Gloria Dei vivens homo

This day I call heaven and earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now – choose life!

Elsewhere in the Scriptures – and annoyingly I can’t locate the place – it says: If you wish, you can keep the commandments: to behave faithfully is within your power. He has set fire and water before you; put out your hand to whichever you prefer. Man has life and death before him; whichever a man likes best will be given to him.” Very much in tune with today’s reading. We are being told uncompromisingly that we need not sin. That if we do sin, it will be our choice. And that is perfectly good theology. There has only ever been one person living on this earth who was unable to sin - though somehow, mysteriously, still maintaining complete freedom: Jesus Christ. But since he died to cancel out the sin of Adam (whatever that was) we are no longer somehow predisposed to sin, as so many of us were taught when we were young.

This is old-fashioned stuff, isn’t it, all this talk of sin. But while I would now probably disagree with almost everything I was taught about sin when I was young, I think we lose sight of its reality at our peril. We are responsible for our actions; that is the bad news. We are responsible for our actions: that is the good news. Jesus told us that without him we could do nothing – implying, at least, nothing good. True. But the point is that we are not without him. By and of myself my attempts at virtue are pretty feeble. But we do not have to act by and of ourselves. His grace is always there first; and if we think that the remnant of the fallenness in our nature, in league with the devil, is so strong as to make any free choice impossible, we are rather underestimating the power of that grace.

These passages of Scripture are about personal responsibility before God and the choice to take the grace he is offering. There have been times, and there still are places, where it has been considered that in order to please God all you need is to be a member of a particular group and to carry out certain ritual or liturgical practices. You must be a Muslim and you must pray a certain number of times a day facing Mecca. You must be a Roman Catholic and you must go to Mass every Sunday, refrain from eating meat on Fridays, and using contraception. You must be a Jew and you must keep the Sabbath strictly and ensure that you do not become ritually unclean. Well, you can’t be all these things, and which of them you are is largely dictated by where and when you were born. I remember a conversation a couple of years ago with a fellow St John’s Pisky in which we agreed that we were “woolly Anglicans” by choice and that we would go further than that: we were “passionately woolly”. It is so difficult, in an environment – whether work or political party or religion – where a particular set of beliefs and attitudes is expected or assumed, not to allow that environment to dictate one’s thought and behaviour. Hence “passionately woolly”, hence the positive choice of a way of seeking God that dictates as little as possible; and hence responsibility. If, for example, your environment is racist or sexist, you are tempted to abdicate responsibility as an individual and act in a racist or sexist way. We see that sort of thing in the gospel, though it’s not racism but a sort of frenzy caused by prescriptive institutional religion, whereby priorities are turned upside down and the rights of God and humankind are ignored. In that frenzy it seems perfectly reasonable to tithe mint and cumin, and leave the other, more important but less precise, commandments undone. I am sure that the priest and levite who passed by on the other side were moved by pressing religious commitments. The Samaritan didn’t happen to have that sort of religion, so he was free – to choose life. At this point I should say that the Jewish religion does not have that kind of wrong priority built into the system, although it does lend itself to it through the sheer number of its commandments. The Rabbis have always insisted that the saving of human life (whether Jewish or Gentile) comes before any of the commandments. But that wasn’t the climate in Jesus’ time, and it is so easily not the climate at any time in any religion.

Freedom is a problematic thing. I remember a song containing the lines: “Freedom is a word I rarely use without thinking of the time when I’m in love”. I’m not sure what that means in the context of the song, but what it means to me is that while we desire, or think we desire, freedom, there is something else far more precious and far more desirable, which is not compatible with complete freedom, and that is love. When we say we want freedom from these binding institutions (whether it’s a racist workplace or a crazed religious system) and when we say we want freedom to choose, what we are after is not exactly freedom: we want freedom to love, to act according to our love. It is a freedom to know that you must always put the object of your love first, and as St Thomas teaches, only God can be loved legitimately with such an unconditional love. So the freedom we want and need is precisely the freedom not to sin, the freedom to choose life. Paul knew only too well that law cannot give that freedom; all it can tell us is whether or not an action is a sin. The law cannot bring us to assume true responsibility. Only love can do that. When we love we are free to choose – always – the good of the loved one; we are bound; and we are responsible.

