Where did they put the body?
Perhaps it’s Father Mustard in the organ loft with the candlestick. Perhaps it’s Douglas the Verger in the Crypt with the collection plate. Every game of Cluedo - and every murder mystery - poses the same question.
Where did they put the body?
It’s a question for Hercule Poirot and for Miss Marple, for Morse and for Gene Hunt. And it’s a question for us too as we celebrate the Ascension of Jesus Christ.
Where did they put the body?
It is not a straightforward matter. For after the crucifixion the body, the wounded body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Death had taken it from their sight, and sealed it in the tomb. Yet three days later they saw it again. The wounded body was raised; the wounded body was transformed. It was the same body: it bore the marks of the nails, its hands broke bread, and its mouth spoke peace. Yet it was not the same body: it was mistaken for that of a gardener, it passed through locked doors, it came and went at will. The wounded body had become the resurrected body.
Where did they put the body?
After the Ascension the body, the resurrected body, could no longer be seen by the disciples. Cloud had taken it from their sight, and carried it up into heaven. The resurrected body was exalted. So where did they put it? Where was the body of Jesus?
Where is the wounded, resurrected, exalted body?
Our forebears in faith had no doubt. The body of Jesus was in heaven. It was up there. It was in a realm which we cannot see. It was in a realm which is spread beyond the sky. There Jesus sat in glory, ready to return on the Last Day. The body of Jesus lived on, it lived on somewhere that is within the created universe; it lived on somewhere that is invisible to us. It lived on where we could not travel.
This belief we cannot share. Air-travel and interstellar exploration inform us that, in John Lennon’s words, above us there’s only sky. Journey (boldly go, if you will) to the reaches of the earth’s atmosphere and beyond and you will find yourself not in a place called heaven but in the wilderness of space, the boundless expanse of the universe. There is nowhere up there for the body to go.
Where did they put the body?
In the years since Copernicus and Galileo began to explain the universe to us we have mythologized the question. We duck the embarrassing Ascension story and read it as an allegory for the final vindication of Jesus. We ignore the resurrected body that led the disciples out to Bethany, and point instead to the sacrament of the Eucharist and to the reality of the Church and say that the body is there.
But we do this at our peril. The risks are twofold. If we cannot say where they put the body then we cannot answer those who scoff at our faith as flaccid and unhistorical spirituality. And if we cannot say where they put the body then we are careless of our own reality. Jesus is an embodied presence in the world; we too are an embodied presence in the world. If Jesus’s embodied presence becomes unimportant forty days after his resurrection; if Jesus’s embodied presence simply disappears; if Jesus’s embodied presence is a passing necessity for God that serves its limited purpose and is discarded then what are we to make of our embodied presence? Is that too unimportant; will that too disappear; must that too be discarded?
We must reclaim the Ascension of Jesus Christ. It vital for our redemption, and prophetic of our sanctification. In short, we must work out where they put the body. The clues are all there. The clues are there in the transformation of the body that is foreshadowed at the Transfiguration; the clues are there in the transformation that the body undergoes at the resurrection. The body evolves; the body is changed. The body evolves and the body is changed because it is the body of Jesus of Nazareth and it is also the body of God.
And at the Ascension the body undergoes its final transformation. It is exalted, yes, it is glorified, yes, but it is still real. It is seen by Stephen in the hour of his martyrdom; it speaks to Saul of Tarsus as he travels to Damascus; it is experienced by countless Christians across the generations who know that Jesus has not left the earth and that Jesus’s body has not left the earth. The body has ascended; the body has been glorified; and now there is no place from which the body is absent. It fills ‘all in all’. Yes, we are the body of Jesus; yes, we receive the body of Jesus; but in the Church and in the sacraments the Holy Spirit distils and focuses the body which is everywhere.
Stand inches from an advertising hoarding and you cannot read what it says. The text is distended. Put your ear up against a stereo speaker and you cannot hear the music that it plays. The sound is distorted. Fill your mouth with good claret and you cannot savour its complexity. The taste is obscured. Juxtaposition does not guarantee understanding; proximity does not guarantee recognition; closeness does not guarantee comprehension.
Open your eyes. Open your eyes to the suffering of the innocent; open your eyes to the self-giving of the poor; open your eyes to the forgiveness of the abused; open your eyes to Jesus’s embodied presence in the world; open your eyes to the body of Jesus.
Where did they put the body? Here; there; everywhere. Amen.
Friday, 14 May 2010
Monday, 19 April 2010
Third Sunday of Easter, 18 April 2010
‘So Simon Peter went aboard and hauled the net ashore, full of large fish, a hundred and fifty-three of them; and though there were so many, the net was not torn’.
A great deal of scholarly sweat has been expended and a great many scholarly ink bottles have been emptied in attempts to interpret the extremely precise number of fish that Simon Peter hauled ashore. The tradition of interpretation began in the late fourth century when the great Biblical translator Jerome recorded that ancient opinion was that there were 153 species of fish in the world’s oceans. The net therefore represents the Church’s embrace of all peoples and all nations. Jerome’s friend Augustine of Hippo adopted a more mathematical approach. 153 is the sum of the numbers one to seventeen, and ten and seven are both Biblical numbers of mystical significance. Moses receives Ten Commandments and John of Patmos receives a vision of seven spirits of God. The net therefore represents God’s self-revelation to his people both old and new.
This debate continues, and although it is extremely tempting to view it with a mixture of bewilderment and suspicion as Dan Brown territory the fact that it continues requires us to recognize that when we read the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel we read something complex and multi-layered. In the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel have an allegorical epilogue to the original text.
In the twentieth chapter Jesus sends his disciples out, full of the Holy Spirit, and says to doubting Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’. That is surely the closing benediction that John intends for us, his readers, who are among those who have not seen. That is surely the original end of the Gospel. Then comes what we have heard this morning, the afterthought, the story of the fishing trip and the seaside breakfast, the story of Jesus’s questions to Peter and of Peter’s protestations of love, a story replete with symbolism and brimming with prophecy.
It is a story written down many years after the crucifixion, a story intended to portray the mature Christian community that has grown under the leadership of the martyred Peter. The fishing trip is the community’s mission; the unbroken net is its unity; the seven disciples listed represent the totality of the faithful (that magic number again); Jesus’s command to Peter to shepherd the flock authenticates the role that Peter has in fact had; Jesus’s dark prediction of Peter’s future validates the death he has in fact suffered on a cross. The chapter assures the people to whom it is addressed that their common life has its origins in Jesus’s risen life.
