Bishop of Dover, England at the Choral Evensong
on Sunday, February 11, 2024, to launch
The Diocese of Jamaica & The Cayman Islands’ 200th Anniversary celebration
The Cathedral of St Jago de la Vega
THEME – Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: Celebrating Service, Guarding Justice, Affirming Hope.
Isaiah 2:2-4
Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob that he may teach us his ways and we may walk in his path…….they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning-hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
Psalm 96:1-7
Ephesians 2:13-22
He is our peace; he reconciles us to God in one body through the cross; he proclaims peace near and far; no longer strangers and aliens but citizens; members of the household of God; built on the foundations of the prophets with Christ as the chief cornerstone. In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God.
Matthew 28:16-20
‘Go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit…. teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you and remember that I am with you always to the end of the age.’
This afternoon, I want to share some reflections with you on the theme of Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Celebrating Service, Guarding Justice, and Affirming Hope.
I trust that like me you are curious about yesterday!
How did it all begin: – The Diocese of Jamaica began its journey as a Diocese on July 24th 1824 as the Church of England in Jamaica and in those initial stages, it incorporated the Bahamas and Belize. The very next day, Dr Christopher Lipscomb was consecrated as the 1st bishop of the Diocese, and this took place at Lambeth Palace, and he was installed a year later on February 11th 1825 in St Catherine Parish Church, the very place where we are present today. In 2001 the title of the Diocese included the Cayman Islands (legally confirming what was operative since the 1960’s) – The Diocese of Jamaica and the Cayman Islands. There was a hope that having resident bishops would reduce the slave-owning interests in the church and that its focus would be on ministering to those who were being enslaved.
So, trusting that you are indeed curious about yesterday, let me continue. Someone once said, ‘if we don’t know where we are coming from, we will not be able to understand the present and we will not be able to ascertain the direction of travel where we are wanting to go.’ So, we need Yesterday, we need to be curious about the past. How it all began? What kind of a man was Bishop Lipscomb, the first bishop of the island? Was he a man of the gospel, a person of integrity or did he come to join in with the enslavers? Was he present when those who were being enslaved were being treated badly and, did he speak up for them? Those are some of the questions that I have, you may, no doubt, have other questions that interest you.
Some years ago, I visited Ghana and there by the sea I arrived at ‘Cape Coast Castle’ on the shores of the Ghanaian city. The castle was a former slave-trade outpost, usually referred to as the “Door of no return” and from which one could see the Atlantic Ocean. Millions of Africans were forced onto slave ships bound for the United States and the Caribbean from this vantage point. I entered the caves where those abducted were kept and allowed myself the silence to take in the enormity of the destruction of a people. But there was something else that I saw that gave me even more reason to contemplate man’s depravity to his fellow human being – it was seeing that above ground, a church had been built. How did so called people of God construct and worship in such a place, while knowing that their fellow human beings were being treated in such inhumane ways?
I was deeply disturbed by what I saw. How could people have been kept in chains in such insanitary conditions? There is also a church here in our beautiful island where at the bottom of the pews there are signs that those who were enslaved were chained while they even sat in a place of worship. How did that happen? Why did it happen?
Today’s Service is meant to be one of celebration as we mark the start of the 200th anniversary. It is, therefore, not my intention to leave you feeling depressed about some of the shocking things that went on. But it would be disingenuous of me, of us, if we pretended that the church to which we belong was not complicit in some evil things in its past. That’s the reality, and we need to own that, to acknowledge that. But let us also remind ourselves that we did get some things right too. There were people who dedicated their lives to service. And this was expressed through their various involvement within the life of the church and society. Involvement, for example, in education right from the beginning. Schools such as St David’s in Yallahs, and St Jago High School, bear some witness to the church taking seriously its role in educating the next generation.
In wanting to be optimistic, there must be some realism thrown into the picture too. I wonder how many of the children of those who were being enslaved would have been able to take up those positions in our schools at that time. Some of you may have seen the musical, ‘Hamilton.’ I am reminded of the struggle that the young Hamilton had in the Caribbean trying to get a place to be educated in the church schools due to the Church’s heavily judgemental nature. His parents were not married so he was not seen as the kind of child to be educated in church schools. So, in other words, although the church was involved in education from the beginning, it was not plain sailing.
In its early beginnings also, the church was keenly involved in social work, meeting the basic needs of hunger, shelter and clothing. I am aware of the work that has been done in the past at St Andrew Parish Church, (and I am reliably informed that it continues) and also the work that is going on in many more of our churches – feeding the hungry and in walking alongside those who have very little. For me, this speaks into a church that is deeply and was deeply conflicted, trying to do the right thing and respond to the needs as they saw it, but at the same time, getting it dreadfully wrong in siding with the powerful and the strong and in being heavily judgemental. We still bear the scars of that today. I am reminded of the words of the hymn, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.” In the 2nd verse (and let me hastily add, that you won’t find these words in your hymn book but these words do exist) it reads: “For the Love of God is broader than the measure of our minds, and the heart of the eternal is most wonderfully kind. But we make his love too narrow by false limits of our own; and we magnify his strictness, with a zeal he would not own.”
