Welcoming Christ in the stranger who arrives at the cathedral

The Lady Chapel in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on the Fourth Week in Advent (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin,

19 December 2016, Monday in Week 4 of Advent,

12.45 p.m., The Eucharist

Judges 13:2-7, 24-25; Gospel: Luke 1:5-25.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I know it is not normal to have a sermon at this mid-day Eucharist in the Lady Chapel, but I thought it might be a good idea to share a few thoughts on our Gospel reading this afternoon.

This is the Fourth Week in Advent, and serving as the deacon at the Cathedral Eucharist yesterday [18 December 2016], before reading the Gospel, I lit the fourth candle on the Advent wreath.

The candles we have lit so far recall the Patriarchs, the Prophets, and Saint John the Baptist, and this week’s candle reminds us of the role of the Virgin Mary in the salvific story, the story of the Incarnation, the Christmas story.

Today’s Gospel reading invites us to make a number of comparisons: between Zechariah and Joseph, between Elizabeth and Mary, between John the Baptist and coming Christ.

It has fallen as my lot, for various reasons, as a canon of the cathedral, to preside at the Eucharist today. And in the Gospel story it had fallen on Zechariah as his lot to serve the liturgy (see verse 23) in the Temple.

Zechariah and Elizabeth have no children. Elizabeth is ‘getting on in years’ (verse 7), meaning perhaps she is now in her early 40s. Yet she is a cousin of Mary, who is probably in her early teens. Two cousins, separated in age by a few years, and by many miles from each other, are about to become pregnant.

But compare Zechariah and Joseph. Both have dreams and the angel speaks to them. Joseph has no spoken part, he is silent and he obeys. Zechariah cannot believe what he hears and is made silent.

But both do. They don’t just listen; they listen and in their action they show what they truly believe.

What was Zechariah expecting in the Temple? Was he expecting to meet God? Was he expecting in serving the liturgy to prepare the way for God’s presence among us?

This afternoon we are meeting Christ in Word and Sacrament in this cathedral. But there is a third way we meet Christ in this Cathedral.

The Rule of Saint Benedict reminds Benedictines to welcome all who arrive at their doors as if they are welcoming Christ himself. ‘All who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ, for he himself will say, “I was a stranger, and you welcomed me”.’

Presumably, Zechariah was welcomed home by Elizabeth (see verse 23). Later Elizabeth welcomes Mary. Within the next week, we welcome Christ into our homes and lives once again at Christmas.

But as volunteers and staff in this Cathedral, we need to be aware that people come to this place as visitors and tourists, yet also have an opportunity to meet Christ. Do we welcome them as Christ, and do they encounter Christ in our welcome?

This is a challenge in today’s Gospel reading.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’

Restored graves in Remuh Cemetery in Kraków, where the smashed gravestones in the background form a Holocaust Memorial (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford,

Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin,

Sunday 13 November 2016,

The Second Sunday before Advent (Remembrance Sunday),

11 a.m., The Cathedral Eucharist and Act of Remembrance.

Readings: Isaiah 2: 1-5; Psalm 98; Romans 8: 31-39; John 15: 9-17.

May I speak to you in the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Earlier this week, I stood before the gates of Auschwitz and stood under those horrific and cynical words: Arbeit macht frei, ‘Work will make you free.’

This slogan, over the gates of so many concentration camps, is in sharp contrast with the words of Jesus: ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free’ (John 8: 31-32).

The only work in Auschwitz for the prisoners was slave labour, demeaning work that sought to dehumanise them long before they went to their sure and certain death.

I stood on the railway line in Birkenau, where 1.5 million people were forcibly moved across Europe to death in this place in the very heart of Europe, close to the points where Germany, Austria, Poland, Ukraine and the former Czechoslovakia meet.

These were crimes on a gross scale that I find still impossible to calculate. In this place, 1.5 million deaths over a five-year period, 300,000 deaths a year, 25,000 deaths a month, almost 1,000 deaths a day.

So true are those words in the Psalms quoted by Saint Paul in our New Testament reading, ‘we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered’ (Romans 8: 36; see Psalm 44: 22).

They thought so little of these people that their ashes were scattered on the ground as fertiliser, their bones were used to make soap, their hair – shaven off beforehand to add to their humiliation – was used to insulate the coats and uniforms of soldiers fighting in the frost on the eastern front.

When they were stripped naked, the clothes of the camp internees were sorted and stacked, sent to clothe people in Germany.

Row after row of exhibits shows pile upon pile of stolen spectacles or glasses, serried suitcases, mounds of shoes, and the shorn locks of once dignified and loved people.

There was no mercy, anywhere, at any time. Not for the old, not for the tiny infant who became the object of cruel medical and scientific experiments, the pregnant mother whose child is snatched at birth, the old, the aged and the ailing.

I came across the story of at least two Irish citizens who died in Auschwitz – Ettie Steinberg, who was brought up in the 1920s and the 1930s in a small house at 28 Raymond Terrace, in ‘Little Jerusalem’ off the South Circular Road in Dublin, and her son Leon Gluck.

We need be under no illusion that this would not have happened in Ireland. One display lists the number of Irish Jews, living in Ireland, who were on the list for extermination.

Back in Kraków, where I was staying for the week, I wandered in dismay and shock through the narrow cobbled streets and squares of the Old Jewish Quarter in Kazimierz.

Before World War II, the Jewish population was about 25 per cent of the population of Kraków, and the families who lived there had lived there for generations and for centuries. In the early 1930s, how could they have imagined that the Holocaust was looming? Who would have worried about the democratic choices being made in neighbouring Germany?

I visited seven synagogues in Kazimierz over the past few days, a ritual bath house, a number of Jewish restaurants, bookshops, listened to traditional Jewish music, visited museums and exhibits, and stopped in two Jewish cemeteries.

For centuries, these cemeteries have been the place of burial for rabbis, doctors, editors, philosophers, poets, composers, musicians, and everyday, ordinary everyday people from Kraków.

But the Holocaust was not going to stop with death and murder. Its intention was annihilation. Even the gravestones were smashed and razed to the ground. The dead were to be annihilated too.

Since 1993, there has been a new interest in this district, thanks to a popularity created by Steven Spielberg’s movie, Schindler’s List.

Old buildings have been restored, restaurants have reopened, museums and shops have come back to life.

But we cannot bring back to life six million people wiped out in the Holocaust – Jews, Romas, Gays, conscientious objectors … hatred compiles an endless list.

And even the memory of the people who died is difficult to recover.

An exhibition in the High Synagogue shows photographs of happy, middle class families in Kraków in the 1920s and 1930s. Children playing with their grandparents, toy planes, horses, skiing … life must have held out so much promise, so many promises.

A young couple on their wedding day … she has long tresses – did her hair end up in that tangled mass in Auschwitz, destined for soldiers’ trench coats and mattresses in apartments in Munich or Berlin?

A sign outside the Jarden Bookshop has photographs and names from the Schwarzer family asking, over 70 years later, asking whether anyone has any memories or can help to trace missing family members.

War and the passing of time cannot destroy love and hope. Who can separate us from real love (see Romans 8: 35)?

In the Old Cemetery behind the Remu'h Synagogue, work continues on restoring some of the gravestones smashed in hatred and in an attempt to wipe out any focus for memory.

Some graves have been restored. Other gravestones, or smashed pieces from them, have been used to form a random jig-saw-like memorial on one long wall, now known as the ‘Wailing Wall.’

In the New Cemetery, behind the street where I was staying, shattered gravestones have been assembled in a mound to make a memorial to the Holocaust.

But there are new burials too in recent years. In a surprising way, death reminds us that life goes on.

Love and hope against adversity and death … a fading rose on the fence at Birkenau; behind is one of the watchtowers and a train wagon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

What was it all for?

The thousand-year Reich lasted for little more than a decade. But we must never forget what happened.

Or have we forgotten already?

We live in a world where refugees are categorised by ethnicity and religion; where those who flee violence and war can be rejected because of their religion; where civilians once again are the innocent victims of war and violence; where children are separated from their parents in the long journey and quest for freedom; where war is a way of testing and trying out new and more cruel weapons.