Interpreting the story in this way is a satisfying exercise, but if we do no more than interpret it in this way then it will remain a self-referential puzzle, theological Sudoku, and its impact upon us - its power to change us - will be negligible. We hear the Gospel as good news, not as food for our intellectual curiosity, or we do not hear the Gospel at all. And in this strange story of experienced fishermen who catch nothing and of apostles commissioned by Jesus who fail to recognize Jesus, at least two themes emerge which speak to us through a swirling mist of symbolic gesture and oracular sign.
The first is encapsulated in those 153 fish. The net brought to shore was full of their quivering, silvery, shimmering forms. It was a substantial haul, a huge haul. It far exceeded what seven hungry men needed for their breakfast. Yet this was the last of the signs that Jesus performed; perhaps the disciples looked upon the net and remembered the first of the signs that he performed. After all, one of them was Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the town where Jesus had turned water into wine all those years before. He had turned water into a substantial amount of wine, a huge amount of wine, an amount far exceeding the needs of the most boisterous of wedding parties. At the beginning of his ministry and at its end Jesus deals in profusion: he reveals the reckless bounty that God lavishes upon the world even when the world has hung his Son on a cross; he reveals the love that is without limit, the goodness that has no boundaries.
The second is encapsulated in the responses Jesus makes to Peter’s increasingly desperate pledges of love. They resonate oddly in the ears of the soap opera generation. When a lover in Albert Square or even Ambridge asks the beloved ‘do you love me?’ and receives the answer ‘yes’, he or she is likely to say ’I don’t believe you’ or ‘prove it’. What Jesus says is ‘Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep’. Jesus does not play a lover’s games with Peter, and he will not allow Peter to hug his love to himself, as something to warm his heart and cheer him up. He wants him to turn his love into love for others. ‘If you love me’ says Jesus ‘then love my people’.
Scholarly sweat and scholarly ink will never precisely identify identified a date and a place for the writing of this afterword to John’s Gospel. But perhaps we can imagine a community, cowed by the death of its great leader Peter, hearing it and through it being reminded that they originate in the miraculous resurrection of God’s Son. Perhaps we can imagine them being reassured that God’s care for them is endless; perhaps we can imagine them resolving that the only possible response to that care is to care for others.
It was Gospel for that far-flung, long-lost community, and it is Gospel for ours. Amen.
A great deal of scholarly sweat has been expended and a great many scholarly ink bottles have been emptied in attempts to interpret the extremely precise number of fish that Simon Peter hauled ashore. The tradition of interpretation began in the late fourth century when the great Biblical translator Jerome recorded that ancient opinion was that there were 153 species of fish in the world’s oceans. The net therefore represents the Church’s embrace of all peoples and all nations. Jerome’s friend Augustine of Hippo adopted a more mathematical approach. 153 is the sum of the numbers one to seventeen, and ten and seven are both Biblical numbers of mystical significance. Moses receives Ten Commandments and John of Patmos receives a vision of seven spirits of God. The net therefore represents God’s self-revelation to his people both old and new.
This debate continues, and although it is extremely tempting to view it with a mixture of bewilderment and suspicion as Dan Brown territory the fact that it continues requires us to recognize that when we read the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel we read something complex and multi-layered. In the twenty-first chapter of John’s Gospel have an allegorical epilogue to the original text.
In the twentieth chapter Jesus sends his disciples out, full of the Holy Spirit, and says to doubting Thomas, ‘Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have come to believe’. That is surely the closing benediction that John intends for us, his readers, who are among those who have not seen. That is surely the original end of the Gospel. Then comes what we have heard this morning, the afterthought, the story of the fishing trip and the seaside breakfast, the story of Jesus’s questions to Peter and of Peter’s protestations of love, a story replete with symbolism and brimming with prophecy.
It is a story written down many years after the crucifixion, a story intended to portray the mature Christian community that has grown under the leadership of the martyred Peter. The fishing trip is the community’s mission; the unbroken net is its unity; the seven disciples listed represent the totality of the faithful (that magic number again); Jesus’s command to Peter to shepherd the flock authenticates the role that Peter has in fact had; Jesus’s dark prediction of Peter’s future validates the death he has in fact suffered on a cross. The chapter assures the people to whom it is addressed that their common life has its origins in Jesus’s risen life.
Interpreting the story in this way is a satisfying exercise, but if we do no more than interpret it in this way then it will remain a self-referential puzzle, theological Sudoku, and its impact upon us - its power to change us - will be negligible. We hear the Gospel as good news, not as food for our intellectual curiosity, or we do not hear the Gospel at all. And in this strange story of experienced fishermen who catch nothing and of apostles commissioned by Jesus who fail to recognize Jesus, at least two themes emerge which speak to us through a swirling mist of symbolic gesture and oracular sign.
The first is encapsulated in those 153 fish. The net brought to shore was full of their quivering, silvery, shimmering forms. It was a substantial haul, a huge haul. It far exceeded what seven hungry men needed for their breakfast. Yet this was the last of the signs that Jesus performed; perhaps the disciples looked upon the net and remembered the first of the signs that he performed. After all, one of them was Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the town where Jesus had turned water into wine all those years before. He had turned water into a substantial amount of wine, a huge amount of wine, an amount far exceeding the needs of the most boisterous of wedding parties. At the beginning of his ministry and at its end Jesus deals in profusion: he reveals the reckless bounty that God lavishes upon the world even when the world has hung his Son on a cross; he reveals the love that is without limit, the goodness that has no boundaries.
The second is encapsulated in the responses Jesus makes to Peter’s increasingly desperate pledges of love. They resonate oddly in the ears of the soap opera generation. When a lover in Albert Square or even Ambridge asks the beloved ‘do you love me?’ and receives the answer ‘yes’, he or she is likely to say ’I don’t believe you’ or ‘prove it’. What Jesus says is ‘Feed my lambs…tend my sheep…feed my sheep’. Jesus does not play a lover’s games with Peter, and he will not allow Peter to hug his love to himself, as something to warm his heart and cheer him up. He wants him to turn his love into love for others. ‘If you love me’ says Jesus ‘then love my people’.
Scholarly sweat and scholarly ink will never precisely identify identified a date and a place for the writing of this afterword to John’s Gospel. But perhaps we can imagine a community, cowed by the death of its great leader Peter, hearing it and through it being reminded that they originate in the miraculous resurrection of God’s Son. Perhaps we can imagine them being reassured that God’s care for them is endless; perhaps we can imagine them resolving that the only possible response to that care is to care for others.
