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.