Send forth thy Spirit and they shall be created; and thou shalt renew the face of the earth.
What is preaching for, anyway? My favourite preacher asked me that a few weeks ago, and I have been worrying at the question ever since, and the answer I have come up with – not very earth-shaking, I think you’ll agree, but appropriate for Pentecost - is that it is has to be about communication – real communication. Thomas Aquinas insisted that if we reach the heights of contemplation of God, it is our duty to come back down and transmit to others the fruits of our contemplation. We are not all contemplatives – I am not – but all the same, preaching must be along these lines.
When I was studying Ancient History at university – so long ago as to be almost ancient history itself – our supervisor’s main strategy to make us THINK was to cover the margins of our essays with the word “Evidence?” interspersed with “Was it?” “Did he?” and so on. They say a good teacher can make all the difference to your entire life, and Liz Rawson certainly did to mine.
Her insistence on evidence and her refusal just to accept bald statements (which were in any case probably pinched from a book she knew far better than we did – or indeed, had written herself) have had profound effects on me.
One of those effects was to make me rather picky in what I read and hear, whether it is an academic book, an article on fishing, or a sermon. Very often, when I listen to a sermon (and if there are any preachers here, may I reassure you by telling you that it sometimes happens to me with St Paul’s epistles too) I find myself silently arguing with the preacher. “Evidence! Evidence! Evidence!” “How do you know?” Or when they say “We so often think...” “Aren’t we all inclined to...” I silently shout “No, I don’t!” “Well, I’m not” and so on.
Don’t you? Ah, yes, I see you do. Or at least, you are now.
I think this is a good thing. I think a sermon should come out of serious engaging with the Word of God and with the Christian life as lived; and sermon-hearing should also be a serious engaging; with the Word just heard (it is not by chance that the sermon immediately follows the readings) and with the words of the preacher, in the context of one’s own experience. The sermon should not be a ten-minute slot of extreme boredom, of half-listening to stuff you have heard a thousand times before (Guilty as charged, m’lud).
You can’t get up in the middle of a sermon and challenge the preacher, despite Edinburgh’s honourable tradition of stool-throwing, and I have only known one preacher who invited comments at the end of his sermon (you can, maybe, guess who was the only person to get up and make a comment on that occasion!). But if you are carrying away with you a niggle, a disagreement, or even just a cry of “Evidence!” you can stop her as she tries to slink away un-noticed or you can get her e-mail and argue with her that way. If her sermon has come from something real in her, and your niggle has come from something real in you, then at least one of you is going to gain something.
We can’t all be “original thinkers” in the usually accepted sense of the word. But since we are all unique, we are all original liv-ers, and if we think at all, we think “originally”. Each life is different, each mind is different and each soul is different. Which can make communication incredibly exciting; and I believe that real communication is part of the purpose of life.
God appears to think so too. Looking at the Bible, one of the things that leaps out at me (and very definitely in the two readings we have heard this evening) is just how important it seems to be to God to communicate effectively with us, and to get us to engage with him. To the extent that the Second Person of the Trinity is called The Word. It has been said – and I wish I remembered by whom – that if the Son is the Word, the Holy Spirit is the Voice.
If we are to understand the Trinity in any way but the most academic and theoretical – and I am not sure that it is worth bothering to understand it at all in that way – then we have to see it as an expression of the truth that relationship, and communication, are essential to the very nature of God and of ourselves. You know the blessing – “may the grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you”. In Latin the last part of this is “et communicatio Sancti Spiritus” “the communication of the Holy Spirit”. If you take that word communicatio apart, you will get “the making-one”. The very nature of the Holy Spirit would appear to be communication, or “making one”; within the Trinity, and between the Trinity and creation.
That seems to be God’s main purpose: by his very own unity to make us one. His own unity, his own love, is so – dare I say “solid”? - as to be a Person in its own right. That is who the Holy Spirit is. That is the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity whose visible descent we celebrate, and whose spiritual descent we pray for, today.
But in what sense do we pray for the Holy Spirit to “come down”? The Holy Spirit does not come again every Pentecost as if she had been absent. The Spirit of Jesus, is “with us always, even to the end of the age”; and indeed always has been, ever since she brooded over the formless void that she hatched into our universe. It is for us to tap into the ceaseless ebb and flow of the love within the Trinity; and tapping into that union, that comm-unicatio within God, is what we call prayer.
Prayer is, for many, a scary word. It’s hard enough to communicate properly with another person without hiding behind ready-made phrases and opinions, behind talk of the weather and the price of cheese, without censoring our thoughts and the less attractive or interesting parts of ourselves. And that’s when you can see the person you are communicating with – though, be it noted, you can’t see their thoughts. But God is worse. God does not answer in a way we are used to; he can’t be seen (unless you are Moses); he knows us better than we know ourselves, and he knows our needs before we tell him. How are we supposed to communicate with God?
No. Prayer is not scary and it is not difficult. What is difficult is praying in a way that does not suit us. Just as I find maths difficult, while you might find languages difficult. Maths may be a breeze for you. I pick up languages out of the air. Well, I spent nearly twenty years faithfully trying to “do” contemplative prayer. And it was only towards the end of those twenty years that I began to understand what “my” way of prayer is, and to discover that it has a respectable history, in both the Eastern and Western parts of the church. Some of you may have been faithfully trying to “meditate”, or to “recite prayers” or to “practise the presence of God” – or whatever. And failing. Because we have been “told” that this way, or that way, is the only way, or the best way, to pray. Nonsense. The best way to pray is the way that suits you; the way in which, as Walter Hilton put it in the fourteenth century, you “find most savour”. Prayer – like preaching, and like responding to preaching – has to come from something real within you. As soon as you stop listening to “the authorities” and instead do some research into the myriad ways in which people have prayed over the millennia and then...TRY IT...you will discover the language in which you and God communicate. It may be silent contemplation. It may be imaginative meditation. It may be walking in the Pentlands and responding to him in communion with the natural world. It may be a ceaseless conversation, as if he was walking next to you wherever you go. But find out for yourself, and don’t worry about doing or saying the right thing – Paul tells us quite plainly that God isn’t bothered about that: “"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness: for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words" . As the slogan from that famous brand of sports clothing has it: JUST DO IT!
..........and so:
may the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communication of the Holy Spirit be with us all.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Saturday, May 23, 2009
Beati mortui, qui in Domino moriuntur
Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ saith unto all that truly turn to him:
So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 17, and indeed John 15-17, tends to scare people. So many words, so many tangents, so much said. I suppose I could try to give a nice meaty exposition of it; but then we’d be here until Christmas, & you’d be much better to go home and get out a good commentary.
So I’m not going to do that. I was considering doing something like it, until a friend rang me to tell me that his cancer has spread and that the best they can offer him is palliative chemo.
And then this passage took on quite a different meaning for me.
I think we can all sometimes be mesmerised by the mass of words and the apparent difficulty of certain passages of the Bible. It is so easy to burrow into the words and forget about the meaning - and, perhaps even easier, to forget the context, to forget who is talking; and, in the case of John 17, who is talking to whom, and when.
It’s very simple really: this is a prayer, a prayer from the man who gave us the Lord’s Prayer; the man who also happened to be God and so knew how God wants to be prayed to.
St Augustine said of the Psalms: “So that we should know how to praise God, God first praised himself.” That’s even more true of the few examples that have come down to us of Jesus’ own way of praying: what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”; the various very short prayers scattered through the Gospels; and this one.
And this one teaches us two basic things: how to pray - and it isn’t necessarily what we would expect - and how to face death.
Well, yes: this is a relatively young man, in full health and lucidity, facing death, undoubtedly the most significant and well-prepared death in history, praying his last thought-out prayer to God; it is a prayer that sums up his life, mission and teaching, and his dearest wishes. The last testament of a person is a thing of great significance; if it is actually spoken as they face death its significance is hugely increased. Many of us, when we get to that stage, and if we are not too incapacitated, are so scared of death that we are not capable of articulating any such thing.