It was Gospel for that far-flung, long-lost community, and it is Gospel for ours. Amen.
Monday, 7 December 2009
Sunday 6 December 2009, Second Sunday of Advent
‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel: for he hath visited and redeemed his people’
Generations of praying Christians have begun the day to the words of the Benedictus. They are immediately reminiscent of morning sunlight playing upon Gothic arches, of Choral Mattins at eleven o’clock, and of sherry before lunch.
Yet is the Benedictus an appropriate text for Christian prayer? Our familiarity with the words, and the beauty of the music to which they are set has stopped up our ears to its irony and to its authentic character as a song lamenting an opportunity missed, a dream shattered, and a moment wasted for ever.
The Benedictus is the spontaneous response of Zechariah to the birth of his son John, who will become the Baptist. In his birth, and in the imminent birth of John’s kinsman Jesus, Zechariah discerns the mighty hand of God, triumphantly fulfilling the promises faithfully spoken by the prophets since the dawn of time. In these two births Zechariah perceives God’s threefold action.
Zechariah the elderly Jew perceives God acting to free his chosen people. The song makes two references to Israel’s enemies and one to those that hate Israel. Zechariah looks back upon the long history of his people’s oppression at than hands of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Seleucids and the Romans. He looks back to the covenant made with Abraham. And he looks forward to Israel’s deliverance and salvation
Zechariah the priest of the Temple perceives God acting to restore Israel’s worship. Deliverance from her enemies means that Israel will be free to serve her God without fear, ‘serve’ here having a particular cultic resonance. Zechariah looks back on his people’s constant longing to live securely in their land, serving faithfully the God who has given it to them. And he looks forward to that longing’s imminent satisfaction.
Zechariah the restored penitent perceives God acting to forgive his people. When the angel tells Zechariah that his wife is to bear him a son he cannot believe it. Because of his unbelief he is struck dumb and his speech is only restored when in faithfulness to the angel’s message he names his son John. Zechariah looks back upon the long history of Israel’s doubts, betrayals and apostasies. And he looks forward to a new era of fidelity in which God’s forgiveness will descend everlastingly upon his people.
Yet within decades of the song’s utterance and within decades of the crucifixion the Judaea known to Zechariah, to John the Baptist and to Jesus of Nazareth had changed beyond recognition and had changed for ever. In the year 70 of the Common Era Roman forces overcame Jerusalem. They razed it to the ground and burned the Temple. Never again was the City of David the national capital of the people of David. Never again was sacrifice offered on the Temple mount. The consequences were incalculable.
And it was amidst these consequences and in this context that Luke wrote his Gospel. Among the material that is unique to Luke are the three canticles of the first two chapters, Mary’s Magnificat, Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis, and Zechariah’s Benedictus. When Luke’s audience first heard Zechariah’s words they must have grimaced. They knew that God’s people had not been freed – that the enemies of God’s people had triumphed. They knew that God’s worship had not been restored – that the Temple was a smoking ruin. They knew that God’s forgiveness had not descended – that the covenant sealed by the gift of the land had been rent asunder. They must have heard Zechariah’s words as irony. The dayspring from on high had visited God’s people, and God’s people had nailed the dayspring to a cross. Zechariah’s song laments an opportunity missed, a dream shattered, and a moment wasted for ever.
So how can we pray this lament?
In doing so we take the three promises that Zechariah discerned and make them our own. Yet we are not besieged by Rome; we are not alienated from the Temple; we have not seen our covenant with our God turn to dust and ashes.
The Benedictus, rooted as it is in the reality of Israel’s national tragedy, compels us to acknowledge that Scripture is always a distant land. It recalls us to the discipline of Biblical study. Zechariah’s words come down to us not Tardis-like, heat-sealed and shrink-wrapped, secure against the vagaries of time and circumstance. They come down to us as the product of a far-off age, an age that we cannot hope to recapture. When we read Zechariah’s words we must consider that distance; we must consider the wisdom of the church; and we must pray that the Holy Spirit will speak, and bring these ancient words to life.
When we do so we may discover that our enemies are more likely to have subtle advertising strategies than all-conquering siege-engines. Our enemies play upon our fear and our vanity, upon our insecurity and our pride. Our return to worship is more likely to involve our internal disposition rather than our physical presence in a sacred space. We are here, after all, but our day to day lived experience may not be the day to day lived experience of men and women set free to serve God without fear. And our forgiveness, or our acceptance of our forgiveness, will only be visible and plausible when we are ready to forgive others as generously as we know ourselves to have been forgiven.
Free, worshipping, forgiven: three adjectives for Zechariah’s descendants, three adjectives for the Advent people of God who look for their Lord’s return.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Generations of praying Christians have begun the day to the words of the Benedictus. They are immediately reminiscent of morning sunlight playing upon Gothic arches, of Choral Mattins at eleven o’clock, and of sherry before lunch.
Yet is the Benedictus an appropriate text for Christian prayer? Our familiarity with the words, and the beauty of the music to which they are set has stopped up our ears to its irony and to its authentic character as a song lamenting an opportunity missed, a dream shattered, and a moment wasted for ever.
The Benedictus is the spontaneous response of Zechariah to the birth of his son John, who will become the Baptist. In his birth, and in the imminent birth of John’s kinsman Jesus, Zechariah discerns the mighty hand of God, triumphantly fulfilling the promises faithfully spoken by the prophets since the dawn of time. In these two births Zechariah perceives God’s threefold action.
Zechariah the elderly Jew perceives God acting to free his chosen people. The song makes two references to Israel’s enemies and one to those that hate Israel. Zechariah looks back upon the long history of his people’s oppression at than hands of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Seleucids and the Romans. He looks back to the covenant made with Abraham. And he looks forward to Israel’s deliverance and salvation
Zechariah the priest of the Temple perceives God acting to restore Israel’s worship. Deliverance from her enemies means that Israel will be free to serve her God without fear, ‘serve’ here having a particular cultic resonance. Zechariah looks back on his people’s constant longing to live securely in their land, serving faithfully the God who has given it to them. And he looks forward to that longing’s imminent satisfaction.
Zechariah the restored penitent perceives God acting to forgive his people. When the angel tells Zechariah that his wife is to bear him a son he cannot believe it. Because of his unbelief he is struck dumb and his speech is only restored when in faithfulness to the angel’s message he names his son John. Zechariah looks back upon the long history of Israel’s doubts, betrayals and apostasies. And he looks forward to a new era of fidelity in which God’s forgiveness will descend everlastingly upon his people.
