‘Many people today go around with a cross on their earrings, bracelet or necklace. We are so used to seeing this that we are not shocked by it. We might be if we saw someone wearing a gallows or an electric chair on a chain; but the cross was just as much a form of execution. Indeed, it was one of the cruellest forms of execution known to mankind. It was abolished in AD 315 because even the Romans considered it too inhumane.’
With those words, taken from the opening paragraph of the third session of Holy Trinity Brompton’s Alpha Course, the curtain is raised on our Lent programme. Isaac Watts calls the Cross ‘Wondrous’ and we have named our programme after his verse; yet our colleagues in SW7 remind us that there is little that is wondrous about the historical cross or the historical crucifixion. The curtain is raised upon an instrument of torture; in the centre of the stage there is a killing; for through these days of Lent we will study in word, art and music a judicial murder, the judicial murder of the man Christian faith claims is the Son of God.
You’ll have heard this before. The simple fact of the cross - and it’s one of the Biblical events that we can confidently call a simple fact, for who would have invented it? - the simple fact of the cross is an insurmountable stumbling-block to many. The cross is a fate so scandalous and so demeaning that our Muslim brothers and sisters, for example, do not accept that God can have allowed his blessed prophet Jesus to suffer it. The Holy Qu’ran insists that there is no blood-soaked death upon Calvary’s hill, that God raises Jesus up to himself. The transcendent God cannot suffer as we suffer, and he will not suffer his prophets to suffer either. That sense of horror at the mere idea of a Son of God suffering ought to send tremors rippling through our veins too. A few years ago a BBC series on twentieth century art was famously entitled ‘The Shock of the New’. Contemplating the cross we too experience the shock of the new, or we ought to. We experience it not in piles of bricks or splurges of colour but in remembering and recognizing the shocking gash that rips through the fabric of eternity when Jesus Christ hangs upon the cross. In accepting the wretchedness and agony of Calvary God does something startlingly, shockingly new.
Perhaps this is unhealthy and morbid. We are a resurrection people, and ‘alleluia’ is our song. Our deacon Mark posed the question on Ash Wednesday: in the light of the empty tomb, why focus upon the cross? His answer was that without the cross there can be no resurrection. He was quite right. Without the cross there can be no resurrection; indeed, without the cross there can be no incarnation. Our proclamation is that in Christ God becomes a human and lives a human life. Death is a part of life. If God lives a human life then God must die a human death. If Christ does not risk the pain and misery that are the lot of so many men and women, of so many of his brothers and sisters; if Christ does not die, then Christ can in no real sense live. Without the empty tomb the cross has no meaning, true; without the years spent healing the sick and proclaiming God’s kingdom the cross has no meaning, equally true. Yet without the cross the life and the empty tomb have no reality. Christ’s death matters because Christ’s life matters, because it is in his life, in the whole of his life, that earth is rejoined to heaven and that our salvation is somehow wrought.
Somehow wrought: as we confront the shock of this new thing that God does through the blood and tears of Calvary, we cannot avoid the question of our salvation. What does this death achieve? The claim that God’s Son dies upon the cross is distinctive, as we have seen. What claims do we make for this distinctive claim? How does that death then affect our lives now? Our ancestors in faith, who compiled the catholic Creeds as defences against encroaching heresy, were reticent. The Creed does not spell out how the cross works. It confines itself, as we shall say shortly, to stating that it was ‘for our sake’ that Jesus was crucified under Pontius Pilate. God comes among us in Jesus. Jesus dies among us and at our hands. His death is for our sake. The fathers of the Church would go no further than that. Perhaps they sensed that to go farther would be to stray into the realm of the unknowable, to second-guess the mind and purposes of God, and to sow seeds of dissension in the Church.
For as long as there has been a Church there has been dissension about this crucial - an adjective used properly for once - about this crucial article of faith. Successive generations have produced successive accounts of what the cross achieved and why, and it is these that we are to explore in the weeks ahead. Was the cross an atoning sacrifice? Was it a decisive victory? Was it the payment of a debt? Was it an act of love? These are the theologies of the cross that the Church has generated over the centuries. All are compatible with the doctrine of the Creed; by pondering them all (and only by pondering them all) we will perhaps have a chance of comprehending the mystery.
Over the next few weeks a number of speakers will address us on the theology and use of icons, and their words will be an important part of our preparation for Passiontide. Yet it is an icon of the crucifixion that we are to receive, not an account of the crucifixion or a theology of the crucifixion. And fundamentally an icon is not to be understood; it is to be gazed upon. An icon is a participation in wood and paint in the reality that it depicts; it is sacramental; it bears the one who gazes upon it into the realm that its images represent. We will find our interior lives profoundly enriched by contemplation of Silvia Dimitrova’s work. What applies to the icon of the crucifixion applies to the crucifixion too. Ultimately it is not something to understand, to gut and fillet, to appropriate and fix with a pin beneath a glass screen. It is something to gaze upon, to fall silent before, to be still before, to know our need of God before; for revealed on the Cross as nowhere else we see God as God most truly is.
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Amen.
Monday, 2 March 2009
Monday, 2 February 2009
The Presentation of Christ in the Temple, Sunday 1 February 2009
To understand the drama that we celebrate today it is necessary to understand the context of the drama. The context is Jerusalem’s great Temple, a building understood by those who went to it as the place of sacrifice and the place of divine presence.
The Temple’s daily routine was shaped around the offering of sacrifice. The air was full of the cries of frightened animals (critics of the noise levels at the Family Eucharist should take note), and thick with the scent of incense burned to take away the stench (a brutal truth that those who are in love with the aesthetic of incense forget at their peril). The Temple’s very building was designed to accommodate the divine presence. At its heart stood the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber where YHWH, the God of Israel, was believed to dwell.
Joseph and Mary visit the Temple forty days after their son’s birth to offer sacrifice and to seek the divine presence; they come for Mary’s purification and for her son’s presentation. Jewish law required that mothers be formally restored to the community’s fellowship after the trauma of childbirth. Through the offering of a sacrifice was a new mother purified. And Luke obviously believed that the law also required that first-born sons be brought into God’s presence, presented to God (whether it did in fact make that requirement is a matter of scholarly debate).
So the drama that we celebrate today has been known by both those names. For us, it is the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. For generations of Anglicans raised on the Book of Common Prayer, it is the Purification of the St Mary the Virgin. Since the Middle Ages it has been known as Candlemas, in honour of the candles carried by the faithful in procession, themselves honouring Simeon’s acclamation of the infant Jesus as the light to lighten the Gentiles. Yet the themes of purification and presentation are not just themes for today; they are not abandoned once the candles of Candlemas have been extinguished.