I am not generally too keen on Radio 4’s Thought For the Day, but I make an exception for Rabbi Lionel Blue. A while ago, having just come home from a stay in a hospice he was musing on the NHS, the lessons that his hospital stays had taught him, and finally - briefly - he referred to the debate about assisted dying. I paraphrase: “I hope I will be free to choose to end my life when the time comes,” he said, “but I am not sure that I will actually do it. I have found that God comes closest when I am at my lowest...and I wouldn’t want to miss out”. “And I wouldn’t want to miss out.” Three years later I am still in awe over that phrase. It shows the most astonishing courage, and the most astonishing faith - the courage and faith, properly speaking, of the martyr. A willingness to endure absolutely anything to find God, or, as another Rabbi put it, to be found in him: “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may be found in him.”
Dying is not a pleasant process, and facing death is terrifying. Most of us would like to avoid both, and most of us, if we were honest, would prefer a sudden death. However, in the old Litany of the Saints we read: “From a sudden and unprovided death, deliver us, Lord.” We are not to desire a sudden death: “in case we miss out”.
That’s quite a good answer to those who accuse Christians of seeking out suffering or making themselves miserable in the name of their religion. No - by no means. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. But some of us find - I think many of us find - that God is closest to us when we are at our lowest; and while we rightly hate the lowness, still...if we have courage, and if we truly seek God, do we really want to risk “missing out”?
“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord.” (Rev 14:13:)
Kierkegaard believed you could build an entire spirituality around the word “as” (forgive us our sins AS we forgive, be ye perfect AS your heavenly Father is perfect). I think you could construct an entire spirituality around the word “in”.
And the place to find it is in these “difficult” chapters. We are in Christ, and he is in the Father, and God is in us, and we are made for glory.
People often stress, and rightly, that there is no glory without the cross. But I wonder whether Jesus wouldn’t prefer us to say that with the cross there is glory. As he makes this prayer he knows what he’s on his way to, but it’s the glory he sees, the glory which is his by nature and ours by gift.
I am not sure there is one “correct” Christian position on “assisted dying”. I don’t think my friend would want to make use of such a thing, even if it were available - because he knows he is in the Christ who descended to the depths and is with us in the depths, and he wouldn’t want to miss out. But we are not all so brave, and we shouldn’t condemn those who hang on to their faith by the skin of their teeth, or be ashamed if that is true of us.
But isn’t there something exhilarating about going all the way? About descending with Christ - no, in Christ - all the way to the depths, to the very door of eternity, in his way and in his own time, and finding him far, far closer than we had ever dreamed, far far closer than he had been even at our lowest during our life?
In the words of John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos:
With ecstasy are we inflamed if we but hear that there is light eternal yonder; that there is Paradise, wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth. Let us all also enter into Christ, that we may all cry aloud thus unto God: Alleluia!
So God loved the world, that he gave his only-begotten Son, to the end that all that believe in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
John 17, and indeed John 15-17, tends to scare people. So many words, so many tangents, so much said. I suppose I could try to give a nice meaty exposition of it; but then we’d be here until Christmas, & you’d be much better to go home and get out a good commentary.
So I’m not going to do that. I was considering doing something like it, until a friend rang me to tell me that his cancer has spread and that the best they can offer him is palliative chemo.
And then this passage took on quite a different meaning for me.
I think we can all sometimes be mesmerised by the mass of words and the apparent difficulty of certain passages of the Bible. It is so easy to burrow into the words and forget about the meaning - and, perhaps even easier, to forget the context, to forget who is talking; and, in the case of John 17, who is talking to whom, and when.
It’s very simple really: this is a prayer, a prayer from the man who gave us the Lord’s Prayer; the man who also happened to be God and so knew how God wants to be prayed to.
St Augustine said of the Psalms: “So that we should know how to praise God, God first praised himself.” That’s even more true of the few examples that have come down to us of Jesus’ own way of praying: what we call “The Lord’s Prayer”; the various very short prayers scattered through the Gospels; and this one.
And this one teaches us two basic things: how to pray - and it isn’t necessarily what we would expect - and how to face death.
Well, yes: this is a relatively young man, in full health and lucidity, facing death, undoubtedly the most significant and well-prepared death in history, praying his last thought-out prayer to God; it is a prayer that sums up his life, mission and teaching, and his dearest wishes. The last testament of a person is a thing of great significance; if it is actually spoken as they face death its significance is hugely increased. Many of us, when we get to that stage, and if we are not too incapacitated, are so scared of death that we are not capable of articulating any such thing.
I am not generally too keen on Radio 4’s Thought For the Day, but I make an exception for Rabbi Lionel Blue. A while ago, having just come home from a stay in a hospice he was musing on the NHS, the lessons that his hospital stays had taught him, and finally - briefly - he referred to the debate about assisted dying. I paraphrase: “I hope I will be free to choose to end my life when the time comes,” he said, “but I am not sure that I will actually do it. I have found that God comes closest when I am at my lowest...and I wouldn’t want to miss out”. “And I wouldn’t want to miss out.” Three years later I am still in awe over that phrase. It shows the most astonishing courage, and the most astonishing faith - the courage and faith, properly speaking, of the martyr. A willingness to endure absolutely anything to find God, or, as another Rabbi put it, to be found in him: “I count all things to be but loss for the excellent knowledge of Jesus Christ my Lord; for whom I have suffered the loss of all things, and count them but as dung, that I may gain Christ and may be found in him.”
Dying is not a pleasant process, and facing death is terrifying. Most of us would like to avoid both, and most of us, if we were honest, would prefer a sudden death. However, in the old Litany of the Saints we read: “From a sudden and unprovided death, deliver us, Lord.” We are not to desire a sudden death: “in case we miss out”.
That’s quite a good answer to those who accuse Christians of seeking out suffering or making themselves miserable in the name of their religion. No - by no means. Jesus came that we might have life, and have it in abundance. But some of us find - I think many of us find - that God is closest to us when we are at our lowest; and while we rightly hate the lowness, still...if we have courage, and if we truly seek God, do we really want to risk “missing out”?
“Blessed are the dead, who die in the Lord.” (Rev 14:13:)
Kierkegaard believed you could build an entire spirituality around the word “as” (forgive us our sins AS we forgive, be ye perfect AS your heavenly Father is perfect). I think you could construct an entire spirituality around the word “in”.
And the place to find it is in these “difficult” chapters. We are in Christ, and he is in the Father, and God is in us, and we are made for glory.
People often stress, and rightly, that there is no glory without the cross. But I wonder whether Jesus wouldn’t prefer us to say that with the cross there is glory. As he makes this prayer he knows what he’s on his way to, but it’s the glory he sees, the glory which is his by nature and ours by gift.
I am not sure there is one “correct” Christian position on “assisted dying”. I don’t think my friend would want to make use of such a thing, even if it were available - because he knows he is in the Christ who descended to the depths and is with us in the depths, and he wouldn’t want to miss out. But we are not all so brave, and we shouldn’t condemn those who hang on to their faith by the skin of their teeth, or be ashamed if that is true of us.
But isn’t there something exhilarating about going all the way? About descending with Christ - no, in Christ - all the way to the depths, to the very door of eternity, in his way and in his own time, and finding him far, far closer than we had ever dreamed, far far closer than he had been even at our lowest during our life?
In the words of John Tavener’s Funeral Ikos:
With ecstasy are we inflamed if we but hear that there is light eternal yonder; that there is Paradise, wherein every soul of Righteous Ones rejoiceth. Let us all also enter into Christ, that we may all cry aloud thus unto God: Alleluia!
Friday, May 22, 2009
Nunc, Christe, scandens aethera, ad te cor nostrum subleva tuum Patrisque Spiritum emittens nobis caelitus.
21 May 2009
Ascension Day
Ego veritatem dico vobis: expedit vobis ut ego vadam: si enim non abiero, Paraclitus non veniet, alleluia
I am telling you the truth: it is better for you that I am going away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come, alleluia.
