Bishop Tim’s Sermon Notes
Civic Service
Sunday 18 May 2008
“See, the home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them;
they will be his people, and God himself will be with them.”
There are many reasons for celebrating this occasion today. We
are all genuinely proud of the first Asian woman to be the Lord
Mayor in the country in this 800th year of the mayoralty in
Leicester. This is exciting for Leicester and properly recognises
the way in which the Asian community has taken its place in the
civic, commercial and political life of our city.
And it’s even more of a cause for celebration, that the first Asian
woman Mayor should be you, Manjula, with your long record of
service to the community and the city, to the Leicester Council of
Faiths, and to the causes especially of women, and the family and
your representative role in the Hindu community.
And we’re also delighted that you have chosen to have your Civic
Service to be here in the Cathedral, linking your public role to the
life of this place of prayer and worship with its task of serving the
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people of the city and the county and located here at the heart of
the city’s heritage quarter.
Your year Lord Mayor will be historic for many reasons. Partly
because of the giant strides forward the city is taking during your
Mayoral year.
With Highcross coming on stream, the Cultural
Quarter coming to life with the Curve opening later this year,
opportunities for the city are everywhere to be seen.
The
universities are flourishing and developing fast, there is the
beginning of the regeneration of our schools in sight, new housing
is springing up around us, the city has taken a lead role in social
cohesion, in interfaith relations, in environmental issues. The list
of things to be proud of is genuinely inspiring.
Leicester, like cities in most parts of the world is a place of
opportunity, of rapid change, a centre for the arts and culture, a
place where people from different continents become neighbours.
But like most of the cities of the world it’s a place facing enormous
challenges. The years ahead will present the City Council and the
civic leadership with intractable problems which will require the
best efforts of the best people working together to solve. We know
we face major difficulties in our schools, continuing not to perform
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well enough to equip the young people of our city with the
education and the skills they are going to need for the 21st
Century.
We know that we face inequalities in our city, and
between living standards in many parts of the city and the
surrounding county. We know we face issues about transport and
inward investment intensified by economic downturn that resist
easy solutions and will take real committed effort to resolve.
These are some of the most acute challenges of urban living. In a
globalising world they focus especially on cities like Leicester.
Diversity, inequality, opportunity and disadvantage all live side by
side here. It was not so different in the first century Mediterranean
cities in which the world of the Bible’s New Testament came to be
written. The writer of the Book of Revelation just read to us, an old
man writing as he saw the Roman Empire decaying before his
eyes had a vision of a new urban society in which justice,
opportunity and human flourishing were to be found. It is a vision
of what he calls the New Jerusalem.
At the heart of this passage is the central claim of the Christian
faith; “See the home of God is among mortals.” God in Jesus
Christ has become human like us.
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He has entered our world,
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experienced the most vulnerable alienating and painful aspects of
it in and through the Crucifixion. He has given to those who follow
him a vision, energy and resources to transform the world so that,
in due time, “mourning and crying and pain will be no more”. It
echoes so accurately the words from the Hindu tradition; “Oh God
thou art the giver of life, remover of pain and sorrow.” of the
Gayatri Mantra which Ramambhai Barber, the spiritual adviser to
the Lord Mayor, will read to us in a few moments.
Perhaps then the greatest challenge for our city, symbolised
particularly here in this Cathedral, is to rediscover the spiritual
roots from which the big questions can be addressed and the big
changes made. Yet there is a widespread impression amongst
many that faith is irrelevant, outdated, an exotic private pastime for
people of a particular persuasion.
The fact is that because although religious attendance is falling,
there is much evidence that the place of faith in the public sphere
is growing more significant. Tony Blair, lecturing in Westminster
Cathedral last month explained for the first time in public how his
own faith shaped his political outlook. He said this: “Faith answers
to the basic, irrepressible, irresistible human wish for spiritual
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betterment, to do good, to think and act beyond the limitations of
selfish human desires. More than that, it is rooted in a belief that
the impulse to do good is not utilitarian or self interested but is
about putting aside self, in being aware of something bigger, more
central, more essential to our human condition than self. In this,
the ‘other’ is not to be rejected still less excluded, but embraced as
more important than you or me. And people of faith believe we are
driven or guided to this end. For those who feel in this way, God is
not some wise old man up in the sky, but a true source of life. God
is selfless love, merciful and an infinite dispenser of grace.”
Well, the voices reminding us that faith is now a highly significant
aspect of public life are gathering in number and increasing in
volume. Mark Thompson, the Chief Executive of the BBC, said
this to a large audience recently: “Programmes like the Monastery
or more recently Extreme Pilgrim and the audience reaction to
them suggest to me not just a persistence but a sharp revival of
interest in the spiritual potential of traditional religious practice and
belief, while the way the public have embraced programmes like
An Island Parish, the resilience of titles like Songs of Praise
despite vastly more intense competitive pressures, imply that
interest in religion as lived in communities and between people
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continues to feel relevant and valuable to millions. And of course
beyond our religious output, faith and religion have become
inescapable in the news, in current affairs, in discussion
programmes and so on.”
We can see the effects of these truths here on the ground in
Leicester. Four years ago a major review of social action by the
faith communities of Leicester described over 440 different faith
based projects reaching some of the most needy communities in
the city. Almost certainly that number has increased in the last
four years.
So indeed there is much to celebrate today.
The
evidence is around us that the city is changing. And it is beyond
dispute that a great deal of the change in this city is motivated,
supported, shaped and enriched by the spiritual traditions of a
large section of our city communities who give themselves in a
committed and faithful way to a larger vision.
And it is the faith communities which carry the responsibility to ask
of any society, and any project within society how it reflects the
kind of enduring commitment to individuals and groups that builds
them up and enables them to fulfil their potential. It is the task of
people of faith to raise the questions about how our corporate life
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shows us something of what God is like and therefore something
of what humanity, made in God’s image, might be. That’s what the
Sermon on the Mt points us to – the qualities of peacemaking,
thirst for justice and courage which lead to blessedness. So we
hope and expect that in your Mayoral year these big questions will
continue to be raised and be faced. What drives our regeneration
– the actual needs of our most needy communities or the agenda
of the developers? What messages are given by the quality and
character of our built environment? Are we creating new kinds of
exclusion which intensify the inequalities that exist and how do we
change the hectic atmosphere of much regeneration work, often
complicated by short-term goals?
These are the questions the communities of Leicester must face
and work together to resolve. Your decision, Lord Mayor, to come
to this place for your Civic Service and to invite into your company
the Christian community as well as your own representatives from
the Hindu community and the other faith communities of Leicester
is a sign of your desire to put at the disposal of this city the
priceless resources of the faith of the people. May God bless you,
guide you, and walk with you in the year ahead.
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