Today we began the liturgy outside on the Portico and entered the building together. In so doing we were recalling the holy family’s entry into the Temple precincts to offer their turtle doves or pigeons, the sacrifice prescribed for the poorest of the poor. A few weeks from now we will begin our liturgy outside again. That will be on Palm Sunday. Today we trace the footsteps of Christ’s first entry to Jerusalem; on Palm Sunday we will trace the steps of his last. Today Mary goes to the Temple to be purified, and we honour her cleansing, the cleansing of the one who has born the Son of God to the world. On Palm Sunday Christ goes to the Temple and purifies it, casting out the money-changers. We honour his cleansing of the place that has born God to the world for generations.
Today we will end the liturgy by removing from the altar the crib figures which have been in place since Christmas Eve. In so doing we will recall Mary’s presentation of her son to God. He is brought to his people’s sacred space. He is acknowledged as the Temple’s rightful heir. Thus the days of infancy are put away, and our worship turns to his Passion, the culmination of his earthly life. A few weeks from now we will again remove the adornments of the altar. That will be on Maundy Thursday. Today we strip away the trappings of babyhood, for Christ is presented to his Father. On Maundy Thursday we strip away the candles and altar cloths. In so doing we recall Christ’s presentation of himself to his Father, stripped of his friends, stripped of his garments, left alone, presenting himself for the world in the garden of Gethsemane.
In the drama of Candlemas we see foreshadowed the drama of Holy Week. The place where sacrifice is offered is purified by the one who himself becomes the sacrificial lamb. The place where presentation is made to the divine presence gives way to the one who presents himself to the Father, the one who is himself the new Temple, the place where earth and heaven meet.
Purification and presentation: we honour today the drama that unfolds in the Temple; we honour too the portents seen in that drama for what was to be Christ’s life and mission. And we are brought to the realization that purification and presentation, our purification and our presentation, are the reasons why we are here today.
We have gathered in our own Temple - not this building, magnificent though it may be and dear to us though it is. We have gathered in the name of Christ, who is our Temple and our sacrifice. In our listening together to his word; in our sharing together in the sacrament of his body and blood; in our common life in him we are restored to ourselves, purified, and made ready to bear his presence to the world. And as bearers of his presence and lights of the world we pray that he will present us, the fruits of his sacrifice, to his Father. To Christ be glory in the Church, now and for ever. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
The Temple’s daily routine was shaped around the offering of sacrifice. The air was full of the cries of frightened animals (critics of the noise levels at the Family Eucharist should take note), and thick with the scent of incense burned to take away the stench (a brutal truth that those who are in love with the aesthetic of incense forget at their peril). The Temple’s very building was designed to accommodate the divine presence. At its heart stood the Holy of Holies, the inner chamber where YHWH, the God of Israel, was believed to dwell.
Joseph and Mary visit the Temple forty days after their son’s birth to offer sacrifice and to seek the divine presence; they come for Mary’s purification and for her son’s presentation. Jewish law required that mothers be formally restored to the community’s fellowship after the trauma of childbirth. Through the offering of a sacrifice was a new mother purified. And Luke obviously believed that the law also required that first-born sons be brought into God’s presence, presented to God (whether it did in fact make that requirement is a matter of scholarly debate).
So the drama that we celebrate today has been known by both those names. For us, it is the Presentation of Christ in the Temple. For generations of Anglicans raised on the Book of Common Prayer, it is the Purification of the St Mary the Virgin. Since the Middle Ages it has been known as Candlemas, in honour of the candles carried by the faithful in procession, themselves honouring Simeon’s acclamation of the infant Jesus as the light to lighten the Gentiles. Yet the themes of purification and presentation are not just themes for today; they are not abandoned once the candles of Candlemas have been extinguished.
Today we began the liturgy outside on the Portico and entered the building together. In so doing we were recalling the holy family’s entry into the Temple precincts to offer their turtle doves or pigeons, the sacrifice prescribed for the poorest of the poor. A few weeks from now we will begin our liturgy outside again. That will be on Palm Sunday. Today we trace the footsteps of Christ’s first entry to Jerusalem; on Palm Sunday we will trace the steps of his last. Today Mary goes to the Temple to be purified, and we honour her cleansing, the cleansing of the one who has born the Son of God to the world. On Palm Sunday Christ goes to the Temple and purifies it, casting out the money-changers. We honour his cleansing of the place that has born God to the world for generations.
Today we will end the liturgy by removing from the altar the crib figures which have been in place since Christmas Eve. In so doing we will recall Mary’s presentation of her son to God. He is brought to his people’s sacred space. He is acknowledged as the Temple’s rightful heir. Thus the days of infancy are put away, and our worship turns to his Passion, the culmination of his earthly life. A few weeks from now we will again remove the adornments of the altar. That will be on Maundy Thursday. Today we strip away the trappings of babyhood, for Christ is presented to his Father. On Maundy Thursday we strip away the candles and altar cloths. In so doing we recall Christ’s presentation of himself to his Father, stripped of his friends, stripped of his garments, left alone, presenting himself for the world in the garden of Gethsemane.
In the drama of Candlemas we see foreshadowed the drama of Holy Week. The place where sacrifice is offered is purified by the one who himself becomes the sacrificial lamb. The place where presentation is made to the divine presence gives way to the one who presents himself to the Father, the one who is himself the new Temple, the place where earth and heaven meet.
Purification and presentation: we honour today the drama that unfolds in the Temple; we honour too the portents seen in that drama for what was to be Christ’s life and mission. And we are brought to the realization that purification and presentation, our purification and our presentation, are the reasons why we are here today.
We have gathered in our own Temple - not this building, magnificent though it may be and dear to us though it is. We have gathered in the name of Christ, who is our Temple and our sacrifice. In our listening together to his word; in our sharing together in the sacrament of his body and blood; in our common life in him we are restored to ourselves, purified, and made ready to bear his presence to the world. And as bearers of his presence and lights of the world we pray that he will present us, the fruits of his sacrifice, to his Father. To Christ be glory in the Church, now and for ever. Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
Monday, 19 January 2009
The Second Sunday of Epiphany, 18 January 2009
‘Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’
It is tempting to sketch one or both of two portraits of Jesus on the strength of his exchange with Nathanael. It is a temptation to which both armchair theologians and commentators who ought to know better often succumb. One of these portraits is Jesus as headhunter. It is the beginning of his ministry. He is assembling his team. The former disciples of his cousin John have already proved fertile ground for recruitment. He has taken on Peter and Andrew; he has called their fellow native of Bethsaida, Philip. Now Nathanael comes along. ‘Here’ says Jesus ‘is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ Nathanael has passed the test. Jesus has spotted his upstanding character and that makes him worthy of inclusion in the new company.