Paul was only echoing the Lord when he said that we were no longer under the Law. God forbid, as he said, that we should think that we are thereby free to sin. No: but we are free not to sin. And only in the context of that peculiar kind of freedom does it make sense to tell us that we are able to behave faithfully, that it is within our power to choose good, to choose life; that all we need do is stretch out our hand to the alternative we prefer. Our passage does not talk about conforming to a complicated and rigid set of rules. It talks about listening to the voice of God, and holding fast to him. To God, to him, to a person. To a person we love, a person we are in a relationship with. “The word is very near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart so you may obey it.” Moses said this, and he did not even realise that the word was God; certainly he never dreamt that the word would be made flesh.

As a default position we should keep the “rules” of whichever method we have chosen to serve God. However, it doesn’t do any harm to question them, and we should sit lightly enough to them to know that if it becomes clear that they are better abandoned, we are free to do so. We need to be free to choose life. It was true for the Jews, the first people of the word, to whom the word was a book. It is far more true for us, to whom the word is a person.

It is not easy. He never said it would be easy. But it is possible. With his grace it is possible. Freedom, responsibility, love – none of those things is easy. And the thing is, the lighter you sit to the rules, the less they will protect you, the less you can wrap yourself around with limits. Rules can be tough, but it is freedom, refusal to set limits, absolute readiness to move with the Spirit – that is what it really means to follow Christ and to become so like him that we become worthy of bearing his name.

A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

Oldie but goodie

I see I forgot to do a sermon for Epiphany last week, so here's one I made earlier:

In dulci iubilo Now sing with hearts aglow
Our delight and pleasure Lies in praesepio:
Like sunshine is our treasure Matris in gremio:
Alpha es et O; Alpha es et O.

I’ve chosen that carol rather than the more obvious “We three Kings” or “Three Kings from Persian lands afar” not because I have doubts about the royalty, origins or number of the Magi (none of which matter in the least) but because this year I am struck more by Christ’s response than by our gifts, by the reality more than the appearance.

Of course, it’s not really accurate to speak of Christ’s response to our gifts, since our gifts are themselves a response. As the Preface has it, “You do not need our praise, but our desire to praise you is itself your gift”. That reminds me of Chesterton’s answer to the question “Why did God make us?”: “Because he thought we would like it”. Christ, God, does not do anything for the sake of a response. he does everything for its own sake – or rather, ultimately for his own sake – because what he does is by definition good in itself. But when we see what he does, and far more when we get a glimpse of what he is, it is impossible not to respond; and that response evokes a response in its turn. “For our praise does not add anything to you, but works for our salvation”. All the same, perhaps I should have said not “Christ’s response to our gifts” but “Christ’s Being, which is at once the inspiration and the reward of our gifts”. I’ve always regretted discovering that “Ego Deus tuus and merces tua magna nimis” is not correctly rendered by the Douay’s “I am thy God and thy reward exceeding great”. Because, mistranslation or not, it is eminently true. The only reward that really is exceeding great is, after all, God himself.

“Like sunshine is our treasure, Matris in gremio”. The Magi knew they were travelling towards the real treasure; their instinct to bring gifts, their own best treasure, to give when they found him, was a sound one. Like calls to like: the divine treasure called for the human treasure. how could it be otherwise?

Like sunshine is our treasure: the nations shall walk in his light and kings in the brightness of his rising. All they from Saba shall come, bringing gold and frankincense: and showing forth praise to the Lord. This is not quite what it looks like. It is in fact an exchange of gifts between God and humankind; it is one example of the wonderful exchange whereby God made himself like us so that we might become like him. “To him that shall overcome I will give power over the nations, as I also have received of my Father; and I will give him the morning star. Behold I stand at the door and knock; if anyone shall hear my voice, and open to me the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, ad he with me. To him that shall overcome, I will give to sit with me on my throne, as I also have overcome, and am sat down with my Father on his throne.” The Magi knew quite well that the initiative had not been theirs: the root and stock of David, the bright and morning star, had done the knocking. They had simply answered the call.

They had simply answered the call: and it was clear to them, when they arrived at where the star stopped, that they had arrived at the gate of heaven. “O Patris caritas! O Nati lenitas! Deeply were we stained per nostra crimina; but thou for us hast gained caelorum gaudia. O that we were there!

