26 April 2009 – 3rd Sunday of Easter
“We give thee thanks for thy great glory”
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Gloria since we started singing it again after the long, long break of Lent. and I paused at this particular phrase. How exactly are we to give God thanks for his great glory? Praise, yes, but thanks? How can we thank God for something which he has in any case, which he has without any reference to us, which is one of his attributes from all eternity? Can I thank a person for their beauty which, although it gives me pleasure, is not there for the purpose of giving me pleasure? I think I can do even that. If I say to that person: Thank you for being such a beautiful creature to look at, they should reply: “Don’t thank me, it is not due to me; thank God. But I am happy that my appearance gives pleasure”. Two points arise from that reply. Firstly, the person is directing the thanks to where it is really due; and secondly, by taking pleasure in giving pleasure, they do acquire a certain responsibility for the giving of that pleasure: they join their will s to the will of God, who made them so beautiful precisely to add to the sum total of beauty and so of joy and pleasure in the world; and so they genuinely share in his desire and his act. They also, one might add, have a responsibility thenceforth for using their beauty for good and not for evil.
If we are talking about the beauty of God – which, it can be argued, is the same as his gory, not least because his attributes, being part of his essence, his being, are not separable – his power, for example, is not something other than his mercy or his justice – then it is clear that our thanks are indeed due to him: he, and none other, is responsible for his essential glory, and when he created us he did so in order that we should see and rejoice in his beauty, through a veil in this life and with unveiled face in the next. So, if you like, thanking him for his glory is really thanking him for creating us to behold that glory. Which is what we are referring to when we say in today’s Collect: “we who now rejoice that the glory of adoptive sonship has been restored to us”. The glory of adoptive sonship in which we rejoice means God’s promise that we will behold his glory in the intimate way proper only to true children.
St Peter – who is much more bold and revolutionary than one tends to think – makes a statement in the first chapter of his first epistle which would seem almost blasphemous if the church had not set her seal on it: it seems to suggest that we are the centre of the universe from God’s viewpoint as well as from our own. The ransom paid to free us was paid in the blood of Christ “who, though known since before the world was made, has been revealed only in our time, the end of the ages, for your sake. Through him you now have faith in God, who raised him from the dead AND GAVE HIM GLORY FOR THIS VERY REASON: SO THAT YOU WOULD HAVE FAITH AND HOPE IN GOD”. God gave Christ glory in order that we should benefit? clearly this has to be taken in context, but all the same, we can certainly thank God for Christ’s glory, since it seems it was for our sake that he was given it. And doesn’t the Bible say somewhere (I forget where) “The glory of God is a living human being”?
St Thomas Aquinas is saying something of the sort when he defines glory as “clara notitia cum laude”. The simple meaning is that glory consists of a clear knowledge o vision accompanied by praise; but “clarus” in Latin has a double meaning. It does mean “clear”, but it also means “eminent, renowned”. So clara notitia cum laude means seeing something or someone clearly, perceiving them to be worthy of renown, and praising them for it. Now if that is the definition of glory (and who am I to contradict Thomas Aquinas?) it would appear that glory in a subject, to be complete, requires not only the glorious subject but also someone to perceive the glory. The reason why God has no need of us, even as regards the completeness of his glory, is that he is not alone: he is the Blessed Trinity, in which each of the Persons perceives and praises the glory of the others. Obviously we cannot add anything to the essential glory of God. But there is no doubt that we can add to his accidental glory, in that we too can have the clara notitia cum laude. That is to say that we can give him glory, can glorify him. That is enough to take your breath away: we, who have nothing, can give to God, who needs nothing; and if strictly speaking we cannot add to his glory, he has chosen to make it possible for us to do so. The greatness of his glory is not increased when we give him glory, and yet…it is his glory that enables us to give him glory; and this clara notitia cum laude will be our eternal occupation in heaven as it is our joy here in a feeble form. If that is not a reason to give him thanks for his great glory, I don’t know what is.
That is the sort of glory the Gloria in Excelsis is referring to: the sort of glory which, when clearly perceived and recognised as worthy by us, gves us the gift of giving glory. It is the glory which God got over Pharaoh and his chariots and horsemen, and it is what Jesus was thinking of when he asked his father to grant his disciples to see the glory which he had with the Father before the world was made: he desires for them the gift of glorifying him for his glory and thanking him for that gift.
God’s glory is intrinsic to him; but it is also something he gives to us; and even when giving his glory, he does not give by measure. When he gives his glory, he gives himself, and the response to a gift should always be thanksgiving. When his glory filled the tabernacle it evoked awe and praise; but it should also have evoked thanksgiving. Perhaps it is easier for us to thank God for his presence than it was for the people of the Old Testament; we have been shown God’s gentleness and humility in a way they were not. Maybe we are still instinctively afraid of his presence (by the way, that’s why prayer is so difficult – we’re scared) but we know that he does not come to destroy but to heal and bless. When his glory passes we need not hide in the cleft of a rock, we can simply bow down in gratitude. The whole earth is full of his glory, and the heavens sing of it’ and while the mere fact of living in this world may not be as heartstopping a gift as being present at the transfiguration, the fact remains that both are gifts of glory, as was the Incarnation: a light to enlighten the Gentiles, and the glory of his people Israel.
We have all sinned, and have fallen short of the glory of God, and we all need the glory of God to have the power to rise again. We have received the glory of adopted children, but we have rejected it. Time after time God offers us his glory again; we can only thank him in the lowliness of our fallen nature which cannot rise to him without it. God’s glory is our life; we live by it as plants live by the sun, and we need a constant supply of it to preserve us in being, a constant supply which he has undertaken to provide unto all eternity. If we thank God for our lives, for our creation, we are thanking him for his glory, the glory of the Sun o Justice, manifested and living in different ways in all his different creatures. “There are celestial bodies and there are terrestrial bodies: but the glory of the celestial bodies is one, and the glory of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars: for star differs from star in glory. So it is with the resurrection of the dead. What is sown is perishable, what is raised is imperishable. It is sown in dishonour, it is raised in glory.”