My brothers and sisters we need to contemplate those words because this is not just something of the past, it is something of the present. We magnify the strictness with a zeal that God would not own. It is ours being projected on to God.
There are many examples in history that remind us that in its past the church did not always heed the words of the prophet in Micah 6:8, which ask – ‘What does the Lord require of us?’ ‘What does the Lord require of you and me?’ Nothing less, than “To act justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.”
We often fall short of this requirement. The prophet Isaiah beautifully expresses this in today’s allocated OT reading, “Come let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, …that he may teach us his ways, and that we may walk in his path.” Not ours but God’s path.
And what will happen when we have learnt from the Lord? (Vs.4) We’re told “……they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, their spears into pruning-hooks; nations shall not lift up their sword against nation, neither shall they study war no more.” In other words, we won’t simply seek to fulfil our desires, we won’t simply be the Putin’s of this world, or the Netanyahu’s for that matter wanting our way, but we will seek peace, ‘neither shall they study war no more.’
So, we celebrate the good things that began in the past, some of the good work that was achieved in the last 200 years, more schools, more social projects, and our contribution to additional health care of the nation through making available health facilities, or indeed medics giving up of their time to treat those who cannot afford health care. We celebrate the commitment of volunteers who simply gave of themselves yesterday. I find it interesting that since Covid, a number of people have said to me, Bishop those who used to volunteer, since Covid, they have not come back. They are afraid. My response is, ‘they are not afraid to go shopping, are they?’ They are not afraid to do other things but suddenly, they are afraid to be in the house of God.’ They are afraid to volunteer for the things they once volunteered for. I am reminded of the words of the Kohima Epitaph engraved on the Memorial of the 2nd British Division in the cemetery of Kohima (Northeast India). It reads: “When you go home, tell them of us and say, ‘For your Tomorrow, we gave our Today.’”
Those who gave of themselves in the last 200 years we ought to celebrate them, every parish should reflect on the people who have contributed to the life of your church, your congregation, your community, and we ought to celebrate the generosity that came with the giving of their time.
Tomorrow is important, we learn from history as we go forward. We learn how to go forward; we learn what is, indeed, important.
And this moves us nicely into the Present. The words of the prophets Micah & Isaiah speak to us into the present. That which God required then (Yesterday), he still requires now (Today). It is still required of us to Guard justice – Guarding justice. This must be a touchstone in what we work for. We cannot and must not take justice for granted. We should not believe that this is something for the courts alone to decide on. We as ordinary citizen, we as the people of God, we must be diligent in our quest for justice and seeking justice.
One of my daughters has joined the march every weekend asking for a ceasefire since the carpet bombing of innocent children in Gaza has been happening. If I lived in London, I too would be out there with her asking for a ceasefire because that for me is about justice. What Hamas did was unacceptable, it was barbaric, inhumane but we should not be patterning that. This should not be about vengeance; it should be about justice. The weapons of warfare must cease, war should not be studied; no one should be sitting down and be strategising about it. We should be doing all in our powers to work for justice and peace today in our world. If we are not careful, we hand our responsibilities over to politicians – to people who pretend that they know best – I do not believe for one minute that any of our politicians, nationally or internationally, knows best. We must not leave our responsibility up to a few. We must pray, yes, but let’s not hide behind praying alone, we must actively engage with others and to advocate for those who are most vulnerable. In the words of the children in the schools in my Diocese of Canterbury, we must show courageous advocacy on behalf of the lost, the least and the last.
Yes, we must find ways to meet the needs of the vulnerable, but it must never prevent us from asking critical questions of why, what, where, how and when. For example, in my Diocese in Canterbury, along the shores of Dover we get people turning up in boats. I am sure you have heard of it in your news items. And our government is presently feeding into the “othering” of these people and is spending vast sums of money to send them to Rwanda, BUT I am yet to hear one Government minister ask the critical question: “Why are they leaving their homes of origin to go somewhere else?”
