Pentecost 12 - Year C

Jeremiah 2.4-13; Hebrews 13.1-8, 15-16; Luke 14.1, 7-14

Today we say farewell to Janet, our Chaplain, as she prepares to take up the role of Rector of Holy Cross, Davison’s Mains, in the NW corner of our city. Janet’s ministry here at the Cathedral has been much appreciated, I know. As preacher on an occasion like this you turn to the readings and hope that there is something appropriate – some words of blessing, or affirmation, to help send Janet, with our love, on her way.

Well, at least to start with, we get Jeremiah: ‘Thus says the Lord,’ he declares, ‘What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me, and went after worthless things, and became worthless themselves? … Be appalled, O heavens, at this, be shocked, be utterly desolate, says the Lord, for my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.’

Jeremiah certainly doesn’t hold back, he is in full denunciation mode. Now, of course, we could have just skipped over Jeremiah and gone straight to our reading from Hebrews. Words that in this week of all weeks, suddenly take on fresh resonance: ‘Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.’ But before we turn to those words, and our Gospel, like any good prophet, Jeremiah interrupts our cosiness with his unease, his worry, his concern for the future of the world. That is not something we can just skip past.

The American Catholic theologian David Tracy tried to make some sense of the huge diversity in Christian faith and practice across the ages, by drawing out two classic ways of understanding and practicing faith. Christianity, he argued, can be understood as the dialogue between the mystic and the prophet. The mystic and the prophet. The mystics within the Christian tradition – down through the ages and in us – experience faith as the ongoing presence of God with us and in us. For the mystic, God is; God is always-already present with us, in all things. Faith, says the mystic, is about stopping, and praying, and attending; it is about acknowledging the One who gives us life, the creative Source of all that is; the Source of all Being. Faith, for the mystic, is about learning and experiencing eternal truths and so discovering what finally matters. The role of the mystic and the priest, are bound up together: for the priest gathers the people to acknowledge that presence of God, the God who is. And in her life, her living out of faith, the priest witnesses to, points toward, that transcendent reality that is the God who is. It is no accident that above all the priest is the one who gathers us around the Eucharist, the act of thanksgiving. For the priest as mystic reminds us to give continual thanks for that creative life of God which holds us in life, sustains us in love. Faith is to offer our thanks and praise.

But, says Tracy, throughout the history of Christianity, the mystic has needed the prophet. For the prophet is the one who is suspicious that all this is a bit comfortable. If God is always-already present, why is the world the way the world is? Thanksgiving is all very well, it may be important, but it can get all a bit cosy and self-congratulatory. Thank you God for making me in love, me: that’s just not good enough, says the prophet. And so the voice of the prophet is uncomfortable. The prophet is not content simply to articulate the eternal truths of the mystic, but declares the truth of a world not yet right. Even if God is, the world is not yet what God would have it be, says the prophet. And we should not rest, not seek to evade or escape the need to respond. God is not the one to whom we simply give thanks, says the prophet, but the one who comes as judge, as the revealer of our hypocrisy, and of how far we still have to travel. The prophet calls us to repentance and change, to turn around. For the prophet, God is not always-already present; God is known in the kingdom that is not yet. God is not the ‘yes’ of the mystic; God is the ‘no’ of uncomfortable truth. If the mystic strand of Christianity is seen most clearly in the sacraments, in the Catholic sense of the presence of God with us; then the prophetic is more Protestant, rooted in protest, in God’s Word that is proclaimed to turn us around.

The mystic and the prophet. Each needs the other: without the prophet, the mystic becomes all too comfortable, religion becomes simply an escape from this world of trouble. But without the mystic, the prophet becomes judgemental, haranguing a world gone wrong, without any sense of why it matters, the grace that the world exists in.

All of us are a mixture of the mystic and the prophet – both personally and corporately, as a congregation and church. Sometimes the mixture can be uncomfortable – sometimes it breaks out in conflict and argument, but each needs the other. Temperamentally we tend towards the mystic or the prophetic, but we need both. We need both the life of prayer, the practice of thanksgiving, but also that restlessness, that unease, the itch that spurs us on. The mystic and the prophet.

In Jesus, the mystic and the prophet meet; both the presence and the summons of God are seen in him. As we heard in our Gospel reading, the image and practice of feasting are central to Jesus. The banquet, with a table groaning under the weight of good things, is a primary image of heaven for Jesus. And yet, in Jesus’ telling and understanding, that always comes with a twist. To give a feast can become all too easily about who gets to sit where, who the most important guests are. But says Jesus, ‘When you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind. And you will be blessed.’ Our thanksgiving, our feasting together, overturns the world, and its usual ways of doing things. To be gathered in thanksgiving, to be reminded of God’s blessing and presence with us, is also to be deepened in our generosity, and in our sense of our need for others.

Janet, you have been both mystic and prophet among us. You have helped us give thanks; witnessed to and been that presence of God, of love and faithfulness among us, in obvious and in quiet unassuming ways. But you have also been the prophet, not afraid to articulate uncomfortable truths; restless and uneasy with things just being how they are, stressing that our feasting needs to include the excluded. As mystic you have assured us that each one of us is loved by God; as prophet, you have asked us, out of that love, to widen the circle of those invited, welcomed, included and given places at the feast. Thank you for being both mystic and prophet, and may your ministry continue to be richly blessed as you gather God’s people in love, and call them forward in hope. Amen.