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.”

Sacred Space - Dedication Festival

Sacred Space – Dedication Festival

“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28.17 (Introit verse for Dedication Festival)


I Google Earthed the house I grew up in last night – 160 Old Shoreham Road, Shoreham-by-Sea – to see if the shed is still there. And it is!

I listened to the Third Programme in that shed, built radios, did my homework and said my prayers.

In the house, we four boys were in one room, my granny and my two older sisters in another, and mum and dad and my baby sister in the box room. The shed was a Godsend. It was a poustinia, a retreat, a place for a young boy to dream about another life.

Most humans have a strong sense of place. So returning to the place of their birth, or a place associated with their first love; a place of great happiness or a place of deep anguish - these places are more than mere geographic locations.

Through memory and its linked emotions, space becomes differentiated for us, divided by familiar tracks. It’s not homogenous, but interrupted by either memory, or in some places where we have never been before, by a sense of mystery.

On a Dedication Festival such as today, we are giving thanks for the building itself, but in so doing we are recognising that it is far more than the sum of its masonry. It is full of memory and mystery.

In today’s epistle, the writer to the Hebrews reminds Christians that when they gather together in earthly temples such as this, they are drawing on the collective memory of the church, and uniting in the unseen mystery of heaven.

He could have been looking at the angels and saints which are depicted everywhere in this building, and as his eye moves from the roof to the walls, to the cross, to the altar he declares:

You have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of the righteous made perfect, and to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. (Hebrews 12.22-24)

We maintain this memory year after year in our liturgy, the Bible readings, the music and vestments and in the very architecture of the church.

The Baptistry is at the entrance, for Baptism is the sign of admission to the Church of Christ.
This is why we should have a stoup of Holy Water at the door – to remind us every time we enter that we have been baptized. Perhaps some of you can remember when ours disappeared?

The altar and cross is the obvious focus – the place where the Gospel is re-enacted.

The pulpit and lectern stand either side of the rood screen, for the reading of the word and the interpreting of the word, the pulpit on the north, nearer the barbarians who came from the north.

In New York last week I went round that wonderful mediaeval museum up at the top of Manhattan, the Cloisters.

It gave me two new ideas for St Paul’s: the great ivory liturgical comb, used by the priest to purify his hair before the mass; and the golden straw or pipette to help the faithful in receiving the wine. I don’t know how we’ve managed without them all these years!

So we could go on, using our collective Judaeo-Christian memory to differentiate this sacred space, following the writer to the Hebrews in re-ordering the world of human ‘things’ to reflect God’s order for salvation.

But a Christian church is not just about order and memory. It is also about mystery.

There are some Sacred Spaces of course that need no ordering: places and events that produce awe and a sense of the transcendent - the total otherness of a vast universe and the feeling that there is continuity and meaning to human life. And yes, even the feeling that there is a God.

Mountain tops and seascapes; quiet gardens and vast deserts; friends in candlelight; the beauty of music, poetry, art…

However, for a Christian, these Sacred Spaces, whether ordered or ‘natural’ bring the sense of mystery to a focus.

The general feelings of awe and transcendence, of longing and loving, and occasionally the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (Otto) - the compelling and fascinating mystery at the centre of life and existence - these feelings find particular focus in the life, death and resurrection of Christ.

This is the sacred breaking into the profane.

For Christians these sacred spaces - these houses of prayer - although they do not fully explain the sacred, nevertheless give shape and form to what we believe to be a Christian explanation of truth.

Many people in our post-Christian society today do not know how to use them. They are unaware of the meaning of the symbols.

They are even in danger of worshipping the created rather than the Creator; they follow the ‘line of beauty’ in a curve that turns in on itself. Sadly, they miss the living messages of a house of prayer, a gate to heaven.

We live in a culture where people don’t like Christian focus, because it brings responsibilities and duties. The answer to everything is a sort of blurry thing. The revelation of Christ as Lord of Sacred Space necessitates response and an effort to live differently.

