There won't be any more posts on this non-blog, as the institutional church has finally made it abundantly clear that I am not wanted...and maybe, after all, it only gave me an extra push in the direction in which I was already going.
But I think I am happy with the "Quaker sermon", which also talks about my beloved St Paul and the thing we hope for above all, being the last one.
Don't listen to me, anyway. Listen to God...and what canst thou say?
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Saturday, May 1, 2010
What canst thou say?
Last week I suggested some ways of approaching reading the Scriptures. The main drift of what I was saying was that people “in those days” were not different from us now, and – well, this is so obvious as not really to need saying – God was not different then from the way he is now. It is to us this is spoken, of us this is said.
I hope that in the years I have been standing up here I have not told you what to believe. I may have told you how I see things, I may have told you how the church, or a part of the church, or certain people of God, see things; but the things of God can only, fundamentally, be understood as part of my own, your own, relationship with God as we encounter God in the Scriptures and in our lives: the two elements of salvation history.
Margaret Fell quotes George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, thus: “You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?” Now this is not to say that any old interpretation is fine and that all opinions are equal. We are not talking here about opinions. “Opinions”, if not worthless, are at the least a barrier to true understanding. Because opinions come from the surface, and understanding comes from deep within, whether deep within our brains, deep within our guts or deep within our souls. Gestalt therapy, which some of you may be aware of, relies on that. It relies on the fact that deep within, so deep sometimes as to be inaccessible under normal circumstances, we all hold our own answers, our own healing, our own inward godliness – as George Fox put it, “that of God” within each human being made in God’s image and likeness. And that deep place is where we find peace, understanding, our true selves as God sees them.
What matters when you read the Scriptures is the response the passage draws from “that of God” within you; the message that you hear from God. You do need to ask yourself Fox’s question, “what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?”, but if the passage has not evoked something from your depths, then you have not understood it, however much you know about it academically.
Since I cannot tell you what to believe, or what today’s Scriptures are saying to you, I can only tell you what they are saying to me. And what leaps to my mind as I hear them is St Paul’s phrase: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”
Paul is our first role model, the first Christian we know anything much about to live like us, the first Christian we know anything much about ever to need to make this statement: If for this life only we hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. During Jesus’ lifetime, I doubt whether anyone even gave that a thought. Yes, there are a couple of references in the Old Testament to life beyond death, and it is a given that God is eternal. But I am pretty sure that the people who came to Jesus came to him for what he could give them in this life. Paul’s statement would probably have made no sense to them at all. It was for this life that they hoped in Jesus, and while some of them rather thought he might be the Christ, the word did not, at that time, have the resonances that it has had since the resurrection and, above all, since Paul’s meditations on the meaning of the resurrection. As for the people who had lived with Jesus and who had stayed the course until the resurrection, they would have been mystified by that statement too. It was patently obvious to them that Jesus Christ transcended death, and in a way quite different to mere raising from the dead back to this life. Jesus was alive and solid, but no longer of this world: his very presence spoke to them of a fuller life with God.
But Paul was the first Christian we know anything much about to have to live by faith as we do. He was the first one to whom that statement of faith, which is also a statement of at least the possibility of doubt, would have made sense, as it does to us. Paul had never seen Jesus in the flesh. His only direct experience of the Lord was in a vision; dramatic it may have been, but it was a vision only, and we do not really know what form it took. It is quite possible that the basic experience was not that different from the experiences of contact with the Lord that many or most of us have had. I can think of a few in my life that I could no more doubt than I could doubt my own existence, and I don’t think I’m unusual in that. But still, you can’t put your finger in the wounds of a vision, or your hand in its side. Jesus knew that very well, and told us that he knew it: Blessed, he said, are those who have not seen, and yet believe. That’s Paul, and you, and me; if indeed we are children of light, and have walked in the light.
We have not seen the Risen Christ. But it is the crucifixion, and the resurrection, that we pin our hopes on; and this is the Paschal season in which we particularly remember and celebrate the source of our hope, for this life and beyond.
So, back to today’s readings. First, the reading from the book of Daniel, and that long, long night he spent in silence, that of God within him so deeply one with the God who transcended him, that during that night earth and heaven touched, and the peace of God reigned in human and animal alike. Please don’t ask me whether “it really happened”. I do not know whether it really happened and I do not much care. At the very least, this story from Daniel is a parable…..an indication of the direction we might take towards the light. But I think that in the context of our second reading, it could also be the foreshadowing of another cave with a stone in front of it, and another early morning discovery.
So tell me, I hear you murmur, did this other early morning discovery “really happen”? I am sorry but I cannot tell you for certain that it did. And, you know, even if I told you with absolute certainty that it did, that would be of no use to you. Because this is a different sort of truth from the ones that we meet in our everyday lives. This is a truth that has to live in you; live in your depths, in the depths of your brain, your guts and your soul. It is a truth on which Christians stake their entire life, their entire hope of happiness, their entire hope of glory. If that early morning discovery did not really happen, our lives as Christians – my life as a Christian – have been a disaster, a bad joke. Because Christ’s resurrection, and our redemption, are so much part of our very identity as Christians, that if Christ is not risen, then the essential part of who I am simply ceases to be. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”. The only consolation is that, if it did not, we shall never know. But if it did…then, as that same Paul, our brother in faith and in doubt, put it, the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For the corruptible must clothe itself with the incorruptible, and the mortal with immortality. When the corruptible has been clothed with the incorruptible, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory”.
I hope that in the years I have been standing up here I have not told you what to believe. I may have told you how I see things, I may have told you how the church, or a part of the church, or certain people of God, see things; but the things of God can only, fundamentally, be understood as part of my own, your own, relationship with God as we encounter God in the Scriptures and in our lives: the two elements of salvation history.
Margaret Fell quotes George Fox, the founder of the Quaker movement, thus: “You will say Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say? Art thou a child of Light and hast thou walked in the Light, and what thou speakest is it inwardly from God?” Now this is not to say that any old interpretation is fine and that all opinions are equal. We are not talking here about opinions. “Opinions”, if not worthless, are at the least a barrier to true understanding. Because opinions come from the surface, and understanding comes from deep within, whether deep within our brains, deep within our guts or deep within our souls. Gestalt therapy, which some of you may be aware of, relies on that. It relies on the fact that deep within, so deep sometimes as to be inaccessible under normal circumstances, we all hold our own answers, our own healing, our own inward godliness – as George Fox put it, “that of God” within each human being made in God’s image and likeness. And that deep place is where we find peace, understanding, our true selves as God sees them.
What matters when you read the Scriptures is the response the passage draws from “that of God” within you; the message that you hear from God. You do need to ask yourself Fox’s question, “what thou speakest, is it inwardly from God?”, but if the passage has not evoked something from your depths, then you have not understood it, however much you know about it academically.
Since I cannot tell you what to believe, or what today’s Scriptures are saying to you, I can only tell you what they are saying to me. And what leaps to my mind as I hear them is St Paul’s phrase: “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”
Paul is our first role model, the first Christian we know anything much about to live like us, the first Christian we know anything much about ever to need to make this statement: If for this life only we hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. During Jesus’ lifetime, I doubt whether anyone even gave that a thought. Yes, there are a couple of references in the Old Testament to life beyond death, and it is a given that God is eternal. But I am pretty sure that the people who came to Jesus came to him for what he could give them in this life. Paul’s statement would probably have made no sense to them at all. It was for this life that they hoped in Jesus, and while some of them rather thought he might be the Christ, the word did not, at that time, have the resonances that it has had since the resurrection and, above all, since Paul’s meditations on the meaning of the resurrection. As for the people who had lived with Jesus and who had stayed the course until the resurrection, they would have been mystified by that statement too. It was patently obvious to them that Jesus Christ transcended death, and in a way quite different to mere raising from the dead back to this life. Jesus was alive and solid, but no longer of this world: his very presence spoke to them of a fuller life with God.