But there is hope – where there is love there is always hope.

The new Jerusalem in the vision of the Prophet Isaiah is in sharp contrast to the greater Germany Hitler wanted to build, or the greater anywhere that politicians offer as a false paradise to tease and fool the voters they use.

And when all goes wrong, can we still stand in love and hope before the Lord? Can we sing, with Leonard Cohen:

And even though it all went wrong
I’ll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

The slaughter of the innocents must never be forgotten, for God’s love is greater than any ‘hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril or sword’ (Romans 8: 35).

We must remember, not to be depressed and fatalistic, but remember so that it never happens again.

And the best way to work towards that is simple. ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15: 12).

It is quite simple. There is no other hope. This is at the heart of all the advice, all the wisdom, all the teaching, all the commandments. ‘I am giving you these commandments so that you may love one another’ (John 15: 17).

There are no ifs, there are no buts … oh but they’re Jews, they’re Syrians, they’re immigrants, they’re not my family. Excuses line the train tracks to Auschwitz.

There is only one commandment: ‘This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you’ (John 15: 12).

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

The ‘Gates of Hell’ … the entrance to Birkenau (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

John 15: 9-17

9 καθὼς ἠγάπησέν με ὁ πατήρ, κἀγὼ ὑμᾶς ἠγάπησα: μείνατε ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ τῇ ἐμῇ. 10 ἐὰν τὰς ἐντολάς μου τηρήσητε, μενεῖτε ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ μου, καθὼς ἐγὼ τὰς ἐντολὰς τοῦ πατρός μου τετήρηκα καὶ μένω αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ. 11 Ταῦτα λελάληκα ὑμῖν ἵνα ἡ χαρὰ ἡ ἐμὴ ἐν ὑμῖν ᾖ καὶ ἡ χαρὰ ὑμῶν πληρωθῇ.

12 αὕτη ἐστὶν ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ ἐμή, ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους καθὼς ἠγάπησα ὑμᾶς: 13 μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ. 14 ὑμεῖς φίλοι μού ἐστε ἐὰν ποιῆτε ἃ ἐγὼ ἐντέλλομαι ὑμῖν. 15 οὐκέτι λέγω ὑμᾶς δούλους, ὅτι ὁ δοῦλος οὐκ οἶδεν τί ποιεῖ αὐτοῦ ὁ κύριος: ὑμᾶς δὲ εἴρηκα φίλους, ὅτι πάντα ἃ ἤκουσα παρὰ τοῦ πατρός μου ἐγνώρισα ὑμῖν. 16 οὐχ ὑμεῖς με ἐξελέξασθε, ἀλλ' ἐγὼ ἐξελεξάμην ὑμᾶς καὶ ἔθηκα ὑμᾶς ἵνα ὑμεῖς ὑπάγητε καὶ καρπὸν φέρητε καὶ ὁ καρπὸς ὑμῶν μένῃ, ἵνα ὅ τι ἂν αἰτήσητε τὸν πατέρα ἐν τῷ ὀνόματί μου δῷ ὑμῖν. 17 ταῦτα ἐντέλλομαι ὑμῖν, ἵνα ἀγαπᾶτε ἀλλήλους.

John 15: 9-17 (NRSV)

9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be complete.

12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father. 16 You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name. 17 I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
whose will is to restore all things in your beloved Son,
the king of all:
Govern the hearts and minds of those in authority,
and bring the families of the nations,
divided and torn apart by the ravages of sin,
to be subject to his just and gentle rule;
who is alive and reigns with you and the
Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Post Communion Prayer:

God of peace,
whose Son Jesus Christ proclaimed the kingdom
and restored the broken to wholeness of life:
Look with compassion on the anguish of the world,
and by your healing power
make whole both people and nations;
through our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a Canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Cathedral Eucharist and Act of Remembrance in Christ Church Cathedral on Remembrance Sunday, 13 November 2016.

‘This man went down to his home justified rather than the other …’

An icon of the Pharisee and the Publican

Patrick Comerford

Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin,

23 October 2016,

The Fifth Sunday before Advent,

11 a.m., The Sung Eucharist,

Readings: Joel 2: 23-32; Psalm 65; II Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18; Luke 18: 9-14.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Sometimes I find our memories from childhood of familiar Gospel stories, going right back to how they were taught to us as children, leave us unwilling to think afresh about what the stories may be saying.

The parables in Saint Luke’s Gospel, which we have been reading in the Lectionary this year, are a good example of this: the story of the Prodigal Son, the Story of the Good Samaritan, the story of Dives and Lazarus, and this morning’s story of the Pharisee and the Publican, or the Pharisee and the Tax-Collector, are excellent illustrations of this.

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican and their prayers is an interesting way to examine our own approaches to prayer. Christ teaches his Disciples a variety of approaches to prayer, giving them examples of prayer with the Lord’s Prayer, and examples of how others pray: the Prodigal Son’s father who prays for his son every day; the persistent widow who keeps on badgering the unjust judge every day; and this morning’s Gospel reading, which presents us with two different approaches to prayer, public and private.

But perhaps we can we can be too quick to say that we are presented with one good example and one bad example.

Both the Pharisee and the Publican prays for himself. Each bares himself before God.

The Pharisee gives thanks to God. In fact, by all the current standards of and means of measuring Jewish piety, he is a good man. Consider what he tells God and us about himself.

First of all, he thanks God that he is not like other people. The Morning Prayer for Orthodox Jewish men, to this day, includes a prayer with these words: ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a gentile, … a slave, … a woman.’

Thanking God that I am not like others is not an expression of disdain for others; it is merely another, humble way of thanking God for being made the way we are, in God’s image and likeness. The Pharisee’s prayer is not unusual.

The Pharisee then goes on to tell God that he obeys all the commandments: he prays, he fasts and he tithes – in fact, he tithes more than he has to, and perhaps also fasts more often than he has to – and he gives generously to the poor. He more than meets all the requirements laid on him by the Mosaic law, and he goes beyond that. He is a charitable, kind and faithful man.

Anyone who saw him in the Temple and heard him pray would have gone away saying he was a good man, and a spiritual man.

But, despite attending to his responsibilities towards others, the Pharisee in this parable does not pray for the needs of others, in so far as we are allowed to eavesdrop on his prayers.

But then, neither does the publican pray for the needs of others.

So neither man is condemned for not being heard to pray for the needs of the other.

What marks the prayers of the Pharisee out from the prayers of the publican is that, in his prayers, the Pharisee expresses his disdain for the needs of others.

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican is also a reminder that at times people may think that because they have sinned they should not pray.

But the story of the Pharisee (apparently good) and the Publican (apparently bad), tells us that the Pharisee prayed easily, while the publican could not even lift his eyes to heaven. Instead, the publican smote his breast and prayed: ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’

Christ tells us it was the publican who ‘returned home justified’ not the Pharisee.

The publican wants to pray even when he feels guilty of sin.

We do not have to wait until we feel righteous, like the Pharisee, so that we can pray. Such prayer is almost useless. I know I can all too easily pray the Jesus Prayer, ‘Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me the sinner,’ and pray it all the more readily when I am feeling righteous than when I realise I am a sinner.

The error of the Pharisee is to confuse the means with the end. Acts of virtue or piety are meant to dispose our hearts towards communion with God, not turn us in on ourselves. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote: ‘From the [Pharisee] learn his works, but by no means his pride; for the work by itself means nothing and does not save.’

Religious feelings can be deceptive in the extreme. When I think I feel like praying, I may in fact be feeling ‘pious,’ and I may not be ready to pray at this stage. Instead, I may be preparing to be self-consumed and self-congratulatory about being a pious person of prayer.

‘In Westminster Abbey’ by John Betjeman’s is a dramatic monologue that retells one part of the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

John Betjeman’s most savage satire is ‘In Westminster Abbey.’ This poem is a dramatic monologue, set during the early days of World War II, in which a woman enters Westminster Abbey to pray for a moment before hurrying off to ‘a luncheon date.’