Bernanos’ Cure de Campagne said “Tout est grace”. I would add: “Tout est gloire”. And always a reflection and gift of the one glory, the great glory of God for which we are to praise, bless, adore, glorify and thank him our whole lives long. Thank him for the beauty of his essential glory, thank him for the gift of his glory in its earthly form of grace, thank him for the heavenly glory which we shall gaze upon, reflect, and share.
“For a day in thy courts is better than a thousand. I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and shield: the Lord will give grace and glory: no good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts, blessed is the man that trusteth in thee”
Sunday, April 26, 2009
Saturday, April 18, 2009
I ha' seen him eat o' the honeycomb sin' they nailed him to the Tree
19 April 2009 – Low Sunday
A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind & sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree.
I hope you’ll forgive me for not preaching on today’s Matins readings. To me they seem to hark back altogether too much to the suffering & the sacrifice. Today is sometimes called the Octave of Easter, the day, a week after a great Feast, when in some sense we celebrate it again. It is a day of rejoicing in the Resurrection, not of looking back at the Passion, however worthily & theologically correctly we do it. Today is the day when the risen Christ came into the presence of his disciples & convinced them that he was not a ghost by tucking into some broiled fish, & according to some versions, a honeycomb.
Eating a honeycomb is quite a messy business. It cannot be done with dignity, nor while retaining an atmosphere of mystery & awe. Indeed, I’ve never seen it done with a straight face, despite having watched an entire convent of nuns engaged in this activity. That is one of the reasons why, in the teeth of the evidence, I would love to retain the honeycomb in Luke 24:42.
Jesus did not need to be taught how to put people at their ease. We forget tat he knows exactly how we feel & how we work, & exactly the right way to deal with us. Not only has he been one of us, which need not imply more knowledge of the rest of us than any sensitive person might have, but he made us. He didn’t just make us in the sense that he set Creation in motion & let it proceed by natural reproduction; he made each one of us individually. We do not, according to the Fathers of the Church, derive our souls from our parents; the soul is created immediately by God & infused into us as we are conceived. Jesus had made each one of his disciples, both the easy ones & the difficult ones, like Peter, the sons of Zebedee, & Thomas. I have no doubt that, within a moment of taking up the honeycomb, he had them all giggling like schoolboys.
I once read a book of the Miserablist School of Theology which stated flatly, with no substantiation whatever, that “ Jesus had few joys”. Although I was in those days more inclined to swallow that sort of thing than I am now, even then I found that statement unconvincing. If there was one thing that Jesus obviously knew about, obviously knew how to experience & to give, it was joy. You can’t give something you haven’t got, & didn’t he say to Nicodemus “We speak of what we know”? He knew joy all right. Read the parable of the lost sheep or the lost coin. At the Last Supper, according to John, he prayed: “that my joy may be in them & their joy may be complete”. If we are, at the last, to enter into the joy of our Lord, it does follow that our Lord has a joy for us to enter into. I am not that keen on the song “Lord of the Dance”. But it does express a truth, if not in its words, in its irrepressible rhythm: “They cut me down & I leapt up high; I am the life which will never never die”. Jesus was irrepressible. He couldn’t be silenced. He couldn’t, ultimately, be killed. Thomas Aquinas said that the more intense one’s life, the more agonising is the separation of soul & body & the acuter the suffering. True, obviously true. But it is equally true that the more intense one’s life, the more intense one’s experience of life. & life – being alive – is, in itself, an experience of pure delight, of pure joy. Things can happen to make a person’s experience of living a painful one. But even then I maintain that being alive in itself is joyful & delightful. Why else would the prospect of eternal life, life in its essence or distillation, attract us?
Jesus was not just fully alive. He was Life. & that means he was joy & delight. His joys, far from being few, were constant. He had the joy of an intensely living & sinless man; & he had the infinite, unimaginable joy whereby God rejoices in his own existence & which overflowed, by his choice, into Creation. If we think about the elements in our joys, we realise that he created them all. To me it is almost blasphemous to refuse such joys, even if we claim it is to be in union with Jesus in his sufferings. There are no doubt some whose vocation is to embrace suffering & asceticism, but for the vast majority of us the way to God is the way of his creation, &, essentially, the way of joy. If sufferings are sent, I think we will be more able to embrace them as Jesus did if we have embraced joy, embraced creation, as he did.
A totally spiritual person, who despised the flesh, would, I think, have responded to Thomas’ doubts somewhat along these lines: “I am not constrained by death, because I am above the flesh, I transcend it. & so should you. You should not need to see me in order to believe something which, after all, s self evident.” He would not have done what he did, which was to give Thomas an exclusively fleshly proof of the resurrection. He did not say “You should not need to see me” but “You believe because you see”. Of course, Thomas believed more than he saw, & Jesus knew it. & then he said something which should be a source of joy to those of us who wish we had seen him & did not. He looked down through the endless ages & saw all of us & each of us who would believe in him without seeing & pronounced all of us & each of us blessed. Here is the perfect balance between the spirit & the flesh.
& since I am talking about that, I’ll end this sermon with Jesus’ blessed Mother, the one who is blessed among women, & yet whose blessing, as Jesus had insisted, was upon all who heard the word of God & kept it. No doubt the Miserablist School of Theology would point out that she is the Mother of Sorrows & that her joys were few also. But there are ten joyful mysteries in the Rosary (glory is only heavenly joy) & only five sorrowful ones. She did suffer, the sword did pierce her heart; just as Jesus did suffer. But as by nature he is life & joy, so by nature & by grace she is the joyful one. In the Greek of the Gospel, the angel didn’t, actually, say “Hail Mary”, he said “Rejoice, Mary”. He didn’t, come to that, say “full of grace”; he said the untranslatable word “kecharitomene” which could equally well be rendered “full of joy”. Did he at least say “You have found favour with God”? Not necessarily. The meaning of what he said could equally well be “You give joy to God”. “Rejoice, O joyful one! You rejoice the heart of God.”