The word “alleluia” has a special atmosphere for us which it cannot have for Eastern Orthodox Christians; because we give it up for Lent. It keeps that Paschal feel about it even, say, in Advent, just as a food which we give up for Lent retains a festive feel even if it is not, as such, notably festive: I gave up olive oil for Lent once, and it took some months to regard it as a perfectly normal part of my diet. Just as we tend to commit excesses with that food in Paschaltide, so the church commits excesses with the alleluias, especially in the monastic liturgy. The word is tacked on to every text, sometimes in clumps, whether or not the text calls for the cry of “Praise the Lord!”. One of my favourites for sheer illogicality and unreasonable optimism is: “Mercenarius est, cuius non sunt oves propriae: vidit lupum venientem, et dimittit oves, et fugit, et lupus rapit et dispergit oves…Alleluia!” “The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it…alleluia???”
The Ascension is certainly a joyful feast, and the thought of the coming of the Paraclete certainly one to provoke alleluias. But I confess to having a battle with this every year when I read the text “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem WITH GREAT JOY”. There are only two other occasions in the Gospel where such joy is expressed: “When the Magi saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” and “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”. In both cases the joy is caused by the sight of Jesus, either immediate or imminent, while here, at the end of Luke’s gospel, it is Jesus’ disappearance which precedes – surely we cannot say causes – the joy.
Jesus has already assured us that the father is greater than he is; now he seems to be saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than he is, and that, therefore, we will be better off with the Spirit than with him. That isn’t what he’s saying; the Father, as underived, as origin of the Godhead, is “greater” than both Son and Sprit. it is true that if Jesus were speaking as man then the Spirit would indeed be greater than he, but I do not think that is what he is doing. The Holy Spirit is “better for us” largely because of our weakness and our fleshly nature, because we are all Thomases at heart and we cling to what we can see hear and touch; unless that is removed, we will never rise higher. In the beginning it was not so and perhaps in the greatest saints it is still not so, but for most of us the flesh is an impediment to the spirit. So what we need is the Spirit. But also because of our weakness and our fleshly nature we would prefer to keep Jesus. I can imagine that even after the resurrection somewhere in the disciples’ heart there was the unspoken cry – unspoken, but heard by Jesus nonetheless – “Lord, never mind this unknown Paraclete – just don’t you go away!”
That, I confess, is how I feel on this feast. The Collect says that it is Christ’s ascension that raises us to the heights, and that the hope of the Body is to be called to the glory of the Head, but for the moment I feel bereft. We know that Jesus tells the truth – Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true – and so we do have to accept that somehow this Paraclete is at least as good to have around as Jesus is himself, But I am not a pure spirit, and neither were the apostles, and it is undoubtedly easier when it is Jesus, the Incarnate Son, who is there.
This sense of bereavement, impending or completed, is heightened by the antiphons that are sung at this season. “Peace be with you, it is I, alleluia! Fear not, alleluia!” And, worse still at this point for those of us who are only to aware of it, “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have: now believe, alleluia!” The Holy Spirit isn’t warm and solid (pace Hopkins) and she can’t smile, or overturn the tables of the money-changers in the temple, or take your hand, or say things in just that characteristic tone of voice, or with those well-known verbal habits and that facial expression – or die for us. Nor can she at once be God and speak to us in a human voice from human vocal chords authoritatively what she has seen with the father. And even she is not present with us on this feast, even for her we have to wait; and the disciples did not know, as we do, that the wait will be only for the space of a novena.
The joy of this feast is an exclusively spiritual one. more so than any other feast in the calendar. It is a feast of complete. and literally blind, trust in God, in the words of the Lord. What it looks and feel like to us is the final disappearance of the one we love It is, it’s true, a disappearance in triumph, a disappearance in joy, the joy of all the heavenly choirs –I think it’s St Gregory the Great who points out that it is at the Ascension and not at the Nativity that the angels are see robed in white, the colour of rejoicing, because at the Nativity the divine nature is humiliated, while at the Ascension the human nature is exalted. But a disappearance which takes all but altruistic and anticipated joy away from us and leaves the present moment, the only moment that really exists, feeling drab indeed.
So why must Jesus go before the Holy Spirit can come; why was the coming of Jesus, indeed, a prerequisite for that of the Spirit; and why should it be “better” for us that Jesus should go, to be “replaced” by the Spirit? I’d say that the second question gives a good part of the answer to the first. one cannot see – that is, receive, the Holy Spirit, unless one has seen Jesus – and so, as he explained, seen the Father also, with that same capacity. The Incarnation was necessary in order to draw us, via bodily sight, to spiritual sight, not as if we saw Jesus with bodily sight and the Spirit with spiritual sight, but that although we once knew and saw Jesus according to the flesh, we now know him so no longer. it was during his lifetime on earth, and of course more specially after the resurrection, that he taught his disciples to move from one form of sight to the other. By the time the Spirit came, their spiritual eyes were ready for her; and she is the consummation of the work of the incarnation and our confirmation in spiritual sight. The world cannot see, cannot receive, the Spirit, because it has not seen Jesus. As Jesus implied, it is only in, through the Spirit, that we can fully see Jesus: because there are so many things we could not bear (the Greek word is the same one as that used for carrying the Cross) before Pentecost, and because we cannot even hold in our minds and hearts all that we have received from the Lord. we need the Spirit to recall this to us, and so to keep Jesus with us. That is why it is to our advantage if Jesus goes and send the Spirit; not that the Spirit is greater than Jesus but that only in the Spirit do we truly possess Jesus.
There’s another reason, and a sadder one. As Dostoevsky, among others, pointed out, human nature (and therefore the church as human institution) being what it is, we would never really accept the Incarnate Son of God. We would continue to find him and offence and a scandal, and we would keep crucifying him, or using whatever method of semi-judicial murder was in vogue at the time. It is instructive that the Baha’I religion, which holds that, in some sense, God has been incarnate several times, teaches that he has een killed – murdered – in all his successive incarnations; he has never been accepted. I hold no brief for the Baha’is; but that is a sound perception of the nature of God and humankind. We can’t crucify the Holy Spirit. We can certainly ignore and blaspheme her – and we do – but we cannot affect her activity in the world, as was possible in the case of the Word Incarnate.
That means that, just as no-one can snatch us from the Father’s hand, no-one can take the Holy Spirit from us. Jesus Christ chose to be at the mercy of humans, and he still chooses to be so in the eucharist. They could take him away from his disciples, even if only for a time; and now they can deny us the eucharist if they wish and are powerful enough. But the Holy Spirit cannot be touched. So perhaps we can even see how the presence of the Holy Spirit I one that gives us the greatest safety and confidence in this unspiritual world. And we mustn’t forget that she is not any old spirit, She is the spirit of the Father and the Son; and, specifically, as St Paul calls her, the Spirit of Jesus. To meet her is to meet Jesus. I think that when the disciples first encountered the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, they at once recognised her as the one with whom they had lived all those years. It has been said that the Old Testament times were the era of the Father, New Testament times the era of the Son, and Church times the era of the Spirit. That’s oversimplifying and over-categorising, and I’m not sure it’s true anyway. But one thing is true: these three Persons are one God, one and the same God; and I don’t think the three Persons have three personalities in the loose sense in which we use the word nowadays. More of this maybe on Trinity Sunday; but I think these Persons have one personality in that sense: that they are recognisably one God. At the risk of being burned at the stake I might say “Three Persons, but one person”. If you knew Jesus, you’d recognise his Spirit. if you had really known YHWH, you would have recognised Jesus – as many did. And I suspect that those who so much dislike the God of the Old Testament have never really known Jesus.
On the day of Pentecost, then, the disciples were not presented with an unknown Paraclete They were reunited with Jesus, though in a different way. And it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit that we will know not only the Spirit but the Incarnate Word and the Father.
Ascension Day
Ego veritatem dico vobis: expedit vobis ut ego vadam: si enim non abiero, Paraclitus non veniet, alleluia
I am telling you the truth: it is better for you that I am going away; for if I do not go away, the Paraclete will not come, alleluia.
The word “alleluia” has a special atmosphere for us which it cannot have for Eastern Orthodox Christians; because we give it up for Lent. It keeps that Paschal feel about it even, say, in Advent, just as a food which we give up for Lent retains a festive feel even if it is not, as such, notably festive: I gave up olive oil for Lent once, and it took some months to regard it as a perfectly normal part of my diet. Just as we tend to commit excesses with that food in Paschaltide, so the church commits excesses with the alleluias, especially in the monastic liturgy. The word is tacked on to every text, sometimes in clumps, whether or not the text calls for the cry of “Praise the Lord!”. One of my favourites for sheer illogicality and unreasonable optimism is: “Mercenarius est, cuius non sunt oves propriae: vidit lupum venientem, et dimittit oves, et fugit, et lupus rapit et dispergit oves…Alleluia!” “The hired hand is not the shepherd who owns the sheep. So when he sees the wolf coming, he abandons the sheep and runs away. Then the wolf attacks the flock and scatters it…alleluia???”