She is not merely a chauvinistic nationalist, but also a racist, a snob and a hypocrite who is concerned more with how the war will affect her share portfolio than anything else. Her chauvinistic nationalism leads her to pray to God ‘to bomb the Germans’ … but ‘Don’t let anyone bomb me.’

Her social and ethical lapses are a product of her spiritual state, which is a direct result of her nation’s spiritual sickness. But she lets God know prayer and her relationship with God are low down her list of priorities:

Let me take this other glove off
As the vox humana swells,
And the beauteous fields of Eden
Bask beneath the Abbey bells.
Here, where England’s statesmen lie,
Listen to a lady’s cry.

Gracious Lord, oh bomb the Germans,
Spare their women for Thy Sake,
And if that is not too easy
We will pardon Thy Mistake.
But, gracious Lord, whate’er shall be,
Don’t let anyone bomb me.

Keep our Empire undismembered
Guide our Forces by Thy Hand,
Gallant blacks from far Jamaica,
Honduras and Togoland;
Protect them Lord in all their fights,
And, even more, protect the whites.

Think of what our Nation stands for,
Books from Boots’ and country lanes,
Free speech, free passes, class distinction,
Democracy and proper drains.
Lord, put beneath Thy special care
One-eighty-nine Cadogan Square.

Although dear Lord I am a sinner,
I have done no major crime;
Now I’ll come to Evening Service
Whensoever I have the time.
So, Lord, reserve for me a crown,
And do not let my shares go down.

I will labour for Thy Kingdom,
Help our lads to win the war,
Send white feathers to the cowards
Join the Women’s Army Corps,
Then wash the steps around Thy Throne
In the Eternal Safety Zone.

Now I feel a little better,
What a treat to hear Thy Word,
Where the bones of leading statesmen
Have so often been interr’d.
And now, dear Lord, I cannot wait
Because I have a luncheon date.

On the other hand, when I feel like the Publican in our parable, then I can pray like a Publican. Throughout the Church, parishioners protest, ‘I cannot take Communion … lead the intercession … serve at the altar today, because I do not feel worthy.’ But surely I am in much greater danger when I do feel worthy.

When does someone ever say, ‘I have been so good this week I have not felt in the least like a sinner, and this is a great sin and deception?’ Now we would be getting somewhere with prayer!

The 19th century Russian, Saint John of Kronstadt (1829-1902), writes: ‘When the foolish thought of counting up any of your good works enters into your head, immediately correct your fault and rather count up your sins, your continual and innumerable offences against the All-Merciful and Righteous Master, and you will find that their number is as the sand of the sea, whilst your virtues in comparison with them are as nothing.’

What ever happened to the Publican or the tax-collector afterwards?

We are not told his name. We are not told where he lived. We are not told how he lived.

Did he ever put into practice what he was praying for? Asking for mercy, receiving mercy, giving mercy?

In moments when I allow my imagination to run away with itself, and with me, I like to ask whether this is the same tax collector who appears in next Sunday’s Gospel reading (Luke 19: 1-10).

The Pharisee this morning lists all he does: he fasts twice a week; he gives a tenth of all his income (verse 12). Next week, Zacchaeus has a profound change of heart, and decides to give away half of his possessions to the poor and to repay four-fold what he has squeezed out of anyone unjustly (Luke 19: 8).

Prayer leads us to God, but prayer that does not lead us to love our neighbour is prayer that is dead.

We need to be people who pray like a publican. We will find so many more times available for prayer if we do. But we should pray for those who are praying like a Pharisee, so that God may free us from our delusions.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

A contemporary icon of the Pharisee and the Publican praying in the Temple

Luke 18: 9-14

9 Εἶπεν δὲ καὶ πρός τινας τοὺς πεποιθότας ἐφ' ἑαυτοῖς ὅτι εἰσὶν δίκαιοι καὶ ἐξουθενοῦντας τοὺς λοιποὺς τὴν παραβολὴν ταύτην: 10 Ἄνθρωποι δύο ἀνέβησαν εἰς τὸ ἱερὸν προσεύξασθαι, ὁ εἷς Φαρισαῖος καὶ ὁ ἕτερος τελώνης. 11 ὁ Φαρισαῖος σταθεὶς πρὸς ἑαυτὸν ταῦτα προσηύχετο, Ὁ θεός, εὐχαριστῶ σοι ὅτι οὐκ εἰμὶ ὥσπερ οἱ λοιποὶ τῶν ἀνθρώπων, ἅρπαγες, ἄδικοι, μοιχοί, ἢ καὶ ὡς οὗτος ὁ τελώνης: 12 νηστεύω δὶς τοῦ σαββάτου, ἀποδεκατῶ πάντα ὅσα κτῶμαι. 13 ὁ δὲ τελώνης μακρόθεν ἑστὼς οὐκ ἤθελεν οὐδὲ τοὺς ὀφθαλμοὺς ἐπᾶραι εἰς τὸν οὐρανόν, ἀλλ' ἔτυπτεν τὸ στῆθος αὐτοῦ λέγων, Ὁ θεός, ἱλάσθητί μοι τῷ ἁμαρτωλῷ. 14 λέγω ὑμῖν, κατέβη οὗτος δεδικαιωμένος εἰς τὸν οἶκον αὐτοῦ παρ' ἐκεῖνον: ὅτι πᾶς ὁ ὑψῶν ἑαυτὸν ταπεινωθήσεται, ὁ δὲ ταπεινῶν ἑαυτὸν ὑψωθήσεται.

9 He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: 10 ‘Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax-collector. 11 The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, “God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax-collector. 12 I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.” 13 But the tax-collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!” 14 I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.’

Collect:

Blessed Lord,
who caused all holy Scriptures to be written for our learning:
Help us to hear them,
to read, mark, learn and inwardly digest them
that, through patience, and the comfort of your holy word,
we may embrace and for ever hold fast
the blessed hope of everlasting life,
which you have given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ.

Post-Communion Prayer:

God of all grace,
your Son Jesus Christ fed the hungry
with the bread of his life and the word of his kingdom.
Renew your people with your heavenly grace,
and in all our weakness
sustain us by your true and living bread,
who is alive and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin, on 23 October 2016.

Which of these two would you prefer to meet afterwards?

The Pharisee and the Publican … who would you prefer to have coffee with this morning? (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin,

23 October 2016,

The Fifth Sunday before Advent,

9 a.m., The Said Eucharist,

Readings: Joel 2: 23-32; Psalm 65; II Timothy 4: 6-8, 16-18; Luke 18: 9-14.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

The parables in Saint Luke’s Gospel are so familiar that we often forget how shocking they must have been to the people who first heard them.

The Prodigal Son, for example, is shocking because the loyal and caring stay-at-home son seems to become the victim. The Story of the Good Samaritan is shocking because good people are exposed and the someone who is an obvious as outsider is held up as a paragon of virtue.

The parable of the Pharisee and the Publican must have had the same impact on those who heard it for the first time.

As the story unfolds, they would have identified with the Pharisee – they would want to pray like him, they may even have prayed with him. And as the story unfolds, who would they prefer to head off with after the morning prayers for coffee – undoubtedly the Pharisee.

As they settle into the story, they would have expected the Pharisee to be held up as the good example. This man gives thanks to God. By all the standards of the day, by all the means of measuring Jewish piety, he is a good man. Consider what he tells God and us about himself.

First of all, he thanks God that he is not like other people. The Morning Prayer for Orthodox Jewish men, to this day, includes a prayer with these words: ‘Blessed art thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast not made me a gentile, … a slave, … a woman.’

Thanking God that I am not like others is not an expression of disdain for others; it is merely another, humble way of thanking God for being made the way we are, in God’s image and likeness. The Pharisee’s prayer is not unusual. We forget, because of generations of hearing this story, we forget that that the Pharisee is not a bad man.

The Pharisee then goes on to tell God that he obeys all the commandments: he prays, he fasts and he tithes – in fact, he tithes more than he has to, and perhaps also fasts more often than he has to – and he gives generously to the poor. He more than meets all the requirements laid on him by the Mosaic law, and he goes beyond that. He is a charitable, kind and faithful man.