The other portrait is Jesus as Gypsy Rose-Lee, a mystic armed with a crystal ball. Nathanael is perhaps underwhelmed by the rabbi’s assessment and the prospects he offers. He needs to be persuaded to throw in his lot with the emerging group. There could be no better way to convince him than a little magic. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus. It works. Nathanael is convinced. A man with such amazing second sight must be a man worth following.
Of course, both portraits are crude and erroneous caricatures. The briefest consideration of the motley crew that surrounds Jesus should be enough to convince us that character plays no part in his considerations. When Jesus makes the remark he makes about Nathanael he is not weighing him up and deciding to take a punt. He is articulating what he sees in him, both actually and potentially; he is calling the man who stands before him; he is choosing Nathanael for a task, just as he has chosen Simon who he calls Cephas. The latter is the rock; the former is an Israelite without deceit. Jesus calls Nathanael.
So the line about the fig-tree is no gimmick. It illustrates Nathanel’s calling to be an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. The leisure to tend one’s own vineyard and the freedom to sit under one’s own fig-tree are the scriptural hallmarks of ancient Israelite bliss. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus: I call you to be an Israelite, says Jesus, I call you to be the representative among my followers of your nation, of God’s historic people.
And the particular task to which Nathanael is called is very clear. ‘You are the Son of God’ he cries, ‘you are the King of Israel’. For an Israelite to make the first declaration is surprising. ‘Son of God’, Yios tou Theou, is not an expression unheard of in Jewish literature, but it is more intimately connected to Greek thought and Greek theology. Nathanael is the first Jew to use of Jesus the title that John the Evangelist will use throughout his Gospel. Jesus, says Nathanael, is son of God, and this only seconds after his friend Philip has introduced Jesus to him as son of Joseph.
Yet if his hearers are taken aback at his turn of phrase they are surely taken even further aback by what follows. ‘King of Israel’ is the title reserved for the Messiah, the great liberator who will restore the nation’s fortunes. In a few seconds Nathanael the Israelite has confessed the carpenter’s son to be the son of the transcendent God, and confessed this same carpenter’s son to be the one on whom his country’s hopes are pinned. Jesus calls; Nathanael answers; truth is revealed.
This is God’s pattern, repeated to countless men and countless women across the years. Look at the narrative of Samuel. God calls. Samuel answers. Truth is revealed. For those so called, those who answer, discover in the call and their response to it what or who it is that they are called to be. So Samuel is the sovereign-anointing prophet of the new kingdom of Israel. Nathanael is a son of the son of God and a subject of the new king of Israel.
Nathanael’s journey is a journey of breathtaking speed and distance. Yet it has barely begun. ‘You will see greater things than these’ promises Jesus. Professions of newfound faith, however remarkable, are not all that disciples of Jesus are called to. There are greater things: greater than the cerebral definitions of Greek philosophy (Son of God), greater than the utopian hopes of Israel’s dream (King of Israel). The coming of Jesus means more than an exercise in intellectual re-positioning, and more than a political settlement for an enslaved people. The coming of Jesus means the breaking open of the sealed scroll that no one in heaven or earth or under the earth has been deemed worthy to break open. The coming of Jesus means the joining of heaven and earth by the one who is Son of God and who is King of Israel; by the one who is both but who is also, crucially, Son of Man. Upon him will the angels ascend and descend as upon a ladder.
It is with this that Nathanael is brought face to face by the friend who invites him to come and see, with this reality that in the coming of Jesus the world has changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus his perceptions have changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus he has changed for ever. No longer will this Israelite sit under his fig tree and tend his vineyard; instead he will bear witness to the one who called him and knew him, to the one whose coming has wrought change for all creation.
‘You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’
We too are invited, called even, to come, and see. Amen.
It is tempting to sketch one or both of two portraits of Jesus on the strength of his exchange with Nathanael. It is a temptation to which both armchair theologians and commentators who ought to know better often succumb. One of these portraits is Jesus as headhunter. It is the beginning of his ministry. He is assembling his team. The former disciples of his cousin John have already proved fertile ground for recruitment. He has taken on Peter and Andrew; he has called their fellow native of Bethsaida, Philip. Now Nathanael comes along. ‘Here’ says Jesus ‘is truly an Israelite in whom there is no deceit.’ Nathanael has passed the test. Jesus has spotted his upstanding character and that makes him worthy of inclusion in the new company.
The other portrait is Jesus as Gypsy Rose-Lee, a mystic armed with a crystal ball. Nathanael is perhaps underwhelmed by the rabbi’s assessment and the prospects he offers. He needs to be persuaded to throw in his lot with the emerging group. There could be no better way to convince him than a little magic. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus. It works. Nathanael is convinced. A man with such amazing second sight must be a man worth following.
Of course, both portraits are crude and erroneous caricatures. The briefest consideration of the motley crew that surrounds Jesus should be enough to convince us that character plays no part in his considerations. When Jesus makes the remark he makes about Nathanael he is not weighing him up and deciding to take a punt. He is articulating what he sees in him, both actually and potentially; he is calling the man who stands before him; he is choosing Nathanael for a task, just as he has chosen Simon who he calls Cephas. The latter is the rock; the former is an Israelite without deceit. Jesus calls Nathanael.
So the line about the fig-tree is no gimmick. It illustrates Nathanel’s calling to be an Israelite in whom there is no deceit. The leisure to tend one’s own vineyard and the freedom to sit under one’s own fig-tree are the scriptural hallmarks of ancient Israelite bliss. ‘I saw you under the fig tree’ says Jesus: I call you to be an Israelite, says Jesus, I call you to be the representative among my followers of your nation, of God’s historic people.
And the particular task to which Nathanael is called is very clear. ‘You are the Son of God’ he cries, ‘you are the King of Israel’. For an Israelite to make the first declaration is surprising. ‘Son of God’, Yios tou Theou, is not an expression unheard of in Jewish literature, but it is more intimately connected to Greek thought and Greek theology. Nathanael is the first Jew to use of Jesus the title that John the Evangelist will use throughout his Gospel. Jesus, says Nathanael, is son of God, and this only seconds after his friend Philip has introduced Jesus to him as son of Joseph.
Yet if his hearers are taken aback at his turn of phrase they are surely taken even further aback by what follows. ‘King of Israel’ is the title reserved for the Messiah, the great liberator who will restore the nation’s fortunes. In a few seconds Nathanael the Israelite has confessed the carpenter’s son to be the son of the transcendent God, and confessed this same carpenter’s son to be the one on whom his country’s hopes are pinned. Jesus calls; Nathanael answers; truth is revealed.
