TURN, TURN AND TURN AGAIN

This poem by All Thieves (featured in the Grey's Anatomy Episode "No Good at Saying Sorry") seems very appropriate for the beginning of Lent and for those reeling from another mass shooting in the USA:

Worn from walking this far
So worn from talking this much
And what we found and what we've seen
As the road curves down

And the lights come up to meet us
Silent for the evening
We enter this town
Like new born creatures

Those I know I see anew
And the space between us is reduced
For I am human
And you are human too.

So turn and turn again

We are calling in all the ships
Every traveler, please come home
And tell us all that you have seen
Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn
And turn again

Only priests and clowns can save us now
Only a sign from God or a hurricane
Can bring about
The change we all want

And we've done it again
This trick we have
Of turning love to pain
And peace to war

We're just ash in a jar

So turn and turn again
We are calling in all the ships
Every traveler, please come home
And tell us all that you have seen
Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn
And turn again 

YOU HAVE HEARD IT SAID, ‘AN EYE FOR AN EYE AND A TOOTH FOR A TOOTH…’

Like most people I have found the atrocities which occurred in Paris this week utterly shocking.  As I listened with growing horror and a sense of disbelief to the unfolding stories of brutality and murder carried out in the name of Allah for the defence of the name of Mohammad I first found myself revolted and stunned.  Then I noticed a welling up of anger and a desire that those who perpetrated the crimes should be made to realise the pain and suffering they had caused.  And, as I continued to become aware of my feelings I also had to accept that I wanted to blame Islam for giving sustenance to the belief that such violence is permissible to defend a religion.  Gradually I realised a feeling that Islam must be a cruel and repressive religion and that we need to ban it from our shores.  And I heard other voices saying the same. 

Yet I sensed that such ’voices’ were leading me into treacherous places and that, whilst I needed to acknowledge they existed, to give attention to them put me in danger of opening myself to the very demons – malevolent forces – which animated the killers.  I can’t pretend that they don’t exist: that I am not susceptible to prejudice, anger, rage, violence and a desire for revenge.  After all, I am ‘only human’.  I may have a brain that’s been civilised over millennia but part of it is primal – ‘reptilian’ – and is the repository of those primitive desires commonly referred to as ‘fear’, fight’ and ’flight’.  I can pretend otherwise but that would leave me at their mercy.  ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth’ is a dictum almost as old as humanity because it appeals to our primitive nature.

The I noticed the way that blame for this is not just levied at Islam but all religion which many see as an inhuman force.  Get rid of religion and the world would live in peace, as John Lennon sang.  But I doubt that’s the case for hatred lies deep in the human heart and is not the preserve of religion.  I sense that those who carried out such barbarous acts would still have had hatred in their hearts even if they weren’t driven by religious feelings.  In fact I would argue that religion exists in order to address this very matter.  Knowing that I am capable of good and evil, how do I embrace the one and avoid the other?  That’s the role of religion.  So Jesus recognised that age-old desire for vengeance and said: ‘But I say to you … love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your Father in heaven.’  (Mt.5:38;44)  And if we are, individually, susceptible to life-denying forces then that is equally true of societies and cultures and the role of religion concerns the way humanity is called to acknowledge its deepest urges – both for good and evil.  It’s easy to ignore the fact that for every sinner there is a saint whose light, born of faith, enlightens us.  I noticed these words of the Islamic Sufi saint, Rumi:

For those in love,
                        Moslem, Christian, and Jew do not exist....
            Why listen to those who see it another way? -
                        if they're not in love--their eyes do not exist.

And for every Islamic Rumi there’s a St. John of the Cross or a St. Teresa of Avila; a Desmond Tutu or a Dorothy Day.  But the light the saint’s offer can be ignored and I know that the tragedy of the violence that lies within me is the way it can blind me to anything else.  But I also know that the glory of the spirit is the way it can lead me out of blindness into light and raise me above my-self. 

One of the tasks of religion is to bring into the open the forces that drive the human spirit and to offer ways in which they can be used for the greater good.  When S. Francis met the muslim Sultan of Egypt, al-Malik-al-Kamil, it is said that he experienced a ‘conversion into a new horizon’ that enabled him to arrive at a vision of universal peace and reconciliation (Dr. Paul Rout OFM).  But I am bombarded with too many voices and I realise the power that all the media has to convey – consciously or unconsciously – its message, and the power of messages rooted in fear to connect with our primal instincts.  I know that it is easy to project onto the other   But I know that I need to listen to those voices which call me to love the other.  As S. Francis wrote: ‘Let us pay attention to what the Lord says: Love your enemies and do good to those who hate you, for our Lord Jesus Christ, whose footprints we must follow called his betrayer ‘friend’ and gave himself willingly to those who crucified him.’ (Francis of Assisi “The Earlier Rule” Chapter XXII 1-4)

I am called to cultivate those practices which lead to life – for example in Christian terms, the way of the Beatitudes – and to own and acknowledge that my heart is not always set upon them.  Religion calls that repentance.   If I don’t own all that for myself and find a way of dealing with it, then I am truly blind.  William Blake put it well when he wrote:

I was angry with my friend; 

I told my wrath, my wrath did end.

I was angry with my foe: 

I told it not, my wrath did grow. 

And I waterd it in fears,

Night & morning with my tears: 

And I sunned it with smiles,

And with soft deceitful wiles. 

And it grew both day and night. 

Till it bore an apple bright. 

And my foe beheld it shine,

And he knew that it was mine. 

And into my garden stole, 

When the night had veild the pole; 

In the morning glad I see; 

My foe outstretched beneath the tree.