Anyone who saw him in the Temple and heard him pray would have gone away saying he was a good man, and a spiritual man.

Despite meeting his responsibilities towards others, the Pharisee in this parable does not pray for the needs of others, in so far as we are allowed to eavesdrop on his prayers.

But then, neither does the publican pray for the needs of others. So neither man is condemned for not being heard to pray for the needs of others.

The story of the Pharisee (apparently good) and the Publican (apparently bad), tells us that the Pharisee prayed easily, while the publican could not even lift his eyes to heaven. Instead, the publican smote his breast and prayed: ‘Lord, be merciful to me a sinner.’

Christ tells us it was the publican who ‘returned home justified’ not the Pharisee. Yet, if I had been around the Temple that day, I am sure it is the Pharisee I would have wanted to join for coffee later that morning, not the Publican.

But it is the Publican who goes back home having south to encounter God in the right way – even if he and his neighbours do not know so.

Perhaps the error of the Pharisee is to confuse the means with the end. Acts of virtue or piety are meant to dispose our hearts towards communion with God, not turn us in on ourselves. As Metropolitan Anthony Bloom wrote: ‘From the [Pharisee] learn his works, but by no means his pride; for the work by itself means nothing and does not save.’

And so, this morning’s Gospel story remains a criticism of my priorities and my values before it ever even begins to examine anyone else’s conscience.

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

A contemporary icon of the Pharisee and the Publican praying in the Temple

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This reflection was shared in Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Ballsbridge, Dublin, on 23 October 2016.

Luke 19: 1-10: going to great lengths and heights just to see Christ

Christ calls Zacchaeus down from the sycamore tree … is this story too familiar that it is difficult to find fresh insights? (Illustration © Henry Martin)

Patrick Comerford

Luke 19: 1-10

1 Καὶ εἰσελθὼν διήρχετο τὴν Ἰεριχώ. 2 καὶ ἰδοὺ ἀνὴρ ὀνόματι καλούμενος Ζακχαῖος, καὶ αὐτὸς ἦν ἀρχιτελώνης καὶ αὐτὸς πλούσιος. 3 καὶ ἐζήτει ἰδεῖν τὸν Ἰησοῦν τίς ἐστιν, καὶ οὐκ ἠδύνατο ἀπὸ τοῦ ὄχλου ὅτι τῇ ἡλικίᾳ μικρὸς ἦν. 4 καὶ προδραμὼν εἰς τὸ ἔμπροσθεν ἀνέβη ἐπὶ συκομορέαν ἵνα ἴδῃ αὐτόν, ὅτι ἐκείνης ἤμελλεν διέρχεσθαι. 5 καὶ ὡς ἦλθεν ἐπὶ τὸν τόπον, ἀναβλέψας ὁ Ἰησοῦς εἶπεν πρὸς αὐτόν, Ζακχαῖε, σπεύσας κατάβηθι, σήμερον γὰρ ἐν τῷ οἴκῳ σου δεῖ με μεῖναι. 6 καὶ σπεύσας κατέβη, καὶ ὑπεδέξατο αὐτὸν χαίρων. 7 καὶ ἰδόντες πάντες διεγόγγυζον λέγοντες ὅτι Παρὰ ἁμαρτωλῷ ἀνδρὶ εἰσῆλθεν καταλῦσαι. 8 σταθεὶς δὲ Ζακχαῖος εἶπεν πρὸς τὸν κύριον, Ἰδοὺ τὰ ἡμίσιά μου τῶν ὑπαρχόντων, κύριε, τοῖς πτωχοῖς δίδωμι, καὶ εἴ τινός τι ἐσυκοφάντησα ἀποδίδωμι τετραπλοῦν. 9 εἶπεν δὲ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁ Ἰησοῦς ὅτι Σήμερον σωτηρία τῷ οἴκῳ τούτῳ ἐγένετο, καθότι καὶ αὐτὸς υἱὸς Ἀβραάμ ἐστιν: 10 ἦλθεν γὰρ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ζητῆσαι καὶ σῶσαι τὸ ἀπολωλός.

1 He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2 A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. 3 He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4 So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5 When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ 6 So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7 All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ 8 Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ 9 Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

Christ calls Zacchaeus

Last week, we looked at the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector praying in the Temple (Luke 18: 9-14). Imagine if Zacchaeus was the model for that publican, that tax collector.

The story of Zacchaeus (Luke 19: 1-10) is the Gospel reading for the Sunday after next, the Fourth Sunday before Advent (30 October 2016). It is a popular Sunday school story, and so, as with so many parables that are unique to Saint Luke’s Gospel, like the story of the Good Samaritan or the Prodigal Son, because it is so familiar to all of us, it is often difficult to read it again with fresh eyes and to find fresh insights.

Yet, this is a fast-moving story, with all the fast-moving pace we are more familiar with in Saint Mark’s Gospel: every verse from verse 1 to 7, in the original Greek version of this story, begins with the word καὶ (and), indicating that the pace has heightened, the story is speeding up, we are moving closer to the climax of this Gospel.

Christ is about to set out from Jericho to Jerusalem. From Jericho, the road is going to be uphill more treacherous: remember that it is on this road between Jericho and Jerusalem that a certain man is mugged and left for dead until the Good Samaritan passes by (Luke 10: 25-37).

Jericho was a major resting place or stopping point on a main trade route, at the centre of the lucrative trade in balsam, making it an important customs centre, and making it a lucrative and profitable location both for tax collectors and for bandits.

But Jericho has other significance: the walls of Jericho fell down at the call of the trumpets (see Joshua 6). So in this reading, after Christ passes through the walls of Jericho, his call breaks down all the walls people erect around themselves, individually and collectively.

Who is Zacchaeus? He cannot be Saint Matthew, who has already been called among the Twelve? Is he the tax collector in the previous Sunday’s Gospel reading?

Certainly Zacchaeus is not any run-of-the-mill tax collector – he is the ἀρχιτελώνης (architelonis), the chief tax collector (verse 2), and so by contract had the right to collect revenues throughout this district. His name Zacchaeus (Greek Ζακχαῖος, Zakchaios) means pure, but his neighbours would have despised him, not only because they believed he squeezed the last drachma and the last lepta out of widows and children, but because they would also have seen him as a collaborator with the Roman administration – never mind that an autonomous Jewish government would still have had to raise taxes to provide itself with revenue and funding. His stature in some way symbolises his low place in Jewish society in Jericho.

The tree Zacchaeus climbs (Greek συκάμινος, sikámeenos) is not the European sycamore but the sycamine tree, which has the shape and leaves of a mulberry tree but fruit that tastes like the fig, known also as the sycamore fig (συκόμορος, Ficus Sycomorus). It is a big tree and little Zacchaeus the tax collector climbs it in order to see Christ (see verse 4).

The sycamine tree is not naturally pollinated. The pollination process is initiated only when a wasp sticks its stinger right into the heart of the fruit. In other words, the tree and its fruit have to be stung in order to reproduce. There is a direct connection between suffering and growth, but also a lesson that everything in creation, including the wasp, has its place in the intricate balance of nature.

So he can catch a glimpse of Christ, Zacchaeus climbs a sycamore tree (verse 4). Now while his name meant ‘pure,’ he climbed a tree that was regarded by some as unpure, unclean, for its fruit was fed to swine. This was humbling for Zacchaeus: to see Christ, Zacchaeus had to crucify his pride. And so the tree also symbolises the cross: a picture is being painted to allow us imagine Zacchaeus prefiguring those who take up his own cross and follow Christ (see Luke 9: 23), while Christ’s call to Zacchaeus to come down (verse 5) could also represent the call to humility for Christians.

Zacchaeus is delighted and welcomes, receives Christ (verse 6). But when Christ goes to dine with Zacchaeus, all who saw it begin to grumble (verse 7): the people murmured in the wilderness; once again they are murmuring (διαγογγύζω, diagonguzo), complaining indignantly, when it comes to eating time, but this time they are not murmuring for food for themselves. Yet, in the wilderness God fed all the wandering people, whether they were sinners or righteous.

Zacchaeus then stands before the Lord and says: ‘Look half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much’ (verse 8).

