Webber! I did from that point come to see other attractions; the sense of order being one and the breadth and diversity of Anglicanism being another
This place, important to my father in the 1930s and 1940s, became important to me. I was confirmed here by Bishop Ronald; ordained in the nave by Bishop Timothy; given a seat by Bishop Kenneth and a different seat by Bishop Christopher. Before very long I expect to be shown the door by Bishop Jonathan!
I believe that the role of every church community is to proclaim that lions dens and sealed tombs are not end of the journey. And where lion’s dens exist the role of the church is to dismantle them.
But sadly, there are lion’s dens and tombs all over the place and in an increasingly hateful world, there are plenty of people willing to throw others in and to fix a stone in place so they can’t get out.
Ukraine has become such a lion’s den. There are lion’s dens and tombs in Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia and God knows where else – Rwanda is surely about to become another.
There can be lion’s dens in loved institutions where insiders make it harder for outsiders; lion’s dens in politics and social media; even lion’s dens and tombs in the church – places where insiders can make life hard for outsiders.
My journey tells me that the Church of England is not as broad as it once was and there are insiders and outsiders - and in my experience an increasing number of clergy are wondering just how safe it really is. We should be troubled by that.
I have learnt a lot about my faith and my journey with Christ over the last two years. The first lockdown for me was a time to study the psalms; the songs of faithful people, a people then as now, often outsiders journeying from one lion’s den to the next. And on that journey, as tonight’s Psalm teaches, they strived to sing a new song to the Lord. We should do more of that.
My journey with Christ now is about living as faithfully as I can in small rural communities with churches that tend to do things a bit differently from cathedrals and urban churches with their eclectic congregations. We should rejoice in that, and I’ll finish with a story by way of example.
If children are present in church, regardless of what service it is, we will involve them. On one Sunday morning a four year old girl was standing on a chair next to me at the altar as I said the eucharist prayer. (If she were here now, I probably would have had to bring her up here and given her a stool to stand on too. Rural Church can be like that.) For several weeks she had watched me preside whilst standing on her chair but one particular week when I picked up the priest’s wafer she said in a voice loud enough for everyone to hear: ‘can I break it?’
It took nearly a whole second to contemplate two thousand years of tradition, eucharistic theology and practice before I said: ‘why not’. So she did and now when children are present, they break it too. The clue is in the words which are ‘We break this bread’ – not ‘I break this bread’.
The breaking of bread is about sharing much more than bread. It is about rolling away the stones that enclose and suppress. It is about working towards a time when there are no insiders and outsiders. It is about setting God’s children free to be human. The Gospel is a gospel of liberation – and that’s uncomfortable for us to hear if we ourselves are insiders.
A rolled away stone is just one of the signs that Christ lives for ever and that our faithfulness to Christ is a journey worth making. In this new week, this week of Christian Aid, let’s roll some stones and set someone free.