ANOINTED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT

CHRISM EUCHARIST, HOLY TRINITY, NICE, HOLY WEEK, 2008

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me.” (Luke 4.18)

“You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know…..the anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lies, just as it has taught you, abide in him.” (I John 2.20,27)

            In his great account of the conversion and spread of Christianity in Britain the Venerable Bede tells how a priest named Utta was sent from Northumbria to Kent to bring back Eanfraed, the daughter of King Edwin, who had been taken there for safety after her father had been killed. She was to be the bride of King Oswiu. Utta intended to return by sea and, nervous of the dangers of sea travel asks Bishop Aidan of Lindisfarne to pray for him. Aidan promises to do so and gives Aidan some holy oil telling him ‘I know that when you board your ship, you will meet storms and contrary winds; but remember to pour the oil I have given you on to the sea; the winds will drop at once, the sea will become calm and serene and will bring you home the way you wish.’ And so it proves to be. There is a great storm; waves sweep over the ship; like the disciples on the Sea of Galilee they think they are at death’s door. Utta remembers Aidan’s words, pours the oil on to the sea, and immediately there is calm. It is indeed, as we know from that phrase embedded in the English language, ‘pouring oil on troubled waters’.

            Holy oil, pressed from the olive, is, as this story from Bede shows, part of Christian life in distant Northumbria, far from the olive groves of the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. In our own day oil has become once again a living sacramental sign. This Chrism Eucharist, now so important a part of Holy Week, was something that disappeared at the time of the Reformation, when so much that was sacramental disappeared. It only survived in the Church of England in the anointing of monarchs at their coronation.  When Elizabeth I was anointed the chrism blessed by the Bishop of Arras for the coronation of her half-sister, Mary was used. The Queen complained ‘that it was grease and smelt ill.’ For Charles I a new chrism oil was prepared ‘made from an infusion of orange and jasmine flower oil, “oil of been”, distilled rose and cinnamon oil, benzoinm ambergris, musk and civet’ – a powerful concoction indeed, rivalling the oil prescribed in Exodus for the anointing of the High Priest. When, some years ago, I compiled a book about anointing, I discovered that the revival of the use of oil in the Church of England, and its blessing, went hand in hand with the healing practice of aromatherapy. The rediscovery of touch, and healing oil, in the world outside seems to have prompted the church to remember some of its ancient wisdom.

            It is the blessing of the oils that is at the heart of this service, not the renewal of commitment of ordination. The first is ancient – it goes right back to the early centuries of the church, and was needed because of the great Easter baptisms and the anointing that went with them. The renewal of ordination vows is barely half a century old, being instituted by Pope Paul VI in my lifetime, who with a clear pastoral instinct, saw the need for a renewal of priestly commitment at the heart of Holy Week. The vow with which Pope Paul was concerned were of course the priestly vows of celibacy, and those of us who are single, value this commitment as an annual renewal of our following in single-mindedness the Christ whose life was so completely consecrated in obedience to his Father. Christ our great High Priest is the one who consecrates himself in obedience to the will of his Father. In the Church of England we do not have compulsory vows of celibacy, but we do have priestly commitment of both married and single. Our ordination sets us apart. It is not simply another job. Not simply a function. It is a way of life and being to which we are called to be in a very special way Christ for others and sharing in the High Priesthood of Christ. The blessing of oils for baptism reminds us that there is no ordination without baptism; that baptism into Christ is the foundation stone of all Christian life and all Christian ministry. St Peter reminds us that the Church is ‘a royal priesthood, a holy nation’ – the Church, not the clergy. The priesthood of the ordained ministry is to serve the priestly life of the whole people of God. Just as Jesus consecrated himself for the sake of those he called, so we who are ordained consecrate ourselves for the sake of those whom we are called to serve. And it is good that each year we renew that commitment, that offering of ourselves to Christ and in Christ, that we consecrate ourselves. And it is good that we do so today in the presence of a large gathering of the faithful, whom in our ordinatiion we are called to serve.