Who in their right mind leaves their beautiful homes just for the sake of it? So, what are the reasons why people are leaving? It is important that we ask those questions. In other words, don’t just pick people up out of the river when they’re already drowned. Let us go upstream and find out why they are jumping into the river in the first place. That’s what we need to do. We need to address it at its source. We must hold our leaders’ feet to the fire. We cannot just at election time throw a bit of money around; patch up a little bit of road here and a little bit of road there. We have got to engage with the people. But, my brothers and sisters, you must take hold of this. Because if you simply just join in with the bandwagon of waving with a particular colour, that is nonsense! What we need to do is to ask the critical questions, Why is this not being done? Where is …. ? How….? Those are the questions we need to be asking. And I would like to encourage our leaders, lay and ordained, we have buildings, create hustings! Invite those who wish to stand and represent the people, from whatever party, including those who stand as independent, and invite the community to ask questions of them. So that they can answer in an intelligible way, so that you can decide, not in the hype of waving around bits of cloth of a particular colour. What are they doing in our neighborhoods? It is not good enough that some people can live in nice neighbourhoods; free from betting shops and hoodlums with guns and drugs. What are they doing to renew all the neighbourhoods around us? These are the questions we must be asking, and we are responsible. Never abrogate your responsibility to a group of people because they call themselves politicians. You belong in those neighbourhoods. That is your neighbourhood; you must decide what kind of neighbourhood you want to live in, and you must begin that work, not just with prayer but with action.
What are the issues of justice in your community that as a church you need to be awakened to? As Christian leaders, how are we equipping our congregations to engage in the world around us? Regularly and weekly, we say the words at the end of the eucharist, “Send us out in the power of your spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.” My brothers and sisters, if you don’t mean it, stop saying it, and if you do mean it,then put it into action. “Send us out in the power of your spirit to live and work to your praise and glory.” And that means we must be engaged in the kind of prayer that is not just talk, but prayer that is deep, prayer that will see you in communication with God, not just once per week but daily, several times per day calling upon God.
Let us find ourselves engaging with scripture. How many of us, we hear the Word read from the front to us on a Sunday and by the time we get home, we have forgotten those words. Let’s not forget those words let’s take the words with us into the week and read and reread them and ask the Holy Spirit to speak to us through those words and if there is something that you do not understand, then I am sure that on the back of your booklet, your normal Sunday bulletins, you will find the phone numbers of your priests. Call them up, call up your Church Army Officers, your Lay Readers and say, help me to understand this. When did you last sit with the scripture and let it speak to you, let it hold a mirror up to you? And then when did you go out and live what you have experienced in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ to live a generous life? I love the bible verse I learnt at Sunday school, John 3.16 – “For God so loved the world that he gave….” And look what God gave – something precious.
We give from our leftovers! Giving back to God of our time what is right and not from our leftovers. And let us not be afraid today as we think about guarding justice not to be afraid of telling the good news about Jesus. This is our core. Someone once asked me what is our greatest threat to the church? My response was that the greatest threat to the church is a lack of confident Christians. Christians who are able to say to others who say they don’t believe, ‘I know you don’t believe but I believe.’ Wherever we are, we should be ready to tell the Good News story of his love not of his judgement. That’s what we need to be proclaiming – His love.
Yesterday – celebrating service; Today – guarding Justice and finally, tomorrow – Affirming Hope:
I was recently sent a short poem which said:
The alphabet ‘O’ stands for opportunity, which is absent in ‘Yesterday’, available in Today and appears 3 times in ‘Tomorrow.’
So never lose “Hope!”
Hope is that thing that we long for and look forward to. In hope we are reminded that we are no longer strangers and aliens but citizens. In other words, we belong. You and I belong.
So, my sisters and brothers, let us commit ourselves to step out in faith living into the Hope of the cross of Jesus; Let us commit to, in the words of the Psalmist, “Sing to the Lord a new song, tell of his salvation daily and his marvellous works among all the nations.”
As the people of God under the Anglican banner, let us step out in the confidence of Christ living into what it means to be “members of the household of God, built upon the foundations of the Apostles and prophets with Christ as the cornerstone.”
We need to affirm each other in the hope that together we will work for a church in which its structures are joined together, growing into a holy temple in the Lord and becoming a dwelling place for God.
Sisters and brothers, this is no competition between mother and daughter church or between different “Cures.” We must pattern Christ in our lives individually and corporately as we work together for the building up of the Body of Christ. Clergy and Lay workers, you are not competitors, you are sisters and brothers of the same heavenly father. It is not a race. It does not matter if one says, ‘look at me, I am flourishing.’ If all the body is not flourishing, then you are not really flourishing. So, let’s commit to working together for the building up of the whole Body of Christ; praying for one another, sharing with one another, work together for the flourishing of all the people of God.
Tomorrow does not happen accidentally. It must be intentional. Someone once said, “if you don’t know where you are going, then any road can get you there.” So, the question is, do you want to stumble around in the dark, do you want to just go from pillar to post with the hope that you might arrive? For the next 200 years, what are you going to do together as the people of God under the banner of Anglicanism to ensure that God’s message, God’s Good news of salvation is shared and lived in our daily lives? Hope is important, going forward. That hope must be within us. The Spirit of God is already at work planting that hope within us.
So Yesterday, Celebrating service, Today, Guarding justice, and Tomorrow, let’s work together Affirming hope, going forward, building on the firm foundation of Jesus Christ.
Amen.