The Ascension is certainly a joyful feast, and the thought of the coming of the Paraclete certainly one to provoke alleluias. But I confess to having a battle with this every year when I read the text “While he was blessing them, he left them and was taken up into heaven. Then they worshipped him and returned to Jerusalem WITH GREAT JOY”. There are only two other occasions in the Gospel where such joy is expressed: “When the Magi saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy” and “The disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord”. In both cases the joy is caused by the sight of Jesus, either immediate or imminent, while here, at the end of Luke’s gospel, it is Jesus’ disappearance which precedes – surely we cannot say causes – the joy.
Jesus has already assured us that the father is greater than he is; now he seems to be saying that the Holy Spirit is greater than he is, and that, therefore, we will be better off with the Spirit than with him. That isn’t what he’s saying; the Father, as underived, as origin of the Godhead, is “greater” than both Son and Sprit. it is true that if Jesus were speaking as man then the Spirit would indeed be greater than he, but I do not think that is what he is doing. The Holy Spirit is “better for us” largely because of our weakness and our fleshly nature, because we are all Thomases at heart and we cling to what we can see hear and touch; unless that is removed, we will never rise higher. In the beginning it was not so and perhaps in the greatest saints it is still not so, but for most of us the flesh is an impediment to the spirit. So what we need is the Spirit. But also because of our weakness and our fleshly nature we would prefer to keep Jesus. I can imagine that even after the resurrection somewhere in the disciples’ heart there was the unspoken cry – unspoken, but heard by Jesus nonetheless – “Lord, never mind this unknown Paraclete – just don’t you go away!”
That, I confess, is how I feel on this feast. The Collect says that it is Christ’s ascension that raises us to the heights, and that the hope of the Body is to be called to the glory of the Head, but for the moment I feel bereft. We know that Jesus tells the truth – Truth himself speaks truly, or there’s nothing true – and so we do have to accept that somehow this Paraclete is at least as good to have around as Jesus is himself, But I am not a pure spirit, and neither were the apostles, and it is undoubtedly easier when it is Jesus, the Incarnate Son, who is there.
This sense of bereavement, impending or completed, is heightened by the antiphons that are sung at this season. “Peace be with you, it is I, alleluia! Fear not, alleluia!” And, worse still at this point for those of us who are only to aware of it, “A spirit has not flesh and bones, as you see that I have: now believe, alleluia!” The Holy Spirit isn’t warm and solid (pace Hopkins) and she can’t smile, or overturn the tables of the money-changers in the temple, or take your hand, or say things in just that characteristic tone of voice, or with those well-known verbal habits and that facial expression – or die for us. Nor can she at once be God and speak to us in a human voice from human vocal chords authoritatively what she has seen with the father. And even she is not present with us on this feast, even for her we have to wait; and the disciples did not know, as we do, that the wait will be only for the space of a novena.
The joy of this feast is an exclusively spiritual one. more so than any other feast in the calendar. It is a feast of complete. and literally blind, trust in God, in the words of the Lord. What it looks and feel like to us is the final disappearance of the one we love It is, it’s true, a disappearance in triumph, a disappearance in joy, the joy of all the heavenly choirs –I think it’s St Gregory the Great who points out that it is at the Ascension and not at the Nativity that the angels are see robed in white, the colour of rejoicing, because at the Nativity the divine nature is humiliated, while at the Ascension the human nature is exalted. But a disappearance which takes all but altruistic and anticipated joy away from us and leaves the present moment, the only moment that really exists, feeling drab indeed.
So why must Jesus go before the Holy Spirit can come; why was the coming of Jesus, indeed, a prerequisite for that of the Spirit; and why should it be “better” for us that Jesus should go, to be “replaced” by the Spirit? I’d say that the second question gives a good part of the answer to the first. one cannot see – that is, receive, the Holy Spirit, unless one has seen Jesus – and so, as he explained, seen the Father also, with that same capacity. The Incarnation was necessary in order to draw us, via bodily sight, to spiritual sight, not as if we saw Jesus with bodily sight and the Spirit with spiritual sight, but that although we once knew and saw Jesus according to the flesh, we now know him so no longer. it was during his lifetime on earth, and of course more specially after the resurrection, that he taught his disciples to move from one form of sight to the other. By the time the Spirit came, their spiritual eyes were ready for her; and she is the consummation of the work of the incarnation and our confirmation in spiritual sight. The world cannot see, cannot receive, the Spirit, because it has not seen Jesus. As Jesus implied, it is only in, through the Spirit, that we can fully see Jesus: because there are so many things we could not bear (the Greek word is the same one as that used for carrying the Cross) before Pentecost, and because we cannot even hold in our minds and hearts all that we have received from the Lord. we need the Spirit to recall this to us, and so to keep Jesus with us. That is why it is to our advantage if Jesus goes and send the Spirit; not that the Spirit is greater than Jesus but that only in the Spirit do we truly possess Jesus.
There’s another reason, and a sadder one. As Dostoevsky, among others, pointed out, human nature (and therefore the church as human institution) being what it is, we would never really accept the Incarnate Son of God. We would continue to find him and offence and a scandal, and we would keep crucifying him, or using whatever method of semi-judicial murder was in vogue at the time. It is instructive that the Baha’I religion, which holds that, in some sense, God has been incarnate several times, teaches that he has een killed – murdered – in all his successive incarnations; he has never been accepted. I hold no brief for the Baha’is; but that is a sound perception of the nature of God and humankind. We can’t crucify the Holy Spirit. We can certainly ignore and blaspheme her – and we do – but we cannot affect her activity in the world, as was possible in the case of the Word Incarnate.
That means that, just as no-one can snatch us from the Father’s hand, no-one can take the Holy Spirit from us. Jesus Christ chose to be at the mercy of humans, and he still chooses to be so in the eucharist. They could take him away from his disciples, even if only for a time; and now they can deny us the eucharist if they wish and are powerful enough. But the Holy Spirit cannot be touched. So perhaps we can even see how the presence of the Holy Spirit I one that gives us the greatest safety and confidence in this unspiritual world. And we mustn’t forget that she is not any old spirit, She is the spirit of the Father and the Son; and, specifically, as St Paul calls her, the Spirit of Jesus. To meet her is to meet Jesus. I think that when the disciples first encountered the Spirit, on the day of Pentecost, they at once recognised her as the one with whom they had lived all those years. It has been said that the Old Testament times were the era of the Father, New Testament times the era of the Son, and Church times the era of the Spirit. That’s oversimplifying and over-categorising, and I’m not sure it’s true anyway. But one thing is true: these three Persons are one God, one and the same God; and I don’t think the three Persons have three personalities in the loose sense in which we use the word nowadays. More of this maybe on Trinity Sunday; but I think these Persons have one personality in that sense: that they are recognisably one God. At the risk of being burned at the stake I might say “Three Persons, but one person”. If you knew Jesus, you’d recognise his Spirit. if you had really known YHWH, you would have recognised Jesus – as many did. And I suspect that those who so much dislike the God of the Old Testament have never really known Jesus.
On the day of Pentecost, then, the disciples were not presented with an unknown Paraclete They were reunited with Jesus, though in a different way. And it is in our relationship with the Holy Spirit that we will know not only the Spirit but the Incarnate Word and the Father.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Christo omnino nihil præponamus, qui nos pariter ad vitam æternam perducat
"Just as there is a bitter and evil zeal, which separates us from God and leads to hell, just so there is a good zeal, which separates us from sin and leads to God and to eternal life. This is the zeal that we should use with the most fervent love: that is, that we should seek to outdo each other in showing respect, tolerate each other’s weaknesses, whether of body or behaviour, with the utmost patience, and give way to each other. No-one should do what seems to be to his own advantage, but should consider what is to the advantage of others. We should love each other with chaste and brotherly love; fear God; and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And may he lead us all to eternal life. Amen."
