2 November 2010, All Souls Day

‘Man is the image of God, and his inner self is a kind of mirror in which God not only sees himself, but reveals himself... through the dark, transparent mystery of our own inner being we can, as it were, see God ‘through a glass’.

The remnant of Judah, authors of the book of Lamentations, were a people bereaved. They had seen their country overrun and their polity overthrown. They had seen their temple destroyed and their citizenry deported. They gathered in the ruins of Jerusalem’s sacred site and cried aloud of their loss: ‘I have forgotten what happiness is…Gone is my glory’.

They knew that the nature of the world they inhabited was transient. They depended on the succession of the seasons and the cycle of the agricultural year. They understood that the stone with which they built, the linen which they wore, and the iron which they worked was all mutable stuff, susceptible to being burned, or melted, or broken. They had witnessed the fleeting lifespan of proud human constructs. Empires rose and fell, kingly dynasties came and went, cultic fashions flourished and decayed.

Yet in spite of this dependence, in spite of this understanding, in spite of this witness, in spite of their cries, they could not accept their plight. They could not resign themselves to desolation and passively await the next turn of fate’s wheel. Hope stirred incessantly in their breasts. Not the gambler’s blind hope that next time things will be better, but hope invested outside the inexhaustible round of life and death, hope that ‘the steadfast love of the LORD never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness’.

In their misery, in their abandonment, in their despair, the remnant of Judah looked deep within themselves. In the words of the mystic Thomas Merton, with which I began, they there saw God ‘through a glass’. Through the glass they saw that when immortal souls, made for communion with the divine, are placed in mortal bodies, made for the cycles of a transient world, then disjunction is inevitable and brokenness and heartbreak are inescapable. Through the glass there glimmered darkly the reality of the disjunction – and perhaps the possibility of its healing.

The apostle Paul was no stranger to such disjunction. Imprisoned, chained, shipwrecked, beaten, driven from town to town, and ministering to people who had endured similar, Paul was compelled to seek an interpretation of his and their experience. Through the glass the remnant of conquered Judah saw that if an eternal soul is placed in a temporal world then the eternal soul will suffer. Through the glass Paul of Tarsus saw that if the Creator of the world is placed in the world that he has created then the Creator will suffer. Place love in a world of avarice and love will be crushed. Consequently when the church in Rome to which Paul is writing most sharply experiences the disjunction between Christ’s command of love and the world’s reality of hatred then through the glass Paul sees that it is truly being the church, for it is closely imitating the pattern of Christ. ‘We boast in our sufferings’ he writes.

But the remnant of Judah never saw their proud kingdom restored, and Paul’s converts saw their churches assailed with no apparent vindication. Is it for this alone that we are made – to peer through a glass, to flatten our faces against it, to see but never to taste or touch? Are we made to glimpse hope from the ruins of the sanctuary, and to prize our wounds as trophies of honour? Does heaven give us enough insight to comprehend the misery of our existence, and enough religion to make our pain seem noble? Are we designed for disjunction; are we knowing souls locked in declining flesh, tellers of truth trapped in a tangle of falsehood, innocent doves before the all-surrounding malice?

The words of Jesus Christ, recorded in John’s Gospel, and prefaced with the words ‘’ - translated as ‘very truly’, presaging a teaching of great significance, tell us otherwise. They invite us to a life in which there is no disjunction but one seamless whole. They invite us to step through the looking-glass within.

First, ‘the Son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, the Son does likewise’. The interior life of God is held before Christ’s hearers as a model of mutual co-operation and dependence. Soul is not at war with body, nor body with soul. They are made for each other and need each other. We are one, as God is one.

Secondly, ‘the Father loves the Son and shows him all that he himself is doing; and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished’. Christ’s triumph is held before Christ’s hearers. All things are in the hands of Jesus. The power of Babylon to ravage Jerusalem, the power of Rome to oppress Paul’s friends, and the power of death to tyrannize us have been given to Christ. In him all life’s possibilities – and impossibilities – coalesce.

Thirdly, ‘anyone who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and does not come under judgement, but has passed from death to life’. Hope is held before Christ’s hearers not as something glimpsed from afar, nor as a reward for patience during times of trial, but instead as something tangible, something in the here and now. Eternal life begins tonight. It is offered to our souls and it is offered to our bodies, in word, in prayer, and in broken bread and wine outpoured.

‘Our being somehow communicates directly with the Being of God, who is ‘in us’’ writes Thomas Merton. ‘If we enter into ourselves, find our true self and then pass ‘beyond’ the inner ‘I’, we sail forth into the immense darkness in which we confront the ‘I AM’ of the Almighty.’

Living and departed we are one flotilla sailing into the darkness, with Christ as our chart, Christ as our course, and Christ as our final destination. Amen, amen. Very truly, amen, amen.