(A Poison Tree)

REMEMBER THAT YOU ARE DUST...

ASH WEDNESDAY

Sermon preached in the Church of All Saints, New Eltham

at Low Mass with Imposition of Ashes on 13^th February 2013

INTRODUCTION

“Ash on an old man’s sleeve

            Is all the ash the burnt roses leave.

            Dust in the air suspended

            Marks the place where the story ended”

So writes T. S. Eliot in his poem, ‘Little Gidding’.  I have a memory of my grandfather sitting in his armchair, a cigarette dangling from his mouth and the ash falling down onto the waistcoat of his blue, pin-stripe suit.

“Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return”

The starkness – even abruptness - of that sentence, which is said as ashes are smeared on us, cuts through the glamour and illusions of life.  It’s meant to, and it presents us with a view of the reality of our human condition.  An old man in his armchair or dust suspended above our foreheads.  It tells a story.  All is passing – the child seems to become the old man in a brief span of years and, from the dust of the earth out of which we are born, we return so very quickly.  The boldness of those words shakes our comfortable lives.  Remembering that we are dust is a call to return to an ancient wisdom that we are as much physical people as spiritual people. Spirituality and physicality are at root connected.  It's a wisdom found in all religions. The ancient Hebrews knew this, and so, of course, did Jesus.

But it is, of course, only part of the picture, only half of the statement addressed to us as the black cross is smeared on our foreheads.  The other part is equally simple and direct: “Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ”

Stark again, but this time in terms of choice.  Yet we would be misled if we were left thinking that the point of this statement is just to frighten us into becoming more religious.  It is an invitation to bring order into chaotic lives, to seek the source of wholeness.  To be faithful to God’s gentle and generous invitation to receive the gift of life.

Today we are invited to recognise the truth of who and what we are – of the earth.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  Indeed, earth is the sacred seedbed of creativity and contains all the elements necessary for life.   We need to realise, perhaps dimly, that to be fully alive requires us to be captured by a greater vision.  The vision of the Risen Christ who appeared to his disciples and who enveloped them in the Divine Glory on the Mountain of the Transfiguration.

CONFESSION

This tension – between a recognition of the truth and reality of who we are as human beings and the potential we have for glory, is, of course, played out throughout our lives but made more explicit now – and especially during Holy Week. 

Our Faith recognises the need we have to face this tension and not to ignore it.  Recently a friend of mine, a priest and psychotherapist, sent me the draft of a talk she was giving in Glastonbury on the subject of the Sacrament of Confession and the Therapeutic process.  In it she wrote about her first experience of making her Confession:

“Early one Saturday morning”, she wrote, “I struggled into the church feeling unclear, confused and thoroughly miserable.  I sat in the pew, the priest sat at the confessional.   Not having a clue what I was going to say, except that I needed to own my own sins … I trusted and believed this would bring me back to myself and to God.

I started with the set format words… ‘Bless me, Mother, for I have sinned.’  And then the priest saying, ‘The Lord be in your heart on your lips, that you may rightly and truly confess your sins.  In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  Amen’

I am kneeling in front of a crucifix; the priest is sitting next to me. We do not look at each other.  I say, ‘I confess to almighty God, to blessed Mary, ever-virgin and all the saints and to you, Mother, that I have sinned in thought, word and deed, through my own deliberate fault.’

With her help I find the words.  They feel bald, clear, naked and frightening.  They are just me.  I am speaking from myself.  I am feeling shameful, fragile and vulnerable but gradually I also have a sense of Christ’s love for me.  He loves me when I feel so dreadful: it is as if I have opened myself to Christ and God, and they are putting their healing hands right into me. The pain is going.  I finish it off by saying, ‘For these and all my other sins which I cannot remember, I am truly sorry, firmly resolve to do better, and humbly ask pardon of God, and of you, Mother, penance, advice and absolution.  Amen’

Then there is the moment of absolution. ‘Our Lord Jesus Christ, who has left power to his church to absolve all who truly repent and believe in him, of his great mercy forgive you your offences; and by his authority committed to me, I absolve you from all your sins in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  The Passion of our Lord Jesus Christ, the prayers of the blessed Virgin Mary and of all the saints, whatsoever good you do or evil you endure, be to you the remission of sins, the increase of grace, and the reward of eternal life.  Amen’

For a brief moment I am without sin. For me there is this unbelievable moment that I find myself truly knowing that I am without sin.  I feel joyous I feel liberated from myself I have been reconciled once again with Christ and so with myself.” 

So my friend wrote of her experience of her first Confession.

Too often we are caught in a cycle of self-concern that can prove debilitating and dangerous. 

We are never sure if we’ve got it right.  We are afraid to own ourselves, to admit to being the people we know we are.  We can be ashamed and carry our burdens just because we fear that, if others knew about us, they wouldn’t like what they saw.  Yet we long, somewhere deep in us, to be free.  To be reconciled to the truth of who we are, with God and with the world around us.  We glimpse the possibility of a life that can be lived to the full, with all our creative energies flowing.  Yet fear holds us back.  It’s then that we need to listen, deeply, to those words: ‘Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.  Turn away from sin and turn to Christ.’

CONCLUSION

So may this Lent be a time to face the truth of who we are and know that God longs to set us free.  Starting from embracing the reality of who and what we are – and that can be an immensely painful process – let us also realise a bit more of the glory that is ours as well.  We may be only dust, but we’re dust destined for glory.  The visible mark that will soon be traced on our foreheads echoes the invisible sign made at our Baptism and all that is promised by that Sacrament will be retold in Passiontide.

“Dust in the air suspended

            Marks the place where the story ended”

And new life began.    Amen.