That is the seventy-second chapter of the Rule of St Benedict: “Of the good zeal which the monks should have”. Zeal is a word we don’t use much nowadays. If we were to refer to someone as zealous, and, even more, as a zealot, we would mean that he is a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and probably dangerous. It’s interesting that Jesus included among his apostles a Zealot, one of those Jews who rebelled against Roman taxation, and finally, by their open rebellion, led to the destruction of Jerusalem. He didn’t mind zeal, but I think it’s a safe bet that, in line with the message to the church of Laodicea, he minded lukewarmness, and minded it a lot. If you described the apostles he chose, lukewarmness is not a characteristic you’d mention, and zeal is one that you probably would. Even though I must die for you, I will not deny you! Lord, shall we call down lightning from heaven to strike them? You shall never wash my feet! Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied! And when Jesus called James and John from their fishing, they dropped everything, left the boats and nets and fish and their father, and followed him.
I need hardly say that Jesus was zealous. “Zeal for your house has consumed me”. Let the dead bury their dead! Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! My food is to do the will of the Father. And, in another vein, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but not my will, but yours be done”.
Sometimes I think that one of the most important things Jesus ever said – for me at any rate – was a throwaway line, spoken to Peter who had shown curiosity about what was to happen to John. Jesus replied: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.” That has become a sort of mantra with me when I find that I am becoming too concerned about the things of this world, or if I find myself being envious of, or over-curious about, another person. What is that to you? As for you, follow me.
That is what we are here for. Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. Being a Christian, following Christ, is not something that we do in our spare time, it is not an optional extra tacked on to a life in which we try to be nice and honest people (though that’s a start). It is life. It is our whole definition. It is easier to remember that in a monastery, since all you need to do is glance at one of your fellow nuns or monks, and their clothing will tell you what they are and what you are. There is a saying in monastic circles: The habit may not make the monk, but it helps to keep him. It does; it helps to remind him and to keep him faithful. We lay people do not have such helps. We live in a world that reminds us of almost everything else at every turn. It is not a wicked world, but our part of it is largely indifferent to Christ, and we are lucky if it is not actually hostile to Christians. Or perhaps I’m wrong there; perhaps hostility is better than indifference. “I wish you were either hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” At least hostility reminds us of what we are, we who bear the name of Christian.
Today’s reading from the Song of Songs contains one of the great biblical misquotations. When a beloved person dies, there is sure to be someone who says “The Bible says that love is stronger than death”. The Bible does not say that love is stronger than death. What the Bible says is that “love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” Very different. It means not that love endures beyond death or overcomes death, but that love is as strong, as unconquerable, as death. No connection is being made between love and death; the author simply couldn’t think of anything more powerful or uncompromising than death. And that word “jealousy” – in Hebrew it is from the same root as zeal. It’s the same word, really. The phrase does not mean that a jealous person will never forgive; it means that love’s zeal is boundless, its strength comparable only to the strongest thing there is – death.
That’s why these two readings are put next to each other: the exhortation not to be lukewarm but zealous, and the poetic explanation of where that zeal comes from. From love. We have been told that “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us”; but love elicits love, and love – not hard work, not weekly attendance at the eucharist, not preaching or teaching – is the only appropriate response. Imagine if the Bride in the Song of Songs had responded with anything but love; even if she had offered the Bridegroom all her possessions “it would be utterly scorned”. Just so with God. As so often, it is Paul who puts it in the clearest and most extreme form: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
It is worth noting that we are given these readings on the Sunday before Ascension Day, when the disciples all had to move out of the realm of sight into the realm of faith, which is the one we all live in, and the one that Jesus called blessed: Blessed is the person who has not seen, and yet believes. Jesus is no longer visibly there to remind the disciples of their mission, of their purpose in life, of what it means to be a follower of Christ. And as we see, lukewarmness set in for them too. As I’ve said, there is nothing exceptionally wicked about today’s world. And there’s nothing exceptionally lukewarm about today’s Christians. But we have waited a long time for the coming of the Bridegroom. It is hard to keep our first fervour and our first love. But he will come, to the world at the end of time, and to each of us at our own death.
Christ does not stand at the door and knock, physically, as the bridegroom did in the Song of Songs. But, interestingly, that, and the word “zeal”, is the only phrase common to the two readings, and I think we are meant to notice that. Christ’s presence, and his love, is always there. And the only response he asks is – love; and the zeal which manifests it.
And so let us use this zeal with the most fervent love; let us love each other with chaste and brotherly love; fear God; and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And may he lead us all to eternal life. Amen.
That is the seventy-second chapter of the Rule of St Benedict: “Of the good zeal which the monks should have”. Zeal is a word we don’t use much nowadays. If we were to refer to someone as zealous, and, even more, as a zealot, we would mean that he is a fanatic, a fundamentalist, and probably dangerous. It’s interesting that Jesus included among his apostles a Zealot, one of those Jews who rebelled against Roman taxation, and finally, by their open rebellion, led to the destruction of Jerusalem. He didn’t mind zeal, but I think it’s a safe bet that, in line with the message to the church of Laodicea, he minded lukewarmness, and minded it a lot. If you described the apostles he chose, lukewarmness is not a characteristic you’d mention, and zeal is one that you probably would. Even though I must die for you, I will not deny you! Lord, shall we call down lightning from heaven to strike them? You shall never wash my feet! Show us the Father and we shall be satisfied! And when Jesus called James and John from their fishing, they dropped everything, left the boats and nets and fish and their father, and followed him.
I need hardly say that Jesus was zealous. “Zeal for your house has consumed me”. Let the dead bury their dead! Scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! My food is to do the will of the Father. And, in another vein, “Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; but not my will, but yours be done”.
Sometimes I think that one of the most important things Jesus ever said – for me at any rate – was a throwaway line, spoken to Peter who had shown curiosity about what was to happen to John. Jesus replied: “If I wish him to remain until I come, what is that to you? As for you, follow me.” That has become a sort of mantra with me when I find that I am becoming too concerned about the things of this world, or if I find myself being envious of, or over-curious about, another person. What is that to you? As for you, follow me.
That is what we are here for. Seek first the kingdom of God and its righteousness. Being a Christian, following Christ, is not something that we do in our spare time, it is not an optional extra tacked on to a life in which we try to be nice and honest people (though that’s a start). It is life. It is our whole definition. It is easier to remember that in a monastery, since all you need to do is glance at one of your fellow nuns or monks, and their clothing will tell you what they are and what you are. There is a saying in monastic circles: The habit may not make the monk, but it helps to keep him. It does; it helps to remind him and to keep him faithful. We lay people do not have such helps. We live in a world that reminds us of almost everything else at every turn. It is not a wicked world, but our part of it is largely indifferent to Christ, and we are lucky if it is not actually hostile to Christians. Or perhaps I’m wrong there; perhaps hostility is better than indifference. “I wish you were either hot or cold! But because you are lukewarm—neither hot nor cold—I am about to spit you out of my mouth.” At least hostility reminds us of what we are, we who bear the name of Christian.
Today’s reading from the Song of Songs contains one of the great biblical misquotations. When a beloved person dies, there is sure to be someone who says “The Bible says that love is stronger than death”. The Bible does not say that love is stronger than death. What the Bible says is that “love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave.” Very different. It means not that love endures beyond death or overcomes death, but that love is as strong, as unconquerable, as death. No connection is being made between love and death; the author simply couldn’t think of anything more powerful or uncompromising than death. And that word “jealousy” – in Hebrew it is from the same root as zeal. It’s the same word, really. The phrase does not mean that a jealous person will never forgive; it means that love’s zeal is boundless, its strength comparable only to the strongest thing there is – death.
