ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

The Eighth Sunday of Trinity, 2nd August 2009
Sermon preached by Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at Solemn Evensong and Benediction

Readings: Job 28; Hebrews 11. 17-31

I've recently come across a website called 'Ted'. Ted's mission is stated in its strap line. Ted is about 'Ideas worth spreading'. You can watch video clips of politicians, academics and leaders in their field speaking at conferences and talking about not just the issues of the day but what motivates them and how they understand the world.

One clip recently showed a senior British politician giving a talk in which he began with a series of photographs that he thought had changed things. There was that famous black and white photograph taken in 1972 during the Vietnam War. A young Vietnamese called Kim girl runs towards the photographer, naked; her back burning with napalm. Another image was the man who stood in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square in 1989 during the student protests. Then there was Neda, the young woman shot a few weeks ago on the streets of Tehran.

All these images and many more bring home to us the world's horrors. They shape public opinion. They are agents of change. The speaker then said: 'What we see unlocks what we cannot see.' What we see presents us with what ties us together. It evokes a response. We have to act. 'What we see unlocks what we cannot see' is a good starting point for understanding what we're doing here this evening.

Last Sunday I commiserated with Fr Julian before the service on having to preach on two difficult texts, one from Job and the other from Hebrews. Imagine then, how disheartened I felt last Monday morning when I looked at the readings for this evening and found that I had to preach on ... Job and Hebrews. But I have easier task this evening. There's a similar trajectory in both readings. Both are talking about an 'invisible' that is 'unlocked' by what is 'visible'.

Job is talking about wisdom. Wisdom in itself is 'invisible'. It's abstract but we are able to talk about wisdom in a meaningful way. We see it (or the lack of it) in the words and actions of those around us. Job talks about the natural world and the ways in which we have learned to use it. We mine precious metals and precious stones. Job marvels that above ground we grow crops yet below ground there are all manner of precious things. Yet most precious of all is wisdom and this is found not in the earth but in God. We explore the visible and are led by a sort of via negative to what is invisible. If wisdom is not a 'natural product' then it must belong to the transcendent realm, to God.

Hebrews talks about another 'invisible'. Hebrews talks about faith. The author appeals not to nature but to history. Faith in itself like wisdom cannot be seen with the naked eye yet we can point to examples of faithfulness. Hebrews rehearses a litany of Jewish heroes: Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; Joseph and Moses. These are people caught up in circumstances way beyond their control but through faith they changed their own lives and the lives of others. They were all Patriarchs, the founding Fathers of their nation. Even Rahab, the prostitute had faith. Faith made them all a blessing and an example. They had a grasp of the 'invisible' (faith) and modelled faith to those around them.

The church continues in the same vein. There's rarely a week goes by that we don't commemoratesome saint or other. Looking at this coming week we're celebrating the life of the Curé d'Ars on Tuesday, St Oswald King and Martyr on Wednesday, John Mason Neale (the 19C priest and hymn writer) on Friday and St Dominic (Founder of the Dominican Order of Friars) on Saturday; and so the list goes on week in and week out.

But the problem with appeals to names is that they are easily tainted by our reactions. As soon as a name is mentioned there tends to be division. I deliberately didn't say who the politician was that I saw on Ted because you would have either cheered or booed. (Looking around, I suspect that most of you would have booed. Frankly, even I did!) I reacted negatively to the thought of preaching on Job or Hebrews. Job is depressing. Hebrews is usually incomprehensiblealthough 'Preaching on the incomprehensible hasn't stopped you in the past,' I hear you say.

Photographs (images of actual people) do raise awareness of the horrors of our world but I'm not sure that they always produce a desire to change things in everyone. We look at distressing pictures in the media every day. Sometimes they galvanize us into action; sometimes they don't. Anyone working in the charity sector will tell you about 'compassion fatigue'.

So something else is needed. If we are going to make the journey from the visible to the invisible and back again, back to make a difference in the visible world then something else is needed; something that isn't instantly skewed by our likes and dislikes. What we need is something beyond names, something easily recognisable, something neutral yet positive. God in his wisdom fastened upon bread. You can't say anything bad about bread. It's the staff of life. There's nothing more delicious than a fresh loaf. There's nothing more basic. When disaster strikes the most important thing is to keep bread supplies going.

Bread is the symbol that unites the Old and New Testaments: the unleavened bread of the Passover, the manna in the wilderness and the Eucharistic host. Beyond the veil of bread we sense the presence of the Christ who loves us and nourishes us, Jesus the Jew who shares the radical riches of his own tradition. Once we have perceived this then we can go deeper into the agony that is a part of history and humanity: the conflict and the cross. And beyond that is the fact that the cross stands upon the earth, the green hill that is part of creation, the delight of the divine will.

Bread: what we see unlocks what we cannot see. It unlocks it in a way that by-passes the distortions that happen when we get hung up on personalities. Hence the wisdom of that old cry: 'the mass is the mass is the mass.' It doesn't matter who the priest is, what we think of them or how worthy they are. It doesn't matter what the church is like. It doesn't matter how many turn up or whether it is said or sung. What's important is that the sacrament is being celebrated and that we are being nurtured by God's grace.

Coming to mass is a discipline. Coming here to adore the invisible made visible at Benediction is an education. When we leave the church and return to the world we then act not on the basis of personality but on the basis of principle. One of the ironies of our culture is that it's constantly bent out of shape by celebrities getting on their high horse. We have a political culture that looks evermore presidential. But it's not serving us well. The future will be shaped for the lasting benefit of all when we have principled action which people analyse for themselves and to which we can either agree or dispute. Leaving it to the fiat of celebrities will only breed a new elite and that's a recipe for another power struggle between the haves and the have-nots.

Meanwhile the church seems bent on following the world down the tubes with similar divisions. The issues that divide Anglicans it seems are being decided not on the basis of principle but on the basis of who shouts loudest, who can field the biggest names and who's got the deepest pockets. The haves and the have-nots in the world are mirrored in the church. One wag has described this as a division between the Anglicans and Anglican'ts.

Yet the renewing power of nature and history, scripture, tradition and liturgy is that it constantly challenges us to think again, to look at the world afresh. Ted may be about ideas worth spreading yet the church is about seeing (looking, being aware) and using this to unlock what we cannot see. This is the best idea of all and certainly one worth spreading. Indeed it's what that hoary old word 'mission' is all about.