Sermon

 

Worship was the primary example that John Bayton (1930-2022) set to all of those around him. He led from the front, not least when he was seen singing the hymn at the tail of the procession, all the words. His conduct of services live in the memory, as do the words of many of his sermons. A pun that he used more than once in sermons was ‘to re-member’, which he extended like John Donne or someone into an entire way of understanding what was happening at the Eucharist. To re-member is to be brought together again into a union of fellowship, to take that which is broken and heal it, to receive and see for the first time that which is done every time in this act of relationship with the host. Sometimes, being a Jungian, he related his dreams to the congregation. This could be disconcerting to some in attendance but he was not indulging in personal psychodrama and the content seemed to be connected to the readings for the Sunday. He wished us to explore our own dreams, to intuit for ourselves what they said. His dreams were related in accord with the action of revelation. A sentence I remember very well from one sermon was that “we are not called to be good, we are called to be holy.” He meant whole and holy in mind, body, and spirit. One Christmas Eve he raised the question of child sexual abuse and what we think we are doing with the Nativity of the person whom the story later relates as the broken victim, Jesus. This was not what the festive congregation had come to hear but neither was anyone leaving with a complaint that his wake-up call was inappropriate. At another Christmas he took us through the secret catechism known as the Twelve Days, with its ultimate chorus of Christ himself, the partridge in the pear tree. Such sermons exemplified in words his love of image and imagination. The imago Dei was his daily concern. John Bayton was an artist. On weekdays that were fair weather he was observed after breakfast painting his latest canvas in the vicarage garden. Some of these would find their way, liturgically, into his sermons. I seem to remember him placing one large painting on an easel opposite the pulpit, a painting that was a Last Supper with apostles missing and not enough food to go round. This was offered as an image of the contemporary church. A painting I remember very well was of the Magi, standing together each clothed in the colour of their gift. It was sombre like a Rothko. This painting was prompted, or so it seemed from the words in his sermon, by the famous reading of the story in the sermon of Saint Ambrose of Milan. Gold is for the king of glory, myrrh foreshadows his burial, and (creatively) frankincense is burning up, the smoke rising into space like prayer. This was all back when women’s ordination was threatening schism, or worse, but he would preach on occasions in Ordinary Time that this was no reason to tear the church apart. His listeners in the pews held every kind of position on the subject and listened thoughtfully. To reflect on such sermons now is to arrive at the understanding, this too will pass.

Photograph: Bishop John Bayton worked at different times in his life at St George’s College and at the Cathedral in Jerusalem. One long series of paintings he made were what could be called Jerusalem mandalas. They are icons, you’d have to say, and we have some at home, see the picture. Colleagues in Brisbane have advised that + John’s funeral will be held at St John’s Cathedral, Brisbane on Tuesday the 30^th of August at 2 pm.