I said that I was more struck this year by the reality than by the appearance; I think that the reality of this episode in the earthly life of Christ is told – as so often when John does not relate an episode in his gospel – in Revelations. What the Magi saw with their physical eyes was rather an unimpressive sight; but I think their inner eye might well recognise this description:

“After these things I looked, and behold, a door was opened in heaven…immediately I was in the Spirit: and behold there was a throne set in heaven, and upon the throne one sitting, and he that sat was to the sight like the jasper and the sardine stone, and there was a rainbow round about the throne, in sight like unto an emerald.” “Like sunshine is our treasure, Matris in gremio!”

We don’t know who else was visibly in that house, but there were certainly angels singing nova cantica, and all the bells were ringing in caeli curia. The Magi were just a small fraction of the vast multitude worshipping Christ. “The living creatures rested not day and night, saying: Holy, holy, holy Lord, God Almighty, who was, and who is, and who is to come. And when those living creatures gave glory, and honour, and benediction to him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever; the four and twenty ancients fell down before him that sitteth on the throne, and adored him that liveth for ever and ever, and cast their crowns before the throne, saying: Thou art worthy, O Lord our God, to receive glory, and honour and power: because thou hast created all things: and for thy will they were, and have been created.”

This is not just a visit of a few Magi to a child in Bethlehem. It is not even just the first visit of the Gentiles to the Christ. It is the start of the consummation of the age, the turning of humankind to God; the reconciliation of heaven and earth, the marriage of God and humankind. It is what John describes thus: “And I heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of great thunders, saying: Alleluia: for the Lord our God the Almighty hath reigned. Let us be glad and rejoice, and give glory; for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath prepared herself…and he said to me: Write: Blessed are they that are called to the marriage supper of the Lamb”. the Magi knew they were blessed. I’ve always been fond of Matthew’s phrase: “they rejoiced with exceeding great joy”. Nothing so strong is found anywhere else in the gospels, not even after the resurrection. Because here in the stable is the dawn of the new dispensation, in which God is with us. This stable is the new Jerusalem “coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adored for her husband…Behold the tabernacle of God with men, and he will dwell with them. And they shall be his people, and God himself with them shall be their God. The Lord God Almighty is the temple thereof, and the Lamb…and the city hath no need of the sun, nor of the moon, to shine in it. For the glory of God hath enlightened it, and the Lamb is the lamp thereof…and he that sat on the throne said: Behold, I make all things new…Write, for these words are most faithful and true…I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end.” Rightly did the Magi rejoice with exceeding great joy!

O Jesu, parvule: For thee I long alway;
Hear me, I beseech thee, O puer optime;
And let my pleading reach thee, O princeps gloriae.
Trahe me post te; trahe me post te.

Amen! Even so come, Lord Jesus!

Sapientia Dei, cum sit una, omnia potest

Ecclus 24:1-4;12-16; Eph 1:3-6; 15-18; Jn 1:1-18

I find it interesting – not to say exciting – to find the Son of God spoken of in the feminine gender. We are used to applying texts about Wisdom to Mary, and that is certainly generally appropriate. But there can be no real doubt that in the case of our first reading today we are hearing Sirach, unknown to himself, speaking about Jesus Christ. There may have been a slight temptation among those who put together the readings for today to fight shy of retaining the feminine pronoun found in the original text – after all, wisdom is a neuter noun in English – but one must be grateful that they did decide to do so. Unfortunately, the response to the Psalm which we are offered is not so bold, arguably even producing a mistranslation in its trepidation. For Verbum caro factum est the English has “”The Word of God became man”. Well, yes, the Word did become man, but that is not what St John is saying; the Word became man simply because the Word, in becoming flesh, had to become a man or a woman if the assumed humanity was to be a true one.

While I am not exactly a feminist theologian (I am neither a feminist nor a theologian), I think it is important to realise that when we speak of the Word of God, the second Person of the Holy Trinity (and note, both “person” and “Trinity” are feminine nouns in most languages) gender-words are irrelevant; and if we speak of the “Son” of God, and “he” for convenience, as we do of the “Father”, we are not in fact speaking accurately and we are certainly not giving any information as to the nature of those Persons. We’re a little more cautious about the Holy Spirit, who is referred to by whatever gender of pronoun agrees with “Spirit” in the relevant language; in English “It” is quite often heard, and increasingly “she”. I use “she” myself, but I should say that I am only doing it to redress the balance; while it does say something very fundamental about the Spirit, it would also become misleading if overstressed.