            When St Cyril, Bishop of Jerusalem in the fourth century, instructed those who to be baptised at Easter and spoke to them of anointing, he reminded them of how rich the symbolism was. If I can summarise: ‘Anointing is for the conflict; anointing is a form of ‘sealing’ or ‘confirming’; anointing is a sign of identification with Christ – you become Christ’s anointed ones; anointing makes Christians ‘kings and priests – those who conquer, those who know God; anointing marks the Christians as belonging to and having enlisted with Christ; anointing is the sign of the coming of the Spirit.’  There is an outward anointing and an inward anointing; the anointing with oil and an anointing by the Spirit. Oil is a salve, it is for healing. Oil is what supplies light in the oil lamp, so to pour oil over someone’s head is the nearest you can get to pouring light over them, and the light poured over us is Christ, the light of the world who dispels all darkness.

            In our Gospel reading from St Luke we heard how Jesus speaks in the synagogue in his home town of Nazareth of his own identity, taking words of the prophet Isaiah about anointing, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me. He quotes from Isaiah 61, a chapter which follows on from the great proclamation in the previous chapter ‘Arise, shine, for your light has come, and the glory of the Lord has risen upon you.’ This is a Gospel of light dispelling darkness, of the Lord’s salvation and deliverance. And the servant of God, who is the anointed of the Lord, is the one who brings deliverance, to the afflicted, the broken-hearted, the captives, those in any kind of imprisonment. In the verses which follow God will give his people through the ministry of his servant, ‘the oil of gladness instead of mourning.’ The oil of gladness, which as we have seen is light and healing and preparation for conflict, is the light which is Christ himself. And so St John reminds his Christian community in words which I also took as one of the texts for this sermon: ‘You have been anointed by the Holy One, and you all know (or ‘you know everything’). The anointing which you received from him abides in you, and you have no need that any one should teach you; as his anointing teaches you about everything, and is true, and is no lie, just as it has taught you, abide in him.’ The oil is transforming and transfiguring. Paul might have put it another way: ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory.’ Abiding in Christ, Christ abiding in us; Christ indwelling us; the Spirit anointing and enabling us; the Spirit flooding our hearts and our lives.

The grace and the glory so given to us, so shared with us, is the life, and the energy, and dynamic of Christian life and Christian ministry. Without it we are nothing. Without it the church is no more than a rather dysfunctional and chaotic ancient organisation. Only in Christ does it find its meaning.

            The glory which is our Lord’s and which he calls us to share is his very being and identity. The Hebrew word for glory, kabod, means the being or character or weight of a thing. St John tells us that in the incarnation, ‘we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth’ – and goes on to say that ‘of his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.’  As John in his Gospel traces this revelation of glory it comes to a focus on that rough wood of Calvary, and a helmet of thorns crushed on a head, and hands and feet nailed and pinioned. ‘On whose dear arms so widely flung the weight of this world’s ransom hung.’ A king is enthroned, lifted up in the costly agony of love, and his royal robe is his own blood. There we see his glory, and that glory he calls us to share, anointing us as priests and kings. There is no Christian life, there is no Christian ministry, without cost, without the marks of sacrificial love. It is not ours to have the easy success and popularity which can be so far from that Christlikeness to which we are called. To renew commitment to Christ and Christian ministry is inseparable from what the Lord asks of us: ‘take up your cross and follow me.’ Good Friday indeed leads to Easter, the Cross to Resurrection, but Easter is not a ‘descent from the cross postponed for thirty-six hours for reason of effect’. Easter is what gathers up Good Friday, and, yes, Holy Saturday, when God is among the dead, and the Lord and giver of life is blotted out. It is from the depths of hell that Christ rose again in triumph. To live in Easter light, to be anointed by the life-giving Spirit of God, is to see the glory of God at all times and in all places.

Gerard Manley Hopkins wrote in his poem ‘God’s Grandeur’ of the transfiguring of the world by the grace of the Holy Spirit.

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.

Hopkins knew, surely, that Gethsemane, the Garden of the Agony, was a place whose name meant, the ‘place of the oil press, of the crushing of the olive, to produce the oil.’ It is there that the Anointed One of God reveals his glory as in his agony of love and obedience. In the place of the oil press, he too is pressed: his life, his glory, ‘gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil crushed.’ And because of that stooping down to our need, because of that entering into the world’s pain, grace runs like sparks among the stubble, and as Hopkins saw – even in our world of pain, and trade and toil, - ‘the Holy Ghost over the bent world brood with warm breast and with ah! Bright wings.’ ‘The Spirit of the Lord has anointed me!’ The Spirit has also anointed us, and St John reminds us, ‘his anointing teaches you about everything, and it is true…abide in him.’

+Geoffrey Gibraltar