I think that Mary was in Jesus’ mind as he spoke to the Apostles at the Last Supper: when he referred to the woman in labour it was Mary that he meant first & foremost, & the pains which, according to legend, had not touched her at his birth were to take place at the cross. But when that child rose from the dead, she no longer remembered the sorrow, for joy that all mankind was born to eternal life.
A son of God was the Goodly Fere
That bade us his brothers be.
I ha’ seen him cow a thousand men.
I have seen him upon the tree.
A master of men was the Goodly Fere,
A mate of the wind & sea.
If they think they ha’ slain our Goodly Fere
They are fools eternally.
I ha’ seen him eat o’ the honey-comb
Sin' they nailed him to the tree.
I hope you’ll forgive me for not preaching on today’s Matins readings. To me they seem to hark back altogether too much to the suffering & the sacrifice. Today is sometimes called the Octave of Easter, the day, a week after a great Feast, when in some sense we celebrate it again. It is a day of rejoicing in the Resurrection, not of looking back at the Passion, however worthily & theologically correctly we do it. Today is the day when the risen Christ came into the presence of his disciples & convinced them that he was not a ghost by tucking into some broiled fish, & according to some versions, a honeycomb.
Eating a honeycomb is quite a messy business. It cannot be done with dignity, nor while retaining an atmosphere of mystery & awe. Indeed, I’ve never seen it done with a straight face, despite having watched an entire convent of nuns engaged in this activity. That is one of the reasons why, in the teeth of the evidence, I would love to retain the honeycomb in Luke 24:42.
Jesus did not need to be taught how to put people at their ease. We forget tat he knows exactly how we feel & how we work, & exactly the right way to deal with us. Not only has he been one of us, which need not imply more knowledge of the rest of us than any sensitive person might have, but he made us. He didn’t just make us in the sense that he set Creation in motion & let it proceed by natural reproduction; he made each one of us individually. We do not, according to the Fathers of the Church, derive our souls from our parents; the soul is created immediately by God & infused into us as we are conceived. Jesus had made each one of his disciples, both the easy ones & the difficult ones, like Peter, the sons of Zebedee, & Thomas. I have no doubt that, within a moment of taking up the honeycomb, he had them all giggling like schoolboys.
I once read a book of the Miserablist School of Theology which stated flatly, with no substantiation whatever, that “ Jesus had few joys”. Although I was in those days more inclined to swallow that sort of thing than I am now, even then I found that statement unconvincing. If there was one thing that Jesus obviously knew about, obviously knew how to experience & to give, it was joy. You can’t give something you haven’t got, & didn’t he say to Nicodemus “We speak of what we know”? He knew joy all right. Read the parable of the lost sheep or the lost coin. At the Last Supper, according to John, he prayed: “that my joy may be in them & their joy may be complete”. If we are, at the last, to enter into the joy of our Lord, it does follow that our Lord has a joy for us to enter into. I am not that keen on the song “Lord of the Dance”. But it does express a truth, if not in its words, in its irrepressible rhythm: “They cut me down & I leapt up high; I am the life which will never never die”. Jesus was irrepressible. He couldn’t be silenced. He couldn’t, ultimately, be killed. Thomas Aquinas said that the more intense one’s life, the more agonising is the separation of soul & body & the acuter the suffering. True, obviously true. But it is equally true that the more intense one’s life, the more intense one’s experience of life. & life – being alive – is, in itself, an experience of pure delight, of pure joy. Things can happen to make a person’s experience of living a painful one. But even then I maintain that being alive in itself is joyful & delightful. Why else would the prospect of eternal life, life in its essence or distillation, attract us?
Jesus was not just fully alive. He was Life. & that means he was joy & delight. His joys, far from being few, were constant. He had the joy of an intensely living & sinless man; & he had the infinite, unimaginable joy whereby God rejoices in his own existence & which overflowed, by his choice, into Creation. If we think about the elements in our joys, we realise that he created them all. To me it is almost blasphemous to refuse such joys, even if we claim it is to be in union with Jesus in his sufferings. There are no doubt some whose vocation is to embrace suffering & asceticism, but for the vast majority of us the way to God is the way of his creation, &, essentially, the way of joy. If sufferings are sent, I think we will be more able to embrace them as Jesus did if we have embraced joy, embraced creation, as he did.
A totally spiritual person, who despised the flesh, would, I think, have responded to Thomas’ doubts somewhat along these lines: “I am not constrained by death, because I am above the flesh, I transcend it. & so should you. You should not need to see me in order to believe something which, after all, s self evident.” He would not have done what he did, which was to give Thomas an exclusively fleshly proof of the resurrection. He did not say “You should not need to see me” but “You believe because you see”. Of course, Thomas believed more than he saw, & Jesus knew it. & then he said something which should be a source of joy to those of us who wish we had seen him & did not. He looked down through the endless ages & saw all of us & each of us who would believe in him without seeing & pronounced all of us & each of us blessed. Here is the perfect balance between the spirit & the flesh.
& since I am talking about that, I’ll end this sermon with Jesus’ blessed Mother, the one who is blessed among women, & yet whose blessing, as Jesus had insisted, was upon all who heard the word of God & kept it. No doubt the Miserablist School of Theology would point out that she is the Mother of Sorrows & that her joys were few also. But there are ten joyful mysteries in the Rosary (glory is only heavenly joy) & only five sorrowful ones. She did suffer, the sword did pierce her heart; just as Jesus did suffer. But as by nature he is life & joy, so by nature & by grace she is the joyful one. In the Greek of the Gospel, the angel didn’t, actually, say “Hail Mary”, he said “Rejoice, Mary”. He didn’t, come to that, say “full of grace”; he said the untranslatable word “kecharitomene” which could equally well be rendered “full of joy”. Did he at least say “You have found favour with God”? Not necessarily. The meaning of what he said could equally well be “You give joy to God”. “Rejoice, O joyful one! You rejoice the heart of God.”