This is the sort of focused, prayer-infused Sacred Space St Paul’s should be, and I believe, is. I hope you continue to support the daily offices and mass. This is at the heart of maintaining the Divine energy of this sacred space, the presence of Christ.

Yet we still have more work to do in helping people who sense the numinous here to take another step: to meet the risen Christ and be transformed by him.

And then another miracle occurs. Our reality of time and space is so infused by the presence of God, that we are caught up in the voiceless mystery of the love of Christ.

At the altar, as the priest raises the body of Christ towards the heavens, eternity touches earth and our bodies and souls are fed with manna from heaven. The sublime is made tangible.

We give most hearty thanks today for this Sacred Space, and for all the lives from around the world whom God has touched through it for over 165 years.

And as again we offer gifts of bread and wine; we offer prayers of thanksgiving and wonder, or sometimes of anxiety, pain, bewilderment; but we remember with faith and hope that

“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28.17 (Introit verse for Dedication Festival)

Faire is the Heaven

Faire is the Heaven

The second sermon in a series on communion motets.

Faire is the heaven
Edmund Spenser (1552-99)
William Henry Harris (1883-1973)

Faire is the heaven where happy soules have place
In full enjoyment of felicitie;
Whence they do still behold the glorious face
Of the Divine, Eternall Majestie;

Yet farre more faire be those bright Cherubins
Which all with golden wings are overdight.
And those eternall burning Seraphins
Which from their faces dart out fiery light;

Yet fairer than they both and much more bright
Be the Angels and Archangels
Which attend on God's owne person without rest or end.
These then in faire each other farre excelling
As to the Highest they approach more neare,
Yet is that Highest farre beyond all telling

Fairer than all the rest which there appeare
Though all their beauties joynd together were;
How then can mortal tongue hope to expresse
The image of such endlesse perfectnesse?

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4

I’m glad I’m old enough now to be a grumpy old man – I miss buses you can jump on and off; you can’t get fish and chips in newspaper anymore; there’s no snow at Christmas; kids are too noisy; and worst of all, worst of all – when you ring a company you don’t talk to a real person anymore!

It’s that annoying electronic lady, who gives us a menu of buttons to push for services which are not quite what we want. And we know that our conversation may be recorded for training purposes. And we know that after we have push-buttoned our way through several layers of menus, we will eventually hear that, our call is very important to them, but all their operators are currently busy and we will be held in a queue.

And we will listen to Eine kleine Nacht music played on a Woolworths music centre or worse, the Spice Girls. And if we’re lucky enough not to be cut off after 30 minutes then we’ll probably end up back at the original menu again.

Which brings us on to Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. These were writings, probably from the early 6th century, which claimed to have originated with the first century Christian bishop, Dionysius of Athens. (Acts 17.34)

It’s a mystical strand of theology which, in one aspect, resembles our infuriating telephone exchange. You never get straight through to God.

God is mediated to humanity through three orders of Angelic beings, each divided into three choirs. So from the top, next to God, we have Seraphim, Cherubim and Thrones; then Dominations, Virtues and Powers; and finally Principalities, Archangels and Angels - and only these last two, Archangels and Angels, have a direct mission to men and women.

This sort of neo-Platonic theology had great influence in the Western church, but after the Reformation by the late 16th century, it began to lose its unspoken authority. This is the era of Edmund Spenser who wrote the words of our offertory motet, Faire is the heaven, towards the end of his life in 1596. This is the era of Richard Hooker, one of the first great Anglican theologians. It is the era of a Reformed Protestant Catholicism.

Spenser is most famously remembered for his epic work, The Faerie Queene, his great allegory of the Virgin Queen Elizabeth who ruled from when he was six until after his death. He’s buried here in Westminster Abbey.

Spenser’s Hymnes of Heavenly Love and Heavenly Beautie are a poetic reflection on what was happening in theology at this time. Heavenly Love begins in the Divine Trinity and moves toward creation, embracing humanity and drawing them into the motionless motion of the everloving Trinity.