But Paul was the first Christian we know anything much about to have to live by faith as we do. He was the first one to whom that statement of faith, which is also a statement of at least the possibility of doubt, would have made sense, as it does to us. Paul had never seen Jesus in the flesh. His only direct experience of the Lord was in a vision; dramatic it may have been, but it was a vision only, and we do not really know what form it took. It is quite possible that the basic experience was not that different from the experiences of contact with the Lord that many or most of us have had. I can think of a few in my life that I could no more doubt than I could doubt my own existence, and I don’t think I’m unusual in that. But still, you can’t put your finger in the wounds of a vision, or your hand in its side. Jesus knew that very well, and told us that he knew it: Blessed, he said, are those who have not seen, and yet believe. That’s Paul, and you, and me; if indeed we are children of light, and have walked in the light.
We have not seen the Risen Christ. But it is the crucifixion, and the resurrection, that we pin our hopes on; and this is the Paschal season in which we particularly remember and celebrate the source of our hope, for this life and beyond.
So, back to today’s readings. First, the reading from the book of Daniel, and that long, long night he spent in silence, that of God within him so deeply one with the God who transcended him, that during that night earth and heaven touched, and the peace of God reigned in human and animal alike. Please don’t ask me whether “it really happened”. I do not know whether it really happened and I do not much care. At the very least, this story from Daniel is a parable…..an indication of the direction we might take towards the light. But I think that in the context of our second reading, it could also be the foreshadowing of another cave with a stone in front of it, and another early morning discovery.
So tell me, I hear you murmur, did this other early morning discovery “really happen”? I am sorry but I cannot tell you for certain that it did. And, you know, even if I told you with absolute certainty that it did, that would be of no use to you. Because this is a different sort of truth from the ones that we meet in our everyday lives. This is a truth that has to live in you; live in your depths, in the depths of your brain, your guts and your soul. It is a truth on which Christians stake their entire life, their entire hope of happiness, their entire hope of glory. If that early morning discovery did not really happen, our lives as Christians – my life as a Christian – have been a disaster, a bad joke. Because Christ’s resurrection, and our redemption, are so much part of our very identity as Christians, that if Christ is not risen, then the essential part of who I am simply ceases to be. “If in this life only we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied”. The only consolation is that, if it did not, we shall never know. But if it did…then, as that same Paul, our brother in faith and in doubt, put it, the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For the corruptible must clothe itself with the incorruptible, and the mortal with immortality. When the corruptible has been clothed with the incorruptible, and the mortal with immortality, then the saying that is written will come true: "Death has been swallowed up in victory”.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
God's Postie
You know what it feels like…you are waiting for the results of an exam, medical test or job interview. They will arrive in the post today & the postie is late. & the feet of the postie are what you are waiting for above all.
Now the postie is not necessarily wearing those fashionable strappy gladiator sandals on beautiful slender tanned feet which have just had a pedicure. It’s not the feet so much as the sound of the footsteps. You can hear them even though you are at the other end of the house, because you have been listening out for them. Here they come: the scruffy trainers with laces that don’t match, barely visible below overlong, frayed, dirty jeans. How beautiful are the feet! & then you hear the letterbox go, the letter drops on to the mat, you open it &…you have got a distinction, an all-clear, the dream job. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation!
& now imagine that this is news that a whole nation has been waiting for, almost but not quite losing hope, battered by one disaster after another; Isaiah may mention watchmen, but there are no watchtowers: the Babylonians have seen to that. & the last people to come over those mountains were bearing anything but peace & good tidings. The postie, shall we say, had brought tidings of failure, disease & death; but now it is different. The future is no longer unmitigated destruction & oppression; the light at the end of the tunnel really is not, this time, the headlights of an oncoming train.
This is how to read tonight’s passage from Isaiah. People in Isaiah’s day were not different from us. This may be a historical document, but that’s not why we read it. I agree, of course, that we need to know some of the historical & social background of Scripture (I’ve given you some just now!) but there can be a temptation to concentrate too much on it. It is genuinely interesting; but above all, maybe, it is less threatening, less demanding; we can stay comfortably in our heads & discuss whether it was the Babylonians or the Assyrians that Isaiah was talking about &, if the latter, whether their cohorts really were gleaming in purple & gold. & what exactly John the Baptist ate &, if the locusts were insects, whether he cooked them first.
I will quote for the nth time the phrase that Kierkegaard muttered to himself before starting to read any Scripture: “It is of me this is spoken, to me this is said”. We must allow the Scripture to interrogate us, not as to what is in our brain (do we know what a locust tree is & where’s Assyria?) but as to what is in our soul.
I have noticed quite frequently at Bible study groups & even at Lent groups that there is an almost audible sigh of relief when the discussion moves to some piece of historical or social information; when that is not what the whole thing is about at all. We are not talking about academic questions but about human beings; & human beings in their nature as children of God & as subjects of salvation history; we are talking, indeed, about God’s action in his creation. Why do we read Scripture after all? Paul replies quite clearly: to Timothy he says: “All Scripture is…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” & to the Romans he explains that “whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance & the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”. “How beautiful are the feet!”
& there’s that familiar verse from the epistle to the Hebrews “For the word of God is living & active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul & spirit, joints & marrow; it judges the thoughts & attitudes of the heart” . I’m not sure we really hear that verse or we might not quote it so much. It’s not comfortable to have our soul & spirit, joints & marrow, sliced apart without anaesthetic. & even in the context of Bible study or a Lent Group, it can be distinctly uncomfortable to have our thoughts & attitudes judged in public. It takes courage to say, as some evangelicals put it, “This piece of Scripture convicts me”.
Interestingly, Paul applies our passage to preachers; he says, in Romans ch 10: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on one they have not believed in? & how can they believe in one of whom they have not heard? & how can they hear without someone preaching to them? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
So, as always, I am the first person to be convicted by this passage, which speaks to me not only as a child of God, as a Christian, but as a preacher.
My job, the job of all of us who stand up here, is to be the postie I was talking about earlier. To bring from God the message that his people most dearly & deeply want to hear. To bring those who hear the word into the closest possible personal contact with it. Otherwise we might just as well not bother. If you want to know what a locust-tree looks like, look on google images. If you want to know the dates of the Babylonian captivity you can read a history of Israel.
What a preacher should do is what you see Mark do in our second reading: show you how the Scripture speaks not of ancient history but of today. Mark takes the anticipation, the surprise, the disbelieving joy, of Isaiah’s Israelites & plonks it straight down where it belongs in his own era: in the appearance of John the Baptist & Jesus, in the middle of the Roman occupation. Because this is how things are, this is how God is, this is what God does. Mark isn’t talking about five hundred years ago when he quotes Isaiah: he is talking about now. When we read the Scriptures here at Evensong, we are not talking about two thousand, two & a half thousand years ago: we are talking about now.
So read those passages again when you get home. Please, do. & ask yourself what they are saying to you. What does it mean to you that our God reigns, & that Isaiah was exploding with joy when he announced it? or that Mark is calling on you – yes, you – to prepare the way for the Lord?
Because now I’m going to turn the tables on you. I’m down there on the order of service as preacher for Evensong. But Jesus addresses his call to every single one of you when he says “Go into all the world & preach the good news to all creation” & “Therefore go & make disciples of all nations”. & unless the Scriptures, the history of God in this world, speak to your life, you will have nothing to tell them.
