Weekly Podcasts University Church of St Mary, Oxford

The Common Good is an ideal we appeal to as citizens, but what does it mean in a distinctively public and political space, a space guaranteed by laws and even by force if necessary? Is there a way of thinking about the common good as a political concept, and how might Christians be involved in this? In this podcast, I am joined by Paul Billingham, Associate Professor of Political Theory at Oxford, to discuss the Common Good in our political and religious life.

An interview between the Revd Dr William Lamb, Vicar of the University Church and the Revd Canon Dr Jessica Martin about the upcoming Bampton Lectures 2021.

The Bampton Lectures have been delivered at the University Church since 1780. The Bampton Lecturer this year is Dr Jessica Martin, who has been Canon Residentiary at Ely Cathedral since 2016, after 6 years as Priest-in-charge of a multi-parish benefice in South Cambridgeshire. Before that, she was Fellow in English at Trinity College, Cambridge, where her research focus was on early modern piety and the early history of literary biography.

Dr Martin’s title for this year’s Bampton Lectures is Four-Dimensional Eucharist. She will be thinking about the eucharist both as sacrament and as ritual theatre, and asking some unusual questions of it. She will be considering its physicality in a time of increasing online presence, the abiding Christian tension between presence and absence it already contains, and its efficacy in a modern culture which veers unstably between scepticism and enchantment. Her range of reference will be wide, reaching from fantasy genres and virtual reality to Eucharistic theology and the anthropology of ritual.

The first two lectures on Tue 11 May, will be livestreamed on our YouTube channel. The last two, on Tue 18 May, will be a hybrid event, in the University Church and livestreamed on our YouTube channel.

Register here:
https://www.universitychurch.ox.ac.uk/content/bampton-lectures

The ‘common good’ is a powerful and evocative phrase, drawing us towards those aims and ideals that we share together. We hear politicians and leaders invoke it – and we often pray for it in church. But what the common good might mean is far from straightforward, especially when we know that all human beings are unique and there are many different ideas of what is good and fulfilling. Given this complexity and diversity, how do we find what is common, how can we come to agreement on things that matter to us, but without sacrificing our individuality? And what role can churches play in helping – or hindering – the search for the common good? 

This term we will be exploring these issues in a series of podcasts and discussions, starting this Wednesday at 8pm on Zoom and continuing on 24 February and 10 March. This week, I will be joined by Mariëtta van der Tol, who is a constitutional theorist and Alfred Landecker postdoctoral fellow at the Blavatnik School of Government. She was also recently Licensed as a Lay Minister in the Church of England.  To start the series off, Mariëtta and I have recorded a short podcast. In it we talk about approaching the 'common good' through a genuine conversation about the kind of society we want to live in, and we discuss why it’s so important to include all members of society in that conversation.

Our second podcast, on ‘Reconciliation and the Common Good’ is an interview with Matthew Murphy, a recent history graduate and now an intern to the bishop of Coventry. Coventry cathedral has had a powerful ministry of reconciliation since the end of the Second World War and Matthew explains why this is still important today. We discuss the ways in which practices of reconciliation can contribute to a broader understanding of the common good, and the role of Christianity in this.

The University Church Choir sings Palestrina’s Stabat Mater. In this medieval hymn, we contemplate the grief of Mary standing at the foot of the cross. On Good Friday, these words challenge us to reach out in compassion to all those whose hearts are broken.

‘Christ’s Seven Last Words’ is a production of the University Church in Oxford, featuring Professor Graham Ward, Regius Professor of Divinity, which will be released each evening throughout Holy Week.

In this seventh and final episode, Professor Graham Ward reflects on the words, ‘Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.

Music sung by the University Church Choir.
Sound design by Ana-Maria Niculcea

As I said, there is one final step, one final last word. It is not in the Gospel of John, just as the cry of dereliction and abandonment – “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me!” – is not in John, nor in Luke. Though it is Luke that records the final deliverance from suffering and the final word: “Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.” This committal is a profoundly Trinitarian act: the Son returning His life to the Father through the Sprit. It shows that all the Godhead is involved in the crucifixion, as all the Godhead was involved in creation and its redemption, the incarnation and the resurrection. We overhear a voiced intra-Trinitarian prayer that reveals the operations of a love that is sacrificial surrender. It is a surrender into silence, for the Word now falls silent. But in that prayer, as in that silence and through that final deliverance, there is a reconciliation. If, citing the psalm, the earlier words of Christ’s forsakenness by God invokes the abyssal difference and distance between creation and its uncreated Creator, then with this prayer there is an incomprehensible crossing of that difference and distance. Something is deepened about God being with us, first announced in Emmanuel and the Bethlehem birth. This is not a departure from that presence: God is with us through the whole of Holy Saturday and the silence of the Word. The death of God, here, is not the abandonment of the world to its own wretchedness. It is rather the bringing of the world into the plenitude of that presence. This is the dilation of God for a new birthing. As the resurrected Christ in Matthew’s Gospel says, “I am with you always.” He is not with us materially, except in and through the work of the church as the body of Christ, the distributor of the sacraments, the proclaimer of the Word down through the tradition and its continual meditation upon the Scriptures, and its work among the sick, the poor, the imprisoned and the oppressed. Christ enters an eternal rest, which is also our eternal rest. But the labouring of His presence remains, and we are participants in that labouring: the body has to be taken down from the cross, the dead have to be buried, the bereaved have to be comforted, new creatures will be born, new joys registered and the rearing and formation of these children begins. What remains, what will always remain, even on the day of resurrection, is the drama and gravitas of the cross. It remains as a perpetual memory, returning almost like trauma, with every suffering, persecution, betrayal, hostility and domination. It is the meek, Jesus tells us, who will inherit the earth. And meekly He completes that salvation, known in God since the foundation of the world. He bows His head. “Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.” And, according to Matthew, at “that moment the curtain of the Temple was torn from top to bottom. There was an earthquake, the rocks split, and the graves were opened.” This upheaval is a beginning, not an end.