This is God’s pattern, repeated to countless men and countless women across the years. Look at the narrative of Samuel. God calls. Samuel answers. Truth is revealed. For those so called, those who answer, discover in the call and their response to it what or who it is that they are called to be. So Samuel is the sovereign-anointing prophet of the new kingdom of Israel. Nathanael is a son of the son of God and a subject of the new king of Israel.
Nathanael’s journey is a journey of breathtaking speed and distance. Yet it has barely begun. ‘You will see greater things than these’ promises Jesus. Professions of newfound faith, however remarkable, are not all that disciples of Jesus are called to. There are greater things: greater than the cerebral definitions of Greek philosophy (Son of God), greater than the utopian hopes of Israel’s dream (King of Israel). The coming of Jesus means more than an exercise in intellectual re-positioning, and more than a political settlement for an enslaved people. The coming of Jesus means the breaking open of the sealed scroll that no one in heaven or earth or under the earth has been deemed worthy to break open. The coming of Jesus means the joining of heaven and earth by the one who is Son of God and who is King of Israel; by the one who is both but who is also, crucially, Son of Man. Upon him will the angels ascend and descend as upon a ladder.
It is with this that Nathanael is brought face to face by the friend who invites him to come and see, with this reality that in the coming of Jesus the world has changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus his perceptions have changed for ever, that in the coming of Jesus he has changed for ever. No longer will this Israelite sit under his fig tree and tend his vineyard; instead he will bear witness to the one who called him and knew him, to the one whose coming has wrought change for all creation.
‘You are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!’
We too are invited, called even, to come, and see. Amen.
1 Samuel 3: 1-10;
Revelation 5: 1-10;
John 1: 43-end.
Revelation 5: 1-10;
John 1: 43-end.
Monday, 5 January 2009
The Eucharist of Christmas Night, 24 December 2008, 11.30 pm
'Of mans first disobedience, and the fruit
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse'.
Don’t look so worried. I’m not going to read all twelve books of Paradise Lost .We’d be here until Epiphany, and in any case Radio 3 is making a much better job of it than I ever would.
On the four hundredth anniversary of John Milton’s birth many commentators have pondered why the work of England’s greatest epic poet has slipped so far from the public gaze. Theories abound. Its great length means that it’s not easily digestible. It could never feature as a Poem on the Underground. Its complex language means that it’s inaccessible to many. ‘Him the Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from th’ethereal sky’ is forbidding to a generation that has just learned to text.
But more profound that either of these hurdles to popularity is its sheer ambition. For Milton sets out to tell in verse the story of humanity’s creation, fall and restoration. Grand narratives come no grander than this. His setting stretches beyond the farthest limits of the universe; his timescale is eternity; his players are the omnipotent God and his heavenly courtiers. The scope is breathtaking, and it is that very scope that makes Milton so difficult for modern readers.
For we no longer trust grand narratives. Poets, philosophers and prophets could once upon a time articulate over-arching stories for the world with utter confidence. That confidence was dealt a body blow on the battlefields of Western Europe more than ninety years ago. Civilization, progress, liberal values: those great totems that the educated citizens of the European empires treasured and celebrated as their common story when they entered the first decade of the last century - those were left bleeding in the trenches, their humane pretensions revealed as paper-thin veneers. And in their place other ideologies appeared and in their turn these too have gone to their fate, very often deservedly: fascism perished in the rubble of Berlin; statist Marxism in the wastes of the Gulag. Unregulated consumer capitalism may have done the same in the credit crunch of 2008.
The effect of the last hundred years’ history is that we disbelieve grand attempts to interpret history. We are suspicious of authority and we are cynical about the claims made by those who wield authority. We prefer our politicians to be technocrats rather than ideologues; we worry more about solutions than visions. What matters is what will work– not what might be. Our soap opera culture, and celebrity addiction respond to this preference. They give us manageable stories about people like us, or people almost like us, and don’t pose the awkward, eternal questions that drove Milton to write. What were the national obsessions of this year? Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, Heather Mills McCartney and Strictly Come Dancing.
‘Milton! Thou should’st be living at the hour: England hath need of thee.’ Wordsworth’s lines have never seemed more prescient.
Yet if she is true to her vocation then at Christmas the Church does the thing that some of her most vocal critics long for her to do. She takes a stand; she refuses to collude with the national trend; she rows against the tide instead of meekly swimming with it. For at Christmas the Church defiantly offers an interpretation of human history and proclaims a grand narrative. But this is not a narrative which seeks to diminish or enslave people as did the discredited ideologies of the last century. It is not a narrative which absolves its hearers of their responsibilities for one another or for the world. It is not a narrative which aims to overthrow all other narratives by force of arms. For this is the narrative of God’s love for his world, a love which compels him to become a part of his world, a love which, ultimately, drives him to suffer at the hands of his world. This is the narrative of God becoming one of us so that we might become like him. This is the narrative we celebrate tonight, the narrative of Bethlehem, the narrative that tells us that human time and earthly space matter to Almighty God, this time and this place matter to Almighty God, that this time and this place are the time and the place in which God acts, that in this time, this place and these people God is present among us.
So let us proclaim that narrative with confidence, with joy. Tonight earth and heaven are one; tonight love eternal lies in a manger; tonight we learn our place in the grand narrative of God.
Let John Milton, poet, prophet, seeker after truth, have the last word:
‘…at his birth a star
Unseen before in heav’n proclaims him come,
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold;
His place of birth a solemn angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night;
They gladly thither haste, and by a choir
Of squadroned angels hear his carol sung.
A virgin is his mother, but his sire
The power of the Most High; he shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign
With earth’s wide bounds, his glory with the Heav’ns’.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
Of that forbidden tree, whose mortal taste
Brought death into the world, and all our woe,
With loss of Eden, till one greater man
Restore us, and regain the blissful seat,
Sing Heav'nly Muse'.
Don’t look so worried. I’m not going to read all twelve books of Paradise Lost .We’d be here until Epiphany, and in any case Radio 3 is making a much better job of it than I ever would.
On the four hundredth anniversary of John Milton’s birth many commentators have pondered why the work of England’s greatest epic poet has slipped so far from the public gaze. Theories abound. Its great length means that it’s not easily digestible. It could never feature as a Poem on the Underground. Its complex language means that it’s inaccessible to many. ‘Him the Almighty Power hurled headlong flaming from th’ethereal sky’ is forbidding to a generation that has just learned to text.
