The homily for the Second Sunday of Advent was given by Bishop Philip, during his
Visitation of the Parish
HOMILY for the 3rd SUNDAY of ADVENT [B], December 14th., 2014
“I am not the Christ”
Surnames. Long ago people didn’t have them. They were just “son” or “daughter of so-and-so”. Then
these names solidified into surnames, like in Iceland, where all surnames end in ‘-sson’ or ‘-dottir’. In Wales
there are very few surnames, so in villages one has to distinguish by adding some descriptive title: Jones the
Milk, Thomas the Post, Edwards the Petrol, and so on.
Some point back to an ancestor’s trade, like Butcher or Cooper, or refer to colour of hair or eyes: Grey,
Brown. In Lancashire there are the distinctive Longbottoms, Broadbottoms and Higginbottoms, which tell
us about people’s .... No, they don’t, actually. They mean someone who lived in a long valley, a broad
valley, or near an oak tree (don’t ask me to explain that last one).
The oddest surnames must be Czech ones. When people were told by the Emperor in Vienna to take
surnames they often named themselves after where they lived, and their houses, rather than having numbers,
were adorned with badges or signs, rather like inn signs, often displaying animals or objects from nature. So
it is quite common to have Czech people called Mr. Frog, Mrs. Hedgehog, Mr. Elephant or Mrs. Strawberry.
And some of their names refer to a past event, maybe a joke. Some of you may recall the rather attractive
tennis player Martina Navrátilová – I see some of you going misty-eyed with nostalgia. She would be the
daughter of Mr. Navrátil, which means “he came back”. Some ancestor came back – but from what? From
the war? The dead? The pub, sober? And then there’s “Mr. He-fell-asleep-standing-up”. And if you
wonder why the Archbishop of Paris is named (English translation) “twenty-three”, then one of his ancestors
was deposited as an orphan baby on the steps of a convent, where the sisters, being too busy for flights of
imagination, ‘named’ the children with numbers in order of arrival
So who am I, David Sillince? My Christian name, “Beloved”, was chosen by my parents. I never had cause
to doubt their love, but maybe also they chose it because there is a slight strand of Welsh in us. My surname
is, I believe, French long ago. I am a silent type – that’s what the name says – though you wouldn’t tell it
from these sermons.
Who am I? Who are you? “What have you to say of yourself?” We are a mixture – what our parents
thought of us, or hoped for in us (Christian name), what some other ancestor has been (surname). That’s
what we’ve received. But that’s not me.
In this modern age we increasingly feel we are just a cog in a machine and we need time to ruminate on who
we are. This is part of the Advent call to “wake up”. So many things to do with identity are done almost
automatically; we sign our name dozens of times per week.
Marriage Care published the most alarming
survey of how people rush romantically into marriage without asking fundamental questions about their
identity: will we have children? what if we have a disagreement? how will we manage our money? what if
I cannot sexually gratify? Or, we might add, what if I believe in Jesus and you don’t?
When John the Baptist and Jesus came to adult maturity the first thing they did was to go off into the desert,
and ponder: exactly who am I?
John means “God is gracious”; he was the son of Zechariah, “God has
remembered”. How is God gracious through him? Jesus Christ is a name and a title: God saves; the
anointed. So Jesus, in his long hours of prayer, was pondering not just “How does God save?” but “How
does God save through me?”
John came to see that he was a voice, a way. He was not Elijah, not Jeremiah, not “the prophet”, not the
Christ. People thought he was; they put him in the “Christ-bracket”. That’s like life today; statistics
group us, like on census forms – racial origin, colour of eyes, blood group. They want to make us batches,
but we aren’t a batch! And so much of the world’s activity is spent in trying to turn us from “me” into
somebody else: what we wear, what we drive, what we drink, or listen to. Many people surrender to this.
If John had said he was the Christ, he would have got away with it!
But who am I? Our confirmation candidates are often invited to think about Cardinal Newman’s great text:
“God has created me to do him some definite service; he has committed some work to me which he has not
committed to another”.
These words are not a sign of selfishness, they are truth. We are we, and not
another.
And we are not the Christ (though we are now the Body of Jesus on earth). What is the Christ? John the
Baptist does not say; John the Baptist did not know. He might have thought he knew, but he was to find
out differently, so better not to say.
Isn’t it amazing how much we say precisely who Jesus is, when we often don’t know who we really are? If
we don’t know the second, how can we possibly know the first?
Of course, we can use words, like Saviour, Friend, Brother, Judge. But what do these mean? It takes a
whole lifetime to find out what saving really is, what befriending is, what brothering is, what judging is. And
we really only begin to find out who Christ is when we set it alongside how we, for example, save, befriend,
brother and judge.
In short, we have lots of information, lots of history, lots of “heritage”. But do we know who we are?
Advent isn’t a good time with all this rushing and calculating and buying things and paying bills, but we are
still being told to “wake up” and look at ourselves. God did not make me a number. He did not make a
history. He made me. And who am I?