"The dead shall be raised incorruptible" - a sermon for the Second Sunday of Easter

Stanley Spencer’s painting The Resurrection: Cookham is one of the great works of twentieth century Christian art. Painted in the 1920s and first exhibited in 1927 it was immediately recognised by one critic as “the most important picture painted by any English artist in the present century”. 

The painting itself is enormous, a little under three metres high by five metres wide and depicts the dead rising from their graves in the pastoral beauty of the church and churchyard at Cookham in Berkshire where Spencer lived for most of his life. It is an image which speaks very much of its time and so has become, for some contemporary critics, a problematic work of art. That understood it is an immensely moving image of that great promise of the general resurrection, that moment at the end of time when, as St Paul describes in one of the earliest written understandings of the resurrection:

the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible 

In Spencer’s vision this future promise is depicted as an outworking of the beauty and peace of his home in Cookham, a place he called “a suburb of heaven”. So, in his painting those he knew and loved are seen climbing out of their graves dressed in contemporary clothes as they make their way down the path to a waiting river boat to carry them to the paradise of God’s new creation. This is not the vision of the resurrection of the great and the holy, but of the mundane and ordinary.

For us, today, this image is a helpful one as it helps us makes sense of one the most challenging aspects of the Easter promise. That in Jesus we find not the resurrection of an idea, nor the possibility of some sort of life on some kind of spiritual plain, but the resurrection of a man in flesh and blood which itself points us to that promise of the bodily resurrection of all the faithful. That moment when, in words from the book of Job used at the funeral of Pope Francis yesterday:

…after my skin has been thus destroyed,

    then in my flesh I shall see God,

[…]

    and my eyes shall behold, and not another.

At the heart of the Easter story is the promise of the bodily resurrection. Through all of the resurrection appearances in the Gospels there is the confident assurance that the Jesus who appeared to the Apostles on that first Easter Day and beyond was not some sort of spectral apparition or ghostly figure, but a real person in flesh and blood. In the Gospel story we heard last Sunday morning Jesus tells Mary Magdalene “do not hold on to me” as she sought to hug and touch Jesus in her shock and joy. Later, on the first Easter Day Jesus meets disciples on the road to Emmaus and reveals himself to them only when he has sat and eaten with them. And then today in our Gospel reading we hear Thomas’ doubt turned around as he is invited by Jesus to:

Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.

We are told again and again about the bodily reality of Jesus’ resurrected self for two reasons. The first is that it provides veracity to these resurrection accounts. These were not hallucinations or visions, but the appearance of a real person, present to them in flesh and blood. The second is that in asserting not only the promise of the resurrection, but the bodily reality of that resurrection, the Christian Gospel is presenting something radically and transformatively new.

The idea of resurrection is not one which is unique to Christianity. Through the Hebrew Scriptures we hear echoes of this idea. Initially it appears as a metaphor alluding to the renewal of the people of Israel after a time of exile. These then develop into the assertions of something beyond death as the dead are carried down to a shadowy existence in Sheol. These ideas were not limited to Judaism with, for instance, Greek philosophy drawn from the ideas of Plato asserting life beyond our material bodies in the theory of the immortality of the soul.

However, in the Christian story – told both in the Gospels and in the writings of St Paul – the promise of life beyond death is held together with the promise of a full and corporeal and bodily resurrection for those who come to God through Jesus; the resurrection and the life. 

So, what can we draw from this great mystery?

The first is that it reminds us that the resurrection is not a rupture in God’s promise with his creation. Rather it teaches us that the resurrection is the consummation of that promise. That in his bodily resurrection Jesus does not leave behind the physical body which walked and ate and, with a healing touch, transformed those he came to save. Rather in his risen body he carries with him the marks of that ministry – in the holes in his hands and side he shows to Thomas and the other Apostles – that all that Jesus showed in his earthly life echoes across all time and space in the resurrection.

The second is that it points towards that same promise for each one of us. Through the Gospels we are given for-echoes of that future resurrection. In stories where Jesus raises people from the dead,  like the stories of Lazarus and Jairus' daughter, we are told that the new life Jesus promises us is not just the reviving of our old selves, but a reorientation of everything that we have been – warts and all – to what we will be in Christ.

