Turning Points
But who do you say that I am?
It is a great pleasure and a great privilege to be able to welcome so many people into this historic church this morning, a morning on which we continue our floral celebration of Kettering Past and Present, and a morning in which we celebrate the fact that Greg, our brand new priest of some 20 hours standing, presides for us at the altar for the very first time.
It’s a great morning. It’s a great day. It’s a day, perhaps, on which you can hear people saying, "Yes - we’ve got used to him being with us and becoming our friend.... but this is something different... this is a turning point..."
It’s a day, perhaps, on which you can hear people saying, "Yes - we’ve got used to him teaching things to us and explaining things to us.... but this is something different...this is a turning point."
It’s a day on which, perhaps, you can hear people saying, "Yes, we’ve got to know about something of his past; we’ve learned something about how he wrestled with his vocation; we’ve come to know something about his life and the ups and downs it’s brought him... but this is something different... this is clearly a turning point."
I hope nobody would disagree that this day is a turning point. Because, amongst other things, a turning point is that moment when you start to see things, or people, or one particular person differently. At its most simple, it is easy to demonstrate... For if where I stand now is a turning point, and thus I turn, you see me differently, and I see you differently... It’s not, I think, rocket science to see that if you do, truly, come to a turning point, then you see things differently - indeed, you have no choice but to see things differently.
And, as I say, on this particular, very special day, you could well, I think, imagine that people are saying something along the lines that, "Yes, we’ve got used to his friendship... we’ve got used to him teaching and explaining things to us... we’ve got to know a bit about his past... we’ve got to know a bit how about how he has wrestled with his vocation... but now we are seeing thing differently...
It’s not even beyond the realm of possibility that there are some people gathered on this special day who know the earlier history - the history which stretches back to his first years. People who knew that his birth and early years contained some frankly bizarre events. Events which involved travel and upheaval. Events which involved dreams and angels, events which included very strange foreigners, and politics, and rulers, and mass executions. People who might have known that when he was baptized, he had the most extraordinarily powerful religious experience - an experience so overwhelming he ended up grappling with the Devil in a lonely and arid place.
All of this, people could have known - but this day changed everything. It was a turning point... a turning point even bigger than today’s eucharist and yesterday’s ordination are in the life of our beloved curate Greg. For - in amongst a morning that is filled to over-flowing with turning points - Lesley has just been reading for us the story of the most significant turning point in the life of Jesus of Nazareth.
And today is a day of turning points. Indeed, when we gather together in a church filled with flowers beautifully and lovingly assembled on a theme so redolent of history as Kettering Past and Present, we would be mad to think that we can escape turning points on this day of all days. You cannot talk about Past and Present for more than a few moments before turning points rise up to place their daunting hand on your perceptions and your memories.
And it is, without any doubt at all, a day when we see things differently about Greg. If a turning point is a moment when something or someone looks different, well, Greg scores 110% this morning. He’s moved centre-stage, rather than hovering permanently on the right hand side of the person presiding week by week. And we have never, yet, seen him dressed quite as splendidly as he is in that outrageously wonderful red vestment. We are seeing Greg, our new priest, in a different way this morning - which also means, of course, that he is seeing each one of us in a different way, for this process works in both directions...
Today, as I say, is a day of turning points. But, while Greg is, perhaps, the most obvious sign and symbol of that for us today, as he presides at the eucharist for the first time, his story - even his story - is not the most significant turning point we are invited to consider this morning, for there is big drama going on for us today... Bigger, even, than that of a new priest...
The preacher at Greg’s ordination yesterday was no lesser parish priest than the Vicar of Stratford upon Avon, the successor to the man who would, I assume, have been Shakespeare’s vicar. And in that famous speech from As you like it, the one which beings with the reminder that All the world’s a stage, we are told that each person’s lifespan is merely a drama in, so Shakespeare tells us, a drama in seven acts. Well, I don’t know if we all notch up as many as seven acts in our humble ways, but narrative and drama are where turning points come into their own. And if you consult that great oracle of modern life, Wikipedia, you will learn that the turning point of a narrative work is its point of highest tension or drama or when the action starts in which the solution is given.
It is an inevitable consequence of a turning point that you are seen differently (and therefore, that you also see differently), but Wikipedia takes us further by reminding us that the turning point is that moment when the action starts in which the solution is given...
Now, if you settle down to a nice drama in front of the television this evening, to relax after this long weekend of flowers and religion, and you turn on a whodunnit - perhaps a Poirot, or a Sherlock Holmes, or even something more modern and gritty - the turning point in a drama of that kind is the vital moment when the clue to the killer’s identity is uncovered, and those viewers who have eyes and brains as sharp as the detective have the chance to realize that the action has started in which they have seen the solution being given...
But when we deal in the reality of human life, lived out before God, the "solution" is a little different - the "solution" that needs to be discovered about you, or me, or Greg is to do with understanding our vocation, or if you want to use an even bigger word, our destiny. And, as I say, today is a day when the action starts in which the solution is given.