& so let us pray: O you who are the fulfilment of the law & the prophets, Christ our God, you have carried out the will of the Father in its entirety. Fill our minds with light & our hearts with love each time we take your holy Scriptures in our hands: for you live & reign with the Father & the Holy Spirit, now & for ever. Amen.
Now the postie is not necessarily wearing those fashionable strappy gladiator sandals on beautiful slender tanned feet which have just had a pedicure. It’s not the feet so much as the sound of the footsteps. You can hear them even though you are at the other end of the house, because you have been listening out for them. Here they come: the scruffy trainers with laces that don’t match, barely visible below overlong, frayed, dirty jeans. How beautiful are the feet! & then you hear the letterbox go, the letter drops on to the mat, you open it &…you have got a distinction, an all-clear, the dream job. How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings, who proclaim salvation!
& now imagine that this is news that a whole nation has been waiting for, almost but not quite losing hope, battered by one disaster after another; Isaiah may mention watchmen, but there are no watchtowers: the Babylonians have seen to that. & the last people to come over those mountains were bearing anything but peace & good tidings. The postie, shall we say, had brought tidings of failure, disease & death; but now it is different. The future is no longer unmitigated destruction & oppression; the light at the end of the tunnel really is not, this time, the headlights of an oncoming train.
This is how to read tonight’s passage from Isaiah. People in Isaiah’s day were not different from us. This may be a historical document, but that’s not why we read it. I agree, of course, that we need to know some of the historical & social background of Scripture (I’ve given you some just now!) but there can be a temptation to concentrate too much on it. It is genuinely interesting; but above all, maybe, it is less threatening, less demanding; we can stay comfortably in our heads & discuss whether it was the Babylonians or the Assyrians that Isaiah was talking about &, if the latter, whether their cohorts really were gleaming in purple & gold. & what exactly John the Baptist ate &, if the locusts were insects, whether he cooked them first.
I will quote for the nth time the phrase that Kierkegaard muttered to himself before starting to read any Scripture: “It is of me this is spoken, to me this is said”. We must allow the Scripture to interrogate us, not as to what is in our brain (do we know what a locust tree is & where’s Assyria?) but as to what is in our soul.
I have noticed quite frequently at Bible study groups & even at Lent groups that there is an almost audible sigh of relief when the discussion moves to some piece of historical or social information; when that is not what the whole thing is about at all. We are not talking about academic questions but about human beings; & human beings in their nature as children of God & as subjects of salvation history; we are talking, indeed, about God’s action in his creation. Why do we read Scripture after all? Paul replies quite clearly: to Timothy he says: “All Scripture is…profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness” & to the Romans he explains that “whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction, so that through perseverance & the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope”. “How beautiful are the feet!”
& there’s that familiar verse from the epistle to the Hebrews “For the word of God is living & active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul & spirit, joints & marrow; it judges the thoughts & attitudes of the heart” . I’m not sure we really hear that verse or we might not quote it so much. It’s not comfortable to have our soul & spirit, joints & marrow, sliced apart without anaesthetic. & even in the context of Bible study or a Lent Group, it can be distinctly uncomfortable to have our thoughts & attitudes judged in public. It takes courage to say, as some evangelicals put it, “This piece of Scripture convicts me”.
Interestingly, Paul applies our passage to preachers; he says, in Romans ch 10: Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved. But how can they call on one they have not believed in? & how can they believe in one of whom they have not heard? & how can they hear without someone preaching to them? As it is written, "How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!"
So, as always, I am the first person to be convicted by this passage, which speaks to me not only as a child of God, as a Christian, but as a preacher.
My job, the job of all of us who stand up here, is to be the postie I was talking about earlier. To bring from God the message that his people most dearly & deeply want to hear. To bring those who hear the word into the closest possible personal contact with it. Otherwise we might just as well not bother. If you want to know what a locust-tree looks like, look on google images. If you want to know the dates of the Babylonian captivity you can read a history of Israel.
What a preacher should do is what you see Mark do in our second reading: show you how the Scripture speaks not of ancient history but of today. Mark takes the anticipation, the surprise, the disbelieving joy, of Isaiah’s Israelites & plonks it straight down where it belongs in his own era: in the appearance of John the Baptist & Jesus, in the middle of the Roman occupation. Because this is how things are, this is how God is, this is what God does. Mark isn’t talking about five hundred years ago when he quotes Isaiah: he is talking about now. When we read the Scriptures here at Evensong, we are not talking about two thousand, two & a half thousand years ago: we are talking about now.
So read those passages again when you get home. Please, do. & ask yourself what they are saying to you. What does it mean to you that our God reigns, & that Isaiah was exploding with joy when he announced it? or that Mark is calling on you – yes, you – to prepare the way for the Lord?
Because now I’m going to turn the tables on you. I’m down there on the order of service as preacher for Evensong. But Jesus addresses his call to every single one of you when he says “Go into all the world & preach the good news to all creation” & “Therefore go & make disciples of all nations”. & unless the Scriptures, the history of God in this world, speak to your life, you will have nothing to tell them.
& so let us pray: O you who are the fulfilment of the law & the prophets, Christ our God, you have carried out the will of the Father in its entirety. Fill our minds with light & our hearts with love each time we take your holy Scriptures in our hands: for you live & reign with the Father & the Holy Spirit, now & for ever. Amen.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
O quam metuendus est locus iste: vere non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei et porta caeli
When I travel by train I look at all the windows flashing by and it makes me quite dizzy to think that behind each window there is a human being who is the centre of their own universe. And then I see a church. That unmistakable architecture. And I wonder what God thinks about it, and why we think it is at all helpful to put up these strange buildings.
There’s a special feel about churches. Some churches smell of incense. Some churches smell of wax polish or Mr Sheen. Some churches, where the priest or minister lives next door, smell of cabbage. But there is something about most of them; whether or not it is the prayers seeping into the walls I do not know. But when you enter a church, you know where you are. Architects are clever. They can do almost as much as magicians can with smoke and mirrors, and there is a reason why church buildings have evolved as they have: it’s rather like chemists imitating natural substances with artificial ones: orange flavour in chocolates, vanilla scent in perfumes; a building that evokes the numinous in imitation of the naturally numinous that comes upon us anywhere. The ancients were not so wrong when they believed that every tree and every spring had its own deity. But you need to bottle a scent to spray it on your wrists, and you need to wall in the numinous to be able to summon people to experience it Sunday by Sunday – and other days too.
That’s not all bad by any means. A church can be a refuge on a busy or sad day – it’s easily recognised and easily accessed. And it is a place for fellowship. But Jacob tells us something very important in today’s reading: that the house of God and the gate of heaven is everywhere – or rather, anywhere. There is no place on this earth where we might not see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending. And St Paul was not talking figuratively when he said that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. I said I recognise the churches as I gaze at towns and cities from the train. But in fact, behind every one of those windows in every one of those houses is at least one temple of the Holy Spirit.
And the natural activity in a temple is prayer. It’s strange: nobody ever tells you the fact that prayer is easy. Prayer is the simplest and the most natural thing that there is: it is as natural as breathing; actually, it is as natural as being. There are countless books written about prayer and precious few of them tell you how it’s done; and those that do often give complicated techniques that only suit people like their authors. Many of the techniques are helpful; I have found the Jesus Prayer helpful, and I find lectio divina invaluable. But they aren’t prayer, just techniques; just preparation.
