The Parish Church of St John-at-Hampstead

Yesterday was the commemoration of the translation of Saint Richard of Chichester’s bones from Dover, where he died in 1253, leading a Crusade, to Chichester Cathedral where his shrine was venerated until 1538 when Henry VIII had it destroyed. Richard was born in 1197 and, after working on his brother’s farm and restoring the family fortunes,  he studied canon law and soon rose to high legal office in the Church. There were some set backs including a period of exile in Burgundy where he decided to become a priest. On his return to England he was elected Bishop of Chichester but the king, Henry III opposed his election and it took a papal decree and several excommunications to get him established and in possession of his episcopal property. Meanwhile he visited the parishes of his diocese on foot, helping the poor and admonishing wayward clergy. He was regarded as an exemplary bishop.
Although 50 years later, his career has some parallels with that of Thomas a Becket and it is another, less dramatic episode in the struggle between the church and the crown.  Richard’s canonization, only nine years after his death is surely, in part at least, a move by the Papacy in that conflict.  His personal piety, manual labour,  pastoral concern and his severe discipline of clerical laxity were all typical attributes for saintly bishops, and ones which assisted the church in the propaganda struggle against the crown in England and elsewhere.
The struggle between church and crown, the bishops and popes against kings and emperors is a constant theme of the middle ages, and much of it has more to do with secular power than religion, but the church’s promotion of saints like Richard, demonstrates a more serious underlying conflict between religious conscience  and state power. It’s a dichotomy which goes deeper than the mediaeval struggle between church and crown. The Early Church was formed in a period of almost constant suspicion and actual persecution, as it was perceived by the authorities as a subversive force which would destroy the mental structures on which society and government were founded.
Our perspective in England is possibly a little skewed by the way in which this struggle was resolved by the English Reformation and the almost complete victory for the crown and the recognition of the King as head of the church. Henry VIII took particular care to destroy the shrines of Richard and Thomas a Becket. Elsewhere, however,  anti-clericalism has remained a feature of most continental societies and we should perhaps see the ascendant atheism of our time as a resurgence of similar attitudes. The establishment of the Church of England,  while it may be only ceremonial and formal nowadays, does obscure the divide between secular and religious interest which obtains elsewhere.
Christianity developed alongside a  polarisation of religious and secular interests. The divide between the two is to be found in the Gospels. But in the Gospels things are rather more ambiguous. Jesus was clearly aware that his proclamation of the Gospel made him appear a potential political, and even military leader in the mould of King David and that was a seemingly common understanding of what the Messiah should be. And the Romans evidently thought him a political threat; they did not crucify people for having- as they saw it-just crazy religious views. They crucified those whom they saw as threat to their rule. That threat might indeed come from unusual religious ideas.
 Jesus however, expressly denies temporal power ; he tells Pilate”My kingdom is not of this world” and he spends his time mostly with the poor and politically impotent, on the fringes of society. While he is critical of the powerful in society, he does not reject society itself, or “the world” altogether. He is engaged and moved to act by the experience of illness, disability and madness. He is sympathetic to the poor, although I can’t think of any miracle that actually alleviates poverty itself. While he calls for social change, it is more in personal individual attitudes than any political or structural agenda. The miracles all have at their centre a personal and humane moment; a sympathetic response to individual suffering. On the other hand they are also clearly symbolic of more than just physical healing; the blind see, and understand; the bed ridden leap up and leave the captivity of their condition; the possessed are feed from the domination of madness. These events presage the coming of the Kingdom of God, as envisaged by the prophets. This is a political agenda, in the sense that it seeks to change the world, but it is rooted in an individual and human response to suffering.
For one who rejects conventional political power, Jesus uses surprisingly political vocabulary when describing himself and the world he has come to realize. That world is somehow other than this world but it is likened to a kingdom in many parables, in the Lord’s prayer we ask that “Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in Heaven.” The royal imagery applies especially to the future and specifically the second coming which is envisaged in the terms of a royal court where the king is judge in majesty. This ambiguity is perhaps inevitable; we are earth bound and can only imagine God in worldly terms; other worlds are just re-workings of this one. And as we believe in a God who engages with this world to the extent of becoming human and living and dying with us so we can believe in Heaven as not another place altogether but this place only transformed.
If that transformation is to be the result of our effort, aided, of course by the inspiration and the grace of God, it hard to think that is not going to happen by some sort of political action. How can we eradicate the suffering in this world or bring about real freedom except by concerted action, which is just about what politics is? Our individual love and personal kindness can only go so far; they will not alone right the structural faults in society. This is why I believe, Jesus uses the political vocabulary of his day to describe a world which might replace the empty and bankrupt structures of his day, which are not so very different in our own times.
We can see similar ambiguities in the life of Richard of Chichester. On the surface, he is not an immediately likeable character. He is unforgiving of clerical backsliding and unrelenting in his insistence on the Church’s property rights. But crucially he is humble, sympathetic and generous in the face of poverty and need, in the way that Jesus was. His humanity comes first. We may see a similarity with Jesus who responds to human suffering as he can but will develop his message using  use political vocabulary, in the way Richard is prepared to use secular means to promote a religious end. He is prepared to use the contemporary systems as a means to change the world.  This does not mean accepting those systems on their usual terms; it certainly does not mean seeking power for its own sake. But Richard did not wish to restore the church’s property for secular or venal reasons. He preached a crusade to enable pilgrims to visit the Holy places. With hindsight and a dose of anachronism we may think his endeavors to restore property were as misplaced as his preaching a Crusade. These were, however examples of his attempt to deal with a world as it was.
This is what the incarnate Christ did too, in choosing to be specific and to live and work and die in a particular place, so opening the possibility of a perfect and everlasting world through the broken, misguided, vain and selfish world in which he was and we were born. Christianity is not an escapist or other worldly religion. It should take the world on its own terms and use its methods to change them. But at its heart it must have that individual kindness, that humanity which shines out in the person of Jesus in the Gospels; the same kindness which his admirers saw in Richard of Chichester.  Amen.