Spiritual Satisfaction

“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)

A Scotsman moved into the area and started drinking at his local pub. He ordered 3 double whiskies and then spent an hour sipping a little from each of them until they were gone, then he ordered three more. The landlord looked puzzled until the Scotsman explained that he always used to drink with his brothers and now they’ve emigrated to America. So he always has the three glasses of whisky to remind him of the good old times. He became quite an institution in the pub.

Then one day he just ordered two whiskies. There was a hush that fell over the pub and the Landlord, sensing the mood, offered his condolences to the Scotsman for his deceased brother.

The Scotsman smiled and said; “ Och no. My brothers are fine. But it’s Lent, and myself, I've given up drink.”

Part of the discipline of self-denial in lent is to remind ourselves that there is more to life than food and drink. And in an inverse sort of way, that is one aspect of today’s Gospel - the Feeding of the 5000.

This is a strange story, set in the relative wilderness to the east of the sea of Galilee, the Golan Heights. It is the only story, apart from our Lord’s Passion, that is recounted in all four Gospels.

It was obviously an important part of early Christian tradition, and although there have been various attempts to ‘explain away’ the miraculous heart of the story, most Christians have always accepted it, as I do, as one of the miracles of our Lord.

The disciples had just returned from a successful preaching tour - thousands won to the Catholic faith - and were in need of a rest. So Jesus takes them away to a quiet place. But as usual, the grapevine soon spreads the news to the local populace and this crowd of 5,000 men, and presumably at least that number again of women and children, gather expectantly.

It is late in the day. And then the young boy’s picnic lunch (a typical eye-witness account mentioned only in John’s Gospel) – the 5 loaves and 2 small fishes become the stuff of history.

The thoughtful Mother who wrapped them up and thrust them into her son’s hands, no doubt with the instruction that he was to wear a vest as it got chilly on the Golan Heights, could never have imagined that 2000 years later billions of people would be spiritually fed by her simple act of motherly love.

But why did Jesus perform this miracle? The people were not about to die. They would make it to their homes.

The Jesus of the four Gospels does not do tricks to try and persuade the crowd that he is the Messiah. Indeed, at the end of this story when the crowd want to hail him as the new Prophet, he flees into hiding.

In most miracles, Jesus responds to need, and occasionally, as in the water in to wine, this story and the following sign (in John’s Gospel), walking on the water, he shows his mastery over nature and also provides teaching through such an ‘enacted parable’.

In other words, the primary function of the miracle is to illustrate a concept he is trying to teach, usually to his immediate disciples.

And so it is here, that our Lord is making a simple point and, as it turns out later, another very complex point, to his disciples.

The simple point may be expressed in this way: Jesus is not nearly as discouraged as we are, by the little we have to offer. In fact, one of the prerequisites of true worship is the recognition of our inadequacy.

“What can I bring him, poor as I am.”

For Philip it was hopeless - ‘how can we feed them?’ For Andrew it was a little better - he found the little that there was - and this was enough for the Lord.

We are to bring what we have in the recognition that only the Lord can multiply it to meet the needs that are there.

So in our worship: we bring our music, our liturgy, our preaching, our vestments, our art and culture; with the recognition that it is inadequate, but it is the best we can offer. Only Christ can transform it to worship in Spirit and in Truth which is acceptable to the Father and which truly prepares us for heaven.

And in our daily lives, our prayer must always be that God will take what we offer, the little we are able to do, and by his power give our acts of service significance and influence far beyond their meagreness.

But John’s Gospel also points to deeper truths in his account of this incident.

There is a little phrase (in v.4): “and the Passover was nigh”. (Mark’s account makes the same point by another eye-witness touch - they sat down on the green grass. Any of you who have been to the Holy Land will know that about the only time there is any green grass on the Golan Heights is before Passover.

The Passover. Here is John’s axis of interpretation.

If you read on in John’s version, there is a clear movement from miracle to theological discourse, from Jesus to Moses, from bread to flesh.

Our Lord is preparing to show them that hard teaching that will make many leave him: he is the Bread come down from heaven; the panis angelicus; the bread that satisfies the human heart and feeds the soul.

Soon the Passover lamb must be slain and eaten, as a reminder that the Angel of death passed over the Israelites as they were being released from slavery in Egypt.

And soon the Lamb of God must be slain and give his flesh and blood for the salvation of the world.

This story is not just about feeding hungry people. It is about a Saviour who alone can satisfy the spiritual hunger that is everywhere evident in the world.

And there is yet deeper truth here. For even when we have received, as we will in a moment, the Bread of Life, we are still not satisfied and as part of our human condition we will long for more. As CS Lewis says:

“All joy (as distinct from mere pleasure, still more amusement) emphasizes our pilgrim status, always reminds, beckons, awakens desires. Our best havings are wantings.”