For, as I have hinted in my earlier remarks, in the first fifteen chapters of Matthew’s gospel, we have learned a lot about Jesus. Matthew treats us to some - but not all - of the beautiful and fascinating stories around his birth. We learn that Jesus is to be Emmanuel - God with us.
We learn of Jesus’ curious relationship to the gentile world through the coming of the Magi to pay homage to him. We learn of the slaughter and violence that provides another, grim backdrop to his birth. And, as we see the adult Jesus emerge in Matthew’s third chapter, in common with all the evangelists we learn of the religious experience he has when baptized by John; we learn of him wrestling with the nature of his vocation for forty long days in the wilderness; we learn of him teaching and healing and being followed by crowds; we learn of him commissioning his disciples.... but, up to now, we have not seen, we have not learned anything of his destiny, or his vocation.
But, on this highly significant journey into gentile territory with his closest friends and followers, something changes - something of profound importance changes, and it starts with Simon Peter’s extraordinary proclamation when Jesus suddenly cuts to the chase, and demands of these close friends - Who do you say that I am? And Peter, not even fully understanding the implications of what he is saying, tells Jesus that he is The Messiah, the Son of the Living God.
And if you read on to the very next verses that Matthew writes, you can see just why this is a turning point for Jesus, for, so Matthew tells us from that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.
In other words, Matthew tells us that this great moment at Caesarea Philippi is, truly, the ultimate turning point for Jesus, for it is the point when the action starts in which the solution is given. For this is the point when all that Jesus has been and is suddenly comes together to show us his destiny... his vocation. And that means that, really, today is a day about destiny and about vocation - because if our gospel reading shows us Jesus’ true vocation, this reflects onwards as we celebrate Greg’s vocation this morning - and thus, as we celebrate our vocation as the Body of Christ. That is the full significance of this great turning point.
But there is a catch with turning points. There is a catch when you reach a point of such self-awareness that you are able to show those around you something of your true nature - your true vocation, or your true destiny...
I was privileged to go on a fascinating course last month - a course which was looking at church life and conflict through the lens of how families work. Some of it focussed on the benefits that come to a family or a community when a member becomes more self-aware - more capable of standing up for their own identity and vocation. And it was explained to us that as and when an individual manages to do this, it will bring good not just to them but also to their community. But we were also told that when someone is able to stand up and say, "Actually, folks, this is the real me, and that has consequences" (which is a pretty good paraphrase of Peter’s great confession, and Jesus’ consequent prediction of his passion and death) - when someone stands up and says such a thing, it will lead, so we were told, to resistance. It will lead to an attitude of downright sabotage from those who find it hard to cope with recognizing and acknowledging such a clear sense of self-identity and purpose. And that, of course, is what happens - and what happens immediately - to Jesus.
For the gospel shows us that as soon as Peter gives Jesus final confidence in his self-identity, by acclaiming as the Son of the Living God - as soon as Jesus starts to show the consequences of this identity, by speaking about the "solution" that is his true vocation to his friends - as soon as this vital turning point in God’s great plan of salvation for the world happens, then Jesus experiences that first moment of sabotage: God forbid it Lord, this must never happen to you, cries Peter - and, in reply and rebuke, learns just how true it is that people are not only seen differently when they come to a turning point, but that they see differently, when Jesus immediately rebrands him from being the great rock....to being Satan.
Today we are called to live and re-live turning points. Our Flower Festival speaks of many turning points in the history of individuals and groups of people in this church and town. Our gospel reading tells us of the ultimate turning point in Jesus’ life. I’ve not even commented on the great Damascene turning point which provided the true solution for the vocation and destiny of the tent-maker Saul, whom people had, rather suddenly, to see in the very different context of Paul, the Apostle to the Gentiles. And if you read your Bible, you’ll see he had to deal with quite a bit of sabotage as he lived out the consequences of his great turning point.
And today, vested for the first time in those extraordinary robes, speaking words of prayer and power, and breaking bread and pouring wine, we see our dear friend Greg come to a great turning point in life and ministry, as we see him in a new way that speaks the more clearly of his true vocation and destiny. And because priests have this curious representative role to help the whole Body of Christ discover and re-discover its own priestly identity, we should pray that through and alongside Greg’s priestly ministry newly sent among us, in which we come to see Greg’s true vocation and destiny, we may turn the more fully to understanding our own vocation and destiny as Christ’s Body in this place, so that the world may look at us the more clearly and differently. And at times, that will bring us cost, and pain, and conflict, and sabotage - just as it may well, Greg, for you as you live and grow as a priest of God’s church.
But take heart, my dear friends, for, day by day, Christ speaks, not just to Greg, or to all the clergy (as if!?), Christ speaks to all his people, demanding anew of each of us Who do you say that I am? So may it be our prayer this morning, for Greg, our new priest, and for all of us as God’s priestly people, that we can respond in courage and honesty, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. And lest us pray even harder that we may have the strength to live out confidently the priestly vocation it will bring us all in Christ’s name. Amen.
Dominic Barrington, 3rd July, 2011
