Last year, with three other Edmonton area curates, I went on pre-ordination retreat at a convent in Edgware. Every day we were given a series of addresses about the ordained life by the chaplain of the convent.
Attached to the convent is a residential home for the elderly; many of the residents are bed-bound and once a week there is a community Eucharist when the residents come to the convent chapel- many of them being wheeled there in their beds.
It’s now coming up for a year since this retreat and I realise I remember almost nothing about the addresses which were designed to help us curates think about priestly ministry. What I remember most is the community Eucharist where everyone, whatever their physical condition, came or was brought to the chapel.
Throughout the service the nuns wandered between the beds giving the residents water to drink, or simply being present, sitting beside them and stroking their hands. As I watched all this going on throughout the service I began to think about dignity. The elderly bed-bound communicants seemed to have great dignity and this was in large part because they were treated with dignity. I began to realise that if we believe that someone lacks dignity it is because we do not give it to them; dignity is related to the value which we give one another. In our society having independence and control is highly valued. Those who cannot be independent are often at risk of being treated without dignity. If we fail to value a person, because of a physical illness or disability for example, it is very hard for that person to claim the dignity that they deserve. So dignity is something we give one another. Perhaps it is true to say that we cannot earn dignity, rather we only have as much dignity as we are given.
Of course foundational to Christianity is the fact that we are all made in the image of God and therefore have a God-given dignity. This is the dignity we owe one another. There is a mutuality to this reciprocal giving and receiving of dignity that orders our relationships with one another.
Today’s gospel reading presents us with an example of this mutuality. In this case the currency’ if you like, isn’t dignity but glory’. The Father and the Son are glorified in one another; the Father is glorified through the Son’s actions and the Son is glorified by the Father; there is a mutuality in the glorifying that is happening. It is not something which either the Father or the Son claim for themselves, but like dignity, is something that they give one another.
Glory is a difficult word for us to grapple with; as indeed it was for the disciples. The traditional Jewish concept of glory was of a glory that hid and obscured God; a dazzling glory which human beings could not bear.
Today we might more often associate glory with achievement or triumph. It is something we earn rather than something we are given. The notion of glory that we learn about in the relationship between the Father and the Son challenges this understanding of glory; it is through their complete and self-giving love that the Father and the Son glorify one another. In this way our notion of glory as the result of personal achievement is turned on its head. Jesus’ statement that Now the Son of Man has been glorified’ comes at a point when he is least in control of what is happening to him:
Judas has, in the verses immediately preceding today’s reading, gone out into the darkness. Jesus knows what this means; that his betrayer has gone to set into action the run of events that will lead to his death. His love and commitment to his Father means that Jesus will not run away from the consequences of Judas’ betrayal. In doing so the Father is glorified and the Father will glorify the Son.
Within this context of betrayal Jesus issues the disciples with the new commandment that they love one another. We might say there is nothing new in this commandment; it is, after all, one we hear in the Old Testament often enough. But it is new through the context in which it is placed; it is placed in the context of the love that Father and Son have for one another through which the other is glorified. The mutuality between Father and Son is one which might provide us with a template for how we order human relationships and our community.
What might a society based on mutuality, or rather mutual dependence, look like? On a concrete level it might mean thinking about the people in our society who are regarded as most lacking in human dignity and considering whether this is a judgement against them or against the society who deprives them of this dignity.
As disciples of Christ we are called, like the earliest disciples, to love one another as he has loved us. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples’. We can only witness God’s message of love to the world through the way that we are with one another. It is a fact that the way I live as a Christian will effect how other people in society view you as a Christian. And similarly I am judged by the way other Christians have behaved and the love that they have exhibited. I was reminded of this very powerfully last week:
As I was leaving church after Morning Prayer I was stopped by a woman who asked if I was a woman priest. When I said indeed I am, she was visibly delighted and we stopped and talked for a while. She told me that she was Jewish but also that she was brought up during the war by Roman Catholics who risked their lives for her. Her incredibly positive and enthusiastic reaction to me as a Christian priest was built upon her experience of Christians during the war. The love that those Roman Catholics showed her is a means through which I, as a Christian priest, am known.
As continue in this season of Easter and consider what it means to us now, let us recognise our mutual dependence and pray that we may live our common Christian lives in a way which witnesses to the glory of God.
Amen