The contemplation of Heavenly Beautie starts from the opposite end of the cosmos and through stages takes us from the earthly realm, through the heavenly spheres to arrive at the very Godhead. It is from this work, An Hymne of Heavenly Beautie, that William Harris selected these words for his motet.

Now Spenser seems deliberately to have reversed the Dionysian order of the Angelic choirs. This can be no accident, or a lapse of memory.

The Seraphim and Cherubim are furthest from God, and ‘fairer than they both and much more bright’ are the Angels and Archangels, ‘Which attend on God’s own person without rest or end.’ This was an outrageous thought to a church schooled in Dionysian thinking.

Later on in the poem (beyond the words that will be sung today) we see the thinking behind this reversal.

You see, Spenser was also deeply influenced by the Reformation rediscovery of Augustine’s theology. It is by grace that we are saved. We have immediate access to God through the mediation of Christ alone. Immediate means ‘nothing in the middle’.

Further on in the poem Spenser writes that we must
lowly fall before his mercie seate,
Close covered with the Lambes integrity

It is the Lamb who was slain, it is Christ who allows us to approach the beauty and perfection of God.

This motet expounds that great biblical truth of our faith: all may approach God through the finished work of Christ.

It is not for those who discover hidden knowledge and mystical ways. It is not for those who persevere up rungs of the celestial ladder of powers. It is not for the top of the hierarchy of Cherubim and Seraphim, of aristocracy or intelligentsia, of clerics or prelates.

It is a direct spiritual transaction: Emmanuel, God with us. This is reflected in today’s communion motet, Wherever you go.

But of course there is much more to a poem than a theological treatise, or an exposition of doctrine.

And this is why William Harris picked up these words for his motet.

Harris was born in 1883 and studied at the Royal College of Music, where he later became a professor. He was organist of New College, Oxford, Christ Church Cathedral and St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where he gave piano lessons to the young princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret.

He composed this in 1925, recovering from the horrors of the First World War and nostalgically musing on his privileged Edwardian boyhood, surrounded by beauty and optimism. The motet is full of yearning, for lost innocence and the beauty of youth; for the release of death and the ascent to Beauty beyond compare - ‘that Highest’... ‘endless perfectness’.

And here we see that Augustinian immediacy does not completely negate Dionysian hierarchy, because there is a hierarchy of longing; of longing for God. The Christian soul who seeks the Beloved, is drawn ever higher and nearer to the Cloud of Unknowing, to Dionysius’ ‘dark ray’.

Spenser wrote at great length on human beauty and love, but this was as a prelude to that consummation of beauty and love found in Christ and echoed in these words.

Harris’s setting, for double choir - perhaps reflecting the choirs of Angels & Archangels - is deliberately romantic and evocative, drawing us into the very presence of God.

It does what music and poetry is supposed to do in Christian worship: it gives voice to what is inexpressible. It takes us far beyond the rational arguments about the existence of God or the nature of the incarnation. It resonates with that deeply implanted image of God within every human being.

All sorts of music and poetry are able to rekindle our longings for God. They express our immortal longings for him who is Love, who is Beauty, whereof one cannot speak thereof one must be silent. (Wittgenstein)

Let all the music and words this morning remind you of your deepest longings for God, and as you eat bread and drink wine, let his love enfold you in the embrace of Christ.

No wonder King David was glad to go to the temple and to linger in the presence of God:

“One thing I ask of the LORD, this is what I seek: that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to gaze upon the beauty of the LORD and to seek him in his temple.” Ps 27:4

Predestination

Chosen (Predestination)

“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined… for the praise of his glory.” Eph 1.11f

Frogs in Cream p.90

Two frogs fell into a can of cream,
Or so I’ve heard it told.
The sides of the can were shiny and steep,
The cream was deep and cold.

“Oh, what’s the use?” croaked number one.
“Tis fate, no help’s around.
Good-bye, my friend! Good-bye, sad world!”
And weeping still, he drowned.