Our best havings are wantings.

When we have had a satisfying meal, when we linger over the port, is it not then that we most clearly realise that there is more to life than good food and drink.

And when we have truly enjoyed a spiritual meal at mass in the bread and wine, or in some private moment of spiritual revelation, do we not then most clearly realise that we are spiritual pilgrims who have as yet only just set off along the path.

In Epstein’s wonderful representation of Jacob wrestling with the angel (which you can visit in Tate Britain) you can see another metaphor for this giving and yet holding back of God. The Angel, while injuring Jacob, is yet supporting him, solidly holding him up, blessing and renaming Jacob for the next stage in the journey.

The 5000 were fed and we are fed. Like them, we bring the little that we have and that we are, and offer it to Jesus. We will do this symbolically in a moment in the offertory.

But like them we will only truly find sustenance for our journey when we realise that although our needs are met, there is a divine dis-satisfaction in us which always beckons us on.

Because this is miraculous bread.

“This is the Bread from heaven.” (John 6.58)

Take him earth - London Bombings 7/7

Take him earth – (The London Bombings) 7/7/05

A verse of a hymn written in the fourth century by Prudentius, but which reminds us of some of the horrific pictures we have seen this week:

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.

Today has been chosen to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the ending of the Second World War. The Queen is attending a service in Westminster Abbey this morning and there are various events throughout the day. Fifty million people lost their lives in that war. And more than that number have lost their lives in wars since then. Tomorrow is the tenth anniversary of the massacres in Srebrenica.

But whether fifty million or fifty in our own City, cut down by terrorist bombs on Thursday, we struggle to make sense of the violence that has been the undercurrent of human history since Cain slew Abel.

Of course, there is no sense to make of it. We live with human wickedness, and like every generation, hope for a better world and an end to violence. This was Isaiah’s vision in our first reading today. We are helpless and angry, but dare to hope that the goodness of God will triumph.

And in the face of evil, and when words of comfort fail, the people of God have always sung.
Our text, this 1600 year old hymn by Prudentius, was chosen by Herbert Howells as the text for his own composition to be performed at a memorial service for John F. Kennedy in Washington Cathedral in 1964. I often listen to it when contemplating the death of family and friends.

I cry for them and at the thought of my own mortality.

Prudentius’ hymn is a profoundly Christian work. Nevertheless, it is expressed in the high language and solemn imagery of Late Classical Latin. To that extent solemnity and faith mingle. Dignity and mystery are the keynotes of this elegy, just as dignity and mystery will be the keynotes of the many memorials we will hold for those who have died so tragically this past week.

Whilst the language and form of the hymn is redolent of Late Antiquity’s fear and respect for honourable death, in fact the heart of this poem is the redeeming death of Christ; a combination that made it especially appropriate for the funeral rites of the murdered President Kennedy. What’s more, the tragic, even gruesome circumstances of that untimely death are reflected in the poem’s use of the classical device of entrusting; entrusting the "Body of a man… Noble even in its ruin" to the cherishing, gentle breast of his Mother-Earth.

This thought is personified in the Pietà, those paintings and sculptures of Mary clasping the ruined body of Jesus to her breast. (You can see Bellini’s depiction in the order of service).

Of course, this concept is a deeply classical, a very Greek and Roman instinct – straight out of Homer’s Iliad! You can almost hear the lamentation of a Hecuba or Helen over the dead and despoiled body of their beloved Hector. Humanity has always lamented its dead and fallen; its heroes and innocent victims.

But if this hymn is classical, it is certainly not pagan! For yes, it does turn upon the body, upon this fallen flesh, but in a specifically Christian way.

The Early Church Father, Tertullian, wrote, "The flesh is the hinge of salvation" and this is why Prudentius (and his poem) pivots between two worlds. For death is the end of mortal existence. In the end it does all come down to bones and ashes and our bodies return, however reluctantly, and after all modern medicine can do, to their native earth. Yet, in that very returning, we have another poetic device; this time a very Christian one. It is the ‘bargain’ God makes with Mother Earth.Prudentius puts it like this:

"Comes the hour God hath appointed
Then, must thou [Mother Earth], in very fashion,
What I give, return again."

This is about Resurrection. The earth will one day give up its dead.

Thus, the Funeral March of this fallen warrior which you can feel in the metre and in the music of Howells’ motet, is not the resigned lurch of pagan hopelessness; it is not the sleepwalking oblivion of the pagan dead, drinking deeply in the waters of forgetfulness. Rather, it is what St Paul refers to when he wrote:

"Awake O Sleeper
And Rise from the Dead
And Christ will shine upon you".