Yet within decades of the song’s utterance and within decades of the crucifixion the Judaea known to Zechariah, to John the Baptist and to Jesus of Nazareth had changed beyond recognition and had changed for ever. In the year 70 of the Common Era Roman forces overcame Jerusalem. They razed it to the ground and burned the Temple. Never again was the City of David the national capital of the people of David. Never again was sacrifice offered on the Temple mount. The consequences were incalculable.
And it was amidst these consequences and in this context that Luke wrote his Gospel. Among the material that is unique to Luke are the three canticles of the first two chapters, Mary’s Magnificat, Simeon’s Nunc Dimittis, and Zechariah’s Benedictus. When Luke’s audience first heard Zechariah’s words they must have grimaced. They knew that God’s people had not been freed – that the enemies of God’s people had triumphed. They knew that God’s worship had not been restored – that the Temple was a smoking ruin. They knew that God’s forgiveness had not descended – that the covenant sealed by the gift of the land had been rent asunder. They must have heard Zechariah’s words as irony. The dayspring from on high had visited God’s people, and God’s people had nailed the dayspring to a cross. Zechariah’s song laments an opportunity missed, a dream shattered, and a moment wasted for ever.
So how can we pray this lament?
In doing so we take the three promises that Zechariah discerned and make them our own. Yet we are not besieged by Rome; we are not alienated from the Temple; we have not seen our covenant with our God turn to dust and ashes.
The Benedictus, rooted as it is in the reality of Israel’s national tragedy, compels us to acknowledge that Scripture is always a distant land. It recalls us to the discipline of Biblical study. Zechariah’s words come down to us not Tardis-like, heat-sealed and shrink-wrapped, secure against the vagaries of time and circumstance. They come down to us as the product of a far-off age, an age that we cannot hope to recapture. When we read Zechariah’s words we must consider that distance; we must consider the wisdom of the church; and we must pray that the Holy Spirit will speak, and bring these ancient words to life.
When we do so we may discover that our enemies are more likely to have subtle advertising strategies than all-conquering siege-engines. Our enemies play upon our fear and our vanity, upon our insecurity and our pride. Our return to worship is more likely to involve our internal disposition rather than our physical presence in a sacred space. We are here, after all, but our day to day lived experience may not be the day to day lived experience of men and women set free to serve God without fear. And our forgiveness, or our acceptance of our forgiveness, will only be visible and plausible when we are ready to forgive others as generously as we know ourselves to have been forgiven.
Free, worshipping, forgiven: three adjectives for Zechariah’s descendants, three adjectives for the Advent people of God who look for their Lord’s return.
Maranatha! Come, Lord Jesus. Amen.
Monday, 9 November 2009
Remembrance Sunday 2009
The Regimental Museum of the South Wales Borderers in Brecon is a neglected treasure trove of military history. Every inch of its four rooms is filled with the artefacts of an illustrious past: weaponry, insignia, and medals. In pride of place stand the Victoria Crosses won by the regiment, including six of the seven won at Rorke’s Drift on 22 January 1879.
The faces of the men who were decorated for their valour that day stare out from small gilt frames. They are separated from the viewer by a glass case, but not only by a glass case. They are also separated by the coloured tinting of Victorian photography, strange to citizens of the digital era. They are separated by the starched formality of the uniforms that they wear and by the style in which their hair and beards are cut. When we look at Harry Hook’s portrait we see not the recognizable and roguish hero of Cy Endfield’s 1964 film Zulu, but a man from another age. He is inaccessible to us; his life is inaccessible to us. It is impossible to re-enter his world imaginatively, to sense it, understand it and sympathize with it.
Imaginative re-entry characterizes the remembrance that has been customary at this time of year since the end of the Great War. Consciously or unconsciously we have been encouraged to re-enter and re-live the horror of the Western Front. Our re-entry has been eased by the poetry of Wilfred Owen and by grainy newsreel footage of the Somme. But it has been eased above all by the presence at our war memorials of the veterans of the First World War. We have seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears and stood shoulder to shoulder in our market squares with the men who fought at Passchendaele and Jutland. Their survival has kept their great struggle from the clutches of the museum’s dusty shelves.
Yet that era is now past. In the last twelve months the last three British survivors of the conflict that gave birth to Remebrancetide have died, and the voice of that generation has fallen silent. For those growing up now, and for those yet unborn, Harry Patch will be as Harry Hook is to us, a stranger from that distant land called the past. Imaginative re-entry into the slime and squalor of the trenches will become more and more difficult. What then will happen to remembrance? How will we remember a time with which we have no living link?
When imaginative re-entry is no longer possible solemn recollection is. Solemn recollection is the deliberate calling to mind of events that our corporate consciousness might prefer to forget. Solemn recollection is our regular reminding ourselves that, in the words of the Kohima Epitaph, our today has been won at the cost of others’ tomorrow. It is the painstaking chronicling of their sacrifice even when they can no longer prompt us. It is the acknowledgement that such sacrifice continues in the heat of Helmand and in too many other theatres of conflict. It is the perpetual recognition that war, all war, is an abomination. Solemn recollection is a national task which should claim the allegiance of people of all faiths and of no faith. The vocation of Christians within the national task is to enable this solemn recollection, providing sacred space and sacred language for the purpose. It is a vocation which those who treat our Church’s establishment in cavalier fashion would do well to remember.
Yet the Christian contribution to Remembrance Sunday should not be limited to space and language. It should not even be limited to prayer for the victims of war and ethical reflection on the morality of war. The Church’s most profound contribution is a remembrance which is neither imaginative re-entering nor solemn recollection. This is the remembrance that is celebrated daily within these walls, the remembrance that Christ commended to his friends. We may be able to enter the scene created by Leonardo da Vinci, so firmly is it imprinted on the Western heart, but we cannot imaginatively re-enter the upper room. And although the solemn recollection of the Last Supper plays a part in Eucharistic celebration such celebration does not end with recollection.
For here we remember Christ; that is, we re-member Christ. We know what it means to dismember. It is, after all, the achievement of war to dismember communities, to dismember families, to dismember men and women, God’s unique and precious creation. We too easily overlook what it means to re-member. It means to make whole again, to restore again, to bring into the present again. Here we re-member Christ. In broken bread and wine outpoured the Holy Spirit makes Christ present, as real for us as he was for the company with who he reclined around the table.