I think that Mary was in Jesus’ mind as he spoke to the Apostles at the Last Supper: when he referred to the woman in labour it was Mary that he meant first & foremost, & the pains which, according to legend, had not touched her at his birth were to take place at the cross. But when that child rose from the dead, she no longer remembered the sorrow, for joy that all mankind was born to eternal life.
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Alleluia!
Legend and devotion has it that the Risen Christ appeared first to his blessed Mother. Maybe; it would have been a fitting reward to her unshakable faith. But the first recorded appearance, the first appearance we are sure of, was to – of all people – Simon. That is, of course, Peter, though he hardly deserved the name and I expect he shuddered if anyone used it. “Simon”, though, was as bad: no-one had used it for three years, and here it was surfacing again. He knew why he was being denied his Christian name, and knew too well. Another legend says that for the rest of his life, after complete forgiveness, after leading the Christian community, after becoming the first Pope, after being imprisoned in Rome in the sure hope of dying with the Lord as he had sworn he would do (that was Jesus’ last desperate attempt to make him grasp that his sins had been flung into the depths of the sea) he still never ceased to weep for that moment of madness in the High Priest’s courtyard, until the tears wore furrows in his cheeks.
I can understand Peter’s lifelong sorrow. There is something in the life of each one of us that we cannot look back on without flinching, as if a sore spot had been touched. It may have been a sin – it is a fact concealed but well-documented (and I know it directly, though, thank God, not in my own person) that abortion leaves lifelong psychological and spiritual damage. It may have been a moment of great shame; it may have been a hut done to us – it may be another person, or even circumstances or God, that we cannot forgive, rather than ourselves. Or it may be something for which we “cannot forgive ourselves” even though we know perfectly well we were not to blame. A common example is having failed to be present at the moment of death of someone we love. Maybe we were there day and night for weeks; but we will never forgive ourselves for having been elsewhere at that instant. Some of us find that we can scarcely look back at any moment in the past without flinching for one reason or another. So Peter was simply reacting in a normal human way. But, as I said sadly on Good Friday, there is still a lot of the human, as opposed to the superhuman, in Christianity, and it should not be there. it should not have been there in Peter, and it should not be there in us.
The Lamb of God takes away our sins; He takes away our guilt as well, and we should also allow Him to take away our guilt or otherwise painful memories. A lot of emphasis is placed now upon the “healing of memories” by psychotherapists, counsellors and others. They are quite right: our memories do need healing. But I do not believe anyone can heal what is within us except the One who knows what is in humankind. Human beings can soothe the pain of them and help us to understand them (and that is already something) but no more. It’s not that difficult to make someone feel better but only a miracle can heal the scars: and a miracle is precisely what the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection was. it is not impossible that God chose Peter precisely in order to hammer home the completeness not only of forgiveness, but also of healing, that is offered to us. if Peter did carry the scars of his memories with him to the grave, that was not God’s will, nor was it for want of trying on His part.
I arrived at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper this year with my usual burden of painful memories. I am such a fool, so inclined to say and do the wrong thing, to react sharply, to let pride run away with me, to be complacent, petulant, selfish, sulky, cowardly…shall I go on? As quite often happens, when I settled down to pray afterwards, one of the memories rose up from nowhere and gave me a kick in the solar plexus. I winced. Then by association of ideas another joined it, and another, until I felt that I was being assailed by a hail of missiles. I suppose I could have prayed to St Stephen; instead I thought of Peter, and began to enter into his memories rather than my own. And I flinched in sympathy as I ran through his appearances in the Gospel.
Since it was Maundy Thursday, what sparked off my train of thought was his behaviour at the Last Supper: he managed to get it wrong in two opposite directions in the space of thirty seconds. I suspect that when Jesus returned to the table and asked “Do you know what I have done to you?” he gave Peter a quick but searching stare; and Peter either nodded vigorously (having, al the same, not a clue) or else shook his head mournfully. Never could he have looked back at that event without an embarrassed shudder. but he never did twig, poor Peter. After ceaselessly hammering home his teaching of giving without expecting any reward, Jesus found himself being asked by Peter “And what shall we have?” Patient as ever, he gave Peter the answer. But maybe not without an ironic shake of the head. Which is what Peter remembered. “Oh dear, I should never have said that”. And he had forced Jesus into a rather unusual miracle by his over-confident declaration (prompted by extreme nervousness) that oh yes, of course Jesus paid the Temple tax. Jesus’ rebuke on that occasion was very gently: it has the tone of one explaining something to a rather thick six-year-old. But that was not the case when Peter, in horror (quite reasonably, humanly speaking) at the prophecy of the Passion, protested. He’d put his foot in it many times, and Jesus had been calm, gentle and, mostly, patient. But now! Peter quailed and backed off under the onslaught, finding himself addressed not as Peter, not even as Simon, but as Satan. “Oh dear” thought Peter many years later. “I think he was right…and it doesn’t help that it was I who confessed him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. He as good as told me that it wasn’t me saying it at all.” And who was it, when Jesus said that they should sell their cloaks and buy swords (I am not sure exactly what he meant, but I am sure he did not literally mean what he said), who produced a sword, and waved it about? There were four of them, but we know one of them was Peter. And when he tried to use it, he was told in no uncertain terms that he had got the wrong end of the stick…or the sword…again. “Well,” he consoled himself (as I console myself) at least my faults mean that I am tolerant and forgiving. I have obviously taken on board at least that essential piece of teaching.” No, Peter, unfortunately not, as your memory will tell you in a split second. Your generous offer to forgive your brother seven times made Jesus, figuratively or actually, throw his hands up in despair.
