The Heart of the Storm

It is a great pleasure and a privilege to be able to join you in worship today. It is a long time since I have been to a service in this church. When I was up at Magdalen, reading history in the 1970s, it was a good place to come and sit and find quiet - at least out of the tourist season, which in those days still had finite limits. The Nicholas Stone porch was then propped up with a frame of great wooden beams as the church awaited restoration and the result of that restoration is now a delight to see. As I have just returned from walking on the Camino to Santiago de Compostella, I can’t think of a better place to share again in a Church of England communion service.

I am also delighted that I should have been asked to give a sermon on a day when we have heard a passage from St John’s Gospel that lies at the heart of our Christian faith: that we share in the peace that Jesus freely offers to us. And earlier in the same section of text, are those words where he tells us he is the way, the truth and the life and provides that reassurance, often latched on to by those of us who lead worldly lives, that “in my father’s house there are many dwelling places”; for all those with faith, despite our manifest shortcomings. All these are part of the great sermon Jesus himself gave at that Last Supper we remember today in the Eucharist.

But it is on that offer of peace now and always that I want to focus.

We invoke the word “peace” often. We will pray for it for the Ukraine and in places where there is conflict and violence. We pray for it for our streets and homes. We talk of living under the Queen’s peace and being godly and quietly governed. Parents seek their moment of peace when their young children are finally asleep and, when I was in the House of Commons, I would certainly try and find it on my return late at night after a day of work and debate, sometimes acrimonious - usually over a glass of single malt whisky before going to bed.  Unless we are into night clubs, we hope our holidays will be in a peaceful setting, places where the cares of this world might briefly be forgotten.

These words in St John’s Gospel however suggest something rather different from the absence of conflict or stress or busy-ness.  Jesus says “my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives.”

The 1662 Book of Common Prayer’s order for Holy Communion maintained that distinction by asking God to “grant us thy peace” in the Agnus Dei. I must confess that, as the member of a church choir, I prefer that as the cadence is much more natural to sing. But I am told the change in wording in the modern liturgy is closer to the Greek text and makes no difference to the theological meaning.  This is a form of peace which, according to St Luke’s gospel, was sought from and given by Jesus to an unnamed criminal being punished for his misdeeds on a cross beside him on Calvary. It’s the peace of God that passes all understanding. The peace of God that could make Mother Julian of Norwich so certain that “All will be well, all manner of things will be well.” The peace that can envelop us at the most difficult moments of our own lives and experienced even through pain and conflict.

Both forms of peace: the absence of noise and stress and the peace at the heart of the storm are to be desired but I think they should not be conflated as I think sometimes happens.

When I was a Member of Parliament I was struck by how many people came to see me over the years to request I take action that might bring what they called “closure” to a wrong, injustice or tragedy they had suffered. The matters that had blighted their lives were real, as I am sure was the emotional pain they suffered as a result. But in most cases what they believed, was that some form of retributive Justice would free them from it. As a barrister and former Attorney General, I am a firm believer in the Law and the access to justice that is needed to underpin all civilised human societies and I would of course try to help them find a resolution.

But I often doubted whether what they were seeking would be truly helpful to them, that they were right in their hope. Obtaining justice may help. But real “closure” comes when inner peace exists and the two do not always come together.  Retribution may be temporarily cathartic but its effects can soon wear off. The effort to obtain justice can all too soon become addictive and just fuel more distress. By contrast I have been in court and heard the Christian parents or relatives of a road traffic accident victim stating, out of their pain but through their faith, their forgiveness of the perpetrator and seen what a blessing Christ’s peace is to them and can be for us. 

And I saw the same difference on the Camino to Santiago. I started on it last year. I admit that this was, for me personally, in part to shake off what I felt was an excessive addiction to politics brought on during a period of twenty two years in the House of Commons and its turbulent end; although the pilgrimage was also something that I had wanted to do from when I was young.  I walked for four weeks across France last Autumn and five weeks on the route over the Pyrenees and through northern Spain this Spring.

I was struck by the huge variety of ages, backgrounds and motivations to make the journey, of my fellow pilgrims. The modern Camino still has its devout and practising Catholic Christians, but it has many more seeking a spiritual experience with little or no formal religious belief. Many are young. Some of the modern Camino’s accessories have a bit of a hippy New Age flavour – more crystals than crucifixes. But the daily routine was largely the same whether you did or did not choose to go to a church at stopping points when one was available: sore feet and aching limbs; rain, snow and sun; a spot of sunburn; frequent sock and shirt washing; pilgrim meals invariably served with chips or pasta; bunk beds and the snoring of others and sometimes complaints of your own (unless you decided to get your own room). Companionship and a beer when you wanted it and some silence and birdsong when you did not and views of snowcapped mountains and at times beautiful landscapes to look at and many historic and sacred buildings to visit.  

In every pilgrim I met, even those more interested in their physical fitness, there was to a greater or lesser extent the same search for inner peace and for confidence in their own future. My impression is that all I encountered were getting something valuable from it and sometimes it was a life changing experience.  I certainly returned refreshed and I feel much more tranquil in spirit than when I set out. The fact that there are likely to be another quarter of a million people seeking to do it this year suggests a deep yearning for what it might offer.

But for all the secularisation of the modern Camino and one has to admit, the rather dubious historical origins of its founding purpose – the destination is said to be the burial place of St James the Great - Christ’s promises to his disciples recorded in the gospel of St John still inescapably suffuses it. The offer of peace and the hope of heaven. Why else would the individuals who offer hospitality and refreshment without payment or in return for a donation, often driving a van into remote places on the route to deliver this service, do so? The time and pride taken in finding a pilgrim an alternative shelter if the usual accommodation runs out is another example, as are the smiles and greetings from strangers and the welcome in any church that is open. They are practising what Jesus commanded that we love one another just as he loves us, as the gospel of St John also narrates.  They too are receiving and sharing his peace.

This peace lying in the heart of noise and life as a still blessing came into even sharper focus for me on Good Friday in the small town of Fromista, on the high plateau of Castile.  As secular Spain celebrated the start of the Easter week end with the cries of children on a bouncy castle and  loud music and busy cafes in the main square, the church doors opened and with little ceremony the one hundred or so worshipping parishioners, including eight robed and hooded penitents identifiable only by their trainers, trundled out floats with vivid life sized and coloured figures of a flagellated Jesus at the pillar, a Crucifixion, a Deposition,  a Mater Dolorosa, and the dead and entombed Jesus and then took them round the town in complete silence.  Nothing else changed. The bouncy castle was encircled by the crowd, the music did not stop. The café drinkers drank on.  But the price Jesus paid for the promise of redemption we have heard in today’s reading could not have been more tellingly illustrated for whoever cared to look.  And in looking and seeing, the rest of the world slips away – the still moment at the heart of the storm.

May we all in our lives be able to embrace that costly peace that has been so freely offered to us.

For in the words of a verse of our next hymn: “Paschal Lamb, thine offering finished once for all when thou wast slain, in its fullness undiminished shall for evermore remain, alleluya, alleluya, cleansing souls from every stain”.