The Cathedral of St Stephen
This evening we are drawn deep into the mystic triad of the Mediterranean world – the grain, the grape and the olive. The grain and the grape will become the bread and wine which we bring to the altar to become, by the Spirit’s power, the Body and Blood. The olive will become the three oils which, again by the Spirit’s power, we bless and consecrate.
The grain, the grape and the olive are found everywhere in the Mediterranean world; they are on every table; they could hardly be more ordinary. Yet it is these things which God their creator takes to himself and invests with his own presence and power, the extraordinary inhabiting the ordinary, heaven making a home on earth. Such is the humility of the incarnate God who wants to meet us where we are.
The religious use of oil takes us deep into a very old story and deep into the mystic triad of the saving institutions of ancient Israel – the priesthood, the prophetic movement and the monarchy. Because it was the priests, the prophets and the kings who were anointed for sacred service; and that service was to ensure that the counter-society of God, the community of slaves set free, remained faithful to its God-given identity in a world where that identity was always threatened. The priest was anointed to offer sacrifice to God; the prophet to speak the word of God; the king to keep the people united under God. The sacrifice was to ensure the communion of the people with God; the word was spoken by a God who never ceased to communicate with the people; and the unity was guaranteed only if the people obeyed God, listened to their true king.
Those anointed were ordinary people, but the ordinary oil used to anoint them was infused with an extraordinary power which was the Spirit of God who alone could breathe life into his people. Ordinary people were called by God into extraordinary service of the divine plan, and called by the God who would both equip and accompany those he called and anointed.
All three of these – priest, prophet and king – converge in Jesus Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One in whom the fulness of God’s saving power is found. As true man, he is an ordinary human being, as some of his townsfolk remarked: “Is this not the son of Joseph?” (Luke 4:22). But filled with the Holy Spirit, Jesus bears all the extraordinariness of God: he is God-with-us, fully divine. He it is who offers sacrifice to God, the sacrifice of himself on the Cross; he it is who not only speaks God’s word but is the word made flesh; he it is who gathers not only Israel but all nations together, drawing them to himself.
What is true of Jesus is true of those who are “in Christ”, as St Paul would say. Being “in Christ” refers not to some mystical union but to membership of one of the communities which Paul had founded around the Mediterranean basin, the Church which he would come to call, extraordinarily, “the Body of Christ”. These communities becoming the Body of Christ were no less extraordinary than the bread and wine becoming the Body and Blood of the Lord or the oil being infused with the power of the Holy Spirit. But as the Body of Christ they shared in the priestly, prophetic and royal identity of Christ, as we do. They too were anointed in Baptism, as we are; and that anointing incorporated them as it does us into Jesus crucified and risen.
Yet incorporation into him was and is only the beginning of the story. Then comes the long and arduous process of conforming ourselves to him, imitating him, to adopt again the language of St Paul (1 Cor 11:1). In the Apostle’s understanding, to imitate Christ is not just to be a good person like him or even to follow his moral teaching and example. It is, as Paul says in Philippians, “to reproduce the pattern of the Lord’s death” (3:10) – in other words, to live in our own lives the mystery of the Lord’s death and resurrection which are not past events but are to be the pattern of our lives here and now.
This is especially true of those who, from within the community of the baptised, are chosen and anointed for ordained ministry. They are drawn into the priesthood of Christ in order to offer his sacrifice on behalf of the Church and the world; and at their ordination the bishop urges them to “imitate the mystery you celebrate”. The ordained are not just to celebrate the sacrifice but to become the sacrifice. Only in that way will their ministry serve to ensure that the entire community of those incorporated into Christ is being conformed to him. How good it is, then, that here among us this evening our ordained brothers renew the promises of their ordination.
Only if the community of the baptised “reproduce the pattern of the Lord’s death” will they be equipped and empowered for the mission which is the goal of our incorporation into Christ and our conformity to him. If we do not “reproduce the pattern of the Lord’s death”, there will be no mission; our incorporation into Christ in Baptism will look like a mere certification; and we will drift off into an unacknowledged paganism or at best a kind of consumer Christianity where I and my needs are the focus of it all. Here then we have the mystic triad of our life in the Church – incorporation into Christ, conformity to Christ and the mission of Christ. All these we celebrate as we gather for the Chrism Mass as an anointed people.
We are left then with a triad of triads – grain, grape and olive; priest, prophet and king; incorporation, conformity and mission. All of these are under the influence of the Spirit and infused with the Spirit’s power; and this draws us into the mystic triad of the Trinity from which all things come. From that abyss of perfect love, the whole creation has come forth, including the grain, the grape and the olive; from that abyss of perfect love has come forth Israel, the community of slaves set free with its saving institutions; from that abyss of perfect love have come forth finally Jesus Christ and the Church which is his Body. All glory be to the Father who creates, to the Son who saves and to the Spirit who sanctifies, the God “who is, who was and who is to come, the Almighty” (Rev 1:8). Amen.