So here’s a suggestion. One of these days, take your guilt, and your gut feeling that God likes things to be tough for us, and leave them outside the room. Find a really comfortable armchair. Make sure you aren’t hungry or thirsty, too cold or too hot, and that you don’t need the loo. Set aside half an hour to do nothing, in comfort, in the presence of God. Or if you prefer, go for a walk, nowhere in particular, in the presence of God. And relax. And wait, or listen, or just do nothing. Breathe; be. Don’t worry about whether you will hear anything, whether you will fall asleep, whether you will be “distracted”. I don’t believe in distractions. If they’re not important, you can push them aside, or simply be aware of them as something that’s chattering away somewhere in the background. If they are important, then God’s interested in them too, and they’re not distractions.
Prayer is simply being with God – what you do with the time once you and God are sitting in companionable silence is your business. “But we’re always with God!” Are we indeed? Am I with you if we’re out somewhere and I have my nose in my mobile phone, texting someone else? Are you with me if you are reading Scotland on Sunday while I’m preaching? Honestly…it has happened to me…and that’s why, when you’re beginning to pray, you really do need to be somewhere without phones or computers, or whatever your equivalent is. With practice you can be with God anywhere; like Rabbi Lionel Blue I find busy railway stations and doctors’ waiting rooms ideal for prayer, but you do need to practise in quiet places first.
So what’s this got to do with Lent? Well now, what is Lent for? Would any of you like to give me a suggestion? No, seriously, go on…
OK. Lent is the preparation for the resurrection. Lent is the run-up to the leap into eternal life. The point of Lent is to accompany Jesus on his journey towards Easter, and at the same time practise for the journey towards our own Easter. We do this through reading the story of his journey (the Gospels), and also reading the background to it (the rest of the Scriptures). And above all, by being with God.
Giving things up for Lent, making ourselves uncomfortable, hungry, tired, cold – is totally neutral. It can be useless, it can be damaging, or it can be immensely valuable; everything hangs on why you do it. And for that you need self-knowledge. Self-discovery can be painful, but it is always worthwhile, because unless you know who you are, your inclinations, your strengths and weaknesses, your style, you can’t become the person God had in mind when he started you off on your journey towards resurrection. We do indeed see Jesus in the Gospels, but the other place we meet him is in our lives. When we sit in silence, just listening, just waiting, not talking, we meet him. And, like Nathanael, in his presence we meet ourselves.
I do wonder whether silence is a frightening idea to many of us because in silence we’re faced with our own undiluted selves, and none of us is as perfect as we would like to be and, perhaps, would like to kid ourselves we are. But the thing about silence is that God’s there. And he has told us over and over and over again that in his presence we are totally safe: a safe environment to practise being ourselves; nobody’s watching except the one who knows us better than we do.
I’ve often heard people saying they wished they had been the two disciples who spent the whole day with Jesus. Or simply wished they had lived at the same time as Jesus. Well, I’m quite glad I didn’t, as I am not sure that I would have spotted the difference between him and all the other wandering teachers, prophets and what-have-you; and I am not sure at all that, with all the religious authorities telling me that he was a wrong ’un, I would have had the discernment to spot that they were wrong. The first Lent wouldn’t have been a comfortable time or place to be.
So maybe there is something that’s worth giving up in Lent: our comfort zone, the place where we hide from God and from ourselves. I don’t know what yours is – perhaps you could sit down with God sometime and let him tell you? And don’t forget: just because you don’t see the angels ascending and descending – that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.
There’s a special feel about churches. Some churches smell of incense. Some churches smell of wax polish or Mr Sheen. Some churches, where the priest or minister lives next door, smell of cabbage. But there is something about most of them; whether or not it is the prayers seeping into the walls I do not know. But when you enter a church, you know where you are. Architects are clever. They can do almost as much as magicians can with smoke and mirrors, and there is a reason why church buildings have evolved as they have: it’s rather like chemists imitating natural substances with artificial ones: orange flavour in chocolates, vanilla scent in perfumes; a building that evokes the numinous in imitation of the naturally numinous that comes upon us anywhere. The ancients were not so wrong when they believed that every tree and every spring had its own deity. But you need to bottle a scent to spray it on your wrists, and you need to wall in the numinous to be able to summon people to experience it Sunday by Sunday – and other days too.
That’s not all bad by any means. A church can be a refuge on a busy or sad day – it’s easily recognised and easily accessed. And it is a place for fellowship. But Jacob tells us something very important in today’s reading: that the house of God and the gate of heaven is everywhere – or rather, anywhere. There is no place on this earth where we might not see the heavens opened and the angels of God ascending and descending. And St Paul was not talking figuratively when he said that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Spirit. I said I recognise the churches as I gaze at towns and cities from the train. But in fact, behind every one of those windows in every one of those houses is at least one temple of the Holy Spirit.
And the natural activity in a temple is prayer. It’s strange: nobody ever tells you the fact that prayer is easy. Prayer is the simplest and the most natural thing that there is: it is as natural as breathing; actually, it is as natural as being. There are countless books written about prayer and precious few of them tell you how it’s done; and those that do often give complicated techniques that only suit people like their authors. Many of the techniques are helpful; I have found the Jesus Prayer helpful, and I find lectio divina invaluable. But they aren’t prayer, just techniques; just preparation.
So here’s a suggestion. One of these days, take your guilt, and your gut feeling that God likes things to be tough for us, and leave them outside the room. Find a really comfortable armchair. Make sure you aren’t hungry or thirsty, too cold or too hot, and that you don’t need the loo. Set aside half an hour to do nothing, in comfort, in the presence of God. Or if you prefer, go for a walk, nowhere in particular, in the presence of God. And relax. And wait, or listen, or just do nothing. Breathe; be. Don’t worry about whether you will hear anything, whether you will fall asleep, whether you will be “distracted”. I don’t believe in distractions. If they’re not important, you can push them aside, or simply be aware of them as something that’s chattering away somewhere in the background. If they are important, then God’s interested in them too, and they’re not distractions.
Prayer is simply being with God – what you do with the time once you and God are sitting in companionable silence is your business. “But we’re always with God!” Are we indeed? Am I with you if we’re out somewhere and I have my nose in my mobile phone, texting someone else? Are you with me if you are reading Scotland on Sunday while I’m preaching? Honestly…it has happened to me…and that’s why, when you’re beginning to pray, you really do need to be somewhere without phones or computers, or whatever your equivalent is. With practice you can be with God anywhere; like Rabbi Lionel Blue I find busy railway stations and doctors’ waiting rooms ideal for prayer, but you do need to practise in quiet places first.
So what’s this got to do with Lent? Well now, what is Lent for? Would any of you like to give me a suggestion? No, seriously, go on…
OK. Lent is the preparation for the resurrection. Lent is the run-up to the leap into eternal life. The point of Lent is to accompany Jesus on his journey towards Easter, and at the same time practise for the journey towards our own Easter. We do this through reading the story of his journey (the Gospels), and also reading the background to it (the rest of the Scriptures). And above all, by being with God.
Giving things up for Lent, making ourselves uncomfortable, hungry, tired, cold – is totally neutral. It can be useless, it can be damaging, or it can be immensely valuable; everything hangs on why you do it. And for that you need self-knowledge. Self-discovery can be painful, but it is always worthwhile, because unless you know who you are, your inclinations, your strengths and weaknesses, your style, you can’t become the person God had in mind when he started you off on your journey towards resurrection. We do indeed see Jesus in the Gospels, but the other place we meet him is in our lives. When we sit in silence, just listening, just waiting, not talking, we meet him. And, like Nathanael, in his presence we meet ourselves.
I do wonder whether silence is a frightening idea to many of us because in silence we’re faced with our own undiluted selves, and none of us is as perfect as we would like to be and, perhaps, would like to kid ourselves we are. But the thing about silence is that God’s there. And he has told us over and over and over again that in his presence we are totally safe: a safe environment to practise being ourselves; nobody’s watching except the one who knows us better than we do.
