The Sermon given by the Bishop of Southwark at the Chrism Eucharist on Maundy Thursday

  • PREACHER

    The Rt Rev. the Lord Bishop of Southwark Christopher Chessun

My dear brothers and sisters in Christ, I returned recently from a very blessed pilgrimage to Rome and Assisi with pilgrims from our own Diocese and the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Southwark. The pilgrims were led by Bishop Paul Hendricks who is an Auxiliary Bishop in the Archdiocese, Canon Michael Branch the Dean of St George’s Cathedral, our own Dean of Southwark, and myself. When it came to the Holy Communion, we alternated the Eucharists by rite - Roman Catholic and Anglican. When the Eucharist was celebrated according to the Roman rite, the Anglicans made communion from a reserved sacrament consecrated according to our rites, and vice versa. In this way we expressed the unity of our common faith, and together proclaimed that Christ has died, Christ is Risen, and Christ will come again.  
 
This sacramental provision allowed us to enjoy the highest degree of spiritual communion while maintaining, properly, our confessional discipline. It was particularly powerful when we were in Rome because we went to places associated with the Holy See, including St Paul’s without the Walls. On the third of March we visited Pope Francis’s tomb in the basilica of St Mary Major. It is the simplest of all the papal tombs - just a plain stone laid flat, with ‘Franciscus’ inscribed on it. Above the tomb is a cross depicting Christ the Good Shepherd. It was very moving to pray there and see this simple witness to a Christian life lived not for the love of power - which has no place whatsoever in the Kingdom of God - but proclaiming the power of God’s love.  
 
We have a new chief shepherd in the Church of England in Archbishop Sarah, who has very strong Southwark antecedents. I give thanks for her, and ask you to keep her much in your prayers. It was a privilege and a joy to be present at both the Archbishop’s confirmation of election in January and her enthronement this last week. In preparation for her enthronement, Archbishop Sarah made a walking pilgrimage from London to Canterbury along the ancient pilgrim route that we know so well in Southwark because Chaucer’s pilgrims began here. The Archbishop’s first pilgrim station was, therefore, this Cathedral, where Archbishop Thomas Becket preached before making his last fateful final journey to Canterbury. The Dean blessed her in the Harvard Chapel using - not a liturgy constructed especially for an Archbishop - but the ordinary liturgy for pilgrims. Just a few minutes before, I had met Archbishop Sarah on the Millennium Bridge as she crossed from the London side, and I said: “I greet you and Eamonn as a fellow pilgrim, and I welcome you to the Diocese of Southwark”.  
 
This has all been a joyful and a prayerful beginning to the next stage of our national life as the Church of England. It confirmed to me something that I felt in Italy, and which has grown in importance to me over the years: that is, our calling as Christians to be instruments of joy is best accomplished as pilgrims. Our Church is very concerned with institutional matters. We might even say that we are preoccupied with them and it is not easy to say how such introspection contributes to mission or builds joyful communities of Christian faith.  We should not forget our primary calling.  
 
Archbishop Rowan Williams said recently in The Tablet, “The point of having any kind of ordained ministry in the Church is that there should be those whose primary task it is to help the Church be itself”. We are here today to recommit to ministry and the focus at this Eucharist is the ministry of those in Holy Orders. This is not to exclude other forms of ministry, but simply because those who serve in Holy Orders have undertaken a task - and have been given responsibilities - that are specific to them. Deacons, Priests, and Bishops are ordained to help the Church be itself.  
 
Archbishop Rowan continued: “The Church is not a business or a ‘movement’ or a cult or an interest group. It is where God is acting to restore humanity in the divine image through the grace of Christ crucified and risen, so that the human world may see possibilities for transformation that would otherwise be in the realm of fantasy. Ministers of the Gospel tell the story of metanoia, minds changed, horizons altered; of the imperative and the cost of seeing ourselves in a radically new way”. 
 
My dear brothers and sisters, this is our calling: to remind the Church that it  is the place where God is restoring fallen humanity. In every baptism, we “receive remission of our sins by spiritual regeneration” through water sanctified “to the mystical washing away of sin”, as the Prayer Book has it. And likewise, in every Eucharist we are given the “holy mysteries” and fed “with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood” and assured thereby “that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son”. Be confident, brothers and sisters, in what our liturgy proclaims. Do not fail to administer our liturgy faithfully, with dignity and purpose, for it is at the font and the altar that God clothes us with grace for the way we should go. 
 
Our ecumenical pilgrimage in Italy went also to Assisi where we joined a great throng of pilgrims, and encountered quite tangibly the spirit of renewal that has flowed for over 800 years from St Francis’s call to encounter the love of God in creation and in simplicity. In 1205, kneeling before the Cross in the Church of San Damiano, outside Assisi, a voice came to him saying, “Francis, rebuild my Church”. For Francis this was a calling to spiritual renewal and proclamation of the Gospel and utter simplicity of life. In this calling he was joined by Clare and many sisters and brothers. And rather beautifully towards the end of his life, as his health was failing and wracked with pain, Clare nursed him and revived his spirits again at San Damiano.  And in thanksgiving Francis wrote the beautiful Canticle of Creation. May this be our calling – to spiritual renewal, to proclamation of the Gospel and to utter simplicity of living - as we continue along The Way. 
 
This is my last Chrism Eucharist with you because, as you know, I shall be retiring - God willing - in August. I shall leave the Diocese in the care of Bishop Rosemarie with great confidence in her and the episcopal and senior team, and with equal confidence in the team at Trinity House supported by Nicola Thomas as Diocesan Secretary. In due course, the Lord will call another person to serve as Bishop of Southwark and with you I shall be praying for that person.  I shall be praying for you, too, my brothers and sisters, in all the various ways you serve in this wonderful Diocese. It is a simple prayer - that you will be pilgrims together, living the Faith with simplicity and joy as you encounter God in creation, and confident in the sacraments and the liturgical life of the Church. St Francis’s call over 800 years ago was to rebuild one particular church, the church of San Damiano which had almost fallen into ruin. From this one task, fulfilled faithfully, wider renewal came. He helped the Church to remember to be itself. We need only to be faithful, and diligent in the tasks we have accepted for the Lord’s sake as ambassadors for Christ, whose “embassy” - to borrow Archbishop Rowan’s words again - “is on behalf of the new creation, not a business or a ‘movement’ or a cult, but the company that no one can number whose hope was and is in the Word made flesh”. May the Lord make His face to shine upon each and every one of you as we now journey towards the Cross and the unabounding joy of Easter in Faith, Hope and Love.  Amen.