THE NORMALITY OF THE EXTRAORDINARY

In my Easter Day sermon I quoted the lovely e.e.cummings poem that begins ‘i thank you God for most this amazing /day.’ And there is indeed a breath-taking sense of awe and wonder that should overwhelm us when we think of the miracle of God’s love revealed in Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection.

Yet, on reflection, there is another theme to all the Easter accounts. There is something very normal and ordinary about the appearance of the risen Christ. Mary Magdalene mistakes him for a gardener; Cleopas and his companion walk beside him for 5 miles and sit down for a meal before they recognise him; and on the lake, Peter and the other disciples initially believe him to be just a stranger on the shore.

Initially, they didn’t expect Jesus to have been raised from dead. But when they do encounter him, he does not look like a triumphantly victorious Messiah – who might have been expected to be some kind of superhuman, transcendent figure. Instead, he seems to look like anyone else! Something has changed, which may be why they fail to recognise him; but it may that they are not expecting to see him at all, except in some apocalyptically transformed way. But this Jesus in almost every way behaves as he always had, even to the extent of still enjoying a meal with them. (The only difference is his habit of entering locked rooms, and departing unexpectedly.)

What might this mean? I suggest there are two aspects. The first is what we might call the ‘normality of the extraordinary.’ Although the God of the Bible is indeed ‘wholly other’, God’s dealings with his people often take apparently unsurprising forms. God walks through the garden of Eden, looking for Adam; Abraham sees God in the visit of three men; at times, Moses speaks to the Lord, ‘as one talks to a friend’; angels never have wings or other distinguishing features. God speaks to Elijah, not in the powerful manner of winds, earthquakes or fires, but in a ‘still, small voice’ – a whisper. We have a God, it seems, who is to be encountered at least as much in the everyday and the insignificant, as in the ‘otherworldly’. Typical of this is Isaiah 49:31

                Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.

                They will soar on wings like eagles;

                they will run and not grow weary;

                they will walk and not be faint.

Might we not expect a different order? But the Lord’s final promise here is that our faith will enable us to do the normal thing – to walk – without flagging. Divine grace perfects our human nature, it does not overwhelm it, or replace it (to paraphrase Aquinas.)

The other aspect of the ‘normality’ we are considering is that it underlines the fact that Christian faith is grounded in reality. The mistake of many heresies is to try to separate God from his creation, to deny the humanity of Jesus, to propose ways of escaping from the mundane world into mystical ecstasy. The fact is that God loves the world he has made. Christian hope is not for some super-spiritual absorption into a nirvana – but for the resurrection of the body. John the Divine’s vision is of a new heaven and a new earth.

Hannah Arendt famously commented on the ‘banality of evil’ she perceived in Nazi war criminals. Against this, perhaps we Christians should rejoice in the ‘normality of the extraordinary’, the down to earth solidity of the saint, the God we meet in everyday life. After all, as Genesis reminds us, in creation ‘God saw all that he had made, and it was very good.’

Passionate Christianity?

It’s paradoxical that although we often make much of the season of Passiontide, veiling crucifixes and statues, we exhibit little passion in our faith and its expression. We rightly focus on and celebrate our Lord’s Passion – his rejection and betrayal, his appalling suffering and death; but we fail to connect with all the other resonances of the word.

For indeed it is God’s amazing love which is manifested in the great events of our redemption which we celebrate at this time. There’s a Gospel song which includes the words ‘it wasn’t the nails that held him to the cross, but it was the love of God’. And the New Testament is full of references to the fact that God loved us and loves us, not because of what we have done, but despite it.

Surely that calls for a response; for a passionate response to the God who loved us so much. But we are either afraid, or incapable, of this. Perhaps that part of our Englishness, or our Reformation/ Enlightenment culture, which is suspicious of shows of emotion. So ‘enthusiasm’ – which at root means being ‘filled with God’ – came to be regarded with suspicion: Samuel Johnson defined it as ‘a vain confidence of Divine favour or communication.’ John Wesley’s teaching on holiness and the work of the Holy Spirit met with resistance from many Establishment divines.

