|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Sermon
|
| CHAPLAIN TO CULTURE I
First, THE PROBLEM. Put simply, churches no longer enjoy the place they had in the culture fifty years ago. Back then, unless those concerned belonged to another faith, most marriages and funerals were conducted by clergy. At census time most Australians nominated a religious brand loyalty – generally Christian. People would say, “That’s my church; that’s the one I stay away from!” Clergy were familiar figures, easily recognised by their collars and greeted in the street. When surveys of esteem and trust were taken, clergy were among the top-ranking. Australians have never been as ‘churchgoing’ as Irish or Americans, but in the late 50s and early 60s weekly attendance was creeping towards thirty percent of the population; today less than half that. When I was ordained, the culture was much more supportive. For one thing, there was little else to do on weekends if you weren’t in church. But also the culture was less driven, less competitive; it was slower moving and gentler. And the box with a steeple on top was a symbol of security, even for those not often there. Half a century ago churches occupied a place not altogether unlike that of the police, fire and ambulance services. Most were glad we had them, but hoped we wouldn’t need them too often – if at all! But try to close down a little country church because the congregation was down to six, and the whole district would come to worship in protest! Even if there were only six to keep a little church going, it was a symbol of security; people felt better than they would without it – just as with the police, fire and ambulance service. For a number of reasons I don’t intend cataloguing now, there have been big, big changes in the last half-century. It’s not just that the headcount is down and the average age is up. It’s that the church simply doesn’t occupy the place it had back then. And so such luminaries as ex-Premier Kennett could refer to us as ‘yesterday’s people’. In other words, we’ve had our day. More and more of the general populace don’t know what we stand for, and don’t particularly care to find out. That’s the problem. II
Now for TWO STORIES – one ancient, one modern. First the ancient story. This concerns the Ark of the Covenant; we heard about it in the reading from II Samuel. The Old Testament volumes I Samuel and II Samuel were originally one book. Their date is unknown; possibly 900 years before Jesus. They’re part of the ancient history of his forebears – principally Saul the first king of Israel, and David, appointed by Samuel to replace Saul. The authorship is unknown. Nothing was more precious to these people than the Ark of the Covenant, not to be confused with Noah’s floating zoo. This Ark was an ornate box, according to tradition made by Moses for the tablets on which the Commandments were written. It travelled with the people. It was stolen by the Philistines, but duly returned, and then taken by David to a special tent in his new capital. The final home of the Ark was the inner sanctuary of the temple of Solomon. After this there is no further mention of it. It may have been lost during the Babylonian invasion, souvenired by Nebuchadnezzar. We have no idea what befell it. What we do know is that for the ancient Israelites it was the symbol of the holy, among them and with them. With it they felt they could win against the odds; without it they wouldn’t fare so well. In this sense it was like a kind of talisman, but more than a talisman. It was regarded with the greatest of reverence; even dread. In the part of II Samuel chapter 6 that we left out this morning (so the reading wasn’t too long!) God strikes a man dead for touching it! Most of the account, especially what we read, is much happier than that. Indeed, the Israelites are wildly euphoric, riotous would not be too strong a word, in their festivities as the Ark is borne on a wagon pulled by oxen. We’re told that David and all the people were dancing before the Lord with all their might, with songs and lyres and harps and tambourines and castanets and cymbals. Why all this jubilation? The Ark was a symbol of those sacred verities without which life was meaningless. Guarding it was vital to the life of Israel. I said there were two stories – one ancient and one modern. Now the modern one. In 1988 I was winter preacher with St David’s Auckland, which claimed then to be the largest Protestant congregation in New Zealand. They had asked if I were open to a call, and I had said ‘no’ – but they still invited me as guest preacher for several months. During that time I received a letter from the Council for Chaplaincies in Tertiary Institutions, suggesting I apply for the post of full-time chaplain with the University of Melbourne. I leaned toward parish ministry, and also was not sure university chaplaincy was my specialty; hence delayed throwing in my name until 24 hours before applications closed. I began at the start of February 1989, my brief being to raise the profile of chaplaincy and to develop a ministry with emphasis on faculty and admin’ staff, not to the exclusion of students, but with definite attention to those I mentioned. I consulted Dr Davis McCaughey for advice, not because he was state governor, but because he was a minister of the gospel connected for many years with tertiary education. He said, “Before you do or say anything, the very fact that you are there makes its own statement to the university community.” That was important advice, and I want you to hold it; we will come back shortly to it. “The very fact that you are there makes its own statement.” I set about connecting with senior teaching and admin’ people. Sometimes one would say, “You should know I’m not too much into religion; are you sure you want to be bothered with me?” I would say, “Well, I don’t know much about zoology (or whatever it was), but I need friends. How about ten minutes at a time that suits you?” I was never knocked back. Of course, I was asked what I thought I was doing. I would say I had three objectives. First was to win friends. Second, following on that, to earn credibility. Third, to get godtalk back in the arenas of public discourse, so that people might become as interested in the relationship between the seen and the unseen as they were in sex and football! Something prompted me to check the derivation of ‘chaplain’, and the heavens opened. Around the 4th century, at Tours in France, there lived a holy man who came to be known as Saint Martin. On his death, Martin’s cappella or ‘cloak’ was kept in a shrine by the Frankish kings as a sacred relic; duly the shrine itself took on the name of the cloak. The French took the word into their language as chapele, which comes to us as chapel. The guardian of the cloak was called cappellanus. This turned into chapelain in Old French, and in time to chaplain. So a chaplain is one who guards the reminders of the sacred. The chaplain’s role is to keep before people that there are more things in life than meet the eye; that sacred things like faith and hope and love are paramount. That is enough about my learning how to be a university chaplain; should you want reflections on religion and the university, I’m happy to address that on another occasion.
III
I said the third part would be an inference or two from these stories, in relation to the problem we started with – namely the churches’ loss of that place they once enjoyed. So, what INFERENCES can we draw from these two stories? First is that every society, if it is to function for the good of all, must have some things that are ‘sacred’; that is, which do not need to be justified by their usefulness or their rationality. They are beyond question. Societies come undone when they have no sacred verities, or when the wrong things get invested with sacredness. Second inference is that every society needs to have some who stand firmly for and with these sacred things, periodically reminding the general populace about them. Somebody has to say, even if it meets with derision, “That is unacceptable. It violates the deepest things we value.” Third inference is that those who guard the symbols of the sacred don’t have to be all that numerous. We now know that as late as the middle of the third century the church father Origen estimated that ‘just a few’ of the population were Christian. The impression of lightning-fast growth from the start – with thousands of converts and a near instantaneous mass movement is just not historically verifiable. Yet this small company of followers of ‘the Way’ (as they called it) began to turn the world upside down. When I started a weekly lunch-hour service at the university during term time, and held in the Trinity College Chapel, my organist Phillip Nunn said, “John, don’t fall into that trap of counting butts on seats. The important thing is that it’s happening.” I reminded myself of that each week; that this smallish gathering of teaching and admin’ staff and students was guarding the symbols of the sacred in a radically secular environment. This to close. In late 1991 I visited twenty-five US universities, in the New England region. At MIT I asked the Anglican Chaplain, fittingly named Scott Paradise, how he would characterise his role. “That’s easy,” he said. “I’m the priest of one religion in the temple of another.” There was nothing bitter in that; it was just a statement of fact. I encourage you to see the people of St Aidan as a chaplain to the culture, a reminder of the holy. ___________________________________________________
An address presented by the Rev Dr John Bodycomb at St Aidan's
Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 16th July, 2006 IT MAY BE REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT. |
|||
Page updated 18/07/06