And if we are in the presence of Christ then time and space mean nothing. If we are in the presence of Christ then we are in the presence of all who are in the presence of Christ. We are in the presence of the fallen, of all the victims of the folly and sin of war. We gather with Harry Hook, hero of Rorke’s Drift, with Harry Patch, the last fighting Tommy, and with Phillip Scott, killed in Sangin on Thursday last week.
Because Christ is we know that they are; because Christ is we know that love ultimately disarms violence; because Christ is we know that beyond death there is life, that beyond darkness there is light, that beyond despair there is hope. Ours is to remember them, and to remember this broken and suffering world. Amen.
The faces of the men who were decorated for their valour that day stare out from small gilt frames. They are separated from the viewer by a glass case, but not only by a glass case. They are also separated by the coloured tinting of Victorian photography, strange to citizens of the digital era. They are separated by the starched formality of the uniforms that they wear and by the style in which their hair and beards are cut. When we look at Harry Hook’s portrait we see not the recognizable and roguish hero of Cy Endfield’s 1964 film Zulu, but a man from another age. He is inaccessible to us; his life is inaccessible to us. It is impossible to re-enter his world imaginatively, to sense it, understand it and sympathize with it.
Imaginative re-entry characterizes the remembrance that has been customary at this time of year since the end of the Great War. Consciously or unconsciously we have been encouraged to re-enter and re-live the horror of the Western Front. Our re-entry has been eased by the poetry of Wilfred Owen and by grainy newsreel footage of the Somme. But it has been eased above all by the presence at our war memorials of the veterans of the First World War. We have seen with our own eyes, heard with our own ears and stood shoulder to shoulder in our market squares with the men who fought at Passchendaele and Jutland. Their survival has kept their great struggle from the clutches of the museum’s dusty shelves.
Yet that era is now past. In the last twelve months the last three British survivors of the conflict that gave birth to Remebrancetide have died, and the voice of that generation has fallen silent. For those growing up now, and for those yet unborn, Harry Patch will be as Harry Hook is to us, a stranger from that distant land called the past. Imaginative re-entry into the slime and squalor of the trenches will become more and more difficult. What then will happen to remembrance? How will we remember a time with which we have no living link?
When imaginative re-entry is no longer possible solemn recollection is. Solemn recollection is the deliberate calling to mind of events that our corporate consciousness might prefer to forget. Solemn recollection is our regular reminding ourselves that, in the words of the Kohima Epitaph, our today has been won at the cost of others’ tomorrow. It is the painstaking chronicling of their sacrifice even when they can no longer prompt us. It is the acknowledgement that such sacrifice continues in the heat of Helmand and in too many other theatres of conflict. It is the perpetual recognition that war, all war, is an abomination. Solemn recollection is a national task which should claim the allegiance of people of all faiths and of no faith. The vocation of Christians within the national task is to enable this solemn recollection, providing sacred space and sacred language for the purpose. It is a vocation which those who treat our Church’s establishment in cavalier fashion would do well to remember.
Yet the Christian contribution to Remembrance Sunday should not be limited to space and language. It should not even be limited to prayer for the victims of war and ethical reflection on the morality of war. The Church’s most profound contribution is a remembrance which is neither imaginative re-entering nor solemn recollection. This is the remembrance that is celebrated daily within these walls, the remembrance that Christ commended to his friends. We may be able to enter the scene created by Leonardo da Vinci, so firmly is it imprinted on the Western heart, but we cannot imaginatively re-enter the upper room. And although the solemn recollection of the Last Supper plays a part in Eucharistic celebration such celebration does not end with recollection.
For here we remember Christ; that is, we re-member Christ. We know what it means to dismember. It is, after all, the achievement of war to dismember communities, to dismember families, to dismember men and women, God’s unique and precious creation. We too easily overlook what it means to re-member. It means to make whole again, to restore again, to bring into the present again. Here we re-member Christ. In broken bread and wine outpoured the Holy Spirit makes Christ present, as real for us as he was for the company with who he reclined around the table.
And if we are in the presence of Christ then time and space mean nothing. If we are in the presence of Christ then we are in the presence of all who are in the presence of Christ. We are in the presence of the fallen, of all the victims of the folly and sin of war. We gather with Harry Hook, hero of Rorke’s Drift, with Harry Patch, the last fighting Tommy, and with Phillip Scott, killed in Sangin on Thursday last week.
Because Christ is we know that they are; because Christ is we know that love ultimately disarms violence; because Christ is we know that beyond death there is life, that beyond darkness there is light, that beyond despair there is hope. Ours is to remember them, and to remember this broken and suffering world. Amen.
Monday, 7 September 2009
Sunday 6 September 2009, Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity
‘In the right to eat the bread, without leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, the black man is my equal and the equal of every living man’.
In her magisterial study of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius, Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes racism as ‘deeply embedded’ in mid-nineteenth century America. Lincoln voiced the egalitarian sentiments with which I began as he campaigned for a seat in the United States Senate in 1858, and he detested slavery. But he believed in white supremacy. The black man in America was not the equal of the white man in America. The black man was not capable of assimilation into American life.
Lincoln was a leader, an orator and a reformer of remarkable stature. Yet he held views that all of us find abhorrent. He was a creature of his time as well as being a creator of his time.
Much scholarly sweat has been expended on the first words spoken by Jesus to the Syrophoenician woman. It is easy to see why. A mother bows down at his feet and begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ‘Let the children be fed first,’ says Jesus ‘for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’. No amount of scholarly sweat can diminish the offensive nature of those words. The food of his ministry is for the children of God; it is for Jesus’s own people; it is for the Jews. It is not for the people who the Jews frequently referred to as dogs; it is not for the Gentiles.
It has been suggested that Jesus was teasing the woman, that the word he used was a diminutive term of endearment, that it was said while a smile played across his lips. Those suggestions are born of a determination that the Redeemer of the World cannot possibly have uttered anything hurtful. That determination, however well-meaning, is surely misplaced. To picture the face of Jesus is the task of the poet, not the preacher. Jesus belonged to a race which believed itself uniquely chosen by God. God had freed them from bondage, given them a homeland, and driven out other nations before them. God’s purposes were for Israel; God’s prophets called for Israel’s renewal; God’s Messiah would restore Israel’s fortunes. Jesus’s mission, in obedience to God, was to Israel. It was to the children, not to the dogs. Like Lincoln, Jesus was a creature of his time.