Why four times?

Why does he not just pay back what he has taken?

The Jewish legal code prescribes the restitution required when responsible for the loss of another’s property (see Exodus 22: 1-15). This restitution ranges from simple replacement for negligence, increasing up to two, four or five times replacement for various thefts.

David applied this rule when he said: ‘he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity’ (II Samuel 12: 6).

Rather than asking how little he could do to correct his past wrongs, Zacchaeus chooses a generous restitution. He places himself on the guilty side of the spectrum in Exodus 22. Now he is living in maximum obedience to God. There is no law that says he must give half of everything to the poor, but Zacchaeus does this as well.

We could compare this behaviour by Zacchaeus the tax-collector alongside the tax collector’s self-description with the Pharisee’s self-description and self-justification in the reading for the previous Sunday (Luke 18: 9-14, the Fifth Sunday before Advent, 23 October 2016).

Zacchaeus also becomes a contrast of character with the Rich Young Ruler (Luke 18: 18-23), whose story comes between these two readings. Both Zacchaeus and the Rich Young Ruler are wealthy men, but one is self-righteous and will not give up his possessions, while the other gives half his possessions to feed the poor.

But for me there are two other sharp comparisons provided in this story when Christ then says to Zacchaeus: ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because this too is a son of Abraham’ (verse 9).

Who else is described in this Gospel as a ‘son of Abraham’ or ‘a daughter of Abraham’?

Firstly, there is the unnamed rich man in the story of ‘Dives’ and Lazarus (Luke 16: 19-31), the Gospel reading for a Sunday last month [25 September 2016, the Eighteen Sunday after Trinity]. This rich man, and we do not know his name and we do not know whether or not he was a tax collector, addresses Abraham as ‘father’ or ‘Father Abraham,’ and he in turn, Christ tells us, is addressed by Abraham as ‘Child’ (verse 25). This morning we see very different behaviour from a rich man, who is hailed as a Child of Abraham, but for very different reasons, and unlike Dives, Zacchaeus is going to have a guest at his table.

The woman who is bent over for 18 years and is healed in the synagogue (Luke 13: 10-17, see the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity, 21 August 2016), is described by Christ as ‘a daughter of Abraham’ (Luke 13: 16). She too is an outsider, a marginalised person in her society, and because of her stature she has to be pushy in order to see Jesus, making her way through the men in the synagogue.

The salvation that Christ brings is not specifically to the house in which Zacchaeus lives, nor even to the House of Israel, but to the household of God, especially those on the margins – those at the gates, those who are pushed outside when they cannot be pushy. The word οἶκος (oikos) in verse 9 means not just a house or even a specific inhabited house or home, but also refers to the house of God, the tabernacle, the place where God fixes his residence, the family of God, the household of the Christian Church, of the church of the Old Testament and New Testament. It is the stem word for ecumenism.

Perhaps it is because the faith of Zacchaeus is so integral to the apostolic faith of the Church, and the salvation brought to his house is the salvation brought by Christ into the whole world, that the early Church developed a number of traditions around Zacchaeus.

Saint Clement of Rome tells us that Zacchaeus became a companion of the Apostle Peter. Together they preached in Rome, and there during Nero’s reign Zacchaeus accepted a martyr’s death.

On the other hand, according to Clement of Alexandria, in Stromata, and in the tradition of the Eastern Church, Zacchaeus was surnamed Matthias by the apostles, and he took the place of Judas among the Twelve after the Ascension (Acts 1: 26). The Apostolic Constitutions (7: 46) identify ‘Zacchaeus the Publican’ as the first bishop of Caesarea.



(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This essay is based on notes prepared for a Bible study in a tutorial group with MTh students on 19 October 2016.

‘May we be a living sign of that kingdom, where your whole creation will be made perfect’

Patrick Comerford

Introduction:

As a tutorial group, we agreed to spend time using the approach of Lectio Divina to the Gospel reading for Sunday week each week.

The text is being read three times by different people.

We shall focus on the differences of delivery, inflections and resonance. Then we discuss what each member of the tutorial group receives from the readings.

The topics are from the Lectionary for the Sunday 10 days ahead, because this would be beneficial for those preaching in placement and give guidance and time for reflection before committing to a sermon. We agreed that some weeks the Lectionary readings could be supplemented or replaced by a chosen poem or other religious writings.

Luke 18: 1-8

1 Ἔλεγεν δὲ παραβολὴν αὐτοῖς πρὸς τὸ δεῖν πάντοτε προσεύχεσθαι αὐτοὺς καὶ μὴ ἐγκακεῖν, 2 λέγων, Κριτής τις ἦν ἔν τινι πόλει τὸν θεὸν μὴ φοβούμενος καὶ ἄνθρωπον μὴ ἐντρεπόμενος. 3 χήρα δὲ ἦν ἐν τῇ πόλει ἐκείνῃ καὶ ἤρχετο πρὸς αὐτὸν λέγουσα, Ἐκδίκησόν με ἀπὸ τοῦ ἀντιδίκου μου. 4 καὶ οὐκ ἤθελεν ἐπὶ χρόνον, μετὰ δὲ ταῦτα εἶπεν ἐν ἑαυτῷ, Εἰ καὶ τὸν θεὸν οὐ φοβοῦμαι οὐδὲ ἄνθρωπον ἐντρέπομαι, 5 διά γε τὸ παρέχειν μοι κόπον τὴν χήραν ταύτην ἐκδικήσω αὐτήν, ἵνα μὴ εἰς τέλος ἐρχομένη ὑπωπιάζῃ με. 6 Εἶπεν δὲ ὁ κύριος, Ἀκούσατε τί ὁ κριτὴς τῆς ἀδικίας λέγει: 7 ὁ δὲ θεὸς οὐ μὴ ποιήσῃ τὴν ἐκδίκησιν τῶν ἐκλεκτῶν αὐτοῦ τῶν βοώντων αὐτῷ ἡμέρας καὶ νυκτός, καὶ μακροθυμεῖ ἐπ' αὐτοῖς; 8 λέγω ὑμῖν ὅτι ποιήσει τὴν ἐκδίκησιν αὐτῶν ἐν τάχει. πλὴν ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ ἀνθρώπου ἐλθὼν ἆρα εὑρήσει τὴν πίστιν ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς;

1 Then Jesus told them a parable about their need to pray always and not to lose heart. 2 He said, ‘In a certain city there was a judge who neither feared God nor had respect for people. 3 In that city there was a widow who kept coming to him and saying, “Grant me justice against my opponent.” 4 For a while he refused; but later he said to himself, “Though I have no fear of God and no respect for anyone, 5 yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will grant her justice, so that she may not wear me out by continually coming”.’ 6 And the Lord said, ‘Listen to what the unjust judge says. 7 And will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them? 8 I tell you, he will quickly grant justice to them. And yet, when the Son of Man comes, will he find faith on earth?’

The widow and the unjust judge

To supplement this approach this morning, I have also prepared a short Bible study on this parable, which is the Gospel reading (Luke 18: 1-8) in the Revised Common Lectionary for Sunday week [16 October 2016], the 21st Sunday after Trinity.

It is a well-known parable. But, while we often know it as the ‘Parable of the Unjust Judge,’ perhaps it should be known as the ‘Parable of the Persistent Widow,’ for we are told to take her and not him as an example of how to pray, as opposed to example of how to prey.

And yet, let us take some time first to look at the judge.

Are we asked to think that God behaves like an unjust or capricious judge?

But this appears to be a judge who exercises his office without fear or favour?

Is justice about that?

Is justice about seeing that the law is enforced?

Or is it about seeing that justice is done, and is seen to be done?

How many judges implement the law without dispensing justice?

How many judges implement the law without dispensing mercy?

Is this not what happened in Nazi Germany and in apartheid South Africa?

How many judges in Nazi Germany and apartheid South Africa merely applied the law?

Could a Jewish widow expect justice from a judge in Nazi Germany?

Could a black widow expect mercy from a judge in apartheid South Africa?

Could a fleeing Syrian refugee expect mercy today in Greece, or in Hungary given the atmosphere that led up to last Sunday’s referendum?