It was not always so. The great English mystics of the 13^th-15^th centuries frequently described or called for passionate love from the man or woman of faith. Richard Rolle’s The Fire of Love is typical, with its extravagant language , such as:  ‘Jesus, when I am in you, and on fire with joy, and when the heat of love is surging in, I want to embrace you, the most loving, with my whole being.‘ We could find similar words in Julian of Norwich, Walter Hilton and The Cloud of Unknowing.

So where has our passion gone? Our worship is controlled, our prayer is often formal, or dry. And our public teaching and preaching usually lacks fire – in case anyone is offended. A good example is the Archbishop of Canterbury’s recent words about the refuge situation. He actually said the right thing - that we should be giving asylum to more refugees – which was not widely reported.  But he had hedged that statement around, presumably out of a wish to appear reasonable. He even suggested that people ‘had a right’ to feel anxious or afraid. That lacks the passion of OT prophets like Amos and Micah, and ignores St John’s words that ‘perfect love casts out fear’? I am reminded of W.B. Yeats poem The Second Coming, written in the aftermath of the Great War, with its words

                 The best lack all conviction, while the worst
                Are full of passionate intensity.

I admit my own failings in this area. By nature, I am frequently very ‘English’, reserved in my practice and expression of faith. But I don’t count that a virtue. Rather I need to keep recalling the passionate nature of God’s attitude to me, which ought to draw out of me a passionate response, a greater longing and desire for him. I pray for more intimacy, more love, more passion. Unless we open ourselves more and more to God’s love, our prayer and worship are in danger of remaining dry and empty; our teaching and proclamation will lack urgency.

I would like to give up all reasonable religion for the rest of Lent; let’s all renounce the ‘Churchianity’ we often experience and practise – what Michael Marshall called ‘decaffeinated Christianity, which does not keep us awake at night’. As we follow our Lord to Calvary, may our hearts be warmed within us, as Cleopas and his companion were to experience on the road to Emmaus.  May we love him more dearly, follow him more nearly, day by day. Then perhaps we will arouse a new passion in our hearts.

WHO's LOST?

If your church  chose the Mothering Sunday options last Sunday, you’ll have missed the opportunity to reflect on the Parable of the Prodigal Son, the appointed Gospel for Lent 4. Its familiarity can make it difficult to preach on  or think about– we all know what it means. But it repays re-visiting.

It’s now normally called the ‘Parable of the Lost Son’; but I would rather think of it as the story of two lost sons. We usually concentrate on the younger brother as a paradigm of repentance (though in the parable his return seems to be motivated as much by self-interest as by compunction!),And obviously we reflect on the remarkable father, who ignores convention by not only welcoming his errant son back, but running to meet him. That’s still worth pondering as an image of God’s amazing graciousness.

 But the parable ends with the older brother, which suggests to me that Jesus intends us to think about him. Traditionally we regard him as a negative model – an embodiment of Pharisaic self-righteousness and resistance to grace. But that misses the point. For he too is ‘lost’: unsure of his standing and his father’s love. To understand Jesus’ purpose, and gain the full benefit of this parable, we need to glimpse this son’s pain and confusion.

That can also save us from the dishonesty of condemning this ‘bad brother’, when many of us really, if secretly, sympathise with him. Indeed if we go deeper, we may find we actually identify with him.

We know what he is feeling. He has been the good son; he’s always done his duty and never really felt his father’s love.

 Perhaps he privately envied his younger brother, who had escaped from the demands of responsibility and respectability, and gone offer to experience ‘life’ and adventure. Of course doing that was selfish and uncaring  – and it all ended in tears. At least it should have done, but the returning wastrel is not just allowed to crawl into the servants’ hall, he is welcomed home by his father and invited to a party.

No wonder the older boy is angry! He’s angry with his brother, whom he won’t even acknowledge, and with his father, who seems to have shown unfair generosity. But isn’t he also angry with himself – for not having had the courage to break free, for never having asked for anything? The younger son had taken risks, and explored his desires – even though they were not worthy ones. The older son has been too hesitant, closed in on himself.  He had never even asked to have his friends round for a meal, and now nursed a deep resentment – against himself for his reticence, and against his father for not suggesting that.