The encounter with the Syrophoenician woman recalls us to the transience of human values. Just as Lincoln disliked the notion of black suffrage, Jesus drew a parallel between a desperate mother’s sick child and a despised dog. Abraham Lincoln and Jesus of Nazareth in these instances exemplify that transience, and that transience requires us to re-examine the values we hold. How might we assess what is eternal, and what is not?
The Letter of James makes a unique contribution to the Christian understanding of faith, and it makes it so clearly that Martin Luther was driven to condemn it as ‘a right strawy epistle’. ‘What good is it’ writes James ‘if you say you have faith but do not have works? Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’. Protestations of belief are not enough. They have no cash value; they cannot be assessed or analyzed. The quality of faith can be judged only by the action that it generates. Perhaps the quality of values can be judged only by the action that they generate.
Lincoln’s values may fall short of the standards of twenty-first century liberal thinkers. But Goodwin notes that a black contemporary who had met all the leading abolitionists of the day never felt with any of them, as he did with Lincoln, an ‘entire freedom from popular prejudice against the coloured race’. And the crowning achievement of his political career was the emancipation of the slaves of the United States. The Syrophoenician woman responds to Jesus’s words with faithful boldness. The child is healed; the dog under the table receives its scrap. And in the next miracle that is recorded reveals that the impact of her faith has stretched beyond the region of Tyre. The audience for whom Mark is writing three decades after the crucifixion is not an audience of Jews but of Gentiles, her successors in faith.
Isaiah writes of the actions that will identify the coming of Israel’s God. The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame will leap and the speechless will sing. Water will flow in the wilderness and streams will run in the desert. These are the actions that were prompted by faith in Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, walked across the seas and fed the hungry in the desert, whose Gospel was proclaimed to the ends of the earth. These are the actions that that were prompted by Lincoln’s values, values which prompted him to break the shackles of more than three million Americans and restore them to themselves, values for which he gave his life.
So what actions do our values unleash? What actions does our faith provoke? Do we set the prisoner free or do we drain away the vital water of life? Do we make the speechless shout for joy or do we place unconscionable burdens upon their shoulders?
If the latter then no matter how clear we are today, to the generation which worships here one hundred years hence we will appear ludicrous or downright wicked; if the former then we catch in them the echo of heaven’s eternal music.
In her magisterial study of Abraham Lincoln’s political genius, Team of Rivals, Doris Kearns Goodwin describes racism as ‘deeply embedded’ in mid-nineteenth century America. Lincoln voiced the egalitarian sentiments with which I began as he campaigned for a seat in the United States Senate in 1858, and he detested slavery. But he believed in white supremacy. The black man in America was not the equal of the white man in America. The black man was not capable of assimilation into American life.
Lincoln was a leader, an orator and a reformer of remarkable stature. Yet he held views that all of us find abhorrent. He was a creature of his time as well as being a creator of his time.
Much scholarly sweat has been expended on the first words spoken by Jesus to the Syrophoenician woman. It is easy to see why. A mother bows down at his feet and begs him to cast the demon out of her daughter. ‘Let the children be fed first,’ says Jesus ‘for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs’. No amount of scholarly sweat can diminish the offensive nature of those words. The food of his ministry is for the children of God; it is for Jesus’s own people; it is for the Jews. It is not for the people who the Jews frequently referred to as dogs; it is not for the Gentiles.
It has been suggested that Jesus was teasing the woman, that the word he used was a diminutive term of endearment, that it was said while a smile played across his lips. Those suggestions are born of a determination that the Redeemer of the World cannot possibly have uttered anything hurtful. That determination, however well-meaning, is surely misplaced. To picture the face of Jesus is the task of the poet, not the preacher. Jesus belonged to a race which believed itself uniquely chosen by God. God had freed them from bondage, given them a homeland, and driven out other nations before them. God’s purposes were for Israel; God’s prophets called for Israel’s renewal; God’s Messiah would restore Israel’s fortunes. Jesus’s mission, in obedience to God, was to Israel. It was to the children, not to the dogs. Like Lincoln, Jesus was a creature of his time.
The encounter with the Syrophoenician woman recalls us to the transience of human values. Just as Lincoln disliked the notion of black suffrage, Jesus drew a parallel between a desperate mother’s sick child and a despised dog. Abraham Lincoln and Jesus of Nazareth in these instances exemplify that transience, and that transience requires us to re-examine the values we hold. How might we assess what is eternal, and what is not?
The Letter of James makes a unique contribution to the Christian understanding of faith, and it makes it so clearly that Martin Luther was driven to condemn it as ‘a right strawy epistle’. ‘What good is it’ writes James ‘if you say you have faith but do not have works? Faith by itself, if it has no works, is dead’. Protestations of belief are not enough. They have no cash value; they cannot be assessed or analyzed. The quality of faith can be judged only by the action that it generates. Perhaps the quality of values can be judged only by the action that they generate.
Lincoln’s values may fall short of the standards of twenty-first century liberal thinkers. But Goodwin notes that a black contemporary who had met all the leading abolitionists of the day never felt with any of them, as he did with Lincoln, an ‘entire freedom from popular prejudice against the coloured race’. And the crowning achievement of his political career was the emancipation of the slaves of the United States. The Syrophoenician woman responds to Jesus’s words with faithful boldness. The child is healed; the dog under the table receives its scrap. And in the next miracle that is recorded reveals that the impact of her faith has stretched beyond the region of Tyre. The audience for whom Mark is writing three decades after the crucifixion is not an audience of Jews but of Gentiles, her successors in faith.
Isaiah writes of the actions that will identify the coming of Israel’s God. The eyes of the blind will be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped; the lame will leap and the speechless will sing. Water will flow in the wilderness and streams will run in the desert. These are the actions that were prompted by faith in Jesus, who opened the eyes of the blind, unstopped the ears of the deaf, walked across the seas and fed the hungry in the desert, whose Gospel was proclaimed to the ends of the earth. These are the actions that that were prompted by Lincoln’s values, values which prompted him to break the shackles of more than three million Americans and restore them to themselves, values for which he gave his life.
So what actions do our values unleash? What actions does our faith provoke? Do we set the prisoner free or do we drain away the vital water of life? Do we make the speechless shout for joy or do we place unconscionable burdens upon their shoulders?
If the latter then no matter how clear we are today, to the generation which worships here one hundred years hence we will appear ludicrous or downright wicked; if the former then we catch in them the echo of heaven’s eternal music.