I’ve often heard people saying they wished they had been the two disciples who spent the whole day with Jesus. Or simply wished they had lived at the same time as Jesus. Well, I’m quite glad I didn’t, as I am not sure that I would have spotted the difference between him and all the other wandering teachers, prophets and what-have-you; and I am not sure at all that, with all the religious authorities telling me that he was a wrong ’un, I would have had the discernment to spot that they were wrong. The first Lent wouldn’t have been a comfortable time or place to be.
So maybe there is something that’s worth giving up in Lent: our comfort zone, the place where we hide from God and from ourselves. I don’t know what yours is – perhaps you could sit down with God sometime and let him tell you? And don’t forget: just because you don’t see the angels ascending and descending – that doesn’t mean that they aren’t there.
Saturday, February 27, 2010
Sub pennas eius sperabis
O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing! 35Look, your house is left to you desolate.
I am sure that most of you have read, or at least are aware of, Gerry Hughes’ book called “God of Surprises”. It has been a huge success, and although it is an exceptional book, I rather think that its success is partly due to its title. That title will strike a chord with almost everyone – no, I think absolutely everyone – who has any relationship to speak of with God. God is surprising, has surprised everyone, angel or human, he has had anything to do with. There is a persistent tradition that when the angels heard that God was going to be made human in the incarnation, some of them were so horrified that they rebelled. We can’t possibly know whether or not that is true, but it is not unlike our shocking God to be too much even for angels to cope with. God has a habit of choosing shockingly unlikely people: the wrong brother; loose women (including a prostitute or two); the people who are far too old to have children but are chosen to do precisely that; the cowards; the stammering prophets; the smallest, weakest nation…and that rather confusing tradition is proudly continued by Jesus. His (alleged) father? A joiner who wasn’t even married to his mother when she became pregnant. His apostles? A bunch of probably illiterate fishermen plus the odd tax-collector and fundamentalist terrorist. The first to see him after his resurrection? A woman who might have been a sinner and had definitely been possessed by seven demons.
There are two fundamental things that we need to remember about Jesus, this person we meet in the Gospels. They seem to contradict each other but they are equally important. He was God; and he was human. We are so used to that phrase used of him in the Creed “true God of true God”, “very God of very God” , and most of us would agree that yes, Jesus was more than just a man. Some of us believe very definitely that he was true God, just as true God as the Father and the Holy Spirit. Some of us aren’t so sure. But we do proclaim it weekly, and I think we must accept that, if we are to call ourselves Christians, we have to face its implications, rather than repeating it but shying away from its meaning. And there’s no doubt that he was human; very human. I know that we are told God never asks anything of us without giving us the grace to do it, but still…how sane, how “together”, how well-balanced Jesus must have been to cope with his contradictory identity, whether he could have verbalised his oddity or not. You need to remember both sides, or you won’t come anywhere near understanding this doubly complex character.
So when you get a heartfelt cry like the one we have in today’s Gospel, you have to hear it on two levels. Jesus said this as a man, but he also said it as God, and this means that it has far-reaching connotations and resonances. He is a man, approaching the end of a mission that has, so far as he can see, been a near-total failure. He’s pretty clear by now that his days are numbered and that the future is looking very frightening. And that the very people who should have been at the centre of that mission, who should have received him with great joy and been closest to him are just the people who are rejecting him. And what is possibly worse is that he sees that if they continue on the route he sees them taking their fate will be hardly less tragic than his own. “Behold, your house is left to you…desolate.” And he loves them more than he loves himself. Christian art has depicted him as a pelican, feeding his young with his heart’s blood; the bird he himself chose was much more homely and much less dignified: a mother hen, clucking and flapping while her chicks scatter around the farmyard. One thing Jesus did not do was stand on his dignity; he preferred a small donkey to a high horse. His spirit may have had wings, but when he looked at himself the wings he saw were not an eagle’s but a hen’s.
And yet, just as the donkey on Palm Sunday was the sign both of humility and of kingship, the reference to the bird was not made just by a man; it was made by God. There is no indication in the Gospel up to this point that Jesus the man had made any particular efforts to gather the people of Jerusalem. Jerusalem of course stands for the whole people of Israel, the whole people of God. And that “how many times” refers not to the last three years but to the last three thousand…and more. I am sure that Jesus God remembered what the psalmist had said about him: He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; and Isaiah: Like birds hovering overhead, the Lord Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will 'pass over' it and will rescue it. And the author of Deuteronomy describes God’s care for Jacob like this: He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. I like to imagine Jesus thinking of these texts, knowing that they referred to himself, but, in his humility and, in a way, his refusal to take himself too seriously, choosing to be a hen and not an eagle.
He was, as he said, meek and lowly of heart, but there was also a strength and authority about him that came from somewhere other than his human nature. You can see it in the way he simply brushed aside the power of Herod, as he later brushed aside the power of Pilate. And that was not because they did not have power. Pilate certainly did. Jesus’ life and death were indeed in his hands. It was because it did not matter. I have heard it put this way: It’s not so much what the future holds as Who holds the future. And Jesus knew who held the future, and in some fuzzy way he knew that he held it himself. When he said “I must” and “it cannot be” it was no outside agency that was compelling him. Our lots are in God’s hands, and his were in his own. It can have been no joke for a man to be God – and we can never, in a whole lifetime of thanksgiving, express even a fraction of the gratitude that he is due for going through with it.
And that’s why, sometimes, although it is of the utmost importance, especially as we move through Lent towards Easter, to remember that Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, I have trouble with pictures like that one Because, when I think of that well-known phrase “And in my flesh shall I see God” I want to add “And in His flesh shall I see God”. And when I see a depiction of the Son of God, I want to see at least some trace of that Son of Man who sat on a dusty hillside overlooking Jerusalem, spotted a frantic hen chasing her chicks and recognised himself in her.
I am sure that most of you have read, or at least are aware of, Gerry Hughes’ book called “God of Surprises”. It has been a huge success, and although it is an exceptional book, I rather think that its success is partly due to its title. That title will strike a chord with almost everyone – no, I think absolutely everyone – who has any relationship to speak of with God. God is surprising, has surprised everyone, angel or human, he has had anything to do with. There is a persistent tradition that when the angels heard that God was going to be made human in the incarnation, some of them were so horrified that they rebelled. We can’t possibly know whether or not that is true, but it is not unlike our shocking God to be too much even for angels to cope with. God has a habit of choosing shockingly unlikely people: the wrong brother; loose women (including a prostitute or two); the people who are far too old to have children but are chosen to do precisely that; the cowards; the stammering prophets; the smallest, weakest nation…and that rather confusing tradition is proudly continued by Jesus. His (alleged) father? A joiner who wasn’t even married to his mother when she became pregnant. His apostles? A bunch of probably illiterate fishermen plus the odd tax-collector and fundamentalist terrorist. The first to see him after his resurrection? A woman who might have been a sinner and had definitely been possessed by seven demons.
There are two fundamental things that we need to remember about Jesus, this person we meet in the Gospels. They seem to contradict each other but they are equally important. He was God; and he was human. We are so used to that phrase used of him in the Creed “true God of true God”, “very God of very God” , and most of us would agree that yes, Jesus was more than just a man. Some of us believe very definitely that he was true God, just as true God as the Father and the Holy Spirit. Some of us aren’t so sure. But we do proclaim it weekly, and I think we must accept that, if we are to call ourselves Christians, we have to face its implications, rather than repeating it but shying away from its meaning. And there’s no doubt that he was human; very human. I know that we are told God never asks anything of us without giving us the grace to do it, but still…how sane, how “together”, how well-balanced Jesus must have been to cope with his contradictory identity, whether he could have verbalised his oddity or not. You need to remember both sides, or you won’t come anywhere near understanding this doubly complex character.
