Given at St Mary the Virgin, Oxford, 2nd November 2008

Giles Goddard

Luke 9:  20  -  "But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered "The Messiah of God”

I want to take you for a moment out of the beautiful surroundings of the centre of Oxford,  to the Elephant and Castle roundabouts,  in South London.  If you know that part of London well,  you'll be able to take the first exit from the second roundabout and follow the Walworth Road towards Camberwell.  About 500 metres down on the left is a neo-classical church set back from the road;  St Peter's,  where I'm based.   

The Walworth Road is one of London's less prepossessing roads;  Walworth is the kind of place,  according to a friend, that the rats refuse to come to.   Its big housing estate,  the Aylesbury,  is the place the former Prime Minister made his first announcement,  promising change in 1997;   and that part of London is certainly a place with more than its fair share of the events which hit the headlines  -  gun and knife crime,  drugs and drink abuse,  all the results of  alienation -  although I'm very fond of announcing that of course Walworth is nothing like Peckham,  just across the park .  I said that last week at a meeting, to be hauled up short by someone born and bred in Peckham;  so I expect emails after this sermon. 

But it won't surprise you to learn that, of course, Walworth is nothing like its stereotype.    Behind the headlines and under the sensationalism lies a profoundly rooted and complicated community which in its multifarious and varied ways has taught me more than I can possibly say about the human capacity for generosity and the endurance of community.  

Take for example Irene,  a lady from the Caribbean who without fuss or bother,  and with a nice line in irony quietly and constantly looks after her son who is in and out of mental hospitals,  her grandson deserted by his mother; she cooks every week for another thirty people with mental health issues,  rules the church cleaning rota with an iron rod, and brings food for the clergy every Wednesday evening,  as well as maintaining and supporting an extensive family network and attending evening prayers at least three times a week.  Or Mary,  indigenous South London to the end of her fingertips,  challenged in more ways than I begin to understand,  but every morning whatever the weather waiting outside the church at 8.25 for morning prayer,  bringing quiet devotion and a proper constancy to the church's prayer life without which we would be much diminished.

"Jesus said to them - 'But who do you say that I am?'  Peter answered "The Messiah of God.”

Today is All Saints' Sunday,  hard on the heels of Hallowe'en and before All Souls,  tomorrow.  All Saints,  when the church remembers those who have gone before us - not only those who have been canonised but also the unsung and the quiet heroes -  and sometimes reflects too on the saints around us,  the saints in the communities we're all part of.  

From earth's wide bounds, from ocean's farthest coast,

through gates of pearl streams in the countless host,

singing to Father, Son and Holy Ghost:

Alleluia, Alleluia!

Who are those we remember?  Those who are held up to us as examples to follow, people to emulate?   The great theologians,  perhaps,  or spiritual leaders - St Augustine,  St Joan,  St Clare,  St Gregory of Nyssa,  ;   St Thomas Aquinas.  Or some of the little known local saints?  -  like St Cuthman in  West Sussex,  where I grew up.    A shepherd, who after his father died, had to look after his invalid mother -  he pushed her,  we're told, from Bosham to Steyning,  where the wheelbarrow broke so he founded a church - I guess that now he would have used a van and phoned the AA,  but then he wouldn't have made it into the Book of Saints!

Both the greater and the lesser.   But it's a Sunday,  too,  when we  remember that those saints we celebrate were not, of course, the images of perfection we see in the plaster statues scattered around Catholic and Anglican churches.   I am especially fond of St Theresa of Avila and St John of the Cross,  great mystics and reformers both,  who had a stormy and tempestuous relationship;  I'm told that Theresa, as the abbess of her convents,  was always keen to have a large bit of communion bread to denote her status;  John,  priest of the order,  was fond of picking out the smallest possible bit,  which irritated her greatly.     

And so,  in Walworth,  we have a procession on All Saints Sunday,  singing enthusiastically and enjoying the sight of the motley crew we are, trailing round the church - the inheritors of the saints in light and the people of God on the march - the people of God on the march. 

On All Saints' Sunday we aren't simply celebrating all those who have gone before,  all Christians from all times and in all places.  No - All Saints remembers particular people who have made special contributions to the life and work of the church.   Those who have,  in some way or other, shown the love of God in the world and communicated it to others. Those who have been leaders or offered inspiration to others.   It sounds a bit like a citation from the Honours List - but in short,  we remember ordinary people,  doing extraordinary things.  

Who more ordinary than those first disciples,  the men and women who surrounded Jesus?  The familiar Gospel reading we heard today is the kernel from which the whole thing grows.  Peter acknowledging Jesus as the Christ occurs in all three Synoptic Gospels - Matthew, Mark and Luke -  with slightly different emphases in each.  But in each case the format is similar -  Jesus asks the disciples who they or who others say that he is;  the response - "Some say John the Baptist,  and others Elijah”  is insufficient ; it's not until Peter comes out with the words "The Messiah of God”  that Jesus is satisfied. 