Sunday 19 July 2009, Sixth Sunday after Trinity
‘Magnificent desolation’ said Buzz Aldrin as he looked across the Sea of Tranquility forty years ago.
‘Come away to a deserted place’ said Jesus Christ as he looked across the Sea of Galilee two thousand years ago.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a journey with a purpose. It had its roots in the Cold War rivalry of two global superpowers, but it had a rationale that was greater than that rivalry. It will always have its critics and its sceptics, not to mention the conspiracy theorists for whom the term ‘lunatic’ is uniquely apt. It expanded the boundaries of human knowledge. It enlarged human experience. And in its triumph it strengthened the human family, albeit briefly. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place had a purpose. They had just returned from the first solo mission upon which Jesus had sent them. They had much to say, much to recount, much to learn. The crowd was pressing in. There was little space to take a breath, little chance step back, little time to reflect.
Christ has a purpose for those who follow him. It is to send us out as the twelve were sent out. It is to shepherd the flock as he shepherds the flock. It is to be his presence in this place: to be his feet to go about, to be his hands to bless, to be the fringe of his cloak, bringing wholeness to those who touch it.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a test of human ingenuity. It had less computer power behind it than does the average BlackBerry. The ground crew at Houston used slide rules to calculate the optimum angles for its’ re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. And the spindly legs of the lunar module made it look like a child’s junk model. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place tested human endurance. They were newly-returned missionaries. Yet they were taken far from home and family. They were removed from the acclamation of the crowds, and they had only one another for company and for sustenance.
Christ tests those who follow him. In sending us out he offers us not the security of paths we have already taken but a new journey in an unforeseen direction. For our rest he offers us not luxury but a deserted place. To comfort us he offers not the adulation of the mob but his presence among us.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a voyage into silence. We remember the words that enveloped the mission: ‘The Eagle has landed’ said Neil Armstrong; ‘…all the people on this earth are truly one’ said Richard Nixon. What we don’t remember is the silence that envelops the Moon. No breath of wind stirs the lunar dust. The astronauts’ footprints are as clear today as the day they were made. Nothing has disturbed the Sea of Serenity since Apollo 17 departed in 1972. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place was a sojourn in silence. All we know about the place is that it was empty. Jesus took the apostles away from the cities and away from the villages of the region.
Christ leads those who follow him into silence. We are to be sent out. There is a mission to accomplish. But there is always teaching to give. There is always healing to perform. There are always people to care for. The task of Christ in the world is endless; the task of those who follow Christ in the world is endless. Christ leads us away from teaching and away from healing and away from caring. He leads us into silence. For he knows that in silence will we meet his Father; in silence will we be replenished; in silence will we discover who we are rather than what we do.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
They are called to a task, tested to the utmost, and drawn into silence. They steps they take may be small, but their small steps are towards One whose giant leap is eternally towards the cosmos that he has made and has in love redeemed. Amen.
‘Come away to a deserted place’ said Jesus Christ as he looked across the Sea of Galilee two thousand years ago.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a journey with a purpose. It had its roots in the Cold War rivalry of two global superpowers, but it had a rationale that was greater than that rivalry. It will always have its critics and its sceptics, not to mention the conspiracy theorists for whom the term ‘lunatic’ is uniquely apt. It expanded the boundaries of human knowledge. It enlarged human experience. And in its triumph it strengthened the human family, albeit briefly. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place had a purpose. They had just returned from the first solo mission upon which Jesus had sent them. They had much to say, much to recount, much to learn. The crowd was pressing in. There was little space to take a breath, little chance step back, little time to reflect.
Christ has a purpose for those who follow him. It is to send us out as the twelve were sent out. It is to shepherd the flock as he shepherds the flock. It is to be his presence in this place: to be his feet to go about, to be his hands to bless, to be the fringe of his cloak, bringing wholeness to those who touch it.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a test of human ingenuity. It had less computer power behind it than does the average BlackBerry. The ground crew at Houston used slide rules to calculate the optimum angles for its’ re-entry to the Earth’s atmosphere. And the spindly legs of the lunar module made it look like a child’s junk model. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place tested human endurance. They were newly-returned missionaries. Yet they were taken far from home and family. They were removed from the acclamation of the crowds, and they had only one another for company and for sustenance.
Christ tests those who follow him. In sending us out he offers us not the security of paths we have already taken but a new journey in an unforeseen direction. For our rest he offers us not luxury but a deserted place. To comfort us he offers not the adulation of the mob but his presence among us.
The mission of Apollo 11 was a voyage into silence. We remember the words that enveloped the mission: ‘The Eagle has landed’ said Neil Armstrong; ‘…all the people on this earth are truly one’ said Richard Nixon. What we don’t remember is the silence that envelops the Moon. No breath of wind stirs the lunar dust. The astronauts’ footprints are as clear today as the day they were made. Nothing has disturbed the Sea of Serenity since Apollo 17 departed in 1972. The apostles’ sojourn in the deserted place was a sojourn in silence. All we know about the place is that it was empty. Jesus took the apostles away from the cities and away from the villages of the region.
Christ leads those who follow him into silence. We are to be sent out. There is a mission to accomplish. But there is always teaching to give. There is always healing to perform. There are always people to care for. The task of Christ in the world is endless; the task of those who follow Christ in the world is endless. Christ leads us away from teaching and away from healing and away from caring. He leads us into silence. For he knows that in silence will we meet his Father; in silence will we be replenished; in silence will we discover who we are rather than what we do.
Astronauts and apostles share a common destiny. They are called to the wilderness.
They are called to a task, tested to the utmost, and drawn into silence. They steps they take may be small, but their small steps are towards One whose giant leap is eternally towards the cosmos that he has made and has in love redeemed. Amen.
Sunday 14 June 2009, First Sunday after Trinity
'Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten…Every year fewer and fewer words, and the range of consciousness always a little smaller’
It is sixty years since George Orwell published his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, a prophetic depiction of a world still recognizable to the reader yet submerged in a totalitarian nightmare. Its three super-states are locked in unceasing war; its brutal governance is in the hands of the anonymous Party; and its people are kept under constant and total surveillance.