But more profound that either of these hurdles to popularity is its sheer ambition. For Milton sets out to tell in verse the story of humanity’s creation, fall and restoration. Grand narratives come no grander than this. His setting stretches beyond the farthest limits of the universe; his timescale is eternity; his players are the omnipotent God and his heavenly courtiers. The scope is breathtaking, and it is that very scope that makes Milton so difficult for modern readers.
For we no longer trust grand narratives. Poets, philosophers and prophets could once upon a time articulate over-arching stories for the world with utter confidence. That confidence was dealt a body blow on the battlefields of Western Europe more than ninety years ago. Civilization, progress, liberal values: those great totems that the educated citizens of the European empires treasured and celebrated as their common story when they entered the first decade of the last century - those were left bleeding in the trenches, their humane pretensions revealed as paper-thin veneers. And in their place other ideologies appeared and in their turn these too have gone to their fate, very often deservedly: fascism perished in the rubble of Berlin; statist Marxism in the wastes of the Gulag. Unregulated consumer capitalism may have done the same in the credit crunch of 2008.
The effect of the last hundred years’ history is that we disbelieve grand attempts to interpret history. We are suspicious of authority and we are cynical about the claims made by those who wield authority. We prefer our politicians to be technocrats rather than ideologues; we worry more about solutions than visions. What matters is what will work– not what might be. Our soap opera culture, and celebrity addiction respond to this preference. They give us manageable stories about people like us, or people almost like us, and don’t pose the awkward, eternal questions that drove Milton to write. What were the national obsessions of this year? Russell Brand, Jonathan Ross, Heather Mills McCartney and Strictly Come Dancing.
‘Milton! Thou should’st be living at the hour: England hath need of thee.’ Wordsworth’s lines have never seemed more prescient.
Yet if she is true to her vocation then at Christmas the Church does the thing that some of her most vocal critics long for her to do. She takes a stand; she refuses to collude with the national trend; she rows against the tide instead of meekly swimming with it. For at Christmas the Church defiantly offers an interpretation of human history and proclaims a grand narrative. But this is not a narrative which seeks to diminish or enslave people as did the discredited ideologies of the last century. It is not a narrative which absolves its hearers of their responsibilities for one another or for the world. It is not a narrative which aims to overthrow all other narratives by force of arms. For this is the narrative of God’s love for his world, a love which compels him to become a part of his world, a love which, ultimately, drives him to suffer at the hands of his world. This is the narrative of God becoming one of us so that we might become like him. This is the narrative we celebrate tonight, the narrative of Bethlehem, the narrative that tells us that human time and earthly space matter to Almighty God, this time and this place matter to Almighty God, that this time and this place are the time and the place in which God acts, that in this time, this place and these people God is present among us.
So let us proclaim that narrative with confidence, with joy. Tonight earth and heaven are one; tonight love eternal lies in a manger; tonight we learn our place in the grand narrative of God.
Let John Milton, poet, prophet, seeker after truth, have the last word:
‘…at his birth a star
Unseen before in heav’n proclaims him come,
And guides the eastern sages, who inquire
His place, to offer incense, myrrh, and gold;
His place of birth a solemn angel tells
To simple shepherds, keeping watch by night;
They gladly thither haste, and by a choir
Of squadroned angels hear his carol sung.
A virgin is his mother, but his sire
The power of the Most High; he shall ascend
The throne hereditary, and bound his reign
With earth’s wide bounds, his glory with the Heav’ns’.
Alleluia, alleluia, alleluia. Amen.
Monday, 22 December 2008
The Second Sunday of Advent, 7 December 2008: JUDGEMENT
‘Mother of Pure Evil’ screamed Friday’s headlines after the conviction of the kidnappers of Shannon Matthews. Those headlines were a reminder, as if one were needed, that judgement is a theme that fascinates and implicates us in equal measure.
For more than four years before I came to St Peter’s I worshipped every Sunday underneath something almost as cataclysmic as a red-top headline: painted above the chancel arch of St Thomas’s, Salisbury it dates from the late fifteenth century and is one of the largest surviving mediaeval frescoes in England. The tabloids’ judgement of the kidnappers is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper; but the subject of the painting is, of course, the Doom, or The Last Judgment, the theme of this second address in our Advent series.
It depicts Christ robed in majesty outside the walls of the New Jerusalem. He is the judge of all creation. Beneath his feet sit the apostles in their long-promised places of honour. To the north and south of the chancel arch, and to the right and left of Christ, members of our race go to the fate decreed for them. Angels give the righteous a helping hand and they are raised to life, while the damned are dragged towards the gaping maw of hell. Numbered among them are crowned, mitred and tonsured heads.
No doubt the citizens of late-mediaeval Salisbury would have marvelled at the painting’s colour and detailed sophistication; no doubt they would have been cheered by the rewards promised to the saved; no doubt they would have shivered at the gruesome end of the condemned. To twenty-first century eyes the colours have faded, the detail appears crude, and the rewards and the gruesome end cruder still.
Today few are prepared to argue seriously for the existence of hellfire; fewer still accept that the fate of the unrighteous will be to be tortured for all eternity. Yet our principled loss of faith in hell’s gaping maw has not heralded an equally principled new era of faith in compassionate, forgiving human judgement. Friday’s headlines and the public reaction to every conviction of a child abuser testify to that. And we should not dismiss such outrage as mere populism of little consequence. It does not happen in a vacuum – it influences public policy. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has recently reminded all judges that their primary purpose in passing sentence is the punishment of the accused. Deterrence of others from committing crime, let alone the rehabilitation of the offender, is a secondary consideration. We inhabit a punishing society.
Our standards conflict in this as in so many spheres of life and faith. God cannot condemn us, we insist. He must love us just as we are, coming alongside us and responding to our needs and concerns. Yet we may (indeed we must) condemn the offender in our midst. We have learned a new way of understanding God – we have not learned a new way of understanding judgement. Our model is still the one painted above the chancel arch in Salisbury. It’s just that we’ll no longer allow Christ to sit in majesty. Preferring the court of public opinion, we’ve enthroned ourselves.
My belief is that it’s time to rediscover and renew our understanding of divine judgement, and that in the light of that understanding we’ll find our view of human judgement changing too. For if we remove God from the judgement seat and turn him into a divine social worker then we turn our backs on our tradition. Punch the word ‘judge’ into your Bible software and you’ll find that it occurs no fewer than 587 times between the books Genesis and Revelation; while ‘saviour’ appears 59 times and ‘creator’ 21. God is our judge: that is a non-negotiable Christian doctrine.