Peter sighs. “I warned him,” he says. “I told him to go away from me for I am a sinful man.” You did, Peter; and what would have happened to you if he had taken you at your word? “Oh dear,” he mutters again. And unfortunately, thinking about boats brings up another uncomfortable memory. Who was it that (a) did not believe that the walker on the sea really was Jesus (b) was confident that he could do it too (c) sank at the first puff of wind and (d) was informed, by One who knew, that he hadn’t any faith to speak of. And looked a right idiot, too, being hauled, drenched, into the boat. By now Peter, as I visualise him, is sitting hunched up in exactly the same position as my soul, and maybe my body too, adopts once Sister Mind has been allowed to wander among her memories. And I feel a great deal better.
But I feel better not for the obvious, human reasons. It’s not a sort of Schadenfreude, pleasure that St Peter was as bad as I am or even worse. or even consolation that someone like Peter could be so hopeless and make it all the same. it is the knowledge that “by His stripes we are healed” and that God has provided a cure for all our dis-eases. He did not create Peter, with his character and vocation, specifically for me; but then He did not create penicillin specifically for me either, and I have every right to thank him when my sinusitis clears up after a course of it. It seems logical that I can thank him for Peter.
You are about to complain that, today of all days, I haven’t even mentioned the Resurrection. What do you think I have been talking about all this time? Because our whole life is in the image of the Lord who died and rose again. We have been buried together with him in our baptism, and we rise with him to glory. But for us it is usually a long process, and at every moment he is with us and gives us the help we need, with us himself and with us in the companions he has given us for the way. We do not go to God alone, but in that great company, spread through time and space, which makes up the Church Militant. For my companion is not St Peter in glory, but Simon son of Jonah, surnamed Peter, struggling on earth, together with me, both of us led, not in spite of but by way of our weakness, to the glory of the Resurrection.
Alleluia!
I can understand Peter’s lifelong sorrow. There is something in the life of each one of us that we cannot look back on without flinching, as if a sore spot had been touched. It may have been a sin – it is a fact concealed but well-documented (and I know it directly, though, thank God, not in my own person) that abortion leaves lifelong psychological and spiritual damage. It may have been a moment of great shame; it may have been a hut done to us – it may be another person, or even circumstances or God, that we cannot forgive, rather than ourselves. Or it may be something for which we “cannot forgive ourselves” even though we know perfectly well we were not to blame. A common example is having failed to be present at the moment of death of someone we love. Maybe we were there day and night for weeks; but we will never forgive ourselves for having been elsewhere at that instant. Some of us find that we can scarcely look back at any moment in the past without flinching for one reason or another. So Peter was simply reacting in a normal human way. But, as I said sadly on Good Friday, there is still a lot of the human, as opposed to the superhuman, in Christianity, and it should not be there. it should not have been there in Peter, and it should not be there in us.
The Lamb of God takes away our sins; He takes away our guilt as well, and we should also allow Him to take away our guilt or otherwise painful memories. A lot of emphasis is placed now upon the “healing of memories” by psychotherapists, counsellors and others. They are quite right: our memories do need healing. But I do not believe anyone can heal what is within us except the One who knows what is in humankind. Human beings can soothe the pain of them and help us to understand them (and that is already something) but no more. It’s not that difficult to make someone feel better but only a miracle can heal the scars: and a miracle is precisely what the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection was. it is not impossible that God chose Peter precisely in order to hammer home the completeness not only of forgiveness, but also of healing, that is offered to us. if Peter did carry the scars of his memories with him to the grave, that was not God’s will, nor was it for want of trying on His part.
I arrived at the Mass of the Lord’s Supper this year with my usual burden of painful memories. I am such a fool, so inclined to say and do the wrong thing, to react sharply, to let pride run away with me, to be complacent, petulant, selfish, sulky, cowardly…shall I go on? As quite often happens, when I settled down to pray afterwards, one of the memories rose up from nowhere and gave me a kick in the solar plexus. I winced. Then by association of ideas another joined it, and another, until I felt that I was being assailed by a hail of missiles. I suppose I could have prayed to St Stephen; instead I thought of Peter, and began to enter into his memories rather than my own. And I flinched in sympathy as I ran through his appearances in the Gospel.
Since it was Maundy Thursday, what sparked off my train of thought was his behaviour at the Last Supper: he managed to get it wrong in two opposite directions in the space of thirty seconds. I suspect that when Jesus returned to the table and asked “Do you know what I have done to you?” he gave Peter a quick but searching stare; and Peter either nodded vigorously (having, al the same, not a clue) or else shook his head mournfully. Never could he have looked back at that event without an embarrassed shudder. but he never did twig, poor Peter. After ceaselessly hammering home his teaching of giving without expecting any reward, Jesus found himself being asked by Peter “And what shall we have?” Patient as ever, he gave Peter the answer. But maybe not without an ironic shake of the head. Which is what Peter remembered. “Oh dear, I should never have said that”. And he had forced Jesus into a rather unusual miracle by his over-confident declaration (prompted by extreme nervousness) that oh yes, of course Jesus paid the Temple tax. Jesus’ rebuke on that occasion was very gently: it has the tone of one explaining something to a rather thick six-year-old. But that was not the case when Peter, in horror (quite reasonably, humanly speaking) at the prophecy of the Passion, protested. He’d put his foot in it many times, and Jesus had been calm, gentle and, mostly, patient. But now! Peter quailed and backed off under the onslaught, finding himself addressed not as Peter, not even as Simon, but as Satan. “Oh dear” thought Peter many years later. “I think he was right…and it doesn’t help that it was I who confessed him as the Christ, the Son of the Living God. He as good as told me that it wasn’t me saying it at all.” And who was it, when Jesus said that they should sell their cloaks and buy swords (I am not sure exactly what he meant, but I am sure he did not literally mean what he said), who produced a sword, and waved it about? There were four of them, but we know one of them was Peter. And when he tried to use it, he was told in no uncertain terms that he had got the wrong end of the stick…or the sword…again. “Well,” he consoled himself (as I console myself) at least my faults mean that I am tolerant and forgiving. I have obviously taken on board at least that essential piece of teaching.” No, Peter, unfortunately not, as your memory will tell you in a split second. Your generous offer to forgive your brother seven times made Jesus, figuratively or actually, throw his hands up in despair.