That’s why these two readings are put next to each other: the exhortation not to be lukewarm but zealous, and the poetic explanation of where that zeal comes from. From love. We have been told that “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us”; but love elicits love, and love – not hard work, not weekly attendance at the eucharist, not preaching or teaching – is the only appropriate response. Imagine if the Bride in the Song of Songs had responded with anything but love; even if she had offered the Bridegroom all her possessions “it would be utterly scorned”. Just so with God. As so often, it is Paul who puts it in the clearest and most extreme form: “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”
It is worth noting that we are given these readings on the Sunday before Ascension Day, when the disciples all had to move out of the realm of sight into the realm of faith, which is the one we all live in, and the one that Jesus called blessed: Blessed is the person who has not seen, and yet believes. Jesus is no longer visibly there to remind the disciples of their mission, of their purpose in life, of what it means to be a follower of Christ. And as we see, lukewarmness set in for them too. As I’ve said, there is nothing exceptionally wicked about today’s world. And there’s nothing exceptionally lukewarm about today’s Christians. But we have waited a long time for the coming of the Bridegroom. It is hard to keep our first fervour and our first love. But he will come, to the world at the end of time, and to each of us at our own death.
Christ does not stand at the door and knock, physically, as the bridegroom did in the Song of Songs. But, interestingly, that, and the word “zeal”, is the only phrase common to the two readings, and I think we are meant to notice that. Christ’s presence, and his love, is always there. And the only response he asks is – love; and the zeal which manifests it.
And so let us use this zeal with the most fervent love; let us love each other with chaste and brotherly love; fear God; and prefer nothing whatsoever to Christ. And may he lead us all to eternal life. Amen.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
Vergine Madre, Figlia del tuo Figlio
A bit early, but I'm off down to darkest Somerset for work tomorrow, so here it is:
10 May 2009 - Fifth Sunday of Easter
You in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person
I suppose you could sum up today’s Gospel in the phrase “and the Word was made flesh”. It is not so much “the Word is flesh”, even after the union of the two natures in Christ, and you can’t quite say “flesh is the Word”, though maybe that would be a good corrective to our almost Manichean fear and contempt for the body. Ever since Christ died, death has not only lost its sting, but it has become something beautiful and even precious (oh yes, I have seen people die, and I know it doesn’t always look like that; but then, neither did Christ’s death). The same is far more true of life – life in the flesh on this earth, I mean. People travel for hundreds, even thousands of miles to touch or even to see relics that have been used or touched by a saint or which made up part of her body; we have all heard about the statue of St Peter in Rome whose foot has been worn away by the pilgrims’ constant caresses. There’s another, by the way, in the Brompton Oratory. But why just speak of saints? Consider the popularity of houses where great people have lived, or museums which contain their clothing or possessions: the frisson that goes through you when you are allowed to touch the piano that Chopin once played. The fact that these things once had some contact with these great people – great in whatever fashion – invests them with a special value. But it doesn’t seem to strike us that ever since Christmas our life, our very flesh, and since Easter our death, has been invested with a far more special nature, because the One with whom it has had contact is divine; is God.
In a group discussion during my time at Cambridge, our philosophy tutor suddenly demanded: “Where are you?” We looked at each other, uncertain as to what he was on about. Finally a brave soul piped up: “We’re in your rooms at King’s College.” “No, no,” cried Dr Lloyd. “I mean where are YOU, where is YOU, where in your body do you feel YOU reside? Is it here –“ and he gave the unfortunate young man a cuff on the head, “and if not, where?” I think we all agreed that we felt we “were” in our heads. I’m not sure whether I would feel that quite so strongly if I were blind: the eyes are our windows on to the world, and it seems logical that “I” should be behind my windows, looking out. Of course our ears, and our senses of taste and smell are also in our heads, but I do feel that “I am “ behind my eyes. However, if I asked myself “where” I feel my source of life to be, I would reply “in the region of my heart”. Which is, mechanically speaking, correct: that’s the engine room, and the captain is up in my brain. certainly the further from my heart a part of my body is, the less life-threatening an injury seems; and the further from my brain it is the less it feels like an essential part of me; while it would be inconvenient to lose one of my feet, I would not feel it affected my being; while damage to my face would feel like damage to “me”. Well, I’m not sure that “I” am in my brain; but I am very sure indeed that the source of my life is not in my heart. When Paul says “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me” that is not a pious allegory. It is literally true. Since the Incarnation “all flesh” is the Body of Christ. The Word was made flesh, and flesh can never be the same again.
My source of life is not within myself. I am not an independent plant, entire by itself, that has only to be rooted in the soil to live. I am part of the one plant, and if I do not receive the sap from it, I wither and die. Any idea of self-sufficiency is pure illusion, not because some tyrant God wishes to keep me in subjugation, but because apart from him there is no life. I am free within the vine, but only within it. But there’s another side to that: if I am in the vine, I cannot die, any more than Christ, once risen, can die. My participation in the vine is not a fiction. If I cannot live outside it, that is because its life – God’s own life – is mine. Christ is the vine, but so am I; apart from the fact that you can cut off the vine’s branches without killing the vine, you cannot distinguish between vine and branches. If that isn’t being deified, I don’t know what it is.
Of course another thing that means is this: you cannot prune the branches without pruning the vine. If one of the branches is cut out, or even pruned, Christ feels it: not “as if” it were himself but because it quite literally is himself. To say “the vine” and “the branches” is more or less synonymous. If I spray the vine’s branches, I spray the vine. It is far more than Paul’s “head and members”, as there there is a genuine distinction: if I cut my hand I do not in any sense cut my head. You talk about pruning the rosebush, not about pruning the branches of a rosebush. It is meaningless to say “I didn’t prune the bush, I only pruned the branches”. At most, you could say “I pruned part of the bush”, but that wouldn’t in fact give an accurate impression of what you actually did. So “I am the vine, you are the branches” is really a form of the Hebrew parallelism which you find, for example, in the phrase “What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou considerest him?” There is no distinction between “man” and “the son of man”. The two are the same. I am Christ and Christ is me. He said so: he said that whatever we do to the least of his brethren, we do to him. He did not say “It is as if you had done it to me”; but “You did it to me”. We are in Paschaltide, so perhaps I shouldn’t point out what the cost of this is to our Lord, but we wouldn’t have Paschaltide without the Passion, so here goes: when the Father prunes the branches, he prunes the vine. He prunes the Son. I think that was what was happening in Gethsemane. It would be meaningless to say “I’m going to prune the branches because they have curly-leaf disease (in our case, sin) but I am not going to prune the vine – Christ – because it hasn’t (in his case, he is sinless). If you prune the branches you prune the vine. A person damned is part of the vine – of Christ – cut away and burned. So, of course, is pruning, but that is health and life giving. Christ feels it, not in sympathy, but in himself. It is far more than any person could feel for any other, because it is not other, but self.
Perhaps the only person who could fully understand this was Mary. Not because she was supernaturally enlightened – maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t – and not because, being sinless, she would have been more conscious of her likeness to the Vine. But simply because she had experienced a paradox that no-one else ever can: she had been, literally and physically, the source of life, not just of any embryo, but of God. It is impossible that she should not have meditated on her extraordinary pregnancy, extraordinary not just in the manner of its beginning but in its very nature. She was the source of life for the one who was the source of life. As she felt her own blood being pumped around her veins and knew that her child, a separate person from the very instant of his conception as we all are, was being sustained in life by the beating of her heart and the flow of her blood, she must have been aware that the converse was also true, and that if – so to speak – God’s Heart, God’s love which is his being, were to cease to beat, she would cease to be, as surely as her child would do if her heart were to stop. And as she felt her life flowing through her body she knew that in some sense it was God’s life, and that she, although a separate and independent person, was in some way part of God. It was her Son who expressed it, but – and I am sure this is not the only example, it was Mary, the Virgin Mother, daughter of her Son, who first felt it.
Blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it!
10 May 2009 - Fifth Sunday of Easter
You in me and I in you, together we are one undivided person
I suppose you could sum up today’s Gospel in the phrase “and the Word was made flesh”. It is not so much “the Word is flesh”, even after the union of the two natures in Christ, and you can’t quite say “flesh is the Word”, though maybe that would be a good corrective to our almost Manichean fear and contempt for the body. Ever since Christ died, death has not only lost its sting, but it has become something beautiful and even precious (oh yes, I have seen people die, and I know it doesn’t always look like that; but then, neither did Christ’s death). The same is far more true of life – life in the flesh on this earth, I mean. People travel for hundreds, even thousands of miles to touch or even to see relics that have been used or touched by a saint or which made up part of her body; we have all heard about the statue of St Peter in Rome whose foot has been worn away by the pilgrims’ constant caresses. There’s another, by the way, in the Brompton Oratory. But why just speak of saints? Consider the popularity of houses where great people have lived, or museums which contain their clothing or possessions: the frisson that goes through you when you are allowed to touch the piano that Chopin once played. The fact that these things once had some contact with these great people – great in whatever fashion – invests them with a special value. But it doesn’t seem to strike us that ever since Christmas our life, our very flesh, and since Easter our death, has been invested with a far more special nature, because the One with whom it has had contact is divine; is God.