Jesus keeps asking the question "Who do people say that I am” because, in these accounts,  he's not satisfied with the answers.   John the Baptist and Elijah are familiar figures who have great importance for the people of Judah.  To be their inheritors is,  one would have thought,  quite enough.  But he wants the disciples to go beyond their familiar boundaries,  outside their comfort zones if you like; to acknowledge the exceptional,  remarkable,  unknown and radical nature of Jesus' ministry ;  which can only be expressed in the words "the Messiah,  the Son of the living God.”

I have a debt to Oxford and owe it a great deal.  Not because I studied here;  I didn't,  I studied in the Fens in a small town not far from Ely.  But because our church in South London is proud to be an inheritor of the legacy of the Oxford Movement - of people like Charles Gore and F D Maurice who combined a passionate commitment to Anglo-Catholic liturgy and theology with an equally passionate commitment to the poor in the inner cities;  it's because of people like them that Walworth still has no less than four thriving churches living out and redefining the legacy of that time,  and it's because of them that I made the circuitous journey from Cambridge to the Elephant and Castle.

Direct connections can be made between those first disciples and those who kick-started the church in the nineteenth century after the state it had fallen into during the years of the Georges.  Both  were fired up by that tremendous and inexplicable event - the inbreaking of God's love into the world in a human being who,  by his life and works,  radically and utterly transformed the nature of our self-understanding and the relationship between the human and the divine.  We - you and I - are the inheritors of those traditions.   Each of us trying in our own ways to live out and redefine that original message;  "you are the Christ,  the son of the Living God.”

Living out and redefining?   There's the rub.  As well as being a parish priest in the Diocese of Southwark,  I am also chair of Inclusive Church:  an organisation which is a  network of individuals and organisations whose make-up reflects the breadth and scope of the Church of England and beyond.  It began just over five years ago by Giles Fraser,  formerly of this parish;   it has thousands of supporters;  it has an excellent National Coordinator, Clare Herbert,  who is busy organising a programme of events around the country as well as helping us communicate better inside and beyond the church.  Its aim is,  in the words of the Statement drafted and agreed in this city

We affirm that the Church's mission, in obedience to Holy Scripture, is to proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ in every generation.

To that end, we call on our Church to live out the promise of the Gospel; to celebrate the diverse gifts of all members of the body of Christ; and in the ordering of our common life to open the ministries of deacon, priest and bishop to those so called to serve by God, regardless of their gender,  ethnicity or sexual orientation

We believe,  in short,  that the church's message and mission (the message of All Saints) is fundamentally damaged by the continued exclusion of women and lesbian and gay people in relationships from the highest offices of the church;  by the way in which the voices of black and minority ethnic people are so little heard (with some very honourable exceptions);  by the continued poverty and poor education of so many in this country and beyond;  and by the many subtle and distinct ways in which ordinary people are stopped from doing extraordinary things,  leaders do not get the chance to lead,  preachers to preach or teachers to teach,  as a result of the ways in which the church orders its own life.      Here, as in so many other ways, the church is lagging behind the insights of society;  that all people are created equal and in the image of God;  All,  in the end,  are called to be Saints.  

All Saints,  then, is a Sunday when we celebrate the radical inclusion of the Gospel of Jesus Christ;  when we acknowledge,  by word and deed, and in the words of a previous preacher in this pulpit, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, that "when Christ was lifted up,  he did not draw some people to himself.  He drew all,  all,  ALL!”   It's a Sunday when we remind ourselves that the widow and the orphan,  the poor, the marginalised,  the excluded, those in the highways and byways are all invited to the banquet,  that the anawim, the weak,  are honoured too at the table -  not just honoured but also called to lead.  It's the day  we remember that the society of the reign of God as envisioned by Isaiah and heard in our first reading includes not just the Israelites but also,  as we hear in verse 2,  the people of Lebanon, Carmel and Sharon who are also to be drawn to the Holy Mountain.  

The parish of St Peter's Walworth has more of the poor, the excluded, the anawim than most parishes.  But it's exactly in places like St Peter's that we can see the vital necessity and  also the great benefits of overcoming the insidious and destructive barriers which exist in church and society.   Because it's in that kind of parish that the transformation which can take place,  as black people begin to find they are truly welcomed at the altar,  as gay and lesbian people are offered the chance to celebrate their relationships without fuss or bother,  as women participate on equal terms with men in the life and liturgy of the church, that we begin to see,  lived out,  the meaning of All Saints Sunday -  the explosion of confidence and leadership throughout the congregation which is the child of the explosion into life of the early church and of the radical transformation of the church by the Oxford Movement. 

In the familiar words of the prophet Isaiah:  "Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened and the ears the deaf unstopped;  then shall the lame leap like a hart and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.”

When I look at that reading again in the context of the Gospel I begin to find that it has richer meanings and deeper implications -  much more than a simple promise to bring in the outcast and the stranger,  to make the blind see and the deaf hear.   For Isaiah,  the blind who will see and the dumb who will speak are not only the people we see on the side of the road,  begging;  they are the community itself.   Those who have chosen to become blind or dumb because they have not been willing to hear the message.  Isaiah 6.10 - "Make the mind of this people dull, and stop their ears,  and shut their eyes,  so that they may not look with eyes and listen with their ears and turn and be healed.”  "Those who have ears”  says Jesus "let them hear.”  So when in Isaiah 35 we hear of the blind seeing and the lame leaping,  we are to understand that as the whole community,  together.  Not just the outsiders;  all,  all, ALL!  The people from Lebanon alongside the people from Israel;  the insiders alongside the outsiders. 