Peter sighs. “I warned him,” he says. “I told him to go away from me for I am a sinful man.” You did, Peter; and what would have happened to you if he had taken you at your word? “Oh dear,” he mutters again. And unfortunately, thinking about boats brings up another uncomfortable memory. Who was it that (a) did not believe that the walker on the sea really was Jesus (b) was confident that he could do it too (c) sank at the first puff of wind and (d) was informed, by One who knew, that he hadn’t any faith to speak of. And looked a right idiot, too, being hauled, drenched, into the boat. By now Peter, as I visualise him, is sitting hunched up in exactly the same position as my soul, and maybe my body too, adopts once Sister Mind has been allowed to wander among her memories. And I feel a great deal better.
But I feel better not for the obvious, human reasons. It’s not a sort of Schadenfreude, pleasure that St Peter was as bad as I am or even worse. or even consolation that someone like Peter could be so hopeless and make it all the same. it is the knowledge that “by His stripes we are healed” and that God has provided a cure for all our dis-eases. He did not create Peter, with his character and vocation, specifically for me; but then He did not create penicillin specifically for me either, and I have every right to thank him when my sinusitis clears up after a course of it. It seems logical that I can thank him for Peter.
You are about to complain that, today of all days, I haven’t even mentioned the Resurrection. What do you think I have been talking about all this time? Because our whole life is in the image of the Lord who died and rose again. We have been buried together with him in our baptism, and we rise with him to glory. But for us it is usually a long process, and at every moment he is with us and gives us the help we need, with us himself and with us in the companions he has given us for the way. We do not go to God alone, but in that great company, spread through time and space, which makes up the Church Militant. For my companion is not St Peter in glory, but Simon son of Jonah, surnamed Peter, struggling on earth, together with me, both of us led, not in spite of but by way of our weakness, to the glory of the Resurrection.
Alleluia!
Friday, April 10, 2009
Consepulti sumus cum illo in baptismate
10 April 2009 – Good Friday
Since the Fall, we have managed to ruin or misunderstand everything, and we have turned the following of Jesus Christ into two things it is not: first, an ideology; second, a religion of success. We Scottish Episcopalians have not yet got to the point reached by those American churches which encourage their embers to become as wealthy as possible and achieve as much worldly success as possible as an integral part of their religious practice, but I am not sure that we look at things in a fundamentally different way. It is human to try and get rich, and to need approval, and there seems to be a lot of the human – as opposed to the superhuman – in Christianity.
Look at the cult of the saint; look, above all, at hagiography. have you noticed how they were all beautiful, talented, intelligent, and successful at everything they put their hand to? I usually complain about this because it seems to put the saints out of our reach, and absolve us from trying to become saints ourselves. But today I’m complaining because these are just the characteristics which a saint does not need – I almost said: these are unchristian characteristics. I suppose it is inevitable that most of the canonised saints were in some way successful, or we’d never have heard of them, and they would never have been canonised. Thank God, I say, for saints like the Cure d’Ars and Benoit-Joseph Labre. Especially the latter, that most glorious of failures. A failure, you could say, in the image of his divine Master.
And that, you see, is why our cult of success is all wrong. That is why I like to see a “failure” saint. Not because it makes me, in my mediocrity, feel better; but because the most outstanding thing about Jesus’ life, looked at humanly at this time on the first Good Friday, was his resounding failure. In the old days those of us who were reluctant about penance and asceticism were scolded and admonished to remember that we were “members of a thorn-crowned Head”. True, of course, though Jesus was no ascetic. His life was, as it happens, very hard, but never, I am sure, just for the sake of it. But we should remember that we are members of a Head who was condemned as a criminal and executed, betrayed by one of his disciples and denied by another, and deserted by all of them – except, needless to say, by the women; because woman, in her natural state, understands and values failure. The Cross we are to carry daily was the instrument of execution for the lowest class of criminal. It is not just that we’ll be accepted even if we fail. But that the more we are failures by the world’s standards, and those standards encompass everything except holiness, the more – yes, the more – we will be like our Lord.
God does not stand at the end of our road watching us struggle, tutting when we go off the road, smiling approvingly when we do not, and occasionally cheering us on. He is there on the road with us, at all times, especially in our failures (he who failed), even in our sins. If when the two of us reach the end of the road our sins have brought us to the point at which we choose to turn away from him, that is another matter. But he will never leave us: our life is a series of choices, or one enormous ongoing choice, whether to leave him. We need to realise who it is we are choosing to cleave to, whose road we are choosing to walk, and see things with his eyes; but conversely, we must realise that it will never be failure that will separate us from the Crucified One, whose only success was being God; for that is what he offers us by his own free gift, he who became man that we might become gods.
St Benoit-Joseph Labre, pray for us!
Since the Fall, we have managed to ruin or misunderstand everything, and we have turned the following of Jesus Christ into two things it is not: first, an ideology; second, a religion of success. We Scottish Episcopalians have not yet got to the point reached by those American churches which encourage their embers to become as wealthy as possible and achieve as much worldly success as possible as an integral part of their religious practice, but I am not sure that we look at things in a fundamentally different way. It is human to try and get rich, and to need approval, and there seems to be a lot of the human – as opposed to the superhuman – in Christianity.
Look at the cult of the saint; look, above all, at hagiography. have you noticed how they were all beautiful, talented, intelligent, and successful at everything they put their hand to? I usually complain about this because it seems to put the saints out of our reach, and absolve us from trying to become saints ourselves. But today I’m complaining because these are just the characteristics which a saint does not need – I almost said: these are unchristian characteristics. I suppose it is inevitable that most of the canonised saints were in some way successful, or we’d never have heard of them, and they would never have been canonised. Thank God, I say, for saints like the Cure d’Ars and Benoit-Joseph Labre. Especially the latter, that most glorious of failures. A failure, you could say, in the image of his divine Master.
