11.00am Sung Eucharist, Sunday 19 May 2024

It’s surprisingly hard to walk in procession to the theme tune of Steptoe and Son! I discovered this last Tuesday morning at the so-called ‘Mayor Making’ ceremony in Portsmouth’s Guildhall.   Our new Lord Mayor had chosen it for his exit music, having entered midway through the ceremony to the rather different rhythms of a French military march.   ‘Mayor Making’ also included another television theme tune – Dr Who – and part of a song by an American grunge rock band called Mudhoney (of whom I had never heard).   We did sing the National Anthem as well!   And somehow these disparate styles all contributed to the overall ceremony, marking the transition from one Mayoral year to the next.  New councillors were welcomed,  and the Freedom of the City conferred on Frank Jonas, who for many years represented the Hilsea Ward with great distinction. 

This year’s City Service takes place on the Feast of Pentecost, sometimes referred to as the ‘birthday of the church’.   We heard the reason why in our first reading when a motley group of people, including those of different languages and nationalities, are united by a powerful experience of the Spirit of God, and what we now call the church was born.   So it is fitting that today we also celebrate civic unity, of which the incorporation of different musical styles into a coherent ceremony is a suitable metaphor.   There is a whole variety of music and instruments in this service too, as well as a variety of languages in our prayers of intercession. 

Drawing together disparate music, disparate languages, different people, into some kind of working unity is no easy task.   We live in a world of culture wars and military conflict, of echo chambers, conspiracy theories and social media abuse.  So how best to live in such circumstances?

At Mayor Making there was pithy piece of advice for the new councillors: ‘Be like Frank’.   What was meant by that, as I understand it, was that Frank Jonas – who now with his freedom of the city has the theoretical right to drive sheep through Guildhall Square – had won the respect of all the parties in the council chamber.   And how had he done this?   I can only speak from my perspective as Frank’s chaplain in his recent mayoral year, but my conclusion is straightforward.   That respect was based on the kind of person Frank was and is.   His underlying character informed the way he practiced his politics.

There is a term in the social sciences that describes the kind of political engagement Frank did not go in for.  The term is ‘negative polarisation’ and it describes an approach which is more about what you’re against, than what you are for.   At its worst, political opponents are seen as fundamentally different to you, people to be disliked and mistrusted, not only wrongheaded but also worthy of contempt. 

An analogy from the world of football: last week Tottenham Hotspur played their penultimate game of the season against Manchester City, needing a win if they were to stand any chance of securing top tier European football next season.   Many Spurs fans, however, were quoted in the media as saying they wanted their team to lose.  Why? Because beating or even drawing with City would hand an advantage in the title race to their North London rivals Arsenal.   They disliked Arsenal so much they would rather harm their own interests than concede any advantage to them.  Surely it isn’t like this between Portsmouth and Southampton?!

‘Be like Frank’ is one way of saying: don’t encourage this kind of polarization.  Be true to your convictions, absolutely, but do so with civility and courtesy, not contempt.  Without civility and good humour, without recognizing the humanity of those with whom we differ, how are we going to look after what is genuinely in our own interests, let alone engage with loftier concepts such as the common good?

Our first reading today quotes from the prophet Joel, about the gift of God’s Holy Spirit to all people, young and old, men and women, with the result that they dream and prophesy.   Their eyes are lifted to a vision of God, and what that means for human life both now and in the future.  Our second reading speaks about receiving the first fruits of the Spirit, and learning to pray and act as we ought, in world that is groaning in labour pains: something new is being born out of the suffering of the present.   And in our Gospel we hear from Jesus, about how the Holy Spirit will ‘take what is mine and declare it to you’.  

To explore what all this might mean for us today, I’m going to go back to the language of music I began with.  This time, however, I invite you to think of Jesus Christ as transcribing the divine music of heaven into a melody that can be played on human instruments.  Because we hear that heavenly music in his life, death and resurrection, we can get caught up in the melody ourselves, and even begin to play it in what we do and say, including the way we practice our politics.  For Christians, our journey of discipleship is about giving ourselves up more and more to the divine music heard in Christ, not least so that others may hear it in our lives: the whole of our lives, both public and private.

Last month we had a lecture in the cathedral by a former White House aide named Michael Wear.   He had worked as a faith adviser to Barack Obama, and he encouraged his UK audience to work against the kind of ‘negative polarisation’ of which I’ve spoken.  He urged us to have confidence that the way of Jesus, in whom we hear the music of heaven, holds up in public and political life. 

Wear told us that during the Obama presidency there was, for a few months, a painting outside the Oval Office called ‘The problem we all live with’.  In it the artist Norman Rockwell depicts a real historical event in which a six year old black child named Ruby Bridges was escorted to school by four federal marshalls.  The wall behind her displays a racist insult and the marks of a thrown tomato.   Ruby was the first black pupil in a previously all white school, following a legal ruling requiring integrated education.   Every day she was escorted through a crowd who would curse her, shout racial slurs, and hurl death threats. 

A teacher at the school reported that as Ruby walked to school in this way, she would smile at those who spat at her, and abused her in any way.  She told one of the marshals that she prays for those in the crowd every day before she goes to sleep.  A Harvard child psychologist was intrigued by these stories and asked Ruby why she acted in this way.  ‘Well,’ said Ruby, ‘I go to church every Sunday, and we’re told to pray for everyone, even those who do bad things, and so I do.’  On being pressed further, Ruby mentioned the encouragement of her mother and minister, who told her the crowd would get tired after a while and stop coming, and that if she carried on smiling and praying God would be her protection. 

Talk about character.  And this story, this history, inspired many others, and indeed – according to Wear – encouraged those who’d come into the intimidating environment of the White House to speak to the president about their vision of the public good.   So half a century after the events depicted in the painting, Ruby actions were still having a positive effect.  

Be like Frank.  Be like Ruby.  Listen out for the music of heaven in the life of Christ, and embody it in your own actions, so that others may hear it too.   This can be done in a variety of ways, and to a variety of tunes, from Steptoe and Son to Dr Who to Hanz Zimmer and Roxanna Panufnik.  

At Pentecost, the birthday of the Church, Jesus’s promised gift of the Holy Spirit unites a motley group of people from many different places and languages.  It can be done.   For all the frailties of the Christ’s followers, they are still called to embody the possibilities of community; of communities shaped by the kind of life lived and taught by Jesus.   Ultimately, we seek to be like him, and so a people who acknowledge our failings, but also celebrate our gifts: especially the gifts of imagination, hope, compassion, self-sacrifice and service of others.  Guided by heaven’s light and heaven’s music, we are called to work for a future without ‘negative polarization’, in which there is real community enriched by diversity; in which every single person has a voice and a value.   AMEN