Sermon for St Chad's Day 2012
Dr Joe Cassidy
Principal
On days like this, when we celebrate St Chad, it’s natural to feel a certain pride for one’s College. And we have much to be proud of, much to be grateful for. You would know that we’ve had the very best academic results not just in the College’s history, but in the University’s history, for five years now. You would also know that the number of applicants to the College continues to rise, making us proportionally the second-most sought-after college in Durham – a position we’ve probably held for 10 years or more. Our students continue to vote our student support and tutorial/mentoring system the very best in the University. We certainly have the best library resources and the best study space of any college. Our students are the most beautiful and the most handsome of any students, anywhere; and they have the very best teeth.
I’m obviously joking a bit, but only at the end. I can tell you that, as Principal, this College, you guys – you make me feel incredibly proud.
But then there was St Chad – not the college, but the saint himself. St Chad’s story knocks me for a loop on a day like today, because it’s not about pride, but about humility. It’s a story about a man who willingly left his lofty position as Bishop of York to preserve peace – a man who was again appointed bishop a few years later, but who then spent his time as a poor, itinerant monk-bishop, preaching as he walked from town to town, eschewing all the privileges of being a bishop.
I suspect he didn’t begin sermons by spouting statistics about how successful he was.
The problem is I am proud of this little college. And I guess the challenge is to ensure that such pride doesn’t blind me, doesn’t blind us, to the fact that there are loads of ways we could be even better, even more faithful. In fact, I’d have to say that the real importance of all our recent successes is not in our achieving anything, but in the greater scope it has given us for more change, to make more of a real difference.
But what would it mean to be better? Better in whose eyes? Better according to whose criteria?
Well, as a Christian college, our fundamental criterion has to be the Gospel itself – the same gospel of humility that inspired Chad to opt for poverty instead of wealth. Our criteria have to be Jesus’ own criteria.
Let me quote you a line from the letter to the Philippians, a text that is read on Palm Sunday: The line is: ‘Though Jesus was divine, he did not cling to his equality with God, but emptied himself to become a slave.’ (Phil 2.5) This is Jesus’ boast, this is his true majesty. This is where his divinity screams out at you. God’s greatness, God’s absolute power, God’s magnificence, God’s holiness – these were expressed not by Jesus’ clinging to his divinity, not by his clinging to being all-powerful, all-knowing, all-everything, but rather in emptying himself. God’s very own holiness was expressed not just by being born as one of us, but by ‘being more humble yet, humble enough to accept death, death on a cross,’ for our sake – to quote from that same Philippians text again.
I don’t know about you, but there’s something incredibly special about believing in a God who could love us so completely that he could become infinitely humble for us. Try to imagine infinite humility, infinite self-giving, infinite risk-taking. I know it’s virtually impossible; but, for me, that says much more about our God than all the mighty words, the pious superlatives and the saccharine compliments we could throw at God – compliments God doesn’t really want or need. To taste such divine humility is to be drawn almost immediately into adoration.
But the best thing about these few lines from Philippians is that, even if Jesus did not cling to his equality with God, he was still God. In not clinging to his divinity, he was actually expressing, he was actually revealing, his divinity. He was showing by the life he lived, by the decisions he made, what it really means to be God. When he didn’t cling to power, to honours, to privileges, he showed us exactly what it means to be God. When he befriended the poor, touched the lepers, allied himself with the marginalised and the despised, he again revealed exactly what it means to be God. When he preferred to eat with sinners and tax collectors, when he preferred to serve at table than to be served, he again revealed exactly what it means to be God.
Now and then people get it, but only now and then. Some of us can’t stand the idea that he was that humble. We want a superman – a strong God to be proud of. But there is a sublime majesty in Jesus’ being human like the rest of us: in his humble birth, in his radically simple teaching, in his weird choice of friends – there’s something jaw-droppingly majestic there.
And that’s the kind of humility we need here at St Chad’s. It’s not optional. If God in Jesus humbles himself to reveal how God is for us, then why should we think we know better? Are we so proud that we think that humility is good for God, but not good for us? Are we so full of ourselves that we think we’ve got a better strategy for saving our world than by being willing to give of ourselves, to humble ourselves, for the sake of others? No: the way of humility is not optional. And to be part of a College dedicated to the memory of St Chad, someone who tried to follow Jesus precisely thrugh humility – well that’s a wonderful, even if a daunting, gift.
Concretely, this means that we need to be asking ourselves constantly whether we cling to power, riches, honours, privileges. I suspect we do, and in more ways thatn we might realise. We need to ask ourselves whether our actions and policies in College challenge the already-powerful, rich and privileged so that we can have proper regard for those with less? We probably don't do as much as we should on that count. After all, in comparison to the rest of the world, we are rich, aren’t we? So how do we live today according to Jesus’ preferences back then? Hard questions, but why shouldn’t we ask how Jesus’ preference for sinners and tax collectors impacts on our admissions policies today?
And yet I can honestly say that we do try to ask such questions here at Chad’s, and we try to set up situations so that such questions emerge rather naturally. I know that Dr Margaret Masson agonizes over admissions decisions precisely because she’s asking those sorts of questions. But there are other, perhaps rather humble ways, in which these concerns arise in our daily lives. It is really heartening to see how many of you have joined in CSP activities aimed at opening our eyes to those parts of the North East that are not particularly well-off. I know that many of you volunteer to do incredibly valuable, and again truly humble, stints of service around Durham and around the world. And there’s real humility, and real self-sacrifice, in doing such things as practising in a choir when you might well prefer to be in the College bar; or in trying out for a team when you know you’re not very good at all but you still want to support the College; in sticking with a room-mate or a house-mate who is having difficulties; or in volunteering to be a hard-working member of the JCR or MCR Exec. These are real examples of what Jesus was on about. I admit that they may not sound so romantic as hanging out with lepers or dining with tax collectors, but they are nonetheless very real.
Jesus’ example suggests that we need to ask ourselves the hard questions. But Jesus’ example also enables us to recognise that there are humble ways of following Jesus; and on our feast day we should feel not only challenged, but also permitted to celebrate what we’re doing right.
I started this sermon by bragging about St Chad’s. I quoted some wonderful statistics. But I’d be even more proud if I thought that our little College was the sort of place where people caught a glimpse of the disarming majesty of Jesus’ humility. That wouldn’t always translate into impressive statistics for league tables, but it would make a huge difference to our lives. My prayer for our College is that we would all yearn to make just that sort of difference.