The woman in our parable is not asking for what is her legal right. She is not asking for her neighbour to be punished. But she may be asking for something she is not entitled to: justice.

When people say they cannot accept a judgmental God, is that because their image of a judge is of a distant figure who applies the full rigour of the law, rather than an accessible figure who dispenses justice and mercy?

These contrasting images of God are found too in the Old Testament reading (Jeremiah 31: 27-34) in the Revised Common Lectionary for that Sunday; it concludes:

No longer shall they teach one another, or say to one another,
‘Know the Lord,’
for they shall all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,
for I will forgive their iniquity,
and remember their sin no more. – (Jeremiah 31: 34)

Who is ‘the least of them’ in that reading?

Certainly, a widow would fall into that category at the time of Christ. She would have no man to argue her case for her, and so would go unheard. All other cases – commercial, civil and criminal – would take precedence over her request to be heard.

Who is the widow in this story?

The first part of the Old Testament reading might allow us to draw parallels between this widow and the chosen people who have turned their back on God: a people whose covenantal relationship with God has died, and a woman whose covenantal relationship, her marriage, has come to an end with death.

Without love, there is no covenant. Without love there is no true religion, and no true marriage.

Could we talk on Sunday week about a true relationship with God being marked by love – God’s love for us, our love for God, and our love for others?

If that love is the foundation of our Christianity, then justice becomes more important than law, and mercy more important than rules, and God the Judge becomes a loving rather than a tyrannical image.

Concluding poem

Last week, someone suggested we might conclude with a poem or another reflection.

I have chosen a poem by the late Poet Laureate John Betjeman (1906-1984), Variation on a Theme by Newbolt. It tells the story of how a banker or lawyer in the City of London has died. His colleagues and erstwhile friends are concerned about the funeral arrangements, about what happens to his trappings and status symbols, and how they want to be seen at his memorial service in Saint Katherine Cree.

But no-one stops to think of his widow, how she is grieving, and how she feels she has lost everything. Wait for the sting in the tail.

Variation on a Theme by Newbolt, John Betjeman

The City will see him no more at important meetings
In Renaissance board rooms by Edwin Cooper designed;
In his numerous clubs the politely jocular greetings
Will be rather more solemn to-day with his death in mind.

Half mast from a first floor window, the Company’s bunting
Flops over Leadenhall Street in this wintry air
And his fellow directors, baulked of a good day’s hunting
Nod gloomily back to the gloomy commissionaire.

His death will be felt through the whole of the organization,
In every branch of its vast managerial tree,
His brother-in-law we suppose will attend the cremation,
A service will later be held in St. Katherine Cree.

But what of his guns? – he was always a generous giver.
(Oh yes, of course, we will each of us send a wreath),
His yacht? and his shoot? and his beautiful reach of river?
And all the clubs in his locker at Walton Heath?

I do not know, for my mind sees one thing only,
A luxurious bedroom looking on miles of fir
From a Surrey height where his widow sits silent and lonely
For the man whose love seemed wholly given to her.

The Collect of the Day:

Merciful Lord,
Grant to your faithful people pardon and peace,
that we may be cleansed from all our sins
and serve you with a quiet mind;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Father of light,
in whom is no change or shadow of turning,
you give us every good and perfect gift
and have brought us to birth by your word of truth.
May we be a living sign of that kingdom,
where your whole creation will be made perfect
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Next week (19 October 2016):

The Gospel reading for Sunday 23 October 2016, Luke 18: 9-14.

(Revd Canon Professor) Canon Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. These notes were prepared for a tutorial group with MTh students on 5 October 2016.

‘You crown the year with your goodness and give us the fruits of the earth in their season’

Harvest fields in Pollerton, Co Carlow (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

2 October 2016,

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity,

Harvest Thanksgiving Eucharist,

11.30 a.m.: Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, Co Dublin.

Readings: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11; Psalm 100; Philippians 4: 4-9; John 6: 25-35.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

I am grateful to your Rector, the Revd Ian Gallagher, for inviting to preach at your Harvest Thanksgiving Service here in Stillorgan this morning.

We were both in Christ Church Cathedral last Sunday for the ordination of the Revd Kevin Conroy, who spent his two years as a deacon in this parish. Kevin was one the students whose dissertation I supervised, and I know how much he appreciated his time in this parish.

It involved commuting through rural Co Wicklow to be in suburban Dublin, and I was often reminded of how living in a city separates us from rural life in so many ways: from the times and seasons, from rural isolation, from the problems created by the closure of village pubs and village post offices, from springtime and harvest.

And no number of successive attendances at ‘Electric Picnic’ is going to count up for one day at ‘The Ploughing.’

I spent a lot of the important growing-up times in my childhood on my grandmother’s farm in West Waterford. Perhaps that alone helps explain why I often need to get out of cities and go for walks, long walks, in the countryside.

But sometimes I worry that in idealising the countryside, we often forget that in cities and suburbs we too have the harvests of our gardens and the harvests of our hearts and of our faith.

The green and gold of the harvest fields in Comberford, Staffordshire, a few weeks ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In recent weeks, I have had long walks in the countryside, in rural Ireland and in rural England. One summer Sunday afternoon, I walked through the fields in a part of rural Staffordshire that I knew intimately.

The harvest was just beginning, and the fields were that beautiful mixture of green and gold that are so much a part of summer on these islands.

So often, clergy feel guilty about doing nothing. We have to be on the go, filling empty time with planning our next sermon, our next study group, our next vestry or committee meeting.

But on that Sunday afternoon, thinking of how Christ emptied himself, I emptied myself, and allowed my mind and my body to wander aimlessly, enjoying God’s blessing of allowing me to be in a place I like being in so much. I had a busy week ahead of me, and in those few hours of almost absent-minded bless, I enjoyed being in God’s company in God’s creation.

Like Saint Paul in our epistle reading this morning, I could call out that afternoon, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’ (Philippians 4: 4).

In the few weeks that have passed since then, the countryside has changed in its colours. The blackberries have ripened on the brambles in the lanes, most of the harvest is now complete, and the stubble gives the countryside different shades and balances of green and gold beneath the blue skies and white clouds.

A golden harvest stubble near Tolleshunt Knights in Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Just a month ago, while I was on a one-day retreat in a monastery in the countryside in Essex, I heard a story of a monk from Cyprus who was the gardener in his monastery. He was happy at his work, growing vegetables, tending the vines and orchards, bringing the flowers to bloom, and looking after the soil, in season and out of season.

He enjoyed his work, and never sought to do anything more in the monastery.

One day, the Abbot called him aside and told him he wanted this monk to be ordained a priest.

The monk was perplexed. He was from a simple farming background, he was a brother among the monks, and he had never thought about being ordained a priest.

But Father Abbot, he protested, I do not know how to serve the liturgy.

But the garden is your liturgy, the Abbot insisted. And the garden shall continue to be your liturgy.

Despite this monk’s protests, he was ordained a priest.

He continued to work in the garden. The flowers bloomed and the vegetable grew in such vast quantities that the monks had to give them away freely to the local villagers.

Often, while the other monks were praying the offices or hours in the monastery chapel, Father John was still out on his tractor, looking after the garden, the flowers, the vegetables, the vines and the orchards. They needed constant attention, Father John understood nature, and there he prayed with them.

There are three degrees in Orthodox monasticism:

When the novice becomes a monk, he is clothed in monk’s clothing and receives the tonsure.

Some years later, when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility, he moves on to the second degree known as the Little Schema.

Many monks remain at this level. But sometimes, monks whose abbots feel they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, known as the Great Schema.

In his dying days, Father John received the Great Schema from his Abbot. He died a few days later, but his gardens continue to bloom and to blossom, and both he and his generosity are still remembered by the villagers many years later.

The fruit and the flowers, the vine and vegetables, may have been Father John’s liturgy. But the people he blessed with the produce of the fields and the gardens are themselves the harvest of the monastery.

Shortly after hearing this story that day, I found myself face to face with a fresco in one of the monastery chapels depicting the Resurrection scene where Mary Magdalene is in the garden and mistakes the Risen Christ for the gardener.