This is the poem’s "shining road" that leads through death to the fields of Paradise, the open woodlands of eternity.

But this poem is not just about imagery. It is more than mere form. There is real substance here. This hymn is about you and me, about our dying and rising, because Christ has died and has risen in the substance of our flesh. It is this Paschal Mystery (of Christ’s Dying and Rising) that separates pagan from Christian – separates death as defeat from death as victory.

If Prudentius lived at a time when Europe was waking up to its Christian consciousness, we perhaps live at a time of cultural forgetting. More and more people today "live in a land where all things are forgotten". The Greek word for ‘forgetting’ is of course Lethe, the River of Forgetfulness in Hades. The word for truth is a-letheia, not-forgetting. And this is what death, Christian death, is about. Death is not oblivion but awakening to full consciousness of the truth.

Because of this, unlike most ‘modern pagans’, we Christians do well to remember our own death. The "Memento Mori" is a spiritual exercise commended to us by the Church. This is why the Church surrounds the death of the faithful with help, with support. It is why in the Prayer Book Litany we ask, "to be delivered from sudden death". We wish to be prepared.

In an age of forgetting, when Europe falls back into pagan forgetting of its Christian Faith; at a moment in history when war and death and terror may seem all too close, let us remember the great mystery of our faith: Christ has died; Christ is risen; Christ will come again.

We mourn our dead, and pray that we will be delivered from evil; not as those without hope, but as those who believe in the resurrection of the dead, and that God’s kingdom is coming.

Like those early Christians, we sing with Prudentius of the mystery of a suffering God; of a king who rules in love from a cross.

And we entrust – give our dead, and our world and ourselves - to God’s strange cherishing.

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.

By the breath of God created.
Christ the prince of all its living.
Take, O take him,
Take him, earth, for cherishing.

Appendix
Take him Earth for Cherishing – Prudentius (348-413) & Howells (1882-1983)
Translated by Helen Waddell

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.

Once was this a spirit's dwelling,
By the breath of God created.
High the heart that here was beating,
Christ the prince of all its living.
Guard him well, the dead I give thee,
Not unmindful of His creature
Shall He ask it: He who made it
Symbol of his mystery.
Take him, earth, for cherishing.

Comes the hour God hath appointed
To fulfil the hope of men,
Then must thou, in very fashion,
What I give, return again.
Take him, earth, for cherishing.
Body of a man I bring thee.
Take, O take him.

Not though ancient time decaying
Wear away these bones to sand,
Ashes that a man might measure
In the hollow of his hand:

Not though wandering winds and idle
Scatter dust was nerve and sinew,
Is it given to man to die.
Once again the shining road
Leads to ample Paradise;
Open are the woods again,
That the Serpent lost for men.

Take, O take him, mighty Leader,
Take again thy servant's soul.
Grave his name, and pour the fragrant
Balm upon the icy stone.

Take him, earth, for cherishing,
To thy tender breast receive him.
Body of a man I bring thee,
Noble even in its ruin.

By the breath of God created.
Christ the prince of all its living.
Take, O take him,
Take him, earth, for cherishing.

Holy Spirit - Comforter - First Mass

The Holy Spirit

“The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything.” (Jn 14.16)

It’s a great pleasure to be here among friends tonight at St Matthew’s for Ian’s first mass. We’ve known each other for some years now and have both been on a long and unexpected journey.

I was very nervous before presiding at my first mass. I was 15, and it wasn’t so much a mass, as holy communion in a tiny Baptist tin tabernacle nestling in the South Downs. I remember it, because as I gave out the little tray of wine glasses to the ageing Baptist deacon to distribute to the half a dozen old ladies and a sheep dog that were present – he looked very puzzled.

It was only after we had drunk the wine and I was thinking ‘what comes next’, (no liturgy to follow) that I spotted the loaf of bread on the table. I had forgotten the bread! We had it after the wine, and people were too polite to mention anything. They usually are Ian!

Ten years after that, I was Commodore of the Fleet. It was a very small fleet. In fact it was the Lancing College Sailing Club - but the Master in Charge of our battered fibre glass dinghies was known as the Commodore.

Those were happy afternoons on the River Adur; or occasionally, if I misjudged the tides very badly, in the English Channel.

You learned early on in small boats that the wind is both exhilarating and exasperating. It is unpredictable, and so you are constantly on your toes, changing the position of the boat; the position of yourself and the crew; adjusting the sails.

On the one hand you might capsize; and on the other you might hit a lull and become becalmed and directionless. You can only steer a boat when it is in motion.

