SERMON PREACHED BY
THE MOST REVEREND ALAN HARPER, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH
TO THE
GENERAL SYNOD
OF THE CHURCH OF IRELAND
IN ST CANICE’S CATHEDRAL, KILKENNY
8TH MAY 2007

My text for this sermon derives from the final words of the Gospel proclaimed at this Eucharist:

Come now, let us go forth!

The burden of this sermon relates to the theme I of my Presidential Address earlier today. It has to do with becoming less introvert and more extrovert and intentional in our engagement with the world.

The passage in the Gospel this evening comes at the culmination of events in the Upper Room on the night of Christ’s betrayal.

The great discourse in the Fourth Gospel in which the Lord
• prepares his disciples for his departure;
• washes their feet in a symbolic act demonstrating the attitude and care that each disciple should express towards all others;
• promises them the aid of the Spirit, the Paraclete, which will come to them only after his departure;
• and announces to them his gift, the Shalom, the peace of God with which he both greets them and fills them – a peace qualitatively and quantitatively different from anything the world has to offer;
that discourse is continued in the following three chapters, 15, 16 and 17, but the writer of the Fourth Gospel clearly intends his readers to understand that everything which follows is instruction and conversation “on the way”, peripatetic teaching, as the Lord and his disciples walk towards the olive grove which will be the scene of His betrayal and arrest.

The final words in the Upper Room, therefore, mark a decisive moment. They encapsulate the initiation of the final phase of the obedience of Jesus to the will of the Father:

The world must learn that I love the Father and that I do exactly what my Father has commanded me.
So, come now, let us leave, let us go hence from here, let us go to confront the prince of this world.

William Temple wrote:
There is not much opportunity left for teaching. The world will soon break in upon the companionship of the little band of friends and there is nothing in common between the worldly principle and the Lord. The force of all that makes the world what it is as a kingdom or a system not of God will be put forth against him in sheer antagonism; that will be the opportunity for the supreme proof that He loves the Father and perfectly obeys Him, a proof that must be given in action, not in word…
So they leave the Upper Room and start to walk across the temple Courts towards Kidron and Gethsemane.

Temple wrote that “the world will soon break in upon the companionship of the little band of friends” but I think it is clear that it is less the case of the world breaking in as of the Lord leading forth his friends to confront the world in obedience to the Father. The initiative is with the Lord, not the world.

The Father is sending them forth.
The choice is the Father’s; the response is the Son’s, a response of obedience. The time has come for action not talk.

This does not mean of course that Jesus has no more to say to his friends. As they proceed:
• he describes their relationship with him as a vine and its branches;
• speaks of the world’s hatred of Him and all that he stands for, and therefore, by transference, its future hatred of them;
• speaks of the work of the Holy Spirit whose coming will convict the world of guilt in respect of sin, righteousness and judgment;
• tells the disciple of the grief that they will experience through His death but also the joy that will swiftly come to them thereafter;
• prays for himself, for his disciples and for all believers.
But this is all on the way to the denouement. His radical act of obedience which takes place in the evening quiet of an olive grove has already been initiated.

I will not speak with you much longer, he had said, for the prince of this world is coming. He has no hold on me, but the world must learn that I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me.

The Lord is vulnerable to the prince of this world only because he places himself in the prince of this world’s power in obedience to the Father!

So, 
- the way of Christ is to go out forthrightly to confront the prince of this world. He does his work in the night, in the shadows, in the dark, because he is the prince of darkness. He is powerful, aggressive, dangerous but he must be confronted;
- the way of Christ is the way of willing sacrifice in which the world is confronted, or better still subverted, not be lethal weaponry but by the naked vulnerability of love, humility, truth, generosity and steadfast conviction;
- the way of Christ is the way of obedience to the Father, in which the will of the Father, discerned by us through the scriptures and supremely through the words and actions of the incarnate Son in the Gospels, and expressed through the inner convictions of the heart, provides the guiding principle of both thought and action;
- the way of Christ leads us out from the secure confines and the comfortable anonymity of an Upper Room into the dark, into the world, into the realm of the prince of this world, in order, through love and sacrifice, to give notice of a better king and a better kingdom.

The battle to establish the kingdom is not conducted behind closed doors in the bright lit conversations of the like minded, necessary though such conversations are. It is conducted in alien territory, in the dark, in the places where the power of the dark prince holds sway, a power that is at once brutal and blatant, but also seductive and subtle.

That battle to establish the Kingdom, which is emphatically not of this world but which must be established in it: that battle is our battle. We are joined in this synod to take council in order to discern how together we take forward the agenda of God and build the Kingdom. We are called together in order to be sent out again, intentionally to become what already we are: an apostolic community. We are not called merely to keep house but to plan and prepare and motivated to enlarge our room that others may find a place here and, themselves being empowered by grace, faith, love and understanding, in turn to go forth to take light into the dark places.

Let us, then, be bold in our going forth, in obedience to the Father, in the love of the Son and in the power of the Spirit, the one true God, to whom we ascribe power, majesty, dominion and glory, henceforth and world without end. Amen