In a group discussion during my time at Cambridge, our philosophy tutor suddenly demanded: “Where are you?” We looked at each other, uncertain as to what he was on about. Finally a brave soul piped up: “We’re in your rooms at King’s College.” “No, no,” cried Dr Lloyd. “I mean where are YOU, where is YOU, where in your body do you feel YOU reside? Is it here –“ and he gave the unfortunate young man a cuff on the head, “and if not, where?” I think we all agreed that we felt we “were” in our heads. I’m not sure whether I would feel that quite so strongly if I were blind: the eyes are our windows on to the world, and it seems logical that “I” should be behind my windows, looking out. Of course our ears, and our senses of taste and smell are also in our heads, but I do feel that “I am “ behind my eyes. However, if I asked myself “where” I feel my source of life to be, I would reply “in the region of my heart”. Which is, mechanically speaking, correct: that’s the engine room, and the captain is up in my brain. certainly the further from my heart a part of my body is, the less life-threatening an injury seems; and the further from my brain it is the less it feels like an essential part of me; while it would be inconvenient to lose one of my feet, I would not feel it affected my being; while damage to my face would feel like damage to “me”. Well, I’m not sure that “I” am in my brain; but I am very sure indeed that the source of my life is not in my heart. When Paul says “I live, now not I, but Christ lives in me” that is not a pious allegory. It is literally true. Since the Incarnation “all flesh” is the Body of Christ. The Word was made flesh, and flesh can never be the same again.
My source of life is not within myself. I am not an independent plant, entire by itself, that has only to be rooted in the soil to live. I am part of the one plant, and if I do not receive the sap from it, I wither and die. Any idea of self-sufficiency is pure illusion, not because some tyrant God wishes to keep me in subjugation, but because apart from him there is no life. I am free within the vine, but only within it. But there’s another side to that: if I am in the vine, I cannot die, any more than Christ, once risen, can die. My participation in the vine is not a fiction. If I cannot live outside it, that is because its life – God’s own life – is mine. Christ is the vine, but so am I; apart from the fact that you can cut off the vine’s branches without killing the vine, you cannot distinguish between vine and branches. If that isn’t being deified, I don’t know what it is.
Of course another thing that means is this: you cannot prune the branches without pruning the vine. If one of the branches is cut out, or even pruned, Christ feels it: not “as if” it were himself but because it quite literally is himself. To say “the vine” and “the branches” is more or less synonymous. If I spray the vine’s branches, I spray the vine. It is far more than Paul’s “head and members”, as there there is a genuine distinction: if I cut my hand I do not in any sense cut my head. You talk about pruning the rosebush, not about pruning the branches of a rosebush. It is meaningless to say “I didn’t prune the bush, I only pruned the branches”. At most, you could say “I pruned part of the bush”, but that wouldn’t in fact give an accurate impression of what you actually did. So “I am the vine, you are the branches” is really a form of the Hebrew parallelism which you find, for example, in the phrase “What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou considerest him?” There is no distinction between “man” and “the son of man”. The two are the same. I am Christ and Christ is me. He said so: he said that whatever we do to the least of his brethren, we do to him. He did not say “It is as if you had done it to me”; but “You did it to me”. We are in Paschaltide, so perhaps I shouldn’t point out what the cost of this is to our Lord, but we wouldn’t have Paschaltide without the Passion, so here goes: when the Father prunes the branches, he prunes the vine. He prunes the Son. I think that was what was happening in Gethsemane. It would be meaningless to say “I’m going to prune the branches because they have curly-leaf disease (in our case, sin) but I am not going to prune the vine – Christ – because it hasn’t (in his case, he is sinless). If you prune the branches you prune the vine. A person damned is part of the vine – of Christ – cut away and burned. So, of course, is pruning, but that is health and life giving. Christ feels it, not in sympathy, but in himself. It is far more than any person could feel for any other, because it is not other, but self.
Perhaps the only person who could fully understand this was Mary. Not because she was supernaturally enlightened – maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t – and not because, being sinless, she would have been more conscious of her likeness to the Vine. But simply because she had experienced a paradox that no-one else ever can: she had been, literally and physically, the source of life, not just of any embryo, but of God. It is impossible that she should not have meditated on her extraordinary pregnancy, extraordinary not just in the manner of its beginning but in its very nature. She was the source of life for the one who was the source of life. As she felt her own blood being pumped around her veins and knew that her child, a separate person from the very instant of his conception as we all are, was being sustained in life by the beating of her heart and the flow of her blood, she must have been aware that the converse was also true, and that if – so to speak – God’s Heart, God’s love which is his being, were to cease to beat, she would cease to be, as surely as her child would do if her heart were to stop. And as she felt her life flowing through her body she knew that in some sense it was God’s life, and that she, although a separate and independent person, was in some way part of God. It was her Son who expressed it, but – and I am sure this is not the only example, it was Mary, the Virgin Mother, daughter of her Son, who first felt it.
Blessed are they who hear the word of God, and keep it!
Saturday, May 2, 2009
Amazing Grace
Amazing grace! How sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me!
I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see.
Could we just take a minute here to ask ourselves in what way, if at all, we identify with this verse of that well-known hymn?
I have been thinking, in the context of a well-heeled city centre church, about the sheepfold, about insiders and outsiders, about people who belong and people who don’t. People are not consciously included or excluded, but I think you could safely say that this congregation is made up almost entirely of “insiders”, people who “belong in the sheepfold”. Few of us have a serious struggle to make ends meet. Few of us are addicted to illegal drugs (though I’d be prepared to bet that there are a few problem drinkers around, on sheer statistical probability). Few of us have ever been homeless, and I would be very surprised if any of us were so now. Few of us have any convictions, with the possible exception of minor road traffic infringements. Few of us have been refugees. though maybe some of our parents were. I suspect that few of us have major mental health issues, few of us have been victims of domestic abuse, and few of us live in the seriously disadvantaged parts of the city. Pennywell or Bingham, anyone? Well, this sounds really great, doesn’t it? A church full of happy and successful people. Actually, it worries me quite seriously.
In the second chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians we are clearly told that Christianity started by turning everything upside down – excluding the chosen people, the insiders, unless they were willing to accept that others were equally chosen; and welcoming in “those who were outside”.
We have a tendency (and I think we hardly give it a thought) to distinguish between what we do for ourselves as a congregation, and what we do as “outreach”. Out – reach. The insiders reaching out to the outsiders. Well and good, as far as it goes. But – what are they doing outside?
We are followers of the man who said: “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”. How have we managed to neutralise Christ’s magnetic power? What have we done to the magnet that is Christ? and what do we even mean by “outside”? It might do us no harm to listen again to those words of St Paul’s as addressed to us – as indeed they are. “Remember that…you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” As Kierkegaard repeated in season and out of season as he read the Bible: “It is of me this is spoken, to me this is said”.
A friend told me the following story: a very scruffy looking man turned up to a service in a nice church in a nice part of the south of England. Sharp intakes of breath all round. At the end, prompted by the churchwardens, the vicar took the man aside and said "during the next week I want you to talk to God and ask Him if He really wants you to come into His house dressed like this". Next Sunday, there the man was again, still dressed just as scruffily - sharp intakes of breath again. After the service the vicar took him aside again and asked him why he hadn’t spoken to God. "I did" responded the man "and He said He didn’t know your church".
Christ’s brothers threw their hands up in despair and said of him: “He is mad”. One of the precious things that Christ did on earth was to show us a completely different reality. There is no doubt that we are called to be Christ to the disadvantaged, and to those whose reality is different from ours. But if we are willing not only to do that, but also to be open to their reality, we are receiving Christ from them. and there are times when it is more blessed to receive than to give. It does our humility no harm, and the thing we receive may turn out to be just the thing that leads us to the Lord.