But number two, of sterner stuff,
Dog-paddled in surprise.
The while he wiped his creamy face,
And dried his creamy eyes.

“I’ll swim a while at least,” he said,
Or so I’ve heard he said;
“It really wouldn’t help the world,
If one more frog were dead.”

An hour or two he kicked and swam,
Not once he stopped to mutter,
But kicked and kicked and swam and kicked,
Then hopped out, via butter!
(TC Hamlet)

Well, that’s as good an introduction as any on a hot summer’s morning, to the subject of predestination. Is our eternal fate already fixed? As v4 puts it, ‘he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.’ Or can we, like frog number two, work out our own salvation?

Remember the expunged verse of All things bright and beautiful...

“The rich man in his castle,
the poor man at his gate;
God made them high and lowly,
and ordered their estate.”

Is it God who orders our destiny? Prince or pauper? Famous or infamous?

Is our vocation and ministry - the words of our opening collect; ordered by God’s governance - the words of the final collect?

In that wonderful legal ecclesiastical language, Rowan is Archbishop of Canterbury by Divine Providence; whereas poor Richard is Bishop of London, merely by Divine Permission.

A cynic of course might say that both phrases boil down to: ‘by Tony Blair’.

I’m not preaching on John the Baptist today (Fr Alan has a fine sermon on him delivered at St George’s Windsor recently, and due for a re-run here) but he was a very odd choice for the forerunner of Christ. He would certainly never have got through our Anglican selection processes!

Amos himself admits what an odd choice he was to bring the prophetic message of judgment to Israel. As he admits in the last verse of this morning’s reading: “‘I am no prophet, nor a prophet’s son; but I am a herdsman, and a dresser of sycamore trees.'” (7.14)

This is all part of a very disturbing theological principle of the Judaeo-Christian tradition: divine choices often leave both the subject of the choice and those who observe it, bemused or bewildered.

In the words of the book of Proverbs: “Man proposes; God disposes.”

Or in our Lord’s words: “You did not choose me; I chose you.” (John 15.16)

The doctrine of predestination was an unsuccessful attempt to give theological shape to this part of the character of God, that is basically unfathomable.

This is the ‘u’ in ‘TULIP’ - the little mnemonic for remembering the central tenets of Calvinism: total depravity, unconditional election, limited atonement, irresistible calling, perseverance of the saints.

But if you’re not careful, you can end up with a capricious and almost vicious god, and a view of life that is fatalistic – que sera sera. (Like the Calvinist who fell down stairs and said “Thank goodness that’s over with!”)

Paul begins to get to the nub of the matter when in the next chapter he talks of God’s choosing in the same sentence as he says - lest any man should boast.

“For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.” (Eph 2.8, 9)

There is at the heart of God’s dealing with humanity, a desire to confound; and at the same time to reveal. It seems it is the only way to deal with us in order to save us from self-destruction - both individually and perhaps as human kind; and perhaps the only way for us to maintain our integrity and freedom.

So at Babel there is the confusion of languages, the confounding of the superstate’s plans, in order, Genesis 11 tells us, to save humanity from the dangerous consequences of its own folly.

Our Lord quotes the prophet Isaiah when explaining why he uses parables. “That seeing they may see, and not perceive; and hearing they may hear, and not understand; lest at any time they should be converted, and their sins should be forgiven them.” (Mark 4.12)

You see the principle at work in weak King Herod: “When Herod heard John he was greatly puzzled; yet he liked to listen to him.” (Mk 6.20)

To confound and to reveal - this is the mystery of our faith; the mystery of this Sacrament. It is what calls us to walk by faith rather than by sight. (2 Cor 5.7)

But, unhappy with the loose ends our faith throws up, we attempt to justify everything; to square the circle. At one level that is what theological debate and trying to understand life is all about. But part of our childlike faith is being able to accept that there are some things, however hard we struggle, that we will never understand.