I would even be inclined to say that even when we are speaking about the Incarnate Word, gender-words are only used for convenience. Jesus was indeed a man; as Ezra Pound rightly said, “No capon priest was the Goodly Fere, but a man o’ men was he”, but I would venture to say that all the same his gender on earth does not tell us anything fundamental about him. Had he been a woman – impossible at that time and in that culture – he (or rather she) would have been a woman o’ women – the perfection of woman, as he was in fact the perfection of man. St John makes this pretty clear in today’s Gospel. Verbum caro factum est contrasts with the description of John the Baptist: Fuit homo missus a Deo. Homo isn’t the specifically masculine vir, which we find later, but it does have a masculine slant which is not at all present in caro. John is just saying “The Word of God became one of us”.

I accept that it would be difficult for most of us – yes, myself included – to cope with a new version of the bible in which for God the Father we would read “Mother”; for “God the Son” (not, obviously, referring to the Incarnate Son) “Daughter” and so on. I am certainly not advocating that, because that would simply be making the same mistake in the opposite direction. What I do say is that we should become more aware of those occasions when the unexpected feminine is found; and at the same time – paradoxically – of the inadequacy of both masculine and feminine in speaking of God. Both must be used, and used naturally, to give the complete picture. As we know, although Jesus did call the disciples “children”, he does not seem to have thought of himself as a father; as he laments over Jerusalem he depicts himself not as the father but as the mother of his people Israel.

Actually, this “feminist” point is not the point I want to make, though I is part of that point. If it seems shocking to think of God as feminine – or even as neither masculine or feminine, which is the truth, but a truth which can’t, I think, be grasped unless the balance is, so to speak, over-redressed – that’s excellent. Because sometimes only shock can awake; as Haydn knew! Excellent – yes; but also very sad. Because this is part of our blindness as regards God. We cannot see God, that is true; that isn’t the problem: the problem is that we don’t realise it. It w accepted we are blind we would not have sin; but now we think we see, our sin remains. We were, as I say in season and out of season, created in the image and likeness of God, but that phrase can also mislead and mesmerise. We don’t listen. We have our own idea of God, and we don’t listen. This first reading could do as an antidote to that. I wonder whether that is intentional, on this second Sunday after Christmas when our attention is so much focused on the Child who is so like us. It’s even more effective if one includes the verses that the lectionary omits, as I intend to do.

As we look at that Child, let us not form God in the image and likeness of what we can see. Just for once, let’s look from the opposite angle, as St John does when he presents his view of the origins of the Child: the angle which all three readings offer us today. let’s try to throw off our inadequate conceptions of God, not by trying to create new ones ourselves, since they would probably be as crude an attempt as replacing “God the Father” with “God the Mother”, but by listening to what God tells us about himself through the mouth of the inspired writers.

This Child – what is so important about him? Listen to him speaking of himself in the person of Wisdom, in the verses the lectionary omits: “I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before all creatures; I made that in the heavens there should rise light that never faileth, and as a cloud I covered all the earth. I dwelt in the highest places, and my throne is in a pillar of a cloud. I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked the waves of the sea. And have stood in all the earth, and in every people, and in every nation I have had the chief rule.” His dwelling was in Jacob, his inheritance in Israel, but he could not be circumscribed by them, nor by his human condition. From the beginning and before the world was he begotten, and until the world to come he will not cease to be. What you see is the dwelling place of the Word. Truly human, but transcending the human.

And it is not above us to transcend the human in this way; for if he was before the world was made, so, truly, were we: before the world was made God chose us, chose us in Christ, to be holy and spotless, and to live through love in his presence. If we believe in him, we too, while remaining fully human, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

Perhaps if we could free ourselves from the shackles of habit, and see God as God would have us see him, then we could see ourselves and each other in that image, as chosen in Christ before the world was made. It might require a few shocks, and it might give us a few surprises. but that way we may attain to the purity of heart which will allow us to see God, to the praise of his glorious grace with which he has graced us in the Beloved.

May he enlighten the eyes of our mind, that we may know what the hope is of our calling, and what are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints.