Sermon: Playing and Reality

We are all aware that this ordination coincides with a day of action across the world to make poverty history.  And priesthood is not unconnected with that, as I shall say later on.  You may feel that the fact that it also coincides with Wimbledon finals weekend is barely relevant either to what we are doing here, or what hundreds of thousands of people are doing in London and Edinburgh with Live Aid. 

Well, maybe not…. I once preached about tennis at an ordination – no small achievement for someone with my athletic prowess.  I said that it was the most theological of sports because not only do you serve in tennis, but every game, set and match starts out from love.  My attitude to sport was deeply coloured when on my second day at prep school, I was frogmarched with 29 other boys out on to a rugby pitch one baking hot September day.  We sat down on the parched ground to be taught the rules of the game by Old Marsey, as we called him.  He began his exposition by saying: ‘Boys, always remember that the object of a game is to enjoy yourself’.  Within a week, the misery of cold, wet, muddy afternoons confirmed that this was not altogether true.  But he was right about the theory.  We need enjoyment, recreation, laughter; we are homo ludens, people who play.  It’s how we learn and grow.  It’s how we tap into our creativity and enlarge the imagination, which is why we speak of recreation.  Far from being a way of escape, to play well is to enter into reality.  It is to experience a kind of freedom.

This is the theme of our reading from the Book of Proverbs.  But it makes the extraordinary claim that playing isn’t simply a human activity, but belongs to the nature of God himself.  Lady Wisdom is pictured as being with God at the beginning, as if she is the mind and imagination of God, fashioning the heavens and the earth, giving birth to life. In the famous painting of creation in the Sistine Chapel where the spark of life passes from God’s finger to Adam’s, Michaelangelo has placed a beautiful woman by God’s side: not Eve, probably, but the figure of Wisdom, poised to help God in his mighty work.  But my point is precisely that the text is telling us that creation is not work at all, but play on God’s part.  ‘I was his delight daily, playing before him continually, playing in his inhabited world, and my delight was with the human race’.  It’s an image of laughter in heaven and creation as an act of playfulness and joy.  God did not have to make the world.  It was his choice: we are his choice.  And if we could open our eyes to this sunrise of wonder at our own existence, we too like God would dance and play.

Why am I telling you all this at your ordination of priests? Because the gospel is an invitation to be re-created and to find in Jesus our delight.  In the cross and resurrection of Jesus there is a new creation.  Paradise lost has been restored to us and made more glorious.  Jesus says that receiving the kingdom of heaven is to embrace this new world God is making; it’s to dance when he pipes to us; it’s to leap for joy because we are being healed; it’s to sing when anyone turns back to God; it’s to feast at his table like royals; it’s to assist at a wedding; it’s to become like little children.  These are all images of pleasure and play.  You could say that the church is called to be a community of delight, who are discovering what it means, as the Shorter Catechism puts it, to glorify God and enjoy him forever.  Like Thomas in the gospel reading, we acclaim the risen Jesus as our Lord and our God, and pass from the shadows in the full light of day, and sing our alleluias. 

The priesthood of the church is a visible focus of all this.  Priests are there for many things.  Much of our ministry concerns the dark and desperate places of human life where people are overwhelmed by tragedy, suffering and pain, struggling with failure, facing death, longing for purpose and meaning.  Into these places the priest comes as alter Christus, as-Christ himself, a walking sacrament of his love and grace.  And because the church dares to stand for public faith, the priest is a public sign of God’s judgment and mercy in the wider world, where the gospel word needs openly to be spoken into the issues of our time: conflict, poverty, saving our planet.  Just as I was ordained priest at the time of the Soweto massacres and have never forgotten it, you will remember that this was the weekend of Live Aid, at the time of the G8 Summit when history will be made for good or evil, when the lives and futures of millions of people in the developing nations rest on the decisions of the few.  For every priest, ordination is a sacred and inescapable vocation to be immersed in the pain of the world. 

But if you ask what is at the heart of priestly ministry, I say that it is to preside over the church’s praise of God.  The church is never more a community of delight than when we gather, as we do now, to offer our praises in the eucharist.  The word eucharistia means thanksgiving.  And we offer praise not only on our own behalf but, we believe, for the whole human family, indeed, for the whole of creation.  In the eucharist, we celebrate the love shown us in Christ and we anticipate the promised new creation.  We come to the table of God as equals at his banquet.  Whether we are rich or poor, quick-witted or dull, weak or powerful, old or young, Christ invites us here as his honoured guests, makes us kings and queens as we feast on the bread and wine of heaven.  The liturgy is godly play.  It opens our eyes and makes us wise.  It imagines that the kingdom of God is already among us and invites us to live as if it were.  In giving shape and voice to the play of God’s people, priests have a uniquely privileged role. 

In our retreat together over these past few days, we have been exploring the nature of wisdom.  We have talked about integrity and insight, about faith and trust in God, about discerning purpose in a perplexing world, about standing with those who suffer: serious issues, and all necessary if priests are to be wise themselves and help others on the path to wisdom.  But it is not enough to be solemnly dutiful about these things.  They must be underpinned by celebration and delight.  Your ordination today charges you with the responsibility to keep faith alive against the relentless undertow of its melancholy long withdrawing roar. It is hard to be a priest in an age so uncertain about religion.  But as Napoleon put it, a leader is a dealer in hope.  That is profoundly true of the ordained ministry in a world so devoid of hope.  Why else be ordained?  This is what ordination has to do with making poverty history: because a priest is about the kingdom of God. 

So take up the heavy-light burden Christ lays on you today, reawaken joy, consecrate everything by thanksgiving.  Like Lady Wisdom, never leave the side of God where your life belongs, and where the healing and salvation of humanity springs.  Be his helper in bringing new worlds to birth.  Delight in him and in the human race.  Be glad that he calls you today.  Never lose heart.