Sermon: Installation Service | Honorary Canons

Preacher:

Andrew Watson

Date:

Sunday 25th May 2025

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

6pm Choral Evensong

Matthew 28:1-10, 16-end

Zephaniah 3:14-end

 Installation of Neil Roberts and Daniel Natnael as Canons,

Guildford Cathedral, 25.5.25

‘You’re just a bunch of bleeding amateurs!’

It’s a phrase that has stayed with me since one of the earlier series of The Apprentice, following a poor performance in a particularly challenging task: withering words that were inevitably followed, a few moments’ later, by the pointed finger of Sir Alan Sugar bearing down on a hapless victim, accompanied by his favourite liturgical riposte, ‘You’re fired!’

And as the apostles climbed a mountain in Galilee to meet with the Risen Jesus, they too were just a bunch of bleeding amateurs: indeed, if the Lord Jesus had had more in common with the Lord Sugar, God forbid, he would have fired them on the spot.  We think of the cowardly way in which they’d deserted Jesus at his darkest hour; of Judas’ betrayal, Peter’s denial, that stupid argument kicked off by James and John about who was the greatest. Even now, as the Risen Jesus met with just these 11 men (not even 12 because of the Judas fiasco), we note that extraordinary sentence, ‘When they saw him, they worshipped him, but some doubted’. They really were a sorry sight, this small, dishevelled bunch of former fishermen and tax collectors and zealots; and whatever Matthew meant by the phrase ‘some doubted’, it’s hard to imagine that here was standing a group of people whose courageous witness would turn the world upside down. 

It’s an important reminder when we read this famous passage at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: ‘Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations’ - and when we think of the sheer size of the task confronting them, and indeed confronting us, where such a small proportion of the people around us seem to ‘get it'. Because these rousing words of Jesus –were not spoken to a huge crowd of the party faithful. They were shared instead with a small bunch of bleeding amateurs. And yet ‘You’re fired!’ wasn’t to be the story at all. Instead, ‘You’re hired!’ was the message of the moment.

To those who knew the book of the prophet Zephaniah, there was a parallel here, where God spoke words of comfort and encouragement to an earlier bunch of bleeding amateurs: the people of Judah, whose betrayal of their God had led to defeat and exile. Looking to the future, though, Zephaniah had spoken words of extraordinary hope:

‘The Lord your God is in your midst’, he’d said, ‘a warrior who gives victory; he will rejoice over you with gladness, he will renew you in his love’… and then, in the only verse of Scripture which speaks of God Himself as a singer,

‘He will exult over you with loud singing, as on the day of festival’.

We’re not told that Jesus sang over his disciples at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: but his confidence in them was equally remarkable.

In earlier years, this same Jesus had been taken in his mind’s eye to a very high mountain, where he had been shown him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. ‘All this I will give you’, a voice had said in his head, ‘if you will bow down and worship me’. Yet Jesus had steadily refused to take that path, not just then but in the challenging years that followed.

So now, on another mountain, the Risen Christ could speak those words with complete integrity - ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me’: not given as part of some Faustian pact, but granted by God Himself in response to a perfect life, a perfect death, a glorious resurrection. When the disciples first started calling Jesus ‘Lord’, they intended little more than a mark of respect. But following his death and resurrection, the phrase ‘Jesus is Lord!’ took on a brand-new meaning: for the one who had saved them; the one who had hired them was none other than the Lord of heaven and earth.

To be honest, it didn’t look like it. The Romans were still there in the Promised Land, clamping down on any behaviour that smacked of rebellion or religious enthusiasm. People were still falling sick and dying. There were still wars and earthquakes and famines and tragedies of all kinds. If Jesus had authority over heaven and earth, why didn’t he sort that all out? It’s a question that people still ask today.

So here was Jesus’ answer to the question: ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore Go…’ It was the disciples’ calling to go and make a difference – to make disciples, to baptise, to teach, and so to live out the Lordship of Jesus in their own lives that his love, his blessing, his kingdom would be extended into every corner of the earth. ‘Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as in heaven’ was not just to be a prayer the disciples prayed rather piously whenever they came to church on a Sunday morning. It was instead a prayer for which the disciples were to work with every fibre of their beings – a vision to live for; a vision, if necessary, to die for.

And I was delighted when I discovered that Zephaniah 3 and Matthew 28 were the lectionary readings set for our service this evening. Zephaniah seems particularly appropriate, since both of our new Canons are singers and very able musicians. How powerful then to hear of the Lord God ‘exulting over them with loud singing, as on the day of festival’. And when it comes to Matthew 28, it is that call to make disciples which lies at the core of both Daniel and Neil’s sense of vocation against the backdrop of somewhat contrasting traditions within the Church of England!

For Daniel, that call led him to head up youth work across his native Eritrea, then in Norfolk, Hampshire and Camberley; and now to be leading one of our most exciting initiatives in the life of our diocese: the brand-new parish of St. Barbara’s Deepcut, which he has done with great love, creativity, perseverance and passion. For Father Neil, it has equally led him into youth ministry as a school chaplain at Repton, and a highly fruitful ministry as parish priest, breathing new life into the Church of St. Nicolas’ down the road, and serving as an Area Dean, a trustee of our Diocesan Board for Education and a class act in our Local Ministry Programme. Making disciples, in other words, is what they both do, and remains a priority here in the Cathedral Church of the Holy Spirit, where their expertise in the College of Canons will be very much appreciated.   

So back to that mountain and to the Risen Christ – for Jesus’ great commission to the disciples, to which Daniel and Neil have both responded so wholeheartedly, is our commission too as baptised followers of our incarnate, crucified, risen and ascended Lord. And yes, they were a bunch of bleeding amateurs – ‘unschooled, ordinary men’, as the Jewish Ruling Council rather snootily described them, and horribly fallible too. But my distant memory of learning Latin as a child reminds me that the verb ‘amare’, from which we derive the word ‘amateur, means to love: that in its truest sense, an amateur is someone who loves what they’re doing and loves the one they are doing it for. And yes, that’s a fruitful and a joyful thing, but love of course can be costly too, sacrificing our wants and desires for the sake of others - which is why almost all of those disciples would eventually become a bunch of bleeding amateurs, martyrs for the cause.    

Daniel, Neil – as you take on this new privilege and responsibility as Canons within this great Cathedral church, may the Lord continue to strengthen and empower you by His Spirit, singing over you in His love and equipping you day by day both to be disciples and to make disciples among all the nations He draws across your path, for the extension of His Kingdom and the glory of His name, Amen.