Yet if God is our judge then we must ask: what sort of judge is God? Is he like our own punishing judges, only on bigger scale? In the Salisbury Doom painting Christ holds his hands up in blessing. He is bare-chested and his feet are unshod. At the end of time, all things being complete, blood still streams from his wounds. All-powerful and glorified, his humanity is ever present, ever visible. Christ is transformed from suffering prophet to omniscient judge; yet the omniscient judge is still the suffering prophet. God’s longing is not for the obliteration of humanity (hence the painting’s rainbow throne, token of God’s promise to Noah that never again would humankind be destroyed); his longing is for its transformation. His judicial concern is not with our rehabilitation. He does not want to make us into different people, but to make us more fully the people we essentially are, the people he loves and knows we might become.
And how is this transformation effected? The mediaeval artist shows the cross, spear and crown of thorns brandished trophy-like behind the throne. Christ’s victory is complete, but he is a wounded victor, and his victory is a victory of love. It is love that keeps Christ faithful to his vocation and bears him to the cross; it is love that scars him with eternal wounds; it is in love that we will judge us. On the last day, however we conceive of that, we will discover what it is to stand in the presence of pure love. What would a human court of law look like if it were constructed on a similar foundation?
For no one should imagine that that will be a reassuring or comforting thing. Imagine the light of a love so intense that it shines like a penetrating laser into the darkest corners of our souls. Imagine the heat of a love so coruscating that it burns away the dross and filth that have accumulated within us. Imagine the gaze of a love so clear that it knows us better than we know ourselves and has held us in being from the moment of our first creation.
Demons, fires and toasting forks are terrifying; but to see ourselves as we really are and to let ourselves be changed – that is the judgement of Christ. Perhaps that’s why we remain stuck, content with our overcrowded and unsanitary prisons, content with religion that constrains and demeans, and content with the Doom: because the reality is even more terrifying. Amen.
For more than four years before I came to St Peter’s I worshipped every Sunday underneath something almost as cataclysmic as a red-top headline: painted above the chancel arch of St Thomas’s, Salisbury it dates from the late fifteenth century and is one of the largest surviving mediaeval frescoes in England. The tabloids’ judgement of the kidnappers is tomorrow’s fish and chip paper; but the subject of the painting is, of course, the Doom, or The Last Judgment, the theme of this second address in our Advent series.
It depicts Christ robed in majesty outside the walls of the New Jerusalem. He is the judge of all creation. Beneath his feet sit the apostles in their long-promised places of honour. To the north and south of the chancel arch, and to the right and left of Christ, members of our race go to the fate decreed for them. Angels give the righteous a helping hand and they are raised to life, while the damned are dragged towards the gaping maw of hell. Numbered among them are crowned, mitred and tonsured heads.
No doubt the citizens of late-mediaeval Salisbury would have marvelled at the painting’s colour and detailed sophistication; no doubt they would have been cheered by the rewards promised to the saved; no doubt they would have shivered at the gruesome end of the condemned. To twenty-first century eyes the colours have faded, the detail appears crude, and the rewards and the gruesome end cruder still.
Today few are prepared to argue seriously for the existence of hellfire; fewer still accept that the fate of the unrighteous will be to be tortured for all eternity. Yet our principled loss of faith in hell’s gaping maw has not heralded an equally principled new era of faith in compassionate, forgiving human judgement. Friday’s headlines and the public reaction to every conviction of a child abuser testify to that. And we should not dismiss such outrage as mere populism of little consequence. It does not happen in a vacuum – it influences public policy. The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales has recently reminded all judges that their primary purpose in passing sentence is the punishment of the accused. Deterrence of others from committing crime, let alone the rehabilitation of the offender, is a secondary consideration. We inhabit a punishing society.
Our standards conflict in this as in so many spheres of life and faith. God cannot condemn us, we insist. He must love us just as we are, coming alongside us and responding to our needs and concerns. Yet we may (indeed we must) condemn the offender in our midst. We have learned a new way of understanding God – we have not learned a new way of understanding judgement. Our model is still the one painted above the chancel arch in Salisbury. It’s just that we’ll no longer allow Christ to sit in majesty. Preferring the court of public opinion, we’ve enthroned ourselves.
My belief is that it’s time to rediscover and renew our understanding of divine judgement, and that in the light of that understanding we’ll find our view of human judgement changing too. For if we remove God from the judgement seat and turn him into a divine social worker then we turn our backs on our tradition. Punch the word ‘judge’ into your Bible software and you’ll find that it occurs no fewer than 587 times between the books Genesis and Revelation; while ‘saviour’ appears 59 times and ‘creator’ 21. God is our judge: that is a non-negotiable Christian doctrine.
Yet if God is our judge then we must ask: what sort of judge is God? Is he like our own punishing judges, only on bigger scale? In the Salisbury Doom painting Christ holds his hands up in blessing. He is bare-chested and his feet are unshod. At the end of time, all things being complete, blood still streams from his wounds. All-powerful and glorified, his humanity is ever present, ever visible. Christ is transformed from suffering prophet to omniscient judge; yet the omniscient judge is still the suffering prophet. God’s longing is not for the obliteration of humanity (hence the painting’s rainbow throne, token of God’s promise to Noah that never again would humankind be destroyed); his longing is for its transformation. His judicial concern is not with our rehabilitation. He does not want to make us into different people, but to make us more fully the people we essentially are, the people he loves and knows we might become.
And how is this transformation effected? The mediaeval artist shows the cross, spear and crown of thorns brandished trophy-like behind the throne. Christ’s victory is complete, but he is a wounded victor, and his victory is a victory of love. It is love that keeps Christ faithful to his vocation and bears him to the cross; it is love that scars him with eternal wounds; it is in love that we will judge us. On the last day, however we conceive of that, we will discover what it is to stand in the presence of pure love. What would a human court of law look like if it were constructed on a similar foundation?
For no one should imagine that that will be a reassuring or comforting thing. Imagine the light of a love so intense that it shines like a penetrating laser into the darkest corners of our souls. Imagine the heat of a love so coruscating that it burns away the dross and filth that have accumulated within us. Imagine the gaze of a love so clear that it knows us better than we know ourselves and has held us in being from the moment of our first creation.