If these first two understandings point us to a future hope, within these is a third understanding which draws us back to our present reality. And here we might return to Spencer’s image of that resurrection at Cookham. What is so powerful and moving in that image is the ordinariness of it. It is full of simple, ordinary acts and actions. People dusting off their clothes as mother might tidy her scruffy son before leaving the house. Some reclining and reading, others resting before the journey to come. All being made new, all being transformed in and through their ordinariness.

These details are a reminder of the deep hope we find in the promise of bodily resurrection. Not only that God will use – on the other side of time – that which he has given us on this, but also that we can use those ordinary things to bring into our own reality the promise of the new creation we seek in this Easter season.

In this week when we have given thanks to God for the life and witness of Pope Francis so often it has been the extraordinary power of his ordinary actions which have shone through. His desire to live in relative humility amid the opulence of the Vatican, his breaking of tradition and washing the feet of female prisoners as part of his Holy Week observance, his calling for peace in South Sudan not only by his words, but by kneeling and kissing the feet of the leaders of that war torn place.

These vivid examples are a reminder that it is through ordinary things – through bread and wine, through water, through our own bodies – that God can reveal the new life of the resurrection. A promise we can know not only on that great day when the trumpet will sound and the dead shall be raised, but here and now in our own lives and in the little suburbs of heaven which we call home.

 

"Hear us, good Lord" - learning from the wisdom of The Litany: a sermon for the second Sunday of Lent

The Second Sunday of Lent, Carlisle Cathedral: 
Genesis 15: 1-7, 17-18 & Luke 13: 31-end.

The Litany, which we heard sung in procession at the beginning of this service, is one of the defining liturgical expressions of the English Reformation. The form we heard this morning began life in 1544. Authored, at the request of Henry VIII, by Thomas Cranmer it was the first English language service to be authorised for use in the newly established Church of England. 

In this way is carries with it all the radicalism and compromise which characterises the English Reformation. It is radical in that it is in English rather than the Latin of the pre-Reformation Church. It is also radical for what it omits, not least the long lists of saints whose prayer would have been asked for in a pre-Reformation prayer of the same type. 

It is, however, also a compromise. Like much of Thomas Cranmer’s prayers and liturgies it relies on, what one historian has called, his “scissors and paste” approach to composition. In forming it Cranmer borrows from sources deep within the tradition of the whole church – most notably St John Chrysostom and the Sarum Rite – and then moulds them to the reformed patterns of theology which were inching their way into the newly independent Church of England. This compromise was also found not only in the content of The Litany, but also its form. It began life as a free-standing service to be sung in processions mirroring the popular open-air processions of the pre-Reformation Church. Then in a later iteration the procession was moved inside the church building. Then the procession was replaced with rubrics for the minister and choir to sing The Litany from the body of the church with the Minister leading it kneeling from a faldstool or litany desk.

What is of more interest to us though is the way in which The Litany expresses one of the more thorny and complex aspects of the English Reformation – the relationship between the life of faith to the world around us. This complexity is woven into form of The Litany. Its original commission from Henry VIII came not, as you might imagine, from the King’s desire to increase the piety of his people and his new Church. Rather the motivation came from the rather more earthly desire for the prayers and petitions of his people as he sought to renew his war with France.

We should though not be surprised to find these patterns of public prayer running across the distinctions we might see between the church and the world. The word litany is derived from a Greek word for prayer, but very quickly within the life of the early Church a litany became linked to a particular form and pattern of visibly, communal and public prayer. They would often be invoked and used at times of calamity. For instance, in the fifth century the Bishop of Vienne in the south of France called from the recitation of litanies on several days during a time of volcanic activity and earthquakes in the Auvergne. Later in the middle-ages litanies and processions we central to the marking and celebration of the cycle of the year with saints invoked to pray-away the spirits that might blight the land and harvest. These processional prayers were known also as "rogations" – a word which has found its way into our pattern of prayer for creation at Rogationtide.

Although we live in a society which can all too easily make a sharp distinction between the concerns of the life of faith the work of the world, the pattern of The Litany is a reminder that this is a very modern and, in many ways, artificial distinction. 