Mortals are contingent to the universe. They are not the authors of it. We rightly wrestle to increase our knowledge of the way things are. But that knowledge, by definition, can never be exhaustive. In the scientific world this is known as Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle.

Sometimes we try to justify God by saying he chooses ‘the good’ for special blessing and special purposes. There seems to be lots of evidence in Scripture for this, especially in the OT.

It’s the righteous who are blessed and used.

But even Scripture struggles with this and isn’t it in the book of Hezekiah that we read that the rain falls on the just and the unjust, but mainly on the just because the unjust have stolen their umbrellas?

The wisdom literature of the Bible knows that plenty of bad things happen to good people.

And Scripture is also brutally honest in showing us that many of the saints were bigger sinners than you and I will ever manage to be.

We cannot ignore the plain truth that the men and women that God has chosen to do remarkable things in the history of the world, have by and large been flawed humans - sometimes ordinary, sometimes exceptional, but always flawed.

The fact is, that there is no justification of God. His dealings with us are always mysterious.

But we also use this same argument to try and justify ourselves. And by this I mean that we say, we’re not holy enough or good enough to be used by God, or even to be Christians, or part of the church.

We keep a sort of mental hierarchy of whom God will bless and use - Our Lord - Mary - saints & martyrs (especially virgins) - bishops - missionaries - priests - deacons - churchwardens - PCC members - right down to advertising executives.

“God can’t use me.” And that lets us off the hook.

Paul is so excited by the fact that we are all called by God, and all used by God, that he dictates the twelve verses of today’s epistle as one long, complex Greek sentence – and the burden of the sentence is the praise of a loving God.

The mystery of why we are Christians, why we believe when many of friends and family don’t seem able to believe, should lead us, certainly not to pat ourselves on the back; but to praise God who is beyond all praising.

I’m very bad at noticing engagement rings, but when I met my friend’s daughter and her boyfriend the other day, it was the smile on each of their faces that made me immediately look to the ring finger. And there it was!

The modern Greek word for engagement ring is αρραβων, and Paul uses the word in the last verse of today’s epistle to describe the Holy Spirit as the pledge, the αρραβων, of our inheritance in Christ. It should bring a smile to our faces and praise to our lips.

“In him we were also chosen, having been predestined… for the praise of his glory.” Eph 1.11f

Sacred Space, Dedication Festival

Sacred Space

“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28 (Introit verse)

I used to preach at the Brighton Railway Mission as a teenager. It was one of those tin tabernacles that sprang up at the end of the Victorian era.

They used to have those big gospel posters outside in day-glow colours, and I remember one Sunday arriving to see “Are you tired of sin? Then come inside.” And someone had added with a felt pen underneath. “If not, phone Brighton 2374.”

The little group who kept the Chapel going loved that building although it was of no architectural merit whatsoever.

Most humans have a strong sense of place. So returning to the place of their birth, or a place associated with their first love; a place of great happiness or a place of deep anguish - these places are more than mere geographic locations.

Through memory and its linked emotions, space becomes differentiated for us, divided by familiar tracks.

Here’s how one writer has expressed it:

“For religious man, space is not homogenous; he experiences interruptions, breaks in it; some parts of space are qualitatively different from others.” (Eliade 1959:20)

On a Dedication Festival such as today, we are giving thanks for the building itself, but in so doing we are recognising that it is far more than the some of its masonry.

When you look at religious people around the world you can see that there are two important processes going on in sacred spaces: re-ordering and focusing.

Re-ordering is repeating the work of God in creation, bringing meaning and order out of chaos. This is the purpose of the careful structure of Genesis chapter one, a literary masterpiece reflecting God’s cosmic intentions.

So our church is carefully ordered if we can but see. The Baptistry is at the entrance, for Baptism is the sign of admission to the Church of Christ. The altar and cross is the obvious focus – the place where the Gospel is re-enacted. And so we could go on, differentiating this sacred space, re-ordering the world of human things to reflect God’s order for salvation.