Demons, fires and toasting forks are terrifying; but to see ourselves as we really are and to let ourselves be changed – that is the judgement of Christ. Perhaps that’s why we remain stuck, content with our overcrowded and unsanitary prisons, content with religion that constrains and demeans, and content with the Doom: because the reality is even more terrifying. Amen.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Christ the King, Sunday 23 November 2008
Like a refreshment stall temptingly positioned somewhere in the twenty-fourth mile of a marathon, the feast of Christ the King beckons the unwary as they enter the last week of the Church’s year. Its imperious title suggests that the last seven days can be run with omniscient warmth in the heart and a royal spring in the step. Christ is King, after all, and with that dynamic assurance the purple wastes of Advent are so many puddles to be vaulted over on the way to the rapture that indubitably awaits. However, if a long-distance runner succumbs to the lure of the refreshment stall, takes a rest and enjoys a long cold beer when he has a mile of his course still to run he’ll find that last mile longer than all the preceding miles put together. A similar fate awaits those who too readily take refuge in the seductive promise that because Christ is King all is necessarily well. And maybe I’m becoming wise, or maybe I’m becoming cynical, but I am refusing the comforting blandishments proffered by today’s feast and, feeling neither omniscient nor royal, am approaching the end of the year with a sense of dissatisfaction.
I am at risk of sounding more like a chairman giving an end-of-year report than a priest proclaiming the Gospel, and I apologize, but it’s me preaching today rather than James or Mark because it had been our hope that today we would bring to an end our Giving Campaign for 2008. You all know the facts. Increased basic costs mean that for St Peter’s simply to keep going as it always has we need to find an additional £30,000 in 2009. If we want to achieve the relatively modest new ambitions we have set ourselves then we need to find an additional £38,000. The need is therefore urgent: but I am unable to tell you today that we have met it. Circumstances that no one could have foreseen or overcome mean that the Campaign’s mailing has only just gone out. I remain very confident that we will raise our income and plug the hole in the budget, but at the year’s end I regret that we have not done so already and as we had planned.
It had also been our hope that we would go into Advent with a new sound system in Church, one that would enable the many people who will worship here in the next month to participate in that worship in a more effective way, perhaps even by actually hearing the preacher. This is occasionally thought to be a good thing. Although we have identified the system and the supplier that we would like, we have also discovered unexpectedly that its introduction into our building will require a faculty from the Chancellor of the Diocese. Again, I am confident that we will obtain the faculty and that the system will enhance what we do here, but I regret that it will be 2009 before I am able to address you without the risk of the microphone dying or the speakers booming.
I could go on, and point to other areas of our common life where we have not achieved what we have set out to achieve within the time-frame we had set out to achieve them: hence springs my year-end sense of dissatisfaction and of a job only half-done. But if we cannot help how we feel, we can help what we do with our feelings. What might I do with my sense of disappointment?
Ignore it, I suppose, and preach a different sort of sermon, telling you that the plan all along had been to delay the Giving Campaign until Advent when people are in the mood to spend money, and that the new sound system was always destined to be part of our Lenten adventure. Or get angry, blame the PCC, blame the printer, blame the Diocese and inform the Assistant Priest that he will be preaching on Christ the King.
Or, or – draw breath and think for a moment about today’s claim. Christ is King. Of course he is: every breath in our lungs, every sinew in our bodies, every drop of blood in our veins compels us to this conclusion: that in Christ is all authority ultimately vested; that in Christ all history finds its meaning; that in Christ the nations will be one. Christ is king. Yet look at the chaos and agony of the world which is his, a world stalked by injustice and violence, a world where evil runs unchecked, a world where innocence is put to the sword every hour of every day. Look at all that and acknowledge that while Christ is King his kingdom is not yet Christ-like.
To commit to the proclamation that Christ is King is to commit to dissatisfaction, to disappointment, and to a sense of a job half-done. To proclaim that Christ is King is perpetually to reach the year’s end unfulfilled. For to proclaim that Christ is King is to proclaim that the kingdom has not yet come and that in the forests of the Congo and on the streets of this very city it sometimes seems an awfully long way off. And to proclaim that Christ is King is to respond to our dissatisfaction at that distance not by ignoring it and not by getting angry with it, but by learning humility in the face of it. Christ is King is a shout of triumph, but it is also a call to action. It is a defiant statement of hope in the face of human sin, but it is also an indictment of human sin. It starkly holds before us the scale of the task that is ours, the task of working alongside the God who was, who is, and who is to come, for the Earth’s redemption.
The year is ending, there’s no shiny new PA, and we face a deficit next year. I - we - must learn to plan better and to deliver on the expectations we raise. But Christ the King convinces me of disappointments and dissatisfactions which dwarf mine ten thousand times over. Christ the King propels us into the season of Advent and compels us to pray the Advent prayer with greater urgency than ever: ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. And Christ the King bids us transform this world to make it one fit for a King.
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people… Amen.
I am at risk of sounding more like a chairman giving an end-of-year report than a priest proclaiming the Gospel, and I apologize, but it’s me preaching today rather than James or Mark because it had been our hope that today we would bring to an end our Giving Campaign for 2008. You all know the facts. Increased basic costs mean that for St Peter’s simply to keep going as it always has we need to find an additional £30,000 in 2009. If we want to achieve the relatively modest new ambitions we have set ourselves then we need to find an additional £38,000. The need is therefore urgent: but I am unable to tell you today that we have met it. Circumstances that no one could have foreseen or overcome mean that the Campaign’s mailing has only just gone out. I remain very confident that we will raise our income and plug the hole in the budget, but at the year’s end I regret that we have not done so already and as we had planned.
It had also been our hope that we would go into Advent with a new sound system in Church, one that would enable the many people who will worship here in the next month to participate in that worship in a more effective way, perhaps even by actually hearing the preacher. This is occasionally thought to be a good thing. Although we have identified the system and the supplier that we would like, we have also discovered unexpectedly that its introduction into our building will require a faculty from the Chancellor of the Diocese. Again, I am confident that we will obtain the faculty and that the system will enhance what we do here, but I regret that it will be 2009 before I am able to address you without the risk of the microphone dying or the speakers booming.
I could go on, and point to other areas of our common life where we have not achieved what we have set out to achieve within the time-frame we had set out to achieve them: hence springs my year-end sense of dissatisfaction and of a job only half-done. But if we cannot help how we feel, we can help what we do with our feelings. What might I do with my sense of disappointment?
Ignore it, I suppose, and preach a different sort of sermon, telling you that the plan all along had been to delay the Giving Campaign until Advent when people are in the mood to spend money, and that the new sound system was always destined to be part of our Lenten adventure. Or get angry, blame the PCC, blame the printer, blame the Diocese and inform the Assistant Priest that he will be preaching on Christ the King.
Or, or – draw breath and think for a moment about today’s claim. Christ is King. Of course he is: every breath in our lungs, every sinew in our bodies, every drop of blood in our veins compels us to this conclusion: that in Christ is all authority ultimately vested; that in Christ all history finds its meaning; that in Christ the nations will be one. Christ is king. Yet look at the chaos and agony of the world which is his, a world stalked by injustice and violence, a world where evil runs unchecked, a world where innocence is put to the sword every hour of every day. Look at all that and acknowledge that while Christ is King his kingdom is not yet Christ-like.