In both of our readings today we see the way in which the concerns of religious experience and worldly life have always been more intertwined than we might recognise today. In our first reading from Genesis, we hear of God’s first covenant with Abraham. This is not a private or inward-looking religious act, but the establishment of God’s concern for his people through Abraham and his descendants who will be more numerous than the stars of the heavens. This is as much a political as it is a religious act, and one which is sealed and inaugurated through ancient cultic ceremonies of animal sacrifice.

In our Gospel reading we find this interweaving of the religious and the worldly in even sharper relief. Pharisees, who we might see primarily as religious leaders, come to Jesus to tell him of the danger he faces from his political overlord King Herod. To this warning Jesus does not seek to make a sharp distinction between his religious teaching and various political concerns. Rather he argues that Herod’s political opposition could not hinder his ministry which was still to achieve its intended end and goal.

In both readings, as with the form and tradition of The Litany, these religious acts exist within and for the redemption of the political landscape within which they are placed. So what use is this to use today?

Well, someone would have had to be looking in a very different direction not to notice and recognise that we are living in a political landscape which is more challenging and troubling than it has been for a generation. Seeming certainties within the political order of the west are being tried to breaking point. Malign forces and greedy nations seem to be looking to assert the will and the cost of the lives of the innocent, and against hard won and deeply held norms and rules. And beyond this, and too often hidden from our headlines, there is the growing persecution of religious and other minorities as national and racial identities are used to cleanse difference from so many places.

In face of this uncertainty there is a power and eloquence to The Litany, and the tradition of prayer within which it stands, that we would be wise to listen and return to. I am not advocating the return to full blown processions of sung litanies through the streets of our towns and villages – although I’ve heard stranger ideas suggested in the life of the Church of England. Rather there is a wisdom inherent in the tradition of The Litany that we would be wise to listen to. The genius of The Litany is that, for a pattern of prayer born out of the capricious contingencies of the reign of Henry VIII, it speaks beyond them because at its heart are three key and recurring prayers which we can and should return to again and again.

The first is that so many of the trials and tribulations of this world come from our failure to recognise our, and humanities collective weakness and fallibility. That we are all, as The Litany says, in a form which is perhaps a little unfashionable but no less true for that, “miserable sinners”.

The second is that in our weakness our only true hope comes in through the life and death and resurrection of Jesus. The pattern and power of God’s love and grace through which we can call for our “good Lord" to "deliver us.”

And between these two points of recognition there is no place or form or pattern of our shared life through the whole history of the world and the Church, from its earliest moments to our current needs and challenges, into which we should not and cannot call again and again for God, in Jesus Christ, to “hear us good Lord”.

For all its strangeness and deep history we live in a world and time that needs the wisdom of The Litany more and more. Whether this is through public processions or regular recitation doesn’t really matter. What matters is that we find the words again to admit publicly and regularly our shared fallibility and faults. That we should place ourselves and our world into the redeeming power of God’s love in Jesus. And that through that we would know more deeply that it is only, and can only, be through the “Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world” that we will ever truly be granted peace.

 

"I wonder as I wander" - a sermon for the Second Sunday after Epiphany

In 1933 an  American, John Jacob Niles, was at an outdoor meeting in the town of Murphy in the  Appalachian Mountains in North Carolina. At that meeting a girl stepped out to the edge of the little platform attached to a car and began to sing. 

Niles, writing many years later, said, ‘her clothes were unbelievable dirty and ragged, and she, too, was unwashed. Her ash-blond hair hung down in long skeins.... But, best of all... in her untutored way, she could sing. She smiled as she sang, smiled rather sadly, and sang this line.

I wonder as I wander out under the sky,

How Jesus the Savior did come for to die.

For poor ordinary people like you and like I...

I wonder as I wander out under the sky."

There is nothing about this Carol which places it especially in this Epiphany season. In a later verse, we have the Wiseman, but they appear with the Shepherds. There is, I guess, a focus on the star that led the wise men, rather than the Angelic chorus of the Shepherd’s. But on first hearing it seems like many of the beautiful carols we have heard sung through these last weeks. But this always feels like an Epiphany Carol to me.

