The essential theme of today’s Gospel reading is unity – to be one with each other as Jesus was one with God. This morning I want to suggest a values rather than text-book meaning for these puzzling words.
Church in my younger days was more formal, more doctrinally passionate than it is for most of us today. While I am glad of a more liberal, progressive spirit, I still recall with some gratitude the efforts that the local Rector put into Confirmation class where he required that we learn the Catechism, the Sunday Collects and the major Psalms. Rote learning was a central part of church and school education. On the one hand I can still recite most of the Rime of the Ancient Mariner and the Captain of the Push and on the other hand, and especially in moments inner search, recite such deep poems as Psalm 51 and Psalm 90.
In those long ago days, we said the Athanasian Creed 13 times each year. That too needed to be learned by rote. Its words are tucked away, now out of easy use, at the back of your prayer books. Again I am glad to be free of its six pages of tight dogma, but a phrase from the Creed has echoed through my thinking to shape the way I understand Jesus’ unity with God – at the Ascension, Jesus took manhood into the godhead.
I dare say that the Fathers long ago were trying to make theological sense of the mythical language of ascension. They were attempting to define what the various creeds mean by the word ‘person’. But something else awakens in me about the very nature of God as undergoing change.
Allow that comment to settle – it is a deliberate attempt to expand the images of God that most of us have carried from childhood. Beyond the simple absolutes of God as goodness, wisdom, always present, a help in trouble, stands a darker, more complex image.
Some writers like Job were overwhelmed by the God who spoke out of whirlwind; the ancient prophet Amos cried out: ‘When a trumpet sounds in a city, do not the people tremble? When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it?’ (Amos 3:6). This is more than a warning of disaster; it is the recognition that we live in an uncertain world where crisis and loss challenge our definitions of truth and the absolute. What we experience is not the resolution of our cries for help but a moment of awareness when we stand hand in hand. Fear and love strive in us for mastery. Here is the essence of our humanity.
I want to explore this through a very stark image: those of you who attended the last Spirituality in the Pub meeting will have heard this story already. It was early weeks in the new parish. I wanted to identify myself along the main drag of Kings Cross, so I wore my clerical collar.
Just outside the handsome Art Deco building now used by the City Council as office and library a woman dressed as a gypsy was seated at a card table, with a crystal ball in central view. As I passed, she called me to sit opposite her – priest and gypsy face to face with the girls on either side of us plying their trade. ‘What do you think I say to these girls’, she said, ‘when they ask me to tell their fortunes? They come with their best clothes, to show off their bodies but in a few months I watch the ravages of disease, drug use and lifestyle – and then I hear of the violence and sometimes their death. I tell them that they are beautiful and that God loves them.’
It all sounded like a lie till I watched and still watch the amazing men and women who work with Sydney’s disadvantaged – the Missionbeat team with a homeless man in Hyde Park, the Good Shepherd sister that volunteers in the Needle Exchange, the young folk not much older than the street boys and girls who join the food teams and those I know personally who help resettle underage girls trapped in brothels and who stand alongside women who have experienced violence. This is not some story of long ago events but every night on the city streets the beauty of connection and care are in evidence. God is apparent in the generosity and the fracture, the love and the fear of humanity.
That is what Jesus ‘took into the godhead’ to remind us all that there are no easy answers our spiritual quest, no promises of direct divine intervention – just love in action. It is in hand to hand, face to face, love intersecting with life, that true spirituality is found. Jesus did not come to tell us a new and different message. He affirmed those who had had taught ancient Israel. He came to tell us that we meet God in the flesh, in our broken, longing humanity. Whatever other exalted or absolute images we may have of God, it is in relation to each other that we discover who we really are.
Let your mind and heart absorb these words of John O’Donohue, Irish philosopher and poet:
Your beloved and your friends were once strangers. Somehow at a particular time, they came from the distance toward your life. Their arrival seemed so accidental and contingent. Now your life is unimaginable without them. Similarly, your identity and vision are composed of a certain constellation of ideas and feelings that surfaced from the depths of the distance within you. To lose these now would be to lose yourself.” – Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom.
They draw ‘the other’ across the distance of difference to discover a ‘unity’ that before you could not have imagined.
This is John’s Gospel theme: you find yourself in the conscious holding of the other. The intention of my illustration and the O’Donohue summary gain focus here. Unity is not about similarity but about the embrace of difference. We all find that demand hard to grasp and live by.
Like you I enjoy meeting people who share my ideals, values and interests: crazy people and those whose lifestyle challenges my own easily embarrass me. This sermon is not about creating some superficial friendship where we each seek to jog along together. I want to touch something much more profound than that.
If Jesus took manhood into the godhead then he juxtaposed the struggle of life and its loss of direction with its absolute goal. He taught us that what we aim for in life is seen however dimly in those moments where we see beauty and hope as we never had seen it before. Every now and then a quote appears endlessly on people’s blogs with no attribution than the name Peter Shepherd, who describes himself as a transformational psychologist. This sentence grasped my imagination: Talk to yourself in two languages – what do I fear and what do I love – in order to balance the body and the soul.
Difference confronts us, demanding this balance between fear and love. It marks us to the end of our days. We may never enter each other’s living spaces. In that sense Christian unity may never be about the unification of denominations. We each as individuals and as church communities have distinct histories and heritage. Some of these mark us out and shape distinctiveness, some get in the road of genuine discourse. But unity is a much more powerful theme than simply trying to march to the same tune. Unity welcomes difference, challenges fear and releases us to experience love beyond our own narrow confines.
In the months ahead you face inevitable fear of change with the appointment of a new Rector. There will be those awkward moments as you have with all of us as we tip-toe around each other’s prejudices and differences. The theme of this sermon will then become a practical conversation about how to live with change.
My last full-time working years were with Mission Australia. At the beginning of my time there the organisation was still struggling with its past. It was an agglomeration of the various City Missions with their common roots in both the Jesus Movement of the 60s and the London City Mission of the mid 19th century. We had the remnants of the old street mission and evangelising mindset struggling with the opportunities of fresh ministry and the need to work closely with secular and government interests. There was a deep fear that losing our heritage might change our destiny.
My task over those six years was to help the organisation re-define and be ‘open to change’. It meant a review of what we meant by workplace values, how we understood the role of being Christian in a contemporary workplace, the extent to which a charity model could shape community service and employment placement. In brief what did it mean for us to celebrate our humanity – our fears and loves – as the very centre of being Christian and Christ-like.
You are facing different specific issues but the principle is identical. How best can your celebration and affirmation of humanity lead you individually and as a congregation to be Christian and Christ-like in the world of which you are an integral part? What will be the impact of this on liturgy, on the way you design the church meeting and on the form that outreach may take? How will your individual authenticity shape the role of mission in the wider community and how will it help each of you present every Sunday to grow in your love for and your care for each other? From this point on talk to yourself in two languages – what do I fear and what do I love – in order to balance the body and the soul.
A Meditation Homily based on the Gospel reading for the Sunday after Ascension-Day, John’s Gospel chapter 17 verses 20-26.
Bill Lawton
12 May 2013