So when you get a heartfelt cry like the one we have in today’s Gospel, you have to hear it on two levels. Jesus said this as a man, but he also said it as God, and this means that it has far-reaching connotations and resonances. He is a man, approaching the end of a mission that has, so far as he can see, been a near-total failure. He’s pretty clear by now that his days are numbered and that the future is looking very frightening. And that the very people who should have been at the centre of that mission, who should have received him with great joy and been closest to him are just the people who are rejecting him. And what is possibly worse is that he sees that if they continue on the route he sees them taking their fate will be hardly less tragic than his own. “Behold, your house is left to you…desolate.” And he loves them more than he loves himself. Christian art has depicted him as a pelican, feeding his young with his heart’s blood; the bird he himself chose was much more homely and much less dignified: a mother hen, clucking and flapping while her chicks scatter around the farmyard. One thing Jesus did not do was stand on his dignity; he preferred a small donkey to a high horse. His spirit may have had wings, but when he looked at himself the wings he saw were not an eagle’s but a hen’s.
And yet, just as the donkey on Palm Sunday was the sign both of humility and of kingship, the reference to the bird was not made just by a man; it was made by God. There is no indication in the Gospel up to this point that Jesus the man had made any particular efforts to gather the people of Jerusalem. Jerusalem of course stands for the whole people of Israel, the whole people of God. And that “how many times” refers not to the last three years but to the last three thousand…and more. I am sure that Jesus God remembered what the psalmist had said about him: He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge; and Isaiah: Like birds hovering overhead, the Lord Almighty will shield Jerusalem; he will shield it and deliver it, he will 'pass over' it and will rescue it. And the author of Deuteronomy describes God’s care for Jacob like this: He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them on its pinions. I like to imagine Jesus thinking of these texts, knowing that they referred to himself, but, in his humility and, in a way, his refusal to take himself too seriously, choosing to be a hen and not an eagle.
He was, as he said, meek and lowly of heart, but there was also a strength and authority about him that came from somewhere other than his human nature. You can see it in the way he simply brushed aside the power of Herod, as he later brushed aside the power of Pilate. And that was not because they did not have power. Pilate certainly did. Jesus’ life and death were indeed in his hands. It was because it did not matter. I have heard it put this way: It’s not so much what the future holds as Who holds the future. And Jesus knew who held the future, and in some fuzzy way he knew that he held it himself. When he said “I must” and “it cannot be” it was no outside agency that was compelling him. Our lots are in God’s hands, and his were in his own. It can have been no joke for a man to be God – and we can never, in a whole lifetime of thanksgiving, express even a fraction of the gratitude that he is due for going through with it.
And that’s why, sometimes, although it is of the utmost importance, especially as we move through Lent towards Easter, to remember that Jesus Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God, I have trouble with pictures like that one
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Gloria Dei vivens homo
This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now – choose life!
Elsewhere in the Scriptures – and annoyingly I can’t locate the place – it says: If you wish, you can keep the commandments: to behave faithfully is within your power. He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes best will be given to him.” Very much in tune with today’s reading. We are being told uncompromisingly that we need not sin. That if we do sin, it will be our choice. And that is perfectly good theology. There has only ever been one person living on this earth who was unable to sin - though somehow, mysteriously, still maintaining complete freedom: Jesus Christ. But since he died to cancel out the sin of Adam (whatever that was) we are no longer somehow predisposed to sin, as so many of us were taught when we were young.
This is old-fashioned stuff, isn’t it, all this talk of sin. But while I would now probably disagree with almost everything I was taught about sin when I was young, I think we lose sight of its reality at our peril. We are responsible for our actions; that is the bad news. We are responsible for our actions: that is the good news. Jesus told us that without him we could do nothing – implying, at least, nothing good. True. But the point is that we are not without him. By and of myself my attempts at virtue are pretty feeble. But we do not have to act by and of ourselves. His grace is always there first; and if we think that the remnant of the fallenness in our nature, in league with the devil, is so strong as to make any free choice impossible, we are rather underestimating the power of that grace.
These passages of Scripture are about personal responsibility before God and the choice to take the grace he is offering. There have been times, and there still are places, where it has been considered that in order to please God all you need is to be a member of a particular group and to carry out certain ritual or liturgical practices. You must be a Muslim and you must pray a certain number of times a day facing Mecca. You must be a Roman Catholic and you must go to Mass every Sunday, refrain from eating meat on Fridays, and using contraception. You must be a Jew and you must keep the Sabbath strictly and ensure that you do not become ritually unclean. Well, you can’t be all these things, and which of them you are is largely dictated by where and when you were born. I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a fellow St John’s Pisky in which we agreed that we were “woolly Anglicans” by choice and that we would go further than that: we were “passionately woolly”. It is so difficult, in an environment – whether work or political party or religion – where a particular set of beliefs and attitudes is expected or assumed, not to allow that environment to dictate one’s thought and behaviour. Hence “passionately woolly”, hence the positive choice of a way of seeking God that dictates as little as possible; and hence responsibility. If, for example, your environment is racist or sexist, you are tempted to abdicate responsibility as an individual and act in a racist or sexist way. We see that sort of thing in the gospel, though it’s not racism but a sort of frenzy caused by prescriptive institutional religion, whereby priorities are turned upside down and the rights of God and humankind are ignored. In that frenzy it seems perfectly reasonable to tithe mint and cumin, and leave the other, more important but less precise, commandments undone. I am sure that the priest and levite who passed by on the other side were moved by pressing religious commitments. The Samaritan didn’t happen to have that sort of religion, so he was free – to choose life. At this point I should say that the Jewish religion does not have that kind of wrong priority built into the system, although it does lend itself to it through the sheer number of its commandments. The Rabbis have always insisted that the saving of human life (whether Jewish or Gentile) comes before any of the commandments. But that wasn’t the climate in Jesus’ time, and it is so easily not the climate at any time in any religion.
Freedom is a problematic thing. I remember a song containing the lines: “Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking of the time when I’m in love”. I’m not sure what that means in the context of the song, but what it means to me is that while we desire, or think we desire, freedom, there is something else far more precious and far more desirable, which is not compatible with complete freedom, and that is love. When we say we want freedom from these binding institutions (whether it’s a racist workplace or a crazed religious system) and when we say we want freedom to choose, what we are after is not exactly freedom: we want freedom to love, to act according to our love. It is a freedom to know that you must always put the object of your love first, and as St Thomas teaches, only God can be loved legitimately with such an unconditional love. So the freedom we want and need is precisely the freedom not to sin, the freedom to choose life. Paul knew only too well that law cannot give that freedom; all it can tell us is whether or not an action is a sin. The law cannot bring us to assume true responsibility. Only love can do that. When we love we are free to choose – always – the good of the loved one; we are bound; and we are responsible.
Paul was only echoing the Lord when he said that we were no longer under the Law. God forbid, as he said, that we should think that we are thereby free to sin. No: but we are free not to sin. And only in the context of that peculiar kind of freedom does it make sense to tell us that we are able to behave faithfully, that it is within our power to choose good, to choose life; that all we need do is stretch out our hand to the alternative we prefer. Our passage does not talk about conforming to a complicated and rigid set of rules. It talks about listening to the voice of God, and holding fast to him. To God, to him, to a person. To a person we love, a person we are in a relationship with. “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” Moses said this, and he did not even realise that the word was God; certainly he never dreamt that the word would be made flesh.
