May 1, 2014

The Rt Rev Jim White

Sermon for the Induction of the Reverend Helen Jacobi as Vicar of St Matthew’s-in-the-city

Feast of St Phillip and St James

Helen what a joy to be here. It is a good thing. I greet you as the one called by God to be vicar - priest, pastor, and preacher in this place. I want to say thank you to the Appointment Group who worked to discern that call.

Helen I delight in the fact that you came to a point that you felt that you could do ‘no other,’ here is where God is calling you to be.

I want to greet your friends and whanau, especially those who have travelled some distance to express their love and support of you and your ministry, I want to greet guests amongst us – although I hope you feel like you belong here and this is your place. Let me greet Episcopal Colleagues – Bishop Murray, Bishop George, Bishop John, tena koutou; and especially Pihopa o Te Tai Tokerau, Pihopa Kitohi, tena koe.

I greet the wonderful Rainbow Community Church whose home has been here for decades.

And the last shall be first; I greet the congregation of St Matthew’s - it is good to be here with you.

It could be said that it has taken an overly long time to get to this point – namely the installation of the first woman as vicar of this parish. St Matthew’s, which under the leadership of John Mullane, was a driving wheel in the advancement of ordination of women throughout the 1970’s. the ordination of women to the priesthood was a milestone that this church got to nearly forty years ago now. Forty years is usually a biblical way to say ‘a long time. It sure is good to be here now.

In need to say that it is not an entirely good thing for me to be here. I always find standing in this pulpit a daunting experience. I am very conscious of some very fine preachers who have stood here and I always suffer intense bouts of imposter syndrome as I climb the stairs. I have the most vivid image of Nelson Mandela speaking from this pulpit. And while the good and great have delivered life-giving words from here, of course it is really the week by week preaching, crafted with a care and call to be God’s people, that has contributed most to the long walk to freedom. It is right that you have been called to this pulpit Helen. You have a fine reputation as a preacher and I know you will occupy this space well.

I want to say something about St Matthew’s–in-the-City. It is such a mouthful. I’ll break the task into three, working backwards. I’ll say something about in-the-city, something about St Matthew’s and something about St Matthew.

In-the-city. How our queen city has changed! For a start in parts our city is much more welcoming of queens.

It is not just clergymen that go about in dresses. In this and many ways our city is changing for the good.

I served here over twenty years ago and at that point there were very few residents in the city; now this neighbourhood is the most densely populated region in the country. Amongst the biggest observable changes to my eyes are the children in walking buses - walking along Hobson Street and down to Freeman’s Bay Primary School. Who would have thought so many children would live right near St Matthew’s twenty years ago.

But over the years our city has changed in dramatic ways and one imagines we will face great changes ahead – not all of them planned or even foreseen.

This city, like many -  and even most - western cities, will, for instance, certainly face issues for good and ill arising from increased immigration and multi-cultural communities. A question for us from here in this city (and in a sense in the city, every city) in this period of late-capitalism is: can we believe? I mean, at a time and place when apparently you can believe what you like as long as it sells, and if we take our lead from our Prime Minister, we can be pretty relaxed and sanguine about most everything, and at a time when all certainty and all defiant purpose is looked at sideways as if it were authoritarianism or sign of latent fundamentalism,

can we believe? … believe in anything good? …. let alone God? Yeats words seem most apposite

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

Of course, it seems that one dare not utter those or any lines with too much conviction for fear that one becomes one of those “worst” who are full of passionate intensity. Such is the postmodern world we occupy and preach into. Nobody describes this better than Umberto Eco:

I think of the postmodern attitude as that of a man who loves a very cultivated woman and knows that he cannot say to her "I love you madly", because he knows that she knows (and that she knows he knows) that these words have already been written by Barbara Cartland. Still there is a solution. He can say "As Barbara Cartland would put it, I love you madly". At this point, having avoided false innocence, having said clearly it is no longer possible to talk innocently, he will nevertheless say what he wanted to say to the woman: that he loves her in an age of lost innocence.

Post-modernity can be such fun. But all the irony is so empty and therefore ultimately very troubling.

Troubling for us because we believe in the opposite; we believe in love, in a God who is love, a God in whom we live and move and have our being a God who has a purpose (a telos) for creation and for each and every one of us.