Chief among the instruments of oppression is the manipulation of language, as is explained to the novel’s hero Winston Smith in the passage with which I began. In 1984 Oldspeak, the language of Milton and Shakespeare, of Coleridge and Shelley, the language with which you and I are familiar, is being replaced by Newspeak, which is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year. Its purpose, Orwell writes, is to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of the governing Party’s ideology. It is also to make all other modes of thought impossible. The Newspeak dictionary introduces new words and eliminates undesirable words; those undesirable words that remain it strips of undesirable meanings. Political freedom and intellectual freedom have been abolished so the word ‘freedom’ can retain little of its original sense. The word ‘freedom’ still exists but only to describe the freedom of a dog from fleas.
The Party uses language to achieve certain ends; so too does Jesus. ‘With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples’. Saint Mark believes that Jesus gives an explanation to those closest to him, but that in public he chooses to speak differently. His subject is the kingdom of God: that kingdom, he says, ‘is as if someone would scatter seed upon the ground…it is like a mustard seed’. Jesus denies the crowd the interpretation he gives to the disciples, and offers instead sketches and stories. George Orwell warns us that language can be deployed to oppress. We are surely entitled to ask why Jesus deploys language as he does. And Orwell may help us find an answer.
In his 1946 essay ‘The Prevention of Literature he ponders what journalism and imaginative writing have in common. It is commonly acknowledged that the former is likely to suffer in societies that are not free. The authorities will clamp down on reporting that dissents from their ideological line. But Orwell argues that creative writing is just as likely to suffer. ‘The journalist is unfree’ he writes ‘when he is forced to write lies or suppress what seems to him important news: the imaginative writer is unfree when he has to falsify his subjective feelings, which from his point of view are facts’. Authentic history and enquiring journalism: these are the mark of the free; but so too is imaginative writing, poetry and story-telling.
Newspeak strips away all nuance, colour and interpretative possibility, denying the hearer space to imagine, question or speculate. Story is steeped in nuance, colour and interpretative possibility. It encourages the hearer to imagine, question and speculate. The language of totalitarianism is Newspeak. The language of freedom is story.
So Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom, a language that recognizes our need to think for ourselves, question for ourselves and speculate for ourselves. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of the kingdom, the kingdom that grows like a mustard seed as we think, question and speculate. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom because freedom is what men and women have been created to enjoy, because in growing up and exercising our freedom we can become God-like.
Slavery and oppression still stalk our planet. Slavery and oppression are the antithesis of the kingdom that Jesus Christ proclaims. Twenty years ago this week thousands of protestors were swept from Tiananmen Square in an operation that China’s rulers can barely acknowledge took place. ‘If you want a picture of the future’ says O’Brien, Winston Smith’s torturer, ‘imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever’. In too many places there is no need to imagine. Wherever the liberty of God’s children is abused the seed of the kingdom is trampled underfoot; the face of Jesus Christ is bruised and bloodied.
‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view’ Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians. We cannot understand any human face simply as a human face, for in every human face we see the face of the One who gave up himself for the sake of us all. Their suffering and their struggle are ours. So let us speak the language of freedom; let us speak it boldly; let us tell the story. Amen.
It is sixty years since George Orwell published his novel ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’, a prophetic depiction of a world still recognizable to the reader yet submerged in a totalitarian nightmare. Its three super-states are locked in unceasing war; its brutal governance is in the hands of the anonymous Party; and its people are kept under constant and total surveillance.
Chief among the instruments of oppression is the manipulation of language, as is explained to the novel’s hero Winston Smith in the passage with which I began. In 1984 Oldspeak, the language of Milton and Shakespeare, of Coleridge and Shelley, the language with which you and I are familiar, is being replaced by Newspeak, which is the only language in the world whose vocabulary gets smaller every year. Its purpose, Orwell writes, is to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of the governing Party’s ideology. It is also to make all other modes of thought impossible. The Newspeak dictionary introduces new words and eliminates undesirable words; those undesirable words that remain it strips of undesirable meanings. Political freedom and intellectual freedom have been abolished so the word ‘freedom’ can retain little of its original sense. The word ‘freedom’ still exists but only to describe the freedom of a dog from fleas.
The Party uses language to achieve certain ends; so too does Jesus. ‘With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it; he did not speak to them except in parables, but he explained everything in private to his disciples’. Saint Mark believes that Jesus gives an explanation to those closest to him, but that in public he chooses to speak differently. His subject is the kingdom of God: that kingdom, he says, ‘is as if someone would scatter seed upon the ground…it is like a mustard seed’. Jesus denies the crowd the interpretation he gives to the disciples, and offers instead sketches and stories. George Orwell warns us that language can be deployed to oppress. We are surely entitled to ask why Jesus deploys language as he does. And Orwell may help us find an answer.
In his 1946 essay ‘The Prevention of Literature he ponders what journalism and imaginative writing have in common. It is commonly acknowledged that the former is likely to suffer in societies that are not free. The authorities will clamp down on reporting that dissents from their ideological line. But Orwell argues that creative writing is just as likely to suffer. ‘The journalist is unfree’ he writes ‘when he is forced to write lies or suppress what seems to him important news: the imaginative writer is unfree when he has to falsify his subjective feelings, which from his point of view are facts’. Authentic history and enquiring journalism: these are the mark of the free; but so too is imaginative writing, poetry and story-telling.
Newspeak strips away all nuance, colour and interpretative possibility, denying the hearer space to imagine, question or speculate. Story is steeped in nuance, colour and interpretative possibility. It encourages the hearer to imagine, question and speculate. The language of totalitarianism is Newspeak. The language of freedom is story.
So Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom, a language that recognizes our need to think for ourselves, question for ourselves and speculate for ourselves. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of the kingdom, the kingdom that grows like a mustard seed as we think, question and speculate. Jesus Christ speaks to men and women in the language of freedom because freedom is what men and women have been created to enjoy, because in growing up and exercising our freedom we can become God-like.
Slavery and oppression still stalk our planet. Slavery and oppression are the antithesis of the kingdom that Jesus Christ proclaims. Twenty years ago this week thousands of protestors were swept from Tiananmen Square in an operation that China’s rulers can barely acknowledge took place. ‘If you want a picture of the future’ says O’Brien, Winston Smith’s torturer, ‘imagine a boot stamping on a human face – for ever’. In too many places there is no need to imagine. Wherever the liberty of God’s children is abused the seed of the kingdom is trampled underfoot; the face of Jesus Christ is bruised and bloodied.
‘From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view’ Saint Paul writes to the Corinthians. We cannot understand any human face simply as a human face, for in every human face we see the face of the One who gave up himself for the sake of us all. Their suffering and their struggle are ours. So let us speak the language of freedom; let us speak it boldly; let us tell the story. Amen.
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