There are of course some Sacred Spaces that need no ordering: places and events that produce awe and a sense of the transcendent - the total otherness of a vast universe and the feeling that there is continuity and meaning to human life. And yes, even the feeling that there is a God.

Mountain tops and seascapes; quiet gardens and vast deserts; friends in candlelight; the beauty of music, poetry, art…

Eclipses have always produced an immense and silent Sacred Space that sweeps around the world with darkness, beauty and the numinous in its wake.

But then there are of course the Focused Sacred Spaces, of which this church is one, where the general feelings of awe and transcendence, of longing and loving, and occasionally the mysterium tremendum et fascinans (Otto) - the compelling and fascinating mystery at the centre of life and existence - these feelings find particular focus in the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and in the lives of his saints.

This is the sacred breaking into the profane.

For Christians these sacred spaces - these houses of prayer - although they do not fully explain the sacred, nevertheless give shape and form to what we believe to be a Christian explanation of truth.

Many people in our post-Christian society today do not know how to use them. They are unaware of the meaning of the symbols.

They are even in danger of worshipping the created rather than the Creator; they follow the line of beauty in a curve that turns in on itself. Sadly, they miss the living messages of a house of prayer, a gate to heaven.

We live in a culture where people don’t like focus, because it brings responsibilities and duties. The answer to everything is a sort of blurry thing. The revelation of Christ as Lord of Sacred Space necessitates response and an effort to live differently.

A fuzzy sense of awe at an eclipse, will not transform human society in the way that the church has. Christ’s people, however imperfect, have done immeasurable good in the world and still do.

This is the sort of focused, prayer-infused Sacred Space St Mary’s should be, and I believe, is. A man rang me when I was here to book a time that he could bring a group of psychics to ‘feel the remarkable energy’ (his words) present in our church. I hope you continue to support the daily offices and mass. This is at the heart of maintaining the Divine energy of this sacred space, the presence of Christ.

There is one more important aspect of this sacred space. Listen to Mircea Eliade in his book The Sacred & Profane:

“But the irruption of the sacred does not only project a fixed point into the fluidity of profane space, a center in the chaos; it also effects a break in plane, that is, it opens communication between the cosmic planes (between earth and heaven) and makes possible (ontological) passage from one mode of being to another.” (1959:63)

Here today is a ‘break in plane’ - along the cosmic axis of this altar and the crucified Christ above.

The altar here is a sarcophagus with relics - the bones of the saints - the place of the dead. Above Christ’s head sits his Mother in Heaven - the place of eternal felicity.


And later as the host is raised along this axis, and as the monstrance is poised above the tabernacle, there is a ‘break in plane’; eternity touches earth and our bodies and souls are fed with manna from heaven. The sublime is made tangible.

We give most hearty thanks today for this Sacred Space, and for all the lives it has touched from around the world and for over a century.

And as again we offer gifts of bread and wine; we offer prayers of thanksgiving and wonder, or sometimes of anxiety, pain, bewilderment; but we remember with faith and hope that

“This is the house of God, and gate of heaven.” Gen 28 (Introit verse)

Voice Crying in Wilderness

Voice in the Wilderness

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness” John 1.23

Advent is almost passed. Christmas is nearly here. The last penitents are queuing at the confessional. The purple vestments will soon rest from their labours until lent. The Christmas trees are in church but not yet bedecked. The shops are advertising their New Year Sales.

And on this last Sunday before the nativity of our Lord, that strange and uncomfortable cousin of our Lord comes crying in the wilderness. With prophetic vision he calls on us to understand rightly what we are about to enact.

With all the intuition of an artist, pursuing his lonely vocation from God, he draws men and women into the unimaginable purposes of God.

A former Dean of Westminster, Michael Mayne, in his latest book, Learning to Dance, (DLT, 2001) suggests three abilities of the artist:

*they can show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention
*they can remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent
*and they can enable us, in Auden’s phrase, ‘to break bread with the dead’

In other words, they use the natural world, the supernatural world and our collective memory; to transform the here and now. And if this is true of the work of artists as I think it is, then it is also true of the ministry of John the Baptist.

