The last sermon of the 20th century
One English Bishop’s words 22 years ago could have, lamentably, been said today.
As I am lucky enough to be together with the family today in Athens, and as we celebrate Christmas together, my mind, which is full of utterly random forms of distraction and procrastination, wanders back to a sermon I stumbled upon on YouTube as I was looking for some choral music years ago. Its message of forgiveness and tenderness rings true to this day, and it broke through the barriers of a cold English church.
It was Christmas Eve, Liverpool 1999, and Anglican faithful had gathered in the Cathedral, just like the year before I imagine. It must have been a night where the air cut through your nostrils and made your bones shiver.
As the Choir subsided in the beginning of the First Communion of Christmas the then newly appointed and young Bishop, the Right Reverend James Jones, took to the pulpit and began his sermon.
“Well, after a long wait he came. His arrival was heralded with music, he descended from the skies, came to the city, into a cavern. And the people worshipped. And his name was Paul McCartney”.
Jones began with his joke. The laity feigned a giggle as they held their candles. The Bishop contextualised his sermon at the end of a millenium and century. He extolled the technological wonders of the internet, the very medium through which I stumbled upon him (a prophetic twist on the Bishop’s part). He told the audience of Paul McCartney’s online concert which ‘brought him back to Liverpool’ so to speak. It must have seemed a miracle in the time of dialup modems and pagers.
In this very special observation for Christians, the Bishop had a task which would make any speechwriter break out with cold sweats — how do you account for the century, the millenium, that is passing, and what does the Church, and society at large, have to say about the future? All in the context of Christian teachings of course. Despite it not putting his flock in a “party mood”, as he said, the grim reality of the world could not be ignored.
And so he delayed not one minute after his sermon’s ‘hook’, to talk about the “four horsemen of a new apocalypse” which he heard being discussed on the BBC’s Newsnight. These were “environmental disaster”, “disease”, “war”, and “crime”. These are no longer horsemen, no longer predictions for a new apocalypse. They are with us in our world today, omnipresent in our politics and daily lives.
Each one of these four have become more caustic, more devastating, more disastrous for humanity in the 22 years since this sermon. The Bishop tried to shock the audience by stating that 1999 had been the “hottest [year] on record” and that the “climate changes are sinister”. If only we were shocked by such statements today. We are numbed by repeated environmental summits, embarrassing displays of egotism peaking at throwing cans of soup at priceless works of art, and worst of all, apathy.
On disease, need much be said as the world scrapes its way out of a pandemic, which wrought untold social and economic damage? The Bishop tried again to provoke thought by reminding the faithful of the pain that AIDS had inflicted to that point. And he warned, that “other even more deadly viruses are marshalling their forces and mounting an offensive on humanity”.
War. Has anything more clearly defined 2022 than the tragic war in Ukraine and the unfathomable pain unfolding before our eyes? I fear that the 21st century could surpass the 20th in the amount of warfare waged, should human brutality and stupidity be profound enough to do so.
Crime too has become invariably linked with how we view the world. Simply, it is nearly everywhere, even in the Church. The Bishop didn’t just mean violent crime, but importantly also corruption. The latter extent of crime, in the complex nature of corruption be it moral, economic and financial, political, and social is perhaps most profound in the present. The “international syndicates” which perpetually have sought to produce gains through illicit means are more cunning, bold, and damaging thanks to the digital world which was in its infancy in 1999.
Adding to the “four horsemen”, the Bishop of Liverpool also made an important reference. It may seem odd to us now that 22 years ago a high ranking cleric openly begged for forgiveness for the “barbaric” slave trade, from which, he mentioned, Liverpool amassed great wealth. He asked the faithful:
“But, who will forgive us?”
The answer wasn’t simply, “Jesus will”. The Bishop continued in asking the people before him:
“The slaves that are dead? Their descendants? The black and ethnic communities who have experienced racism since then?”
Pausing briefly, “yes. We seek their forgiveness. The forgiveness of all those who we have offended”. But, as it was Christmas, Jones underlined that forgiveness has another source for us both as individuals and as a society — that in the “heart of Christmas, in the manger in Bethlehem, lies the gift of God’s forgiveness”, that whoever turns to Jesus Christ will find forgiveness. For us Christians, I would dare say that this is the most significant aspect of our religion and belief system. But that is not to say that people of other faiths, or none at all, can’t find meaning in the Bishop’s words. That sermon broke out of the gates of the Cathedral of Liverpool, transversed time through the internet, and its message is profound for everyone.
In closing his sermon, employing an emotional tone and pace so profoundly acute and delivered with such deep faith, the Bishop of Liverpool left the people with a request. “Please do not bolt the door of your heart”.
Lamentably, this Bishop’s sermon, which I have listened to evermore attentively every Christmas for the past three years, expresses realities which we now face and which many had once written off as impossible.
Listened to again by less than six thousand people at the time of writing, Bishop James Jones’ message was a clarion call. To act on Christian salvation through the message that becomes incarnate through the observation of Christmas… forgiveness. Despite not being an Anglican myself, and not knowing much about the former Bishop of Liverpool, his ten-minute sermon, distant as it may be, helps me reflect on Christmas and the new year that approaches.