And that, you see, is why our cult of success is all wrong. That is why I like to see a “failure” saint. Not because it makes me, in my mediocrity, feel better; but because the most outstanding thing about Jesus’ life, looked at humanly at this time on the first Good Friday, was his resounding failure. In the old days those of us who were reluctant about penance and asceticism were scolded and admonished to remember that we were “members of a thorn-crowned Head”. True, of course, though Jesus was no ascetic. His life was, as it happens, very hard, but never, I am sure, just for the sake of it. But we should remember that we are members of a Head who was condemned as a criminal and executed, betrayed by one of his disciples and denied by another, and deserted by all of them – except, needless to say, by the women; because woman, in her natural state, understands and values failure. The Cross we are to carry daily was the instrument of execution for the lowest class of criminal. It is not just that we’ll be accepted even if we fail. But that the more we are failures by the world’s standards, and those standards encompass everything except holiness, the more – yes, the more – we will be like our Lord.
God does not stand at the end of our road watching us struggle, tutting when we go off the road, smiling approvingly when we do not, and occasionally cheering us on. He is there on the road with us, at all times, especially in our failures (he who failed), even in our sins. If when the two of us reach the end of the road our sins have brought us to the point at which we choose to turn away from him, that is another matter. But he will never leave us: our life is a series of choices, or one enormous ongoing choice, whether to leave him. We need to realise who it is we are choosing to cleave to, whose road we are choosing to walk, and see things with his eyes; but conversely, we must realise that it will never be failure that will separate us from the Crucified One, whose only success was being God; for that is what he offers us by his own free gift, he who became man that we might become gods.
St Benoit-Joseph Labre, pray for us!
Saturday, April 4, 2009
Sermon for Palm Sunday
It isn’t usual to give a sermon on Palm Sunday, and you can see why. There are two possible responses to someone getting up to talk after the reading of the Passion: either “We have just heard the most tragic and mind-blowing narrative there is, and I am shattered: and YOU think you can add anything to it? Shut up and sit down.” Or” “We have already had to endure an endless reading, and are we to have to endure a sermon as well? Shut up and sit down.” I think that is fairly conclusive, don’t you? There can in my opinion be no other possible response. If you have entered into the reading of the Passion and it has entered into you, anything added can only be a best irritating and at worst crashingly insensitive and painful. if you have not, if even the Passion has not moved you, then a sermon certainly won’t. But I just want to reflect briefly on something peripheral to the Passion, or possibly peripheral to its reading.
It used to be the norm to stand for the reading of the Passion There was no special reason for that: we always stand for the reading of the Gospel. I was told by the good nuns who taught me that if you stand without moving for the whole of the Passion, you will get a soul out of Purgatory. Now, this is no more or less than superstition. In fact, God is so pleased with us whenever we do anything out of love that it is quite possible that he would indeed free a soul from Purgatory if we asked for it I that way; but not because there is any virtue in the act itself. You’d be much better off wriggling and shifting a bit and concentrating on what the reading has to say to you than standing stock-still meditating on the twinges in your lower back and wondering whether blinking counts. I do think that God looks a little sadly on some of our observances, customs and usages, which make life even more burdensome and annoying than it is anyway. Maybe that is more true nowadays of the religious life, since lay Christianity has shed a great deal of that sort of thing. Most of these customs and usages – and I’d say many of the observances and ways of doing things within the church – are neutral in themselves, or can even be positively bad if the correct motivation is not there. It is perfectly true that whatever one does out of Charity is pleasing to God. But the fact that the Jongleur de Dieu pleased God by standing on his head and turning cartwheels does not mean that we should now found a new Religious Order of Tumblers or introduce handsprings into the offertory procession. The action itself is neutral; only the lve that is put into it gives it worth. I think it is true to say that the very Passion of Christ would have had no value if – to imagine the impossible – it had not been done out of love.
I think it is a pity we do not stand for the Passion for a different reason: standing as a mark of respect is just about the only naturally meaningful symbol we have left in our service; partly because the service has changed but partly also because we have changed. We no longer kneel or even genuflect in normal life; even the curtsy to the Queen has, I believe, been abolished. We do not bow – which is, incidentally, the reason why the small bow at the name of Jesus has gone: the present generation can’t understand why the Name should provoke a nod – that’s all it is to them and so cannot possibly take hold. Holy water? Most of us no longer know what it is like to have a bath or wash because we are genuinely dirty and need cleansing. The sign of peace? It is a very mixed-up piece of symbolism. Originally it did signify making peace (see its Gospel origin) and the handshake will just about pass for that. But now it is (wrongly) understood as a sign of fellowship, and a handshake is the last way we would express that; it is reserved for the most distant and formal greetings. And so on. But we do still stand as a mark of respect: when someone comes into the room, or even when, at a theatre or concert hall, an artist surpasses himself. Yes, that’s partly enthusiasm, but the two are linked.
The Jews have it right when, at the Passover meal, they ask a series of questions about what distinguishes this night from all other nights. We need reminded. The fact that by standing we treat the Gospel differently from all other readings is of great significance” we could perhaps ask the reluctant, or our squirming children (who squirm, incidentally, at least as much when they are seated): “What distinguishes this reading from all other readings?” and let them think about it. Why is this reading more worthy of respect than any other? The answer of course is that the Gospel not only speaks of the life of Jesus Christ but it symbolises him. He is as truly present in the Gospel, though in a different way, as he is in the bread and wine we receive at Communion. Would we sit to receive Communion? I don’t stand to hear the Passion because it is a salutary asceticism, or even in order to magic a soul out of Purgatory. I stand out of respect for the Lord present in the Gospel, and if it so happens that it is a Gospel passage that takes ten minutes (or whatever it is) to read, so what?