He calls people out of the cities and villages into the natural world - the wilderness. He is a man of nature, with his camel hair clothes, leather girdle and his diet of locusts and wild honey. John somehow realises that his message of repentance and heart religion is better heard in the grandeur of God’s raw world.

Landscape and barren waste, raging seas and mountains, flowers and stars, the river Jordan in which John’s disciples are baptised - all are charged with greater significance, and all disclose deity. In the words of St Paul:

“Ever since the creation of the world God’s eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made.” (Rom 1.20)

And even the beauty of man-made things can point to their divine Initiator if we will listen to our hearts. Here is CS Lewis:

“The books or the beauty in which we thought the beauty was located will betray us if we trust in them; it was not in them, it only came through them, and what came through them was longing... They are not the thing itself; they are only the scent of a flower we have not found, the echo of a tune we have not heard, news from a country we have never yet visited.” (The Weight of Glory, SPCK, 1954, p8)

Secondly John reminds his followers of the hidden power of the transcendent. Matthew tells us that the voice cried in the wilderness: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." (Matt 3.2)

The fabric of the temporal world is to be ripped apart by the birth of a baby. The virgin conceives; the supernatural invades the natural; the dawn from on high breaks among us and John declares he will baptise, not with the natural water, but with the transcendent fire of the Spirit.

Finally, John allows his disciples to break bread with the dead. Although what he preaches is in some ways new, he sees it only as a fulfilment of all that has gone before. The fullness of time has come and that spoken of by the prophets will surely come to pass.

This herald of Christ understands the present because he is soaked in the past. Sadly, the Christian voice is often a voice in the wilderness because so few in our society understand our roots. They do not break bread with the dead, they merely raid their tombs when it is convenient.

I read the little explanation on the back of a Celtic cross that hangs on my wall the other day. It is a copy from the original in St Kevin's Church Glendalough, in Ireland.

“A cross is the meeting of the horizontal and the vertical, yin and yang, feminine and masculine. In the Celtic cross the circle spins this union into infinity, into the cosmos, from the profane to the sacred.”

And there I was thinking it was something to do with Christ and Christianity! This is not breaking bread with the dead, it is breaking faith with the dead. Our collective histories and traditions are an essential part of responding appropriately to the present. It is impossible to appreciate where we are without acknowledging where we have been.

This is true at an individual level as well, and whether it’s sitting with friends and family this Christmas reminiscing, or telling our therapist, or reliving our past through Friendsreunited.com - these all enrich our present and help us to see more clearly where we really want to go.

Of course these three categories of Michael Mayne that we have been exploring in the ministry of John the Baptist, all find focus here at this altar in this mass.

These Holy Mysteries also

*show us what the world discloses when we learn to give it our full attention
*remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent
*and enable us, in Auden’s phrase, ‘to break bread with the dead’

In our Catholic tradition, the mass invites us to give our full attention to the physical world. It provokes our five senses of sight, taste, smell, touch and hearing. There is a physicality about the mass: about movement and eating, and gold and purple, and polyphony and pungency - which draws us beyond itself, and leaves us longing for Another Country and for the Beloved.

And then the Bread and the Wine remind us of the hidden power of the transcendent, mysteriously present in them - a power to transform us from mere animals scraping about the planet to survive; to spiritual beings made in the image of God; capable of beauty and heroism; of friendship and wonder.

And here we break bread with the dead: with the innumerable company of the saints all gathered around the altar. Our liturgy brings our collective memory of God’s saving acts into focus. It incorporates the truths grasped by those who have gone before us in the faith.

So we are called by God, in our turn, to follow John the Baptist as voices crying in the wilderness, always preparing the way for Christ, heralds of his coming; pointing men and women to the transcendence which is all around them if they will but turn and see; opening their hearts and minds to hear

“The voice of one crying in the wilderness”