In Holy Scripture, the Spirit is often referred to as the wind or breath of God. Those are both possible translations of the Hebrew and Greek words.

For the Jewish people, living by lakes and the sea, the wind was full of wonder. It was intangible yet powerful. The very air we breath; invisible yet giving life.

This is why Jesus likens the Spirit to the wind, blowing where it listeth. (Jn 3.8) And in this respect the Spirit is like the Father and the Son.

The incarnate Jesus was unpredictable with a mind of his own. As our first lesson from the book of Wisdom reminds us: “Who can learn the counsel of God? Or who can discern what the Lord wills?” (Wisdom 9.13)

Well of course, some of our fellow Christians will tell us very clearly what the Lord wills! But most of us know that discerning his will is a hard task.

This is why Jesus says earlier in this passage (v 16) “I will send you another comforter” - another, because it will, as it were, replace him. It is (in Luther’s word’s) an alter Christus - another Christ. Our Lord enfleshed could only be in one place at one time, with one group of people. The Holy Spirit would be poured out on all people. He was to be the paraclete (called alongside), the counsellor who leads us into the Truth that is Jesus.

The theme of this mass is the Holy Spirit, because any new priest or deacon, must always recognise that they are utterly dependent on God’s Holy Spirit, and that God’s Holy Spirit is unpredictable.

He is given so many roles in Scripture that we cannot possibly list them all.

We’ll consider just this one word: comforter, or counsellor as it is usually translated.

John emphasises a typically Trinitarian construction in the words of our Lord: “And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter.” The Son prays to the Father and the Spirit proceeds. Or in our text: the Father sends the Spirit in the name of the Son.

The Comforter (counsellor, advocate) - he mysteriously works within us saying things will be alright. And all priests need to sense somewhere deep in their spirits, that things will be alright. As Jesus promises, the Spirit will give that peace which the world cannot give. As Paul puts it – the Spirit enables us to cry ‘Abba’, Father – and to know that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Or as Lady Julian of Norwich put it:

“All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.”

It is hardly surprising that the last half Century has often been called the age of the Spirit.

Not just because of the rise of Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement - certainly the fastest growing section of the church today.

But because in an age of uncertainty and doubt, when propositional truth becomes more slippery by the moment, then we all need the wise counsel of the Spirit to our inner beings,
that all will be well.

That the absurd paradoxes which as Christians we say make sense of life, are true.
That God did become Man in Christ, died for us and rose again. This is the mystery of our faith.

It is only the transcendent Spirit who proceeds from the Father and the Son who can provide this inner calling and witness to our faith.

But there is another aspect of the ministry of the Comforter. He is not just the encourager who leads us into all truth.

In the Bayeux Tapestry, that 230’ picture which tells of everything leading up to the Battle of Hastings in 1066 – there’s a section with the caption “Harold comforteth his troops” - the picture shows him jabbing a spear into a soldier’s backside.

The Spirit doesn’t just comfort us with an inner witness of well-being. He disturbs us. He encourages us to get on with the work of the kingdom. At Pentecost he not only came alongside the Apostles, he forced them out like drunken men and women into the Jerusalem crowds, and to every nation on earth.

It’s part of that disturbing work of the Spirit that led to the formation of Epicentre, and then to Moot, here at St Matthew’s. It’s that ‘spear up the backside’ that can sometimes lead us to uncomfortable places. In the memorable words of Dad’s Army – “they don’t like it up em!” As an Anglican communion, we’re in an uncomfortable place at present, a place we’d rather not be. But that is a sure sign of the working of God’s Spirit.

Let me go back to sailing boats. A friend of mine had a good boat - but I never went sailing with him. I often went out in the boat, but never sailed. He only ever rowed it, you see. He found sails and rigging, cleats and halyards all a bit of a nuisance. If the wind became gusty, you got water in the boat and it was all a bit messy and strenuous.

For each of us both the encouraging and disturbing work of the Comforter will take different forms. And this is true at a corporate level as well. The Spirit will lead Holy Trinity Brompton in another way than that of St Matthew’s Westminster. He has led the Orthodox along a different path from the Catholics.

This diversity, says Paul in our epistle this evening, makes up the whole Body of Christ. We need each other, even if we think we are the only real bits of the body.

There will always be the temptation to avoid anything too strenuous or messy - to quench the spirit. But that path leads to boredom and death. We should be excited by the variety and tensions within the church. It shows we are on the move, and like a sailing boat, we can only be steered when we are moving.

The Holy Spirit, whom we celebrate in our Eucharist this evening, is to encourage Ian in his ministry; to encourage all of us to dare to believe; and to provoke us to be more adventurous in our life of faith.

“The Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything.” (Jn 14.16)