C.S. Lewis somewhere wrote that it can be better to desire the wrong things than to have no desires at all. God can transform our misdirected passion, but is powerless if we don’t admit to having any. We see something similar in Luke’s account of Jesus at the house of Mary and Martha. Martha (like the older brother) becomes resentful that her sister is less constrained by convention, and so is freer than she is, and able to express her longing for closeness with Jesus.

It is interesting that in that narrative, and in this parable, there is no resolution. Did Martha accept Jesus’ gentle reprimand and join her sister in sitting at Jesus’ feet? Did the older son acknowledge his father’s love, and his own need and longing for affection, and so go into the feast?

So in both cases we are presented with a challenge. Are we satisfied with our relationship with God? Or can we dare to discover a desire for a closer relationship with God, a hunger and thirst for more intimacy? Can we take the risk of letting go, and letting God fully into our lives?

Refreshment Sunday?

Clergy - and I include myself - have long bewailed the fact that in the UK, the traditional Mothering Sunday has been overcome by ‘Mothers’ Day’, with all its kitsch commercialism. Actually, I think that more serious than this is the way we have ignored the spiritual and liturgical dimension of this Sunday in the middle of Lent as ‘Refreshment  Sunday’.

Perhaps few of us have been sufficiently austere or abstemious to deserve a day off. Nevertheless, in a deeper sense, we do all require refreshment in our lives. So often, our desire to follow Christ and to live appropriate lives has become burdensome and unrewarding. Prayer in particular becomes a struggle, or a barren duty; worship an activity we participate in rather than look forward to.

Our Christian life has become a desert, a wilderness. Our souls are thirsty and in danger of fading. The greater danger is that we do not even recognise our plight or our need. If Lent has a real value, it is that we may become more aware of our state, and may look for a way out of the dry land – not by indulging our superficial hungers and thirsts, but by longing to be able to cry out with the Psalmist:

                You are my God; earnestly I seek you.

                I thirst for you, my whole being longs for you,

                in a dry and parched land where there is no water.   (Psalm 63:1)

The point of abstaining from some favourite food or drink is that our sense of lack may open us up to the more serious lack within. In his hunger in the wilderness, Jesus was able to see more clearly the truth of the words which expressed the Israelites’ experience when God fed them with manna, to demonstrate that ‘people do not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:3.)

That is why sin is so often manifested in yielding to temptation to unbalanced consumption – of food and drink, in sexual activity or desire for possessions or power. We miss or ignore our real hunger for God, and pursue shallow and ultimately unsatisfying alternatives.

Augustine of Hippo came – reluctantly at first - to a realisation of the emptiness of self-indulgence and could pray:

   Lord, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you.

Peter spoke to the onlookers in the Temple who were amazed at the healing of the paralysed man, and encouraged them to ‘turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing may come from the Lord ‘(Acts 3:19.)  The rich and self-righteous are often warned by Jesus and by his followers that their satisfaction at their supposed material or spiritual wealth is a snare and delusion, which can insulate them against the gracious offer of the Lord.

Exploring the message of Refreshment Sunday – having already denied ourselves some physical pleasure - may help us to rediscover our huger and our need for God. Rowan Williams somewhere suggests that calling to God as Father is not a calm assertion of a universal truth, but more like a needful child’s cry for help. The younger son’s experience of famine led him to discover – and experience for the first time - his father’s true love for him.

At the very least, mid-Lent Sunday offers an opportunity to begin again with our observance of Lent, or to make a more serious commitment to make space, to allow God a chance to satisfy our deepest needs. 

LENT

For almost the first time in 43 years I sat in the congregation for Ash Wednesday. Instead of telling people what it meant, I had to ask myself!

                ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you will return.

                Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’

I am dust. Literally humbling words (humus = earth) which bring me down to earth, which ground me in my reality. It’s not just about sin; it’s a reminder of my finitude, my limitations and my mortality. I’m not made of stardust or pixie dust; as the funeral service also hammers home at the interment of one’s body – ‘dust to dust, ashes to ashes.’

It’s a curious modern delusion that such thinking is morbid. It is actually liberating! It sets me free from thinking too highly of myself, to set myself unattainable goals. I am earthly and earthy, and so I cannot and must not expect too much, or imagine I am ever going to be perfect. And because God made us from the dust of the earth, he does not demand unrealistic achievements. Too often, believers turn God into an oppressive and judgmental figure, and either mistrust him or convince themselves that they cannot hope to please him. That God loves us sometimes seems to be a forgotten truth.

If we combine that fundamental truth, of the Father’s love, with the Ash Wednesday message of our essential limitation, we are taking the first step on a realistic and joyful pilgrimage of growth in trust and closeness to God. The Cross can then be seen, not as a dark and awful warning, but as a beacon of light and hope. God knows us and our weaknesses. That is why the Word becomes flesh, sharing our existence in dust and ashes. That is why the Son joins the crowd by the Jordan to be baptised for forgiveness of sin, and allows himself to be tested and tempted in the desert. He identifies with us in those things, as he will ultimately identify with us in failure, rejection and death.

Our mortality is also not cause for regret or depression. Endless life might appear attractive, but given our condition of our ‘dustiness’, it would become intolerable. We are not going to live for ever, and so we must – and we can - seize the opportunities each day gives us, to be aware of God, to use well the time we are given and aim not for ‘success’, but for peace and contentment.

So though Lent is a ‘penitential season’, it is much more (as its name, denoting it as the spring, when the days lengthen, suggests) a time for growth, for flourishing and for bearing fruit.

The challenge is to turn away from all that diminishes us and denies our reality, and in faithful trust in Christ, to become the people he enables us to be: dust that is destined for glory.

Candlemass

I have always enjoyed and been touched by the Feast of Candlemass. It has liturgical power, with its candles, processions and chants, which has been enhanced in recent Anglican Liturgy with the closing ceremony of a symbolic turning to face towards Lent.

Above all, I am moved by Luke’s telling of the event. Outwardly this was an insignificant happening in the Jerusalem Temple, repeated frequently with parents bringing their first born sons (and no doubt more than a few daughters – as in the legend of the ‘presentation’ of Mary by her parents) in thanksgiving and dedication. And so would this day have been – except for the parents themselves – but for the intervention of two old people, Simeon and Anna.

The fact that Luke comments on their age is clearly important, as we are seldom told the age of those who encounter Jesus. What are we to see here? Partly, no doubt, an echo of Old Testament types, like Noah, Abraham, Mordecai and Tobit: old men noted for their faithfulness more than anything else. Simeon is a faithful man, but he is also one of the poor of the land, who are often ignored and marginalised; Anna more so, being a woman and a widow. But it is these two ‘non-persons’ who see in Mary’s child the bringer of salvation and light to the world. In this they follow the example of those other marginalised people, the Bedouin shepherds on the hills outside Bethlehem, in being drawn to the one who will ignore castes and break down barriers.

Simeon and Anna remind us of the value of those who watch and wait, who are notable not for their strategies and achievements, but for their quiet faith and their ability to see beyond the external and superficial. Simeon, we are told, was filled with the Holy Spirit, and guided by that same Spirit to declare that now he has seen the salvation of the Lord, bringing light and glory for his people and the whole world. Physically, all he has seen is a baby – another non-person in the eyes of the powerful and important. But the man or woman who is open in faith to the leading of God’s Spirit sees what those who are impressed and enthralled by influence and wealth often fail to see. Anna, we are told, has been praying and fasting for years, putting the Lord before other things, and so she too can see – and witness to others.