I have been rambling. But you take my point. Of course the service is boring if we reduce it to a series of meaningless actions and words. And it is of no help whatever to think up new meanings if the real ones have been lost. They will not be true, will not feel true, and will not have the effect that only the truth can have. The truth is frightening because it is too big for us; and as so often, we shy away from the very thing we should face. We attend the eucharist, we hear the Passion read and we are scared. We retreat from its reality, from its true meaning, and find – naturally – the superficial level boring. We shield ourselves from the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, the presence of God and the act of our salvation through history – and there is nothing left. We have lost the soul of the thing. It is essential that we search for that soul ceaselessly, like the woman with the drachma, until it is found. And I think that this is a good time to do it, now when the historical events which are the core of the eucharist and are re-presented in it are about to be enacted before our eyes. Maybe after the events of Maundy Thursday – and if you can’t remember them, it would be no bad thing to supplement the liturgy by reading them for yourselves – the reading of the Passion of Good Friday, and the Vigil Mass on Easter Sunday, might feel a little different from those same things today. If so, thank God for it and take that to the eucharist with you from now on. Never mind the rite, the denomination, the translation, the version, the vagaries of the priest or minister; remember what you are doing, at what you are assisting, and hold fast to what is good – and true.
It used to be the norm to stand for the reading of the Passion There was no special reason for that: we always stand for the reading of the Gospel. I was told by the good nuns who taught me that if you stand without moving for the whole of the Passion, you will get a soul out of Purgatory. Now, this is no more or less than superstition. In fact, God is so pleased with us whenever we do anything out of love that it is quite possible that he would indeed free a soul from Purgatory if we asked for it I that way; but not because there is any virtue in the act itself. You’d be much better off wriggling and shifting a bit and concentrating on what the reading has to say to you than standing stock-still meditating on the twinges in your lower back and wondering whether blinking counts. I do think that God looks a little sadly on some of our observances, customs and usages, which make life even more burdensome and annoying than it is anyway. Maybe that is more true nowadays of the religious life, since lay Christianity has shed a great deal of that sort of thing. Most of these customs and usages – and I’d say many of the observances and ways of doing things within the church – are neutral in themselves, or can even be positively bad if the correct motivation is not there. It is perfectly true that whatever one does out of Charity is pleasing to God. But the fact that the Jongleur de Dieu pleased God by standing on his head and turning cartwheels does not mean that we should now found a new Religious Order of Tumblers or introduce handsprings into the offertory procession. The action itself is neutral; only the lve that is put into it gives it worth. I think it is true to say that the very Passion of Christ would have had no value if – to imagine the impossible – it had not been done out of love.
I think it is a pity we do not stand for the Passion for a different reason: standing as a mark of respect is just about the only naturally meaningful symbol we have left in our service; partly because the service has changed but partly also because we have changed. We no longer kneel or even genuflect in normal life; even the curtsy to the Queen has, I believe, been abolished. We do not bow – which is, incidentally, the reason why the small bow at the name of Jesus has gone: the present generation can’t understand why the Name should provoke a nod – that’s all it is to them and so cannot possibly take hold. Holy water? Most of us no longer know what it is like to have a bath or wash because we are genuinely dirty and need cleansing. The sign of peace? It is a very mixed-up piece of symbolism. Originally it did signify making peace (see its Gospel origin) and the handshake will just about pass for that. But now it is (wrongly) understood as a sign of fellowship, and a handshake is the last way we would express that; it is reserved for the most distant and formal greetings. And so on. But we do still stand as a mark of respect: when someone comes into the room, or even when, at a theatre or concert hall, an artist surpasses himself. Yes, that’s partly enthusiasm, but the two are linked.
The Jews have it right when, at the Passover meal, they ask a series of questions about what distinguishes this night from all other nights. We need reminded. The fact that by standing we treat the Gospel differently from all other readings is of great significance” we could perhaps ask the reluctant, or our squirming children (who squirm, incidentally, at least as much when they are seated): “What distinguishes this reading from all other readings?” and let them think about it. Why is this reading more worthy of respect than any other? The answer of course is that the Gospel not only speaks of the life of Jesus Christ but it symbolises him. He is as truly present in the Gospel, though in a different way, as he is in the bread and wine we receive at Communion. Would we sit to receive Communion? I don’t stand to hear the Passion because it is a salutary asceticism, or even in order to magic a soul out of Purgatory. I stand out of respect for the Lord present in the Gospel, and if it so happens that it is a Gospel passage that takes ten minutes (or whatever it is) to read, so what?
I have been rambling. But you take my point. Of course the service is boring if we reduce it to a series of meaningless actions and words. And it is of no help whatever to think up new meanings if the real ones have been lost. They will not be true, will not feel true, and will not have the effect that only the truth can have. The truth is frightening because it is too big for us; and as so often, we shy away from the very thing we should face. We attend the eucharist, we hear the Passion read and we are scared. We retreat from its reality, from its true meaning, and find – naturally – the superficial level boring. We shield ourselves from the re-presentation of the sacrifice of Calvary, the presence of God and the act of our salvation through history – and there is nothing left. We have lost the soul of the thing. It is essential that we search for that soul ceaselessly, like the woman with the drachma, until it is found. And I think that this is a good time to do it, now when the historical events which are the core of the eucharist and are re-presented in it are about to be enacted before our eyes. Maybe after the events of Maundy Thursday – and if you can’t remember them, it would be no bad thing to supplement the liturgy by reading them for yourselves – the reading of the Passion of Good Friday, and the Vigil Mass on Easter Sunday, might feel a little different from those same things today. If so, thank God for it and take that to the eucharist with you from now on. Never mind the rite, the denomination, the translation, the version, the vagaries of the priest or minister; remember what you are doing, at what you are assisting, and hold fast to what is good – and true.
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