A sermon I gave in St. John’s Cathedral, Limerick: 24th January, Unity Week, 1996
Text given for the service: a reading from Isaiah 41:8-10
"But you, Israel my servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, descendants of my friend Abraham, I have taken you from the ends of the earth, and summoned you from its farthest corners; I have called you my servant, have chosen you and not rejected you: have no fear, for I am with you; be not afraid, for I am your God. I shall strengthen you and give you help and uphold you with my victorious right hand."
Before I speak may I say what a privilege and a terror it is for me to be standing
here at this service of Christian Unity. May I applaud the sense of openness and courage of the Roman Catholic
authorities in allowing me to speak tonight. Visiting clergy speakers is one thing, but the laity have the habit
of being loose canons, going off in entirely unpredictable directions. I want to offer you tonight a layman’s
reflections on this passage and its background, and on christian unity, reflections which speak of an evolving
spiritual journey and rise in human consciousness through meditation.
Jacob’s journey was into the
unknown, meeting new people, new ideas, travelling without knowing the outcome but confident that with Divine
support all would be well.
This section of Isaiah was written at a crucial period in the history of
the Jews, the Exile, where for 70 years in the 6th century, BC they were the unwilling guests of their
conquerors, the Babylonians. It was a time of crisis. They were defeated, uprooted and downcast. But not for
long. Here Isaiah expresses enormous confidence in God. The Jews opened their door to God and as a result were
open to new and evolutionary ideas and insights. During the Exile they collected and edited the laws of Moses
and the books we know as the Old Testament, evolved both the concept of God as a universal deity and a belief in
an afterlife. Under duress their faith moved forward.
Let us move forward 2,500 years. When we
consider unity how closed is our door to God, to new ideas and knowledge, to a Jacob-like open-ended spiritual
journey?
For me the spirit of God is evolution, that driving force of the universe which is taking
us, like Jacob, on an exiting journey into ever more complex states of existence, consciousness and awareness,
points well expressed by that great French Roman Catholic theologian, Teilhard de Chardin, in the ‘Phenomena of
Man’.
Consider the movements towards democracy, the United Nations, human rights, humanitarian
agencies like Concern, the European Union born out of European conflict, all mainly twentieth century phenomena,
manifestations of our evolving consciousness, of our increasing awareness of and concern for co-operation and
for the individual in society.
How much more should not we Christians evolve our spiritual journey
together towards unity, not necessarily uniformity, in obedience to the living, prime directive of Jesus, to
love God and our fellow human being? We contrive to live in unity and harmony in the workplace, at home, even
among nations, yet we Christians still cannot share a meal together. For this we all share responsibility.
Perhaps we have not learnt the lesson of Jacob, that of evolving to new insights at whatever the personal
cost? Perhaps our theology has become too static, lacking new ideas and insights? Perhaps we are too afraid to
learn from modern humanitarian progress or from new disciplines like cosmology, quantum physics and psychology,
disciplines which could provide us with greater insights into our own existence and position in creation, into
the debate of the God within versus the interventionist God out there, even into the very nature of God as
expressed through newly understood laws of the universe?
Perhaps we need to develop our own spiritual
lives and not sink back into the comfort of the repetition of the Sunday service? Perhaps we are too concerned
with the past, in our structures, liturgies and message, leaving us with a first century consciousness like that
of Paul who condoned slavery and blind obedience to civil authority? If we argue from the past we remain rooted
in the past, condemned to repeat its mistakes. Surely God is not bound by our past neither does he dwell
therein.
Above all does it need a crisis for us, like the Jews during the Exile, to evolve new
spiritual concepts and forms of co-operation, perhaps a crisis of drug taking, morality, divorce, theft,
vandalism and declining church attendance? They are here, before us, now!
Religion is a product of
the mind and, for me, it is there any spiritual journey towards unity must start. In the Catechism of the
Catholic Church we read that meditation ‘is above all a quest’. Here we arrive back with Isaiah and the
spiritual journey of Jacob. Only when we can learn to still our own minds, desires and selfishness can we be
open to the call of God and to know the spiritual journey God wishes us all to make.
Jesus founded
the greatest religion this world has ever seen, a religion encompassing the greatest forms of art, architecture,
music, morality, compassionate care, and philosophy. As we close this millennium the stakes for unity are higher
than at any other time in Christian history. The past holds our mistakes. Let the future hold our unity.
May I finish with a quotation of Jesus from John’s Gospel which focuses our minds on the future,
encouraging us all to reach new horizons, new understandings if we open the doors of our minds to the real
message of Jesus and to God’s evolutionary universe.
‘Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes in
me will also do the works that I do; and greater works than these will he do, because I go to the Father’ John
14: 12