It seemed to me that day that there is something spiritually beautiful and appropriate about the monk-gardener becoming a priest, and that the Risen Christ might at first sight be confused with the gardener.

It was the Gospel reading at last Sunday’s ordination of priests in Christ Church Cathedral.

How do we best celebrate the harvest do we have to offer today?

There is a harvest lunch here after this service. But like the people who follow Christ to the other side of the lake in our Gospel reading, are we there because we are being fed (see John 6: 26), or because of who Christ is for us?

What harvest do we have to offer as individuals, as a parish, as a diocese, as the Church of Ireland?

What did we mean when we prayed those words in this morning’s Collect that say: ‘Grant that we may use them to your glory, for the relief of those in need’?

I am just back from a meeting in London of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG at which we heard harrowing accounts of the suffering of Syrian refugees who are fleeing places like Aleppo and Damascus and fleeing to Greece, only to find themselves treated with uncivilised inhumanity in holding facilities on the islands, in Athens and on the borders.

When Saint Paul tells us this morning to ‘keep on doing the things we have learned and received and heard and seen,’ then it must be in loving God and loving our neighbour. And it must involve too remembering, as our Old Testament reading reminds us, that we must ‘celebrate … all the bounty that the Lord God given us’ (Deuteronomy 26: 11) in the harvest ‘with the aliens who reside among us.’

And so, may all we think, say and do, be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Collect:

Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
Grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need
and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord of the harvest, with joy we have offered thanksgiving for your love in creation
and have shared in the bread and wine of the kingdom.
By your grace plant within us such reverence
for all that you give us
that will make us wise stewards of the good things we enjoy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Harvest Thanksgiving Eucharist in Saint Brigid’s Church, Stillorgan, Co Dublin, on 2 October 2016.

Harvest time in Alvecote near Tamworth (Photograph: Ken Robinson, 2016)

‘Grant that we may use them to your glory, for the relief of those in need’

Harvest time in Julianstown, Co Meath (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

2 October 2016,

The Nineteenth Sunday after Trinity,

Harvest Thanksgiving Eucharist,

10 a.m.: All Saints’ Church, Blackrock, Co Dublin.

Readings: Deuteronomy 26: 1-11; Psalm 100; Philippians 4: 4-9; John 6: 25-35.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen.

Living in a city separates us from rural life in oh so many ways: from the times and seasons, from rural isolation, from the problems created by the closure of village pubs and village post offices, from springtime and harvest.

And no number of successive attendances at ‘Electric Picnic’ is going to count up for one day at ‘The Ploughing.’

I spent a lot of the important growing-up times in my childhood on my grandmother’s farm in West Waterford. Perhaps that alone helps explain why I often need to get out of cities and go for walks, long walks, in the countryside.

But sometimes I worry that in idealising the countryside, we often forget that in cities and suburbs we too have the harvests of our gardens and the harvests of our hearts and of our faith.

The green and gold of the harvest fields in Comberford, Staffordshire, a few weeks ago (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

In recent weeks, I have had long walks in the countryside, in rural Ireland and in rural England. One summer Sunday afternoon, I walked through the fields in a part of rural Staffordshire that I knew intimately.

The harvest was just beginning, and the fields were that beautiful mixture of green and gold that are so much a part of summer on these islands.

So often, clergy feel guilty about doing nothing. We have to be on the go, filling empty time with planning our next sermon, our next study group, our next vestry or committee meeting.

But on that Sunday afternoon, thinking of how Christ emptied himself, I emptied myself, and allowed my mind and my body to wander aimlessly, enjoying God’s blessing of allowing me to be in a place I like being in so much. I had a busy week ahead of me, and in those few hours of almost absent-minded bless, I enjoyed being in God’s company in God’s creation.

Like Saint Paul in our epistle reading this morning, I could call out that afternoon, ‘Rejoice in the Lord always’ (Philippians 4: 4).

In the few weeks that have passed since then, the countryside has changed in its colours. The blackberries have ripened on the brambles in the lanes, most of the harvest is now complete, and the stubble gives the countryside different shades and balances of green and gold beneath the blue skies and white clouds.

A golden harvest stubble near Tolleshunt Knights in Essex (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Just a month ago, while I was on a one-day retreat in a monastery in the countryside in Essex, I heard a story of a monk from Cyprus who was the gardener in his monastery. He was happy at his work, growing vegetables, tending the vines and orchards, bringing the flowers to bloom, and looking after the soil, in season and out of season.

He enjoyed his work, and never sought to do anything more in the monastery.

One day, the Abbot called him aside and told him he wanted this monk to be ordained a priest.

The monk was perplexed. He was from a simple farming background, he was a brother among the monks, and he had never thought about being ordained a priest.

But Father Abbot, he protested, I do not know how to serve the liturgy.

But the garden is your liturgy, the Abbot insisted. And the garden shall continue to be your liturgy.

Despite this monk’s protests, he was ordained a priest.

He continued to work in the garden. The flowers bloomed and the vegetable grew in such vast quantities that the monks had to give them away freely to the local villagers.

Often, while the other monks were praying the offices or hours in the monastery chapel, Father John was still out on his tractor, looking after the garden, the flowers, the vegetables, the vines and the orchards. They needed constant attention, Father John understood nature, and there he prayed with them.

There are three degrees in Orthodox monasticism:

When the novice becomes a monk, he is clothed in monk’s clothing and receives the tonsure.

Some years later, when the abbot feels the monk has reached an appropriate level of discipline, dedication, and humility, he moves on to the second degree known as the Little Schema.

Many monks remain at this level. But sometimes, monks whose abbots feel they have reached a high level of spiritual excellence reach the final stage, known as the Great Schema.

In his dying days, Father John received the Great Schema from his Abbot. He died a few days later, but his gardens continue to bloom and to blossom, and both he and his generosity are still remembered by the villagers many years later.

The fruit and the flowers, the vine and vegetables, may have been Father John’s liturgy. But the people he blessed with the produce of the fields and the gardens are themselves the harvest of the monastery.

Shortly after hearing this story that day, I found myself face to face with a fresco in one of the monastery chapels depicting the Resurrection scene where Mary Magdalene is in the garden and mistakes the Risen Christ for the gardener.

It seemed to me that day that there is something spiritually beautiful and appropriate about the monk-gardener becoming a priest, and that the Risen Christ might at first sight be confused with the gardener.

It was the Gospel reading at last Sunday’s ordination of priests in Christ Church Cathedral.

How do we best celebrate the harvest do we have to offer today?

There is a harvest lunch in Stillorgan later in the day [2 October 2016]. But like the people who follow Christ to the other side of the lake in our Gospel reading, are we there because we are being fed (see John 6: 26), or because of who Christ is for us?

What harvest do we have to offer as individuals, as a parish, as a diocese, as the Church of Ireland?

What did we mean when we prayed those words in this morning’s Collect that say: ‘Grant that we may use them to your glory, for the relief of those in need’?

I am just back from a meeting in London of the trustees of the Anglican mission agency USPG at which we heard harrowing accounts of the suffering of Syrian refugees who are fleeing places like Aleppo and Damascus and fleeing to Greece, only to find themselves treated with uncivilised inhumanity in holding facilities on the islands, in Athens and on the borders.

When Saint Paul tells us this morning to ‘keep on doing the things we have learned and received and heard and seen,’ then it must be in loving God and loving our neighbour. And it must involve too remembering, as our Old Testament reading reminds us, that we must ‘celebrate … all the bounty that the Lord God given us’ (Deuteronomy 26: 11) in the harvest ‘with the aliens who reside among us.’

And so, may all we think, say and do, be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Collect:

Eternal God,
you crown the year with your goodness
and give us the fruits of the earth in their season:
Grant that we may use them to your glory,
for the relief of those in need
and for our own well-being;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Post-Communion Prayer:

Lord of the harvest, with joy we have offered thanksgiving for your love in creation
and have shared in the bread and wine of the kingdom.
By your grace plant within us such reverence
for all that you give us
that will make us wise stewards of the good things we enjoy;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin. This sermon was preached at the Harvest Thanksgiving Eucharist in All Saints’ Church, Blackrock, Co Dublin, on 2 October 2016.