I take a major part of Isaiah's message to be this;  that exclusion damages us all.  That discrimination against people,  on the grounds of arbitrary factors like gender or wealth,  class or origin,  diminishes each of us;  both those who exclude and those who are excluded.  We, each of us,  are the blind and the dumb insofar as we each of us participate in some form of exclusion.   The message of All Saints is that we are indeed all saints, because we are all made in the image of God and of love;  the challenge of All Saints is to acknowledge that and to help to bring it about.  To acknowledge that which is of God in each person.  Augustine, Clare, Aquinas, Irene, Mary, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila;  whoever it is.  The church is damaged by the way in which it refuses to acknowledge the wholeness of its people.   Society is damaged by the continued presence of places like the Aylesbury Estate. And we are damaged by our own forms of knee-jerk discrimination and exclusion;  for,  of course,  we all have them.  

Some say that the attempt to be inclusive is by its nature exclusive,  because it does not welcome those who do not support the episcopacy of women or the relationships of LGBT people.  To which I say that we acknowledge that the church of God is a big place with space in it for many shades of opinion;  we are working hard to ensure that when women are consecrated as bishops there will be a code of practice which meets the needs of those opposed;  and, of course,  no church or minister will ever be required to hold a service to celebrate, say,  a civil partnership. 

As I skirt around the dark political places of the church,  I must also pay attention to that little sting in the tail in the reading from Isaiah:    "A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way;  the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people.”   There will be some who are not there - the unclean.   Who, then, are the unclean?   If there are those who are unclean,  who then are God's people?   Is this a way to reimport all those tired and shabby forms of exclusion with which we are familiar,  because the Bible tells me so? 

I think not.  The unclean are,  in the typology and conceptual world of Isaiah, those who decide not to take the highway,  not to take the Holy Way;  those, both from Israel and from the other nations, who do not wish to return to Jerusalem,  to take the path through the wilderness;  in today's terms, those within and outside the church who are unwilling to hear the message -  the radically inclusive message of the equality of souls before God - of the Gospel.   The transformed society to which we are called relies on each of us playing our part,  each of us in whatever position and from whichever part of society hearing the Gospel imperative of love,  acknowledging our need for sight;  and also welcoming the strangers around, those from Lebanon, those from Walworth,  Jew and Greek, male and female,  slave and free.   For our good and the good of all God's church.    So let it never be said that inclusion is not rigorous;  or that the Gospel is not demanding. 

But let it also never be said that the outworking of the Gospel is not glorious;  a wonder.  For at the end of the Holy Way is a place and a time to which the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with singing;  everlasting joy shall be on their heads, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.   The hope of transformation is implicit in every page of the bible:  "Say to those who are of a fearful heart, "Be strong!  Do not fear!”

We have a centre for learning, arts and community in the crypt of my church, called InSpire . It was opened by the Archbishop of Canterbury five years ago this weekend,  and every year we hold a lantern procession to celebrate our birthday.   This year's was last Friday - Hallowe'en.  It was lead by drummers from a project run by and for people with mental health problems.  Following them, as darkness fell,  was a long line of lanterns,  glowing in the dusk.   A six foot long shark,  light flickering out of its open mouth.   A star.  Another star.   A batch of Chinese lanterns held high on bamboo poles.   A moon,  held high by a ten-year old kid who had spent the last three weeks making it.    Flowers, another fish,  a space rocket.    All constructed carefully by people of all ages, tissue paper stretched across willow and varnished,  carried by mums and grans and kids and dads.  African and English,  Turkish and Canadian.    Taxi drivers,  unemployed people,  classroom assistants,  healthworkers.  

We walked slowly from InSpire along the streets on to the Aylesbury,  between Missenden and Latimer blocks,  stopping in the new kids” play area to pick up more from the Aylesbury Youth Project,  and back through the Octavia Hill Estate into the garden by the churchyard.   By the time we reached the garden complete darkness had fallen.  The procession climbed the mound in the centre.  From the gates of the church I watched the massed lanterns lifted high in the night,  surrounded by the lights of the Portland Street tower blocks and accompanied by the drums.   On the eve of All Saints,  I thought to myself how appropriate it is that a project that grew out of the church should be trying to bring light in the darkness of the city around it.    

I give thanks for the present and the past;  for the challenge to the church and to all our institutions implicit in the message of All Saints Sunday;  and for the ways in which each of us tries, in our own different ways,  to live out the Gospel imperative of radical welcome and inspiration.  

Almighty God, you have knit together your elect in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of your SonChrist our Lord: Give us grace so to follow your blessed saintsin all virtuous and godly living, that we may come to those ineffable joys that you have prepared for those who truly love you;  through Jesus Christ our Lord, who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, in glory everlasting. Amen.