As a default position we should keep the “rules” of whichever method we have chosen to serve God. However, it doesn’t do any harm to question them, and we should sit lightly enough to them to know that if it becomes clear that they are better abandoned, we are free to do so. We need to be free to choose life. It was true for the Jews, the first people of the word, to whom the word was a book. It is far more true for us, to whom the word is a person.
It is not easy. He never said it would be easy. But it is possible. With his grace it is possible. Freedom, responsibility, love – none of those things is easy. And the thing is, the lighter you sit to the rules, the less they will protect you, the less you can wrap yourself around with limits. Rules can be tough, but it is freedom, refusal to set limits, absolute readiness to move with the Spirit – that is what it really means to follow Christ and to become so like him that we become worthy of bearing his name.
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Elsewhere in the Scriptures – and annoyingly I can’t locate the place – it says: If you wish, you can keep the commandments: to behave faithfully is within your power. He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes best will be given to him.” Very much in tune with today’s reading. We are being told uncompromisingly that we need not sin. That if we do sin, it will be our choice. And that is perfectly good theology. There has only ever been one person living on this earth who was unable to sin - though somehow, mysteriously, still maintaining complete freedom: Jesus Christ. But since he died to cancel out the sin of Adam (whatever that was) we are no longer somehow predisposed to sin, as so many of us were taught when we were young.
This is old-fashioned stuff, isn’t it, all this talk of sin. But while I would now probably disagree with almost everything I was taught about sin when I was young, I think we lose sight of its reality at our peril. We are responsible for our actions; that is the bad news. We are responsible for our actions: that is the good news. Jesus told us that without him we could do nothing – implying, at least, nothing good. True. But the point is that we are not without him. By and of myself my attempts at virtue are pretty feeble. But we do not have to act by and of ourselves. His grace is always there first; and if we think that the remnant of the fallenness in our nature, in league with the devil, is so strong as to make any free choice impossible, we are rather underestimating the power of that grace.
These passages of Scripture are about personal responsibility before God and the choice to take the grace he is offering. There have been times, and there still are places, where it has been considered that in order to please God all you need is to be a member of a particular group and to carry out certain ritual or liturgical practices. You must be a Muslim and you must pray a certain number of times a day facing Mecca. You must be a Roman Catholic and you must go to Mass every Sunday, refrain from eating meat on Fridays, and using contraception. You must be a Jew and you must keep the Sabbath strictly and ensure that you do not become ritually unclean. Well, you can’t be all these things, and which of them you are is largely dictated by where and when you were born. I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a fellow St John’s Pisky in which we agreed that we were “woolly Anglicans” by choice and that we would go further than that: we were “passionately woolly”. It is so difficult, in an environment – whether work or political party or religion – where a particular set of beliefs and attitudes is expected or assumed, not to allow that environment to dictate one’s thought and behaviour. Hence “passionately woolly”, hence the positive choice of a way of seeking God that dictates as little as possible; and hence responsibility. If, for example, your environment is racist or sexist, you are tempted to abdicate responsibility as an individual and act in a racist or sexist way. We see that sort of thing in the gospel, though it’s not racism but a sort of frenzy caused by prescriptive institutional religion, whereby priorities are turned upside down and the rights of God and humankind are ignored. In that frenzy it seems perfectly reasonable to tithe mint and cumin, and leave the other, more important but less precise, commandments undone. I am sure that the priest and levite who passed by on the other side were moved by pressing religious commitments. The Samaritan didn’t happen to have that sort of religion, so he was free – to choose life. At this point I should say that the Jewish religion does not have that kind of wrong priority built into the system, although it does lend itself to it through the sheer number of its commandments. The Rabbis have always insisted that the saving of human life (whether Jewish or Gentile) comes before any of the commandments. But that wasn’t the climate in Jesus’ time, and it is so easily not the climate at any time in any religion.
Freedom is a problematic thing. I remember a song containing the lines: “Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking of the time when I’m in love”. I’m not sure what that means in the context of the song, but what it means to me is that while we desire, or think we desire, freedom, there is something else far more precious and far more desirable, which is not compatible with complete freedom, and that is love. When we say we want freedom from these binding institutions (whether it’s a racist workplace or a crazed religious system) and when we say we want freedom to choose, what we are after is not exactly freedom: we want freedom to love, to act according to our love. It is a freedom to know that you must always put the object of your love first, and as St Thomas teaches, only God can be loved legitimately with such an unconditional love. So the freedom we want and need is precisely the freedom not to sin, the freedom to choose life. Paul knew only too well that law cannot give that freedom; all it can tell us is whether or not an action is a sin. The law cannot bring us to assume true responsibility. Only love can do that. When we love we are free to choose – always – the good of the loved one; we are bound; and we are responsible.
Paul was only echoing the Lord when he said that we were no longer under the Law. God forbid, as he said, that we should think that we are thereby free to sin. No: but we are free not to sin. And only in the context of that peculiar kind of freedom does it make sense to tell us that we are able to behave faithfully, that it is within our power to choose good, to choose life; that all we need do is stretch out our hand to the alternative we prefer. Our passage does not talk about conforming to a complicated and rigid set of rules. It talks about listening to the voice of God, and holding fast to him. To God, to him, to a person. To a person we love, a person we are in a relationship with. “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” Moses said this, and he did not even realise that the word was God; certainly he never dreamt that the word would be made flesh.
As a default position we should keep the “rules” of whichever method we have chosen to serve God. However, it doesn’t do any harm to question them, and we should sit lightly enough to them to know that if it becomes clear that they are better abandoned, we are free to do so. We need to be free to choose life. It was true for the Jews, the first people of the word, to whom the word was a book. It is far more true for us, to whom the word is a person.
It is not easy. He never said it would be easy. But it is possible. With his grace it is possible. Freedom, responsibility, love – none of those things is easy. And the thing is, the lighter you sit to the rules, the less they will protect you, the less you can wrap yourself around with limits. Rules can be tough, but it is freedom, refusal to set limits, absolute readiness to move with the Spirit – that is what it really means to follow Christ and to become so like him that we become worthy of bearing his name.
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.
Saturday, January 9, 2010
Oldie but goodie
I see I forgot to do a sermon for Epiphany last week, so here's one I made earlier:
In dulci iubilo Now sing with hearts aglow
Our delight and pleasure Lies in praesepio:
Like sunshine is our treasure Matris in gremio:
Alpha es et O; Alpha es et O.
I’ve chosen that carol rather than the more obvious “We three Kings” or “Three Kings from Persian lands afar” not because I have doubts about the royalty, origins or number of the Magi (none of which matter in the least) but because this year I am struck more by Christ’s response than by our gifts, by the reality more than the appearance.
Of course, it’s not really accurate to speak of Christ’s response to our gifts, since our gifts are themselves a response. As the Preface has it, “You do not need our praise, but our desire to praise you is itself your gift”. That reminds me of Chesterton’s answer to the question “Why did God make us?”: “Because he thought we would like it”. Christ, God, does not do anything for the sake of a response. he does everything for its own sake – or rather, ultimately for his own sake – because what he does is by definition good in itself. But when we see what he does, and far more when we get a glimpse of what he is, it is impossible not to respond; and that response evokes a response in its turn. “For our praise does not add anything to you, but works for our salvation”. All the same, perhaps I should have said not “Christ’s response to our gifts” but “Christ’s Being, which is at once the inspiration and the reward of our gifts”. I’ve always regretted discovering that “Ego Deus tuus and merces tua magna nimis” is not correctly rendered by the Douay’s “I am thy God and thy reward exceeding great”. Because, mistranslation or not, it is eminently true. The only reward that really is exceeding great is, after all, God himself.