Can we believe? We must and we do believe in a good God or fundamentalism will surely fill the emptiness left by eternal irony.

Likewise in market place of the city, where captitalism is celebrated as such a wonderful egalitarian and non-elitist force, where the market can be so liberating for some, we also know that capitalism is profoundly unable to deliver adequate resources for the majority of the world’s population to flourish. We have to believe and work for something for each and enough for all.

There are two icons or images I have held in my mind as I have prepared for tonight and thought about in-the-city. One image is global the other is local. The first, the global image, really could be an icon of our time and it comes from the cover of the recent Time Magazine with the hundred most influential people in world in it. 

[ I wonder Helen if you, like me, registered (and celebrated) that an Anglican priest and preacher, made it onto Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2014? I should have liked to weave Barbara Brown Taylor into this sermon somehow but it will have to be another sermon. ]

Returning to the cover of the Time magazine it was Beyonce – an African American woman sensation on the cover. Hugely powerful and yet she is there because she sells in her bikini – she sells  - and not sea shells on the sea shore! – but entertainment and herself for millions; and part of that selling is through the deliberate commodification of her body. The cover is a celebration and it is glorious, liberating, and troubling.

Troubling because it doesn’t really feel emancipatory. Troubling because it is an icon of the body fetish of our age; it is that fetish writ large and legitimized by the fact that it sells  -or should I say, she sells, (as she sings) she is “the boss.”

The second image I have is memory of a few nights ago: I parked my car up in the carpark out front and in every doorway of this church had at least one homeless person sheltering in it. These wonderful resilient and defiant people find a home for the night in the doorways of this church. It is fantastic and tragic. These are fantastic people and I know they sometimes smell and can be unpleasant and they urinate against and under the doors and the staff here clean it up and it isn’t romantic and it is a troubling and difficult edge of life in our city pressing hard on this place. In the city where the rich and fatuous debate the overheated property market some have no home and no capital gain to speculate about. And we need to talk about, pray about, dream what kind of city we want to be part of and would amount to Thy Kingdom come

How might we respond to these images – this context?

This is where you are called to be – in-the-city  - as it says on your foundation stone - – “To the glory of God.”

St Matthew’s – I want to draw the attention to the apostrophe “s.” Somewhere in recent history the apostrophe “s” got dropped and it became the fashion to say “St Matthew in the City.” Because I am married to an English teacher I get talked to a good deal about the possessive apostrophe. I’ll save you the English lesson tonight – the big point is that possessive apostrophes matter. The theology lesson is that they matter too. This place and community is named for St Matthew but it is not St Matthew. As Yoder would put it: “The Saint you are not.”

It is misplaced hubris to imply that you are the Saint. I challenge the congregation here to reflect on this and other ways you puff yourselves with excessive pride and self-congratulation. This is a hospital for broken sinners not a palace of perfected saints.

So, you are named for St Matthew let me conclude with some quick comments about St Matthew – inspired by the Gospel passage.

St Matthew was a tax collector. Unlike today, at the time of Jesus Tax men were not universally liked or admired.

They were essentially private contractors to the Roman Empire. They bid to get the role and then they added their margin when they collected. Sometimes they added big margins. Violence was part of their powers of persuasion. Extortion was not foreign to many of them. So, taxmen were not part of polite and nice society.

That Jesus called such an unlikely and unlikable person to be a follower and that Matthew followed speaks for Jesus, for the power of the Good News, and for Matthew. Here at least, and I mean ‘at least’ because it is there over and over, is the radical inclusion of the call of Jesus. All have a place in the kingdom of God, even the most marginalized and the most despised belong. A community that takes seriously and prayerfully its naming for St Matthew will surely find itself following Christ out onto the uncomfortable edges and into the midst of disquiet over and over. It is surely your calling to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.”  You do this because of the good news you know in Christ. St Matthew’s has done this for years and years on many edges and issues - many that now seem so mainstream. Some will recall that this was one heck of place to be during the 1981 Springbok Tour and now, well, now it seems everyone protested against the tour. I applaud you I give thanks for St Matthew and those who bear his name.

So, St Matthew’s in-the-City. A new chapter in your life and a new priest, pastor, preacher to partner you in ministry and mission. It is good to be here tonight. Thanks be to God who calls us.