University Sermon for the Commemoration of Benefactors

St John’s gospel is not for the feint hearted.

‘The Father and I are one’, says Jesus (John 10. 30).

This assertion is at best surprising. At worst hubristic and deranged. Monstrous. If we heard it on anyone else’s lips, we would quickly borrow Hilaire Belloc’s words, who said of Matilda’s disingenuous utterances, ‘they made one gasp and stretch one’s eyes’. As one of my greatest predecessors put it: “The claim is ridiculous if it is not true.”

But what if it is? And what does this mean?

Even if they disagreed with Jesus, the religious leaders who were by this point fed up to the back teeth with him, still take him seriously. They don’t - as we might have expected - laugh at him; rather, if we had read on just one more verse, they pick up rocks to stone him.

The blasphemy is clear. Though precisely what Jesus means by these word is not necessarily so clear if we make just a little step of imagination and do not automatically read back into them the developed doctrine of a later Church. ‘One’ in this statement, as David Ford points out in his new commentary on John’s gospel, means ‘united – united in purpose and agency.’

However, they do take it to mean a bit more than this.

Of course they do. Which is why they’re not laughing. And which is why the Church has seen in these words the beginning of a vision, which does not undermine or threaten the unity and oneness of God but begins to redefine it. And this, as they say, has consequences.

Jesus’ words challenge everything that the religious professionals rightly and sensibly believe about themselves and their place in God’s economy. It also challenges us.

Jesus, in John’s gospel, insists that his union with God is not exclusive but ‘capaciously hospitable’. “I made your name known to them,” he says in his prayer to the Father on the night before he dies, “and I will make it known, so that the love with which you have loved me may be in them, and I in them.” (John 21. 25)

This is the knowledge of God and the fullness of life that God gives to those who know and follow Jesus, the sheep who listen to the voice of the shepherd; and it is uncomfortably generous, an expansive and scandalously hospitable oneness, for it includes the “other sheep that do not belong to this fold.” “I must bring them also,” says Jesus, “so there will be one flock, one shepherd.” (John 10.16)

And it is treated by those who heard it with the utmost seriousness as the existential threat it is, not just because of what Jesus is saying, but also how he says it and where he says it and the signs that accompany his words.

How? With an authenticity and humility, that shames the powerful. From a life, whose every action aligns with every word.

Where? In the Portico of Solomon at the great festival of Dedication, celebrating the reconstruction of the Temple that John’s gospel, from the very beginning has said is replaced - or we might say reconstructed again – in Jesus himself.  

“Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up,” said Jesus on an earlier visit to Jerusalem. The response is scornful indignation: “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But, says John’s editorial comment, Jesus was speaking of the temple of his body (see John 2. 19-21).

And the signs?

“Well” says Jesus, “If I am not doing the works of my Father, do not believe me.” (John 10. 37)

And what are these works?

The hungry are fed. Water is turned to wine. Lazarus is raised.

And we should take it seriously, too. Especially in a University, whose motto from the opening line of Psalm 27 telling us that the Lord is our light, that God is the one who will illuminate our lives and our learning. It is also uncomfortably challenging for the Church, and for all who have, well, ended up being rather too comfortable.

Jesus is speaking to us from a place of service and welcoming generosity alongside those who are most in need, those who are most left out, those who have the least agency, the least opportunity and the smallest hope.

Somehow, the Church that follows him and carries his stamp must do the same.

It isn’t easy. We are not always in the same place as him. We dwell in a clever and self-satisfied culture, where food and wine and even being raised are more readily available. We therefore too easily imagine that faith must be something we persuade people about, and we marshal our best arguments. That might also be a particular temptation in a city and university like this.

What should we do?

Well, I think the best thing to do is to gird ourselves with a towel of service.

For the Church this might mean not worrying so much about who comes to church and who doesn’t, and, like Peter at Joppa, hear the voice and cry of the human heart - be it children on Teesside who have never been to a dentist; or the homeless sleeping in the doorways of the splendid shops where we, stepping round them, spend our money; or refugees  getting into little boats in Calais to come here  because even that dangerous passage is less frightening than what they are leaving behind; or the cry of the earth itself, wanting someone to say on its behalf we need to live differently, we need to tread lightly,  come to us without delay.

And for this great University it might mean working even harder to make the treasures and traditions that are available here more widely accessible to those who could never ever imagine being here. 

For all of us, at this time of such uncertainty and despair on our world, it must mean opening our hearts to receive him who has opened his heart to us; to become the beloved disciples he sees us to be, to be included in that capacious oneness which is the relationship with the Father that he has made open to  everyone – and especially to the excluded, not because eh loves them more, but because they are more likely to see their need - by his dying and rising and the ever replenishing gifts of his Spirit.

I kind of thought that for the University Sermon for the Commemoration of Benefactors at the University of Oxford I should have something more profound to say; but what can I say which is greater than this:  I open the scriptures, a child of God in need of Gods’ grace and in need of the hope that only God can bring; and I see Jesus and his promises to me and to the world.

I see him coming towards me. He has heard my cry. His arms are open wide. His embrace is all embracing. His way of living is hope for the world and it is where we belong. Nothing can snatch us from his hands. He is indeed our light.