Immortal Longings

Immortal Longings

“claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God... and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator...” (Romans 1.21-25)

‘And what do you want to be when you grow up?’ Every child gets used to that question.

My earliest longings were to be a cowboy - too much Roy Rogers and Lone Ranger!

Then I discovered music and wanted to be a conductor or a famous pianist - and then when I saw it on TV, to be a pianist who conducts from the piano!

And then I longed to be a missionary - my religious phase; and then to be a professor of mathematics - my precocious period.

And the result of all those boyhood dreams? - a Church of England Curate - some might say a combination of all those longings!

It is a part of the human condition to be absorbed by longings and desires. And as we move from childhood to middle age, we fulfil some of those longings, and realise that others are never going to be achievable.

I know for certain now that I shall never be a bishop by 40.

But we begin also to realise that behind all our desires and longings, there is a deeper longing; at once both inescapable, and unquenchable. And very hard to define or understand.

The preacher in Ecclesiastes puts it this way: “God has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in their hearts; yet they cannot fathom what God has done from beginning to end.” (Eccles 3.11)

In today’s epistle, Paul takes this longing one stage further and describes his own longing to be out of the Body and with the Lord.

In other words his longing to be physically dead – a theme taken up in some of the hymns today and in the offertory motet.

For Paul this longing for death is not just a way of escape from the dilemmas of life in this world, it is also a longing for completion, for fulfilment in the Risen Christ, for eternal life, for immortality.

The Roman Catholic Philosopher-priest Fergus Kerr has written a fine book with the intriguing title: Immortal Longings. (SPCK, 1997)

It looks at the philosophy of Martha Nussbaum, Martin Heidegger, Iris Murdoch... and others, through Barthian spectacles. You will be glad to know that we don’t have time to discuss it this morning.

Suffice it to say, that he examines the various ways in which philosophy has struggled with this universal human longing for transcendence - for the ‘there must be more to life than this’.

Even in the good times, when all is well with the world, the moment is often touched by an inner pain and longing.

We look at a sleeping grandchild or a sleeping lover and know the desire for the moment to last forever, and weep silently with the pain of knowing our mortality will not allow this. And it produces an un-namable longing.

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.”

So we see it also in the realm of beauty and mystery: art, music and the glories of the natural world. There is an inner longing to comprehend their magnificence, which is at times almost painful.

And we see it most obviously in the oh-so-rapid passing of the years. We realise we are getting old and that our doctor looks like he’s about to sit his O-levels. And although we enjoy much of the composure that age hopefully brings to us, we have immortal longings.

The Christian tradition identifies this longing as an inbuilt longing for God – the Source of our being.

So in our Lord’s words in the Sermon on the Mount, it is the pure in heart who will see God, whose longings will be satisfied.

Now we know that the Saints down through the ages are not those who have led blameless lives. They are those who have a pure heart; an attitude of godliness; or as Abp Temple put it ‘a passionate aspiration towards the holiness of God’.

Jesus was always concerned with the direction of the heart, the object of our longings. Do we long for God or for self-satisfaction?

The Scriptures make clear that everything which stifles immortal longings and turns beauty, mystery, love and sex into objects of their own end, fosters ugliness, bitterness, hatred and violence – and the eclipse of our true selves. This was Freud’s mortido.

So Adam and Eve grasp the object of desire that they might become like gods. Their longing is not for God himself, but to usurp his power.

This is what St Paul describes, this human reversal of immortal longings, in our text today: “claiming to be wise, they became fools and exchanged the glory of the immortal God... and worshipped and served created things rather than the Creator...” (Romans 1.21-25)

Or as Shakespeare puts it in the words of Cleopatra – for Shakespeare struggled with the ambiguity of his own longings: “Give me my robe. Put on my crown. I have Immortal longings in me.” (Antony & Cleopatra, V/ii/283)

St Paul sees these immortal longings as satisfied partially in this life, but only as we look with hope towards a greater fulfilment in eternity. Heaven is the place where there is no more longing, no more sighing.

And of course Paul doesn’t see this satisfying of our longing as coming from living a life of perfection. Rather he sees our imperfections as fuelling the longing and leading us to a better life here as well as in the world to come.

Scripture is full of examples.

There is Noah, who found favour in the sight of the Lord, and who, shortly after landing the ark, was found naked, drunk and unconscious by his children.

There is Rahab the prostitute who helped the Israeli spies in Jericho, and who finds her way into the genealogy of King David and of Jesus Christ.

There is King David himself, who killed 100 philistines to gain one of his wives; who committed adultery and had the woman’s husband killed to gain another. The Old and the New Testament record God’s verdict: “This is a man after my own heart.”

There is the common thief who was crucified next to Christ – “today you will be with me in paradise!”

It was not spotless lives that made these men and women saints of God. It was the recognition that in all the struggles of their lives there is an inner movement towards God.

And here at this altar, we bring together both the desire, and the object of desire: Jesus Christ, the beginning and the end of all longing. “We find no rest until we find our rest in thee.”

In Kant’s words, the object of our immortal longing ‘is not an ‘it’ to be discussed, but a ‘thou’ to be met’. We meet him and turn to him whenever we become aware of these longings. And in this bread and wine we have a foretaste of that banquet where all our desires will be met.

“Like as the hart desireth the waterbrook, so longeth my soul after thee O God.”