I am now going to “out” myself as a member of Al-Anon, the twelve-step fellowship for families of alcoholics. I think there is an interesting comparison to be drawn with the church. People first go to Al-Anon because they think that they will be given some way to stop the alcoholic drinking. It is not long before they are told very firmly that that is not what it is about. Al-Anon takes the focus away from the alcoholic and puts it squarely on the person who has come to the meeting. The only person you can change is yourself. Most people are, at first, disappointed when they understand this. But if they keep going back, and keep an open mind, the Al-Anon programme “works”. People change. People recover. and new people come, and see the change and recovery…and keep coming back until they too are changed and recover. and exactly the same thing happens at AA – Alcoholics Anonymous.
Why is it quite normal for people to be transformed by AA and Al-Anon, and to keep going back with enthusiasm, perhaps long after the original problem has been solved? While we Christians drag ourselves unwillingly to church, and remain, many of us, unchanged?
I suggest that one reason is that no-one would go to AA or Al-Anon if they had not first recognised their brokenness, their outsiderness. We know our neediness in an immediate way, as most churchgoers do not, and we know how precious that knowledge – that grace -is to us, because without it we cannot change.
I think we need to advert more to the outsiderness in ourselves. We are all able to say “oh yes, there is broken-ness in me, and I have faults”. But as long as we regard those things as weaknesses to be hidden (“I don’t really fit in but I try to make it look as if I do”) we are not going to be healed, and we are not going to connect with those people whose brokenness is more obvious than ours. These things are facts, and they can be the most important facts about us, and the facts that build bridges.
In Al-Anon we not only acknowledge our brokenness to ourselves, we acknowledge it to others. Nothing can be healed unless it is brought into the light.
Why would a broken person come to a church full of happy and successful people? What he wants is a church where people are healed and transformed. and he wants to see it happen. He wants a church which includes the outsiders, the excluded: “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world”. The church that Jesus Christ founded, and whose foundations were built upon by the probably illiterate Galilean fisherman and the heretical Rabbi, Saints Peter and Paul. John Newton knew who belonged in that church. and perhaps we happy and successful people, with our brokenness well papered over, might give it a thought. We need God. and unless we acknowledge that, to ourselves and to others, there will be no healing and no transformation, and the insiders and the outsiders will never meet.
and so let us pray, in the words of a Native American prayer:
Grandfather, Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation Only the human family has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones who are divided
and we are the ones who must come back together to walk in the Sacred Way.
Grandfather, Sacred One, Teach us love, compassion, and honour
That we may heal the earth, and heal each other.
I once was lost, but now I’m found, Was blind, but now I see.
Could we just take a minute here to ask ourselves in what way, if at all, we identify with this verse of that well-known hymn?
I have been thinking, in the context of a well-heeled city centre church, about the sheepfold, about insiders and outsiders, about people who belong and people who don’t. People are not consciously included or excluded, but I think you could safely say that this congregation is made up almost entirely of “insiders”, people who “belong in the sheepfold”. Few of us have a serious struggle to make ends meet. Few of us are addicted to illegal drugs (though I’d be prepared to bet that there are a few problem drinkers around, on sheer statistical probability). Few of us have ever been homeless, and I would be very surprised if any of us were so now. Few of us have any convictions, with the possible exception of minor road traffic infringements. Few of us have been refugees. though maybe some of our parents were. I suspect that few of us have major mental health issues, few of us have been victims of domestic abuse, and few of us live in the seriously disadvantaged parts of the city. Pennywell or Bingham, anyone? Well, this sounds really great, doesn’t it? A church full of happy and successful people. Actually, it worries me quite seriously.
In the second chapter of the epistle to the Ephesians we are clearly told that Christianity started by turning everything upside down – excluding the chosen people, the insiders, unless they were willing to accept that others were equally chosen; and welcoming in “those who were outside”.
We have a tendency (and I think we hardly give it a thought) to distinguish between what we do for ourselves as a congregation, and what we do as “outreach”. Out – reach. The insiders reaching out to the outsiders. Well and good, as far as it goes. But – what are they doing outside?
We are followers of the man who said: “But I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself”. How have we managed to neutralise Christ’s magnetic power? What have we done to the magnet that is Christ? and what do we even mean by “outside”? It might do us no harm to listen again to those words of St Paul’s as addressed to us – as indeed they are. “Remember that…you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world.” As Kierkegaard repeated in season and out of season as he read the Bible: “It is of me this is spoken, to me this is said”.
A friend told me the following story: a very scruffy looking man turned up to a service in a nice church in a nice part of the south of England. Sharp intakes of breath all round. At the end, prompted by the churchwardens, the vicar took the man aside and said "during the next week I want you to talk to God and ask Him if He really wants you to come into His house dressed like this". Next Sunday, there the man was again, still dressed just as scruffily - sharp intakes of breath again. After the service the vicar took him aside again and asked him why he hadn’t spoken to God. "I did" responded the man "and He said He didn’t know your church".
Christ’s brothers threw their hands up in despair and said of him: “He is mad”. One of the precious things that Christ did on earth was to show us a completely different reality. There is no doubt that we are called to be Christ to the disadvantaged, and to those whose reality is different from ours. But if we are willing not only to do that, but also to be open to their reality, we are receiving Christ from them. and there are times when it is more blessed to receive than to give. It does our humility no harm, and the thing we receive may turn out to be just the thing that leads us to the Lord.
I am now going to “out” myself as a member of Al-Anon, the twelve-step fellowship for families of alcoholics. I think there is an interesting comparison to be drawn with the church. People first go to Al-Anon because they think that they will be given some way to stop the alcoholic drinking. It is not long before they are told very firmly that that is not what it is about. Al-Anon takes the focus away from the alcoholic and puts it squarely on the person who has come to the meeting. The only person you can change is yourself. Most people are, at first, disappointed when they understand this. But if they keep going back, and keep an open mind, the Al-Anon programme “works”. People change. People recover. and new people come, and see the change and recovery…and keep coming back until they too are changed and recover. and exactly the same thing happens at AA – Alcoholics Anonymous.
Why is it quite normal for people to be transformed by AA and Al-Anon, and to keep going back with enthusiasm, perhaps long after the original problem has been solved? While we Christians drag ourselves unwillingly to church, and remain, many of us, unchanged?
I suggest that one reason is that no-one would go to AA or Al-Anon if they had not first recognised their brokenness, their outsiderness. We know our neediness in an immediate way, as most churchgoers do not, and we know how precious that knowledge – that grace -is to us, because without it we cannot change.
I think we need to advert more to the outsiderness in ourselves. We are all able to say “oh yes, there is broken-ness in me, and I have faults”. But as long as we regard those things as weaknesses to be hidden (“I don’t really fit in but I try to make it look as if I do”) we are not going to be healed, and we are not going to connect with those people whose brokenness is more obvious than ours. These things are facts, and they can be the most important facts about us, and the facts that build bridges.
In Al-Anon we not only acknowledge our brokenness to ourselves, we acknowledge it to others. Nothing can be healed unless it is brought into the light.
Why would a broken person come to a church full of happy and successful people? What he wants is a church where people are healed and transformed. and he wants to see it happen. He wants a church which includes the outsiders, the excluded: “separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world”. The church that Jesus Christ founded, and whose foundations were built upon by the probably illiterate Galilean fisherman and the heretical Rabbi, Saints Peter and Paul. John Newton knew who belonged in that church. and perhaps we happy and successful people, with our brokenness well papered over, might give it a thought. We need God. and unless we acknowledge that, to ourselves and to others, there will be no healing and no transformation, and the insiders and the outsiders will never meet.
and so let us pray, in the words of a Native American prayer:
Grandfather, Look at our brokenness.
We know that in all creation Only the human family has strayed from the Sacred Way.
We know that we are the ones who are divided
and we are the ones who must come back together to walk in the Sacred Way.
Grandfather, Sacred One, Teach us love, compassion, and honour
That we may heal the earth, and heal each other.
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