Perhaps that is one reason why the Christmas season, which now comes to an end, has so much power and meaning. For a start, it centres on the bringer of salvation in his helplessness and vulnerability, as a new-born child.  That in itself puts into perspective our obsession with success and achievement. As he will tell us when he grows up, the Kingdom of God belongs to the poor, the meek and powerless, those who are ready to become like little children. But Christmas also celebrates the wisdom that powerless older people can embody, if they let go of power, and of nostalgia and guilt. Simeon and Anna are clearly old, but they are open to God. Tradition also sees Joseph as an elderly man (perhaps because he has left the scene by the time Jesus is baptised.) Matthew’s magi are also often depicted as older, wise men. (To balance that, we note that Herod the Great was around 70 when he ordered the massacre of the children in Bethlehem! Old age in itself does not guarantee spiritual discernment.)

But God often speaks to and through unlikely people. The values of the Kingdom contrast with those of our world. So let us finish with old Simeon, holding the baby and declaring that here is light, here is glory, here is the peace that comes with hopes fulfilled; and with Anna witnessing to that light. May that light shine on us, within us and through us!

The Cousins

In one sense, the importance given to John the Baptist in Advent is puzzling. For he does not belong here: he has no role in the preparation for the birth of Jesus, which we celebrate at Christmas. Nor does he have any direct connection with our expectation of the End, which is the other keynote of this season. And yet the Gospel readings for the two middle Sundays of Advent concern the relationship between John and Jesus. (His reappearance in the Epiphany season makes more sense, for the preaching of John in the wilderness leads to Jesus’ Baptism by him, and the revelation of his status as the Father’s Beloved Son.)

Yet how impoverished our Advent observance would be without the Baptist and his presence, warning of judgement and calling for repentance! It’s not just that we wouldn’t be able to sing “On Jordan’s bank”; rather, the emphasis on John’s proclamation and demands warns us not to be sentimental about the birth of Jesus - or blasé about the Last Things. John reminds us of the cutting edge of the Gospel, which is too easily blunted by the intrusion of Victorian carols and school Nativity plays into the weeks before we actually celebrate the Birth.

Christian teaching always treads a tightrope between an over-emphasis on judgement, and a one-sided view of grace. Certainly, we cannot earn, let alone deserve, our salvation; it is essentially and necessarily an amazing gift, freely given by a merciful and loving God. But we cannot ignore Jesus’ teaching about the importance, indeed the necessity, of the right response to God’s love. We have to forgive others, to demonstrate that we have accepted and understood our own forgiven-ness. We have to love our neighbour, whoever he or she is, and resist the human tendency to tribalism and exclusiveness. Our righteousness is to exceed that of the highly moral scribes and Pharisees. And our failure to feed the hungry, visit the imprisoned or welcome the stranger has serious and eternal significance.

John stands to remind us that the path to the Kingdom is open - to those who repent, and acknowledge their need to be cleansed. At the same time, his baptising offers us an invitation to make a fresh start – which is why so many flocked to the banks of the Jordan to take that opportunity. By giving high priority to this man, who is greater than any other human prophet – and at the same time no greater than any others who accept the Kingdom (I take that to be the meaning of Luke 7:28) – the Church reminds us of the paradox at the heart of our faith. We are saved by grace alone, but we are also called to work out our salvation ‘in fear and trembling’.

So although there might appear to be a contrast between the two – John with his demand for righteous works, against Jesus with his offer of grace, that is a mistake. John is the Forerunner of the Christ and the Gospel he proclaims. For John, like Jesus, confronts the self-righteous and the overtly religious, while providing hope for the downtrodden and the downcast. He offers a way out of despair, which requires nothing more than a willingness to swallow one’s pride and accept the gift of forgiveness. And John’s readiness to suffer rejection and death for what he asserts points us beyond him to the greater and efficacious sacrifice of the Lamb of God who takes away human sin.

Luke provides an image of the family relationship between John and Jesus, as cousins, whose conceptions share certain characteristics, as will their deaths. By including the accounts of the Baptist in the Advent lectionary, the Church reminds us of their ‘theological’ relationship. John may remind us of the seriousness of sin rather than deal with it; but in that way he helps us to prepare more fully to welcome the Saviour, who will set us free from its power.