"Love Him in the World of the Flesh": a sermon for the Feast of Christ the King

I sit in one of the dives

On Fifty-second Street

Uncertain and afraid

As the clever hopes expire

Of a low dishonest decade:

Those words begin WH Auden’s great poem “September 1, 1939”. Written in America by the exiled Auden they are a direct response to the news of the invasion of Poland by the German army on that date. An act which, as we all know, precipitated the beginning of the Second World War in Europe.

For a poem which is so rooted in its very specific time and place, it has had an extraordinary afterlife. Many young Americans reached for it in the weeks after the attacks of September 11th. Finding in it a sense of shock and loss at the sudden crumbling of a seemingly naive and comfortable consensus. One could imagine similarly idealistic young Americans looking to it again in the last few weeks as the re-election of Donald Trump means that his political life was not, as they hoped, a seeming aberration but a setting of a new, and for some, strange political landscape.

The poem also carries in it a reflection of human experience as our expectations of our world and life suddenly change. Returning to the original context of the poem Auden sees the fault of Europe's moral and political crisis in careless enlightenment ideals of his time. 

The enlightenment driven away,

The habit-forming pain,

Mismanagement and grief:

We must suffer them all again.

As things he thought he knew were coming dramatically to an end one can recognise in Auden’s words both an anger and resignation to the lot and life that lay ahead of him in these newly uncertain times.

The book of Daniel, which we heard read in our first reading today, could be seen to pre-echo some of the sense of human dislocation and uncertainty that colours Auden’s poem. On first look the book of Daniel tells of the prophetic ministry of Daniel, exiled to the court of Babylon, who through his ability to interpret dreams comes to be one of the leading players in the court of Kings Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar. 

For a short book it includes some of the most well-known biblical images which have found their way into our common language. It is, of course, Daniel who is thrown into the Lion’s den. It is also where King Belshazzar great feast is cut short by the sight of a disembodied hand and the “writing on the wall” and where he is weighed in the balance and found wanting.

We can find in the vivid stories of Daniel the same human experience of uncertainty and dislocation that we find in Auden’s poem. Although set during the time of the Babylonian exile in the sixth and fifth centuries BC, the text we have now was formed and brought together later, possibly in the second century before Christ where the experience of the people of Israel was dominated by the conquests of Alexander the Great the later Maccabean revolt and the looming threat of the Roman Empire.

Like Auden, like Daniel, we live in uncertain and unsettling times. Just in the last few months there have been momentous elections in America. We are coming to terms in our own world with large and significant decisions made by our new government which will affect many people’s live and homes – not least in the farming community. Within the life of the church the repeated failures in safeguarding have made many question what the true future of the church in our national life could and should be. This list could go on and on.

In the face of this we could all be tempted to be like Auden in his poem and reject those old certainties which he tags as the impossible hope of “universal love”. Instead, Auden says we must look to the small things we can hold onto – almost literally – in family and loved ones. As he says towards the end of his poem:

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

Despite the deep popularity of this poem its focus on a limited hope troubled Auden as his life went on. Over the years he tried to edit and change this poem which, as one critic has said, offers “simple answers to difficult questions, which is not necessarily a good thing.”

And with that insight we might return to the book of Daniel. Faced with a world of uncertainty and dislocation Daniel’s response is not to turn in on a simple more limited hope. Instead, the hope he looks for draws from the largest and possible canvas. The reading we heard today comes from the second part of the book where, faced with the experience of dislocation and uncertainty, Daniel sees in dreams and visions the great apocalyptic landscape of God’s promise and hope for creation.

As I watched,

thrones were set in place,

   and an Ancient One took his throne;

his clothing was white as snow,

   and the hair of his head like pure wool;

his throne was fiery flames,

   and its wheels were burning fire.

A stream of fire issued

   and flowed out from his presence.

A thousand thousand served him,

   and ten thousand times ten thousand stood attending him.

On this Feast of Christ the King, standing as we do at the end of the great cycle of prayer and praise we have followed through this year, we are called to lift our eyes from the troubles and dislocations of our present time and place them in God’s time.

As we look to that promise and hope we find it coming to us again in the journey of Advent that we will begin next week. That deep promise that through all the changes and chances of this fleeting world the God of Daniel, the Ancient of Days, will come to be with us in a baby born amongst us and a man who will walk with us.

Moving away from this one poem this was, in truth, a reality that Auden himself knew. In 1941, possibly in the darkest days of the Second World War, Auden began work on his long poem For The Time Being which had the subtitle A Christmas Oratorio. In that great work Auden finds a hope which he could not see in 1939. It is a great hope that we begin again to look to. It is that great hope and promise of the incarnation.

As his oratorio ends, we hear him lift his eyes from the present and place his hope again the promise of that universal love. That promise which we should set our hearts to again at this turning of the year.

He is the Way. 

Follow Him through the Land of Unlikeness; 

You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures. 

 

He is the Truth. 

Seek Him in the Kingdom of Anxiety; 

You will come to a great city that has expected your return for years. 

 

He is the Life. 

Love Him in the World of the Flesh; 

And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

Amen