“Like sunshine is our treasure, Matris in gremio”. The Magi knew they were travelling towards the real treasure; their instinct to bring gifts, their own best treasure, to give when they found him, was a sound one. Like calls to like: the divine treasure called for the human treasure. how could it be otherwise?
Like sunshine is our treasure: the nations shall walk in his light and kings in the brightness of his rising. All they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and showing forth praise to the Lord. This is not quite what it looks like. It is in fact an exchange of gifts between God and humankind; it is one example of the wonderful exchange whereby God made himself like us so that we might become like him. “To him that shall overcome I will give power over the nations, as I also have received of my Father; and I will give him the morning star. Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, ad he with me. To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me on my throne, as I also have overcome, and am sat down with my Father on his throne.” The Magi knew quite well that the initiative had not been theirs: the root and stock of David, the bright and morning star, had done the knocking. They had simply answered the call.
They had simply answered the call: and it was clear to them, when they arrived at where the star stopped, that they had arrived at the gate of heaven. “O Patris caritas! O Nati lenitas! Deeply were we stained per nostra crimina; but thou for us hast gained caelorum gaudia. O that we were there!
I said that I was more struck this year by the reality than by the appearance; I think that the reality of this episode in the earthly life of Christ is told – as so often when John does not relate an episode in his gospel – in Revelations. What the Magi saw with their physical eyes was rather an unimpressive sight; but I think their inner eye might well recognise this description:
“After these things I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven…immediately I was in the Spirit: and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting, and he that sat was to the sight like the jasper and the sardine stone, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” “Like sunshine is our treasure, Matris in gremio!”
We don’t know who else was visibly in that house, but there were certainly angels singing nova cantica, and all the bells were ringing in caeli curia. The Magi were just a small fraction of the vast multitude worshipping Christ. “The living creatures rested not day and night, saying: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come. And when those living creatures gave glory, and honour, and benediction to him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever; the four and twenty ancients fell down before him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour and power: because thou hast created all things: and for thy will they were, and have been created.”
This is not just a visit of a few Magi to a child in Bethlehem. It is not even just the first visit of the Gentiles to the Christ. It is the start of the consummation of the age, the turning of humankind to God; the reconciliation of heaven and earth, the marriage of God and humankind. It is what John describes thus: “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunders, saying: Alleluia: for the Lord our God the Almighty hath reigned. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself…and he said to me: Write: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb”. the Magi knew they were blessed. I’ve always been fond of Matthew’s phrase: “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy”. Nothing so strong is found anywhere else in the gospels, not even after the resurrection. Because here in the stable is the dawn of the new dispensation, in which God is with us. This stable is the new Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adored for her husband…Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself with them shall be their God. The Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb…and the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof…and he that sat on the throne said: Behold, I make all things new…Write, for these words are most faithful and true…I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” Rightly did the Magi rejoice with exceeding great joy!
O Jesu, parvule: For thee I long alway;
Hear me, I beseech thee, O puer optime;
And let my pleading reach thee, O princeps gloriae.
Trahe me post te; trahe me post te.
Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus!
In dulci iubilo Now sing with hearts aglow
Our delight and pleasure Lies in praesepio:
Like sunshine is our treasure Matris in gremio:
Alpha es et O; Alpha es et O.
I’ve chosen that carol rather than the more obvious “We three Kings” or “Three Kings from Persian lands afar” not because I have doubts about the royalty, origins or number of the Magi (none of which matter in the least) but because this year I am struck more by Christ’s response than by our gifts, by the reality more than the appearance.
Of course, it’s not really accurate to speak of Christ’s response to our gifts, since our gifts are themselves a response. As the Preface has it, “You do not need our praise, but our desire to praise you is itself your gift”. That reminds me of Chesterton’s answer to the question “Why did God make us?”: “Because he thought we would like it”. Christ, God, does not do anything for the sake of a response. he does everything for its own sake – or rather, ultimately for his own sake – because what he does is by definition good in itself. But when we see what he does, and far more when we get a glimpse of what he is, it is impossible not to respond; and that response evokes a response in its turn. “For our praise does not add anything to you, but works for our salvation”. All the same, perhaps I should have said not “Christ’s response to our gifts” but “Christ’s Being, which is at once the inspiration and the reward of our gifts”. I’ve always regretted discovering that “Ego Deus tuus and merces tua magna nimis” is not correctly rendered by the Douay’s “I am thy God and thy reward exceeding great”. Because, mistranslation or not, it is eminently true. The only reward that really is exceeding great is, after all, God himself.
“Like sunshine is our treasure, Matris in gremio”. The Magi knew they were travelling towards the real treasure; their instinct to bring gifts, their own best treasure, to give when they found him, was a sound one. Like calls to like: the divine treasure called for the human treasure. how could it be otherwise?
Like sunshine is our treasure: the nations shall walk in his light and kings in the brightness of his rising. All they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and showing forth praise to the Lord. This is not quite what it looks like. It is in fact an exchange of gifts between God and humankind; it is one example of the wonderful exchange whereby God made himself like us so that we might become like him. “To him that shall overcome I will give power over the nations, as I also have received of my Father; and I will give him the morning star. Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, ad he with me. To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me on my throne, as I also have overcome, and am sat down with my Father on his throne.” The Magi knew quite well that the initiative had not been theirs: the root and stock of David, the bright and morning star, had done the knocking. They had simply answered the call.
They had simply answered the call: and it was clear to them, when they arrived at where the star stopped, that they had arrived at the gate of heaven. “O Patris caritas! O Nati lenitas! Deeply were we stained per nostra crimina; but thou for us hast gained caelorum gaudia. O that we were there!
I said that I was more struck this year by the reality than by the appearance; I think that the reality of this episode in the earthly life of Christ is told – as so often when John does not relate an episode in his gospel – in Revelations. What the Magi saw with their physical eyes was rather an unimpressive sight; but I think their inner eye might well recognise this description:
“After these things I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven…immediately I was in the Spirit: and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting, and he that sat was to the sight like the jasper and the sardine stone, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” “Like sunshine is our treasure, Matris in gremio!”
We don’t know who else was visibly in that house, but there were certainly angels singing nova cantica, and all the bells were ringing in caeli curia. The Magi were just a small fraction of the vast multitude worshipping Christ. “The living creatures rested not day and night, saying: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come. And when those living creatures gave glory, and honour, and benediction to him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever; the four and twenty ancients fell down before him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour and power: because thou hast created all things: and for thy will they were, and have been created.”
This is not just a visit of a few Magi to a child in Bethlehem. It is not even just the first visit of the Gentiles to the Christ. It is the start of the consummation of the age, the turning of humankind to God; the reconciliation of heaven and earth, the marriage of God and humankind. It is what John describes thus: “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunders, saying: Alleluia: for the Lord our God the Almighty hath reigned. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself…and he said to me: Write: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb”. the Magi knew they were blessed. I’ve always been fond of Matthew’s phrase: “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy”. Nothing so strong is found anywhere else in the gospels, not even after the resurrection. Because here in the stable is the dawn of the new dispensation, in which God is with us. This stable is the new Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adored for her husband…Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself with them shall be their God. The Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb…and the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof…and he that sat on the throne said: Behold, I make all things new…Write, for these words are most faithful and true…I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” Rightly did the Magi rejoice with exceeding great joy!
O Jesu, parvule: For thee I long alway;
Hear me, I beseech thee, O puer optime;
And let my pleading reach thee, O princeps gloriae.
Trahe me post te; trahe me post te.
Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus!
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