Harvest time in Alvecote, near Tamworth (Photograph: Ken Robinson, 2016)

‘You do not come dramatically, with dragons That rear up with my life between their paws’

Saint Michael slays the dragon … a sculpted image on the north wall of Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

29 September 2016,

Saint Michael and All Angels,

8.15 a.m., The Eucharist,

The Chapel, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute.

Readings: Genesis 28: 10-17; Psalm 103: 19-22; Revelation 12: 7-12; John 1: 47-51.

In the name of + the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

There are few references to Saint Michael in the Bible (Daniel 10: 13, 21, 12: 1; Jude 9; Revelation 12: 7-9; see also Revelation 20: 1-3). Yet they have inspired great works in our culture, from Milton’s Paradise Lost to Jacob Epstein’s powerful sculpture at Coventry Cathedral.

But culturally, this has been an important day for the Church: the beginning of terms, the end of the harvest season, the settling of accounts. It is the beginning of autumn, we were told as children not to pick blackberries after this day.

In all our imagery, in all our poetry, Saint Michael is depicted and seen as crushing or slaying Satan, often Satan as a dragon.

Dragons on Chinese silk ties … our ideas of dragons are also culturally conditioned (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Our ideas of dragons are also culturally conditioned. For the Chinese, dragons symbolise gift and blessing, and represent the majesty of the imperial household.

In most European languages, the word for a dragon is derived from the same Greek word used for a serpent. In European folklore and mythology, legendary dragons have symbolised danger and evil. We are warned in the Greek classics against sowing dragon’s teeth.

Most of us know that throughout life we are going to meet our own dragons, and how they are going to ensnare us if we do not face them and slay them.

Because of the Blitz during World War II, the poet Philip Larkin (1922-1985) spent some of his late teen and early adult years living with his father’s family, close to Saint Michael’s Church in Lichfield, where generations of the Larkin family are buried. There, on the north wall of the church, in a large, looming sculpted image, Saint Michael is crushing the dragon under his feet.

Memories of this image and this churchyard may have inspired the imagery in at least two poems written by Larkin some years later. In his poem ‘At the chiming of light upon sleep’, first drafted on this day 70 years ago [29 September 1946], Larkin links Michaelmas and a lost paradise with chances and opportunities he failed to take in his youth.

In his poem ‘To Failure,’ written a year before he moved to Belfast, Larkin realises that failure does not come ‘dramatically, with dragons / that rear up with my life between their paws.’ Failure comes with more subtlety in those wasted opportunities and lost chances.

During your time here, you will have your own dragons to slay. Do not mistake them for old friends. You will have opportunities and chances to do that, as the days pass quicker than you can count, you will find you have neglected or even lost.

Know your dragons. You already know your own dragons better than I do or anyone else here. But also pay heed to the opportunities that pass far too quickly. And take the opportunities presented here, like Nathanael waiting beneath the fig tree, to prepare yourself for the next stage in your life and ministry.

There may be few dramatic conflicts with your inner dragons while you are here. But in the years to come, you may regret not paying attention to the little opportunities, the minor details of life here. Then you do not notice the changes, the days passing more quickly, and the years pass by.

Philip Larkin writes:

It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Install you at my elbow like a bore.
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. (You have been here some time.)

Sitting under his tree, Nathanael was aware of the opportunities and did not allow them to pass him by. And when you seize these opportunities you may find yourself prepared to ‘see heaven opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man’ (John 1: 51).

And so, may all we think, say and do be to the praise, honour and glory of God, + Father, Son and Holy Spirit, Amen.

No 33 Cherry Orchard, Lichfield… the Larkin family moved here in 1940 during the Coventry Blitz (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

To Failure, by Philip Larkin

You do not come dramatically, with dragons
That rear up with my life between their paws
And dash me butchered down beside the wagons,
The horses panicking; nor as a clause
Clearly set out to warn what can be lost,
What out-of-pocket charges must be borne
Expenses met; nor as a draughty ghost
That’s seen, some mornings, running down a lawn.

It is these sunless afternoons, I find,
Install you at my elbow like a bore.
The chestnut trees are caked with silence. I’m
Aware the days pass quicker than before,
Smell staler too. And once they fall behind
They look like ruin. (You have been here some time.)

Saint Michael slays the Dragon … one of four panels by Eric Gill on the War Memorial in Trumpington, near Cambridge (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2015)

Collect:

Everlasting God,
you have ordained and constituted the ministries
of angels and mortals in a wonderful order:
Grant that as your holy angels always serve you in heaven,
so, at your command,
they may help and defend us on earth;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Post Communion Prayer:

Lord of heaven,
in this Eucharist you have brought us near
to an innumerable company of angels
and to the spirits of the saints made perfect.
As in this food of our earthly pilgrimage
we have shared their fellowship,
so may we come to share their joy in heaven;
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is Lecturer in Anglicanism, Liturgy and Church History, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute. This sermon was preached at the Eucharist on the Feastday of Saint Michael and All Angels, 29 September 2016.

A Sunday filled with colour in the cathedral and the countryside

In Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, before the Choral Eucharist this morning (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Patrick Comerford

It was wonderful to work this morning in harmony with one of the great cathedral choirs in the Anglican Communion.

The choir of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York sang the setting at this morning’s Choral Eucharist in Christ Cathedral, on a morning that I was the canon-in-residence and the preacher.

The celebrant this morning was the Revd Abigail Sines, the new Dean’s Vicar of the Cathedral, and the setting was the Missa Brevis S Johannis de Deo by Franz Josef Haydn (1732-1809). There were so many choir members from New York this the younger ones were sitting on benches in the front of the choir stalls, and I wondered as we processed in whether there would be a stall left for me as I reached the chapter stalls in the choir.

In all, there were 53 robed members of this morning’s choir.

The core of the Cathedral Choir in Saint John the Divine is formed by a 15-voice professional choir that sets the standard for music-making in the cathedral. Its members include some of New York City’s finest choral performers, who are also accomplished soloists in their own right. The Cathedral Choir provides music for the Sunday 11 am Eucharist and 4 pm Evensong services throughout the year and also sings for other major feast days, such as Christmas, Holy Week, and Easter.

In addition, the choir serves as the core ensemble for the Cathedral’s Great Music in a Great Space concert series.

The Cathedral Chorale is an auditioned volunteer choir that draws members from both the local Morningside Heights community and the greater New York City area. It rehearses on Wednesday nights from September through to May. The Chorale often joins the Cathedral Choir for services throughout the year, and is sometimes used to reinforce the professional choral forces for Great Music in a Great Space Concerts.

The Cathedral Choristers are an ensemble of 26 students drawn from the 5th-8th grade classes of the Cathedral School. The chorister programme was founded when the Cathedral School opened in 1901. These young musicians continue this proud tradition, taking part in services at the cathedral as well as taking part in exciting outside projects.

In 2013, the choristers sang in Carnegie Hall for the Oratorio Society of New York’s performance of Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem and travelled to London to sing services at Saint Paul’s Cathedral.

After singing at the Eucharist and Choral Evensong in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, today, the choirs from New York move on to London later this week to sing at Westminster Abbey.

A grey day at the ‘Gold Coast’ of Co Meath in Bettystown (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)

Meanwhile, after this morning’s Cathedral Eucharist, two of us went for a walk on the beach on the ‘Gold Coast’ of Co Meath.

We stopped first at Laytown, but the tide was so high and in so far that it was impossible to walk on the beach.

Further north, at Bettystown, we were given a table by the window in Relish in Bettystown, and had lunch looking out over the high bank on the coast, out onto the beach and across to the Irish Sea.

This was a grey afternoon, with grey skies, grey clouds, grey waters and grey sands. But even summer has its variety of colours in the rain. Later, as we drove back between Drogheda, Julianstown and Gormanston, the fields were green and yellow as the harvest season moves towards its close.

It had been a colourful day in the cathedral and in the countryside.

Fields of green and gold near Julianstown, Co Meath, this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2016)