Unlike many of the Carols of Christmas it has neither the bombast of Hark the Herald Angels, nor the sentiment of Away in a Manger. Rather it is reflective. It suits these weeks when we stay and ponder more deeply the Christmas story after the rest of the world has packed Christmas away and got back to normal life again. This reflective tone is complimented by the plaintive tune which, with the words, ensures that our reflections keep an eye on the whole of the story. Lifting our gaze from the stable door to the life and passion of Jesus our saviour who “did come for to die”. And these reflective themes come together in that deep virtue of this Epiphany season, one repeated through this carol, the virtue of wonder.

Epiphany is a season of Wonder. 

We hear it again and again as we sing of the “star of wonder, star of night” that frames this season. We hear of it again in one of the traditional themes of this season, that of “The Three Wonders”. This theme comes from an antiphon, a short anthem, sung either side of the Magnificat on the Feast of the Epiphany, which is then echoed in the opening section of our Eucharistic Prayer:

Three wonders mark this day we celebrate: today the star led the Magi to the manger; today water was changed into wine at the marriage feast; today Christ desired to be baptized by John in the river Jordan to bring us salvation, alleluia.

Over the last three weeks we have been marking these three wonders, reflecting on these three stories in turn – the visit of the Magi, the Baptism of Christ, and the Wedding at Cana – three great stories which mark what the early Church called in Greek the Epiphanous, what we would translate as the manifestation of Christ to the world. Wonders indeed.

But there is a danger with these wonders that we simply observe them, study them, look at them from afar. So, for instance, on this Sunday, we might look in turn at the story of the wedding feast at Cana and pull apart its constituent parts trying to find the meaning. We might muse that it happened on “on the third day”. We would reflect on the imagery of the six water jars and the abundance of wine and calculate its volume and ascertain some meaning in the spirit of numerology. We can examine and survey the story so much that we discover that from considering this wonder, this story has lost its wonder.

To reflect deeply on these wonders, we need to return to our Carol and remind ourselves on what it is to wonder. The Three Wonders of Epiphany are wonders as a noun. These are events which meet the dictionary definition of a wonder, as a thing unexpected, unfamiliar, or inexplicable. But Epiphany is also a time for us to spend time with wonder as a verb. 

This is what we find in our Carol. Here we glimpse what it means to be surprised again by this great story, and through this wonder desire to know more about God’s love for us all. That as we wonder as we wander we glimpse afresh the extraordinary truth of what God came to do for “poor ordinary people like you and like I.” In our lives of certainty and right and wrong wondering is not something we naturally do. It does not create clarity and it certainty does not encourage productive activity. But wondering is such an important part of faith.

Godly Play is the name of a form of creative Bible Story telling that I know some of you will be very well versed in. Often used with children, but equally effective with all ages, it uses beautiful objects to creatively tell Bible stories. It encourages those listening to the stories to learn about them not through their personal experience and response to the story that they have heard. These responses are encouraged, but not coerced, through a series of questions framed: I wonder…

I wonder what you like best about this story…I wonder which is the most important part…I wonder where you are in this story?

Through this a skilled Godly Play storyteller can help those who hear the story cut past those things we think we are supposed to do when we are learning; like gaining knowledge or learning the right answers. Rather they help foster a personal response and spiritual engagement with God’s word and God’s presence in our lives. In this Epiphany season, as we reflect on these great wonders, we need to remember again what it is to wonder.

We need to wonder, as those travelling wise men did, on the path that God’s quiet but insistent voice is calling us to follow. We need to wonder in the manifestation of this call in the waters of baptism and hear the voice from heaven that calls us all as the beloved in who the Father is well pleased. We need to wonder on the super-abundance of God’s love in Jesus. In a love which is not just enough, nor a bit generous, but ridiculously and laughably generous as at a wedding feast overflowing with the finest wine.

Epiphany is a time of wonder: of manifestations and miracles, of proclamations and Godly power, and for us to find this we must wonder. We must wonder again about the deep and transforming truth God shows us in the birth of his son Jesus Christ, and wonder again on that deep truth that 

…Jesus the Saviour did come for to die.

For poor ordinary people like you and like I...