To commit to the proclamation that Christ is King is to commit to dissatisfaction, to disappointment, and to a sense of a job half-done. To proclaim that Christ is King is perpetually to reach the year’s end unfulfilled. For to proclaim that Christ is King is to proclaim that the kingdom has not yet come and that in the forests of the Congo and on the streets of this very city it sometimes seems an awfully long way off. And to proclaim that Christ is King is to respond to our dissatisfaction at that distance not by ignoring it and not by getting angry with it, but by learning humility in the face of it. Christ is King is a shout of triumph, but it is also a call to action. It is a defiant statement of hope in the face of human sin, but it is also an indictment of human sin. It starkly holds before us the scale of the task that is ours, the task of working alongside the God who was, who is, and who is to come, for the Earth’s redemption.
The year is ending, there’s no shiny new PA, and we face a deficit next year. I - we - must learn to plan better and to deliver on the expectations we raise. But Christ the King convinces me of disappointments and dissatisfactions which dwarf mine ten thousand times over. Christ the King propels us into the season of Advent and compels us to pray the Advent prayer with greater urgency than ever: ‘Come, Lord Jesus’. And Christ the King bids us transform this world to make it one fit for a King.
Stir up, O Lord, the wills of thy faithful people… Amen.
Tuesday, 4 November 2008
All Souls Day, Monday 3 November 2008
Love bade me welcome: yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
One of the realities of ordained life is that if a priest is invited to supper the meal will inevitably be preceded by an awkward pause in which the host wrestles with whether or not Grace should be said and, if it should, by whom it should be said. A priest I know regularly overcomes this embarrassment by declaring categorically that only meals involving potatoes are proper meals, and necessitate Grace, while others are not and do not. I had supper with him last week and was thrown into confusion when, confronted with a plate of chicken and rice I assumed myself to be in safe territory and picked up my knife and fork. He took this as the cue to launch us into prayer. I blurted out my ‘Amen’ and in my defence pointed out the lack of the aforementioned root vegetable. He smiled and said ‘ah, but the presence of a friend makes the meal proper’.
I should not have been surprised. The priest in question is in fact a rather senior bishop of the Church of England, and he has made known on several occasions his opinion that priests ought to be taught less about the Bible and more about how to cook.
This opinion has (in my view) much to commend it, although it is considered shocking by many. It’s been much influenced by the sublime words of George Herbert, with which I began. They comprise a dialogue between the poet and his host, between humankind and God. Invited to dine and painfully conscious of his frailty the poet tells his host that, in response to his enquiry, all he lacks is a guest worthy of the invitation. ‘You shall be he’ insists the host. But ‘I cannot look on thee’ returns the poet. ‘Who made the eyes but I?’ says the host; ‘but I have marr’d them’ says the poet, ‘let my shame go where it doth deserve’. He is fearful. He dares not approach the table.
It is no coincidence that tonight, as we remember those we love but see no longer, we do so in a setting similar to that envisaged by Herbert. We gather around a table, around a table at which we are invited to sit and eat. Each of us stands where the poet stands, and in our Eucharist we discover the truth of what Herbert believed of God. This is that he is not the zealous receptionist, armed with a roll call of those who are invited and those who are not. Nor is he the muscular door-keeper, whose task it is to root out the unwashed and eject them from the party. He is instead the eternally generous host, welcoming in whoever wishes to approach, cooking and serving, and paying the bill. What he serves, what we feast upon, is his life, his presence, given to us and for us.
For the readings for All Souls Day attest that God is as George Herbert portrays him: he is Love, eternally turned towards the world with arms outstretched, the world which he loves into being and constantly holds in being. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; and they are offered to every one of his children, to the departed as to the living. In that invitation; in that hospitality; in that love is our hope.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Come, let us taste Love’s feast. Amen.
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning,
If I lacked anything.
A guest, I answered, worthy to be here:
Love said, You shall be he.
I the unkind, ungrateful? Ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee.
Love took my hand, and smiling did reply,
Who made the eyes but I?
Truth Lord, but I have marr’d them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.
One of the realities of ordained life is that if a priest is invited to supper the meal will inevitably be preceded by an awkward pause in which the host wrestles with whether or not Grace should be said and, if it should, by whom it should be said. A priest I know regularly overcomes this embarrassment by declaring categorically that only meals involving potatoes are proper meals, and necessitate Grace, while others are not and do not. I had supper with him last week and was thrown into confusion when, confronted with a plate of chicken and rice I assumed myself to be in safe territory and picked up my knife and fork. He took this as the cue to launch us into prayer. I blurted out my ‘Amen’ and in my defence pointed out the lack of the aforementioned root vegetable. He smiled and said ‘ah, but the presence of a friend makes the meal proper’.
I should not have been surprised. The priest in question is in fact a rather senior bishop of the Church of England, and he has made known on several occasions his opinion that priests ought to be taught less about the Bible and more about how to cook.
This opinion has (in my view) much to commend it, although it is considered shocking by many. It’s been much influenced by the sublime words of George Herbert, with which I began. They comprise a dialogue between the poet and his host, between humankind and God. Invited to dine and painfully conscious of his frailty the poet tells his host that, in response to his enquiry, all he lacks is a guest worthy of the invitation. ‘You shall be he’ insists the host. But ‘I cannot look on thee’ returns the poet. ‘Who made the eyes but I?’ says the host; ‘but I have marr’d them’ says the poet, ‘let my shame go where it doth deserve’. He is fearful. He dares not approach the table.
It is no coincidence that tonight, as we remember those we love but see no longer, we do so in a setting similar to that envisaged by Herbert. We gather around a table, around a table at which we are invited to sit and eat. Each of us stands where the poet stands, and in our Eucharist we discover the truth of what Herbert believed of God. This is that he is not the zealous receptionist, armed with a roll call of those who are invited and those who are not. Nor is he the muscular door-keeper, whose task it is to root out the unwashed and eject them from the party. He is instead the eternally generous host, welcoming in whoever wishes to approach, cooking and serving, and paying the bill. What he serves, what we feast upon, is his life, his presence, given to us and for us.
For the readings for All Souls Day attest that God is as George Herbert portrays him: he is Love, eternally turned towards the world with arms outstretched, the world which he loves into being and constantly holds in being. His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; and they are offered to every one of his children, to the departed as to the living. In that invitation; in that hospitality; in that love is our hope.
And know you not, says Love, who bore the blame?
My dear, then I will serve.
You must sit down, says Love, and taste my meat:
So I did sit and eat.
Come, let us taste Love’s feast. Amen.
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