continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea
In the middle of Galilee, four or five miles from Nazareth there stands a mountain. It is circular, almost perfect in it symmetry, like the top of a great round ball emerging from the Galilean plain. When you get to the top, where it flattens off you can see the whole of the central southern Galilee spread out around you. You look down on the dozens of little villages where Jesus walked and talked. This is Mount Tabor, famous locally as the Mount of Transfiguration.
Mountains matter in the story of God’s people. Moses came to Mount Sinai and saw the burning bush, and discovered himself to be in the personal, close and dangerous presence of God. That moment of commission led to the subsequent visit to Sinai, which was mentioned in Monday’s reflection, where he went up a mountain to wait upon God, to receive the law of God, to plead with God when Israel sinned. When he came down, the skin of his face was shining because he had been with God. So too Elijah, at his moment of deepest desolation, made his way from Mount Carmel, where he had slaughtered the prophets of Baal to Mount Sinai, where after the earthquake, wind and fire, there came a still voice saying “What are you doing here, Elijah?” God commissioned him afresh assuring him that God’s strange purposes were going ahead, despite appearances and despite his depression. Abraham’s strangest and darkest dealings with God too took place on a mountain. David’s lifts his eyes to the hills, and saw them as a symbol of God’s presence.
Here once again Moses and Elijah meet God on a mountain. History suddenly telescoped together: past and present are fused into one and future too, because the transfiguration points forward, as Luke says in his account, to Jesus departure, his exodus, which he was to accomplish in heaven. And the voice from the cloud, the same voice that announced the Ten Commandments to Moses and that whispered a gentle rebuke and decommissioning to Elijah now speak to Jesus and Jesus only: “This is my son, my beloved one, in whom I am well pleased; listen to him.” The next time anyone will suggest that Jesus is the son of God will be Caiaphas, in the trial narrative, and then the centurion at the foot of the cross.
But of course the strangest thing in the story is the actual transfiguration itself. Jesus was transformed so that his face shone like the sun, and his clothes themselves became shining white. This glory that shone from Jesus face on the mountain is the glory of a human being made in God’s image and now totally open to God, totally possessed by God, totally reflecting God’s image, totally on fire with God. Seeing this human being, we are seeing God, God in a mirror, God through the looking glass, God present as in the burning bush but now in the shining face, and even in the clothes of a man amongst men.
And it is because of this that the path of the Christian journey has always included the way up the mountain. The Christian tradition has emphasized two great complementary truths about mountaintop experiences, times of special and transforming intimacy with God. On the one hand they are for anyone and everyone, and if you’re missing out on them you may want to review your life of prayer and waiting upon God. On the other hand, the importance of such experiences lies not in the experience themselves, but in what they do to us, what they prepare us for, what they commission us to do.
Often we live in a perpetual spiritual winter. We look at photographs of buds and blossoms as fairy-tale fantasies, things that don’t happen in the real world. And if our present lifestyle both in the church and in our everyday lives don’t allow spaces for mountain climbing for fresh springtimes of the spirit, we should take steps to put matters right. Deep, rich transforming experiences of the presence of God are not reserved for special categories of people. They are on offer for everyone. They help us glimpse the bigger picture, to glimpse the goal, to gather fresh strength for the journey.
Spiritual experiences, great moments of illumination and transformation are never given simply that we may enjoy them for their own sake. We live in an experience-orientated culture, which teaches us to value experiences for themselves. We know so many Californians who change light bulbs and who want to share their experiences, the danger of course is to think that one’s experiences of the presence and love of God are somehow a possession, given simply to be enjoyed, clung to, celebrated in themselves, for our own use, for our own enjoyment. But the gift is given in the context of vocation, to strengthen that vocation.
Today might be a time to pause as we enter the city, to take time to walk up a mountain and wait patiently for God. Perhaps it’s time at last to do what you’ve always promised yourself and never got round to: to set time for prayer and meditation of scripture, to reordered the haunts of life in which you’ve got stuck, so as to make fresh room for God who waits to show you his glory. Perhaps its time to seek out a friend who may gently help you to move forward along the twisty mountain road. Perhaps it’s time to expose yourself again to the possibility that you too might hear a voice, might glimpse glory, might fall on your face in terror and awe, might be grasped afresh by the majesty of Jesus.
And to those who do climb the mountain comes the promise echoing the transfiguration story but pointing beyond it, from the letter of John. “Beloved, we are God’s children now, and it does not yet appear what we shall see; but we know that when Jesus appears, we shall be like him. For we shall see him as he is.”
The road up the mountain is not for the casual tourist or the faint hearted. But the view from the top is out of this world.
Psalm 54: Luke 9 v28-36
Wednesday, 20 April 2011
Tuesday, 19 April 2011
Tuesday – The Way to Jerusalem
continuing this week's reflections by Ray Anglesea
The way to Jerusalem is paved with great expectations.
Jerusalem is after all the city of the great King, the joy of the whole earth. It is Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest. It is the place where the living God has chosen to put his name. It is the city where David built his own house and then planned God’s house. It is the city of dreams, the Holy City, the ultimate place of pilgrimage. It was and is the city of breathtaking beauty up in the Judaean mountains, encompassing in itself steep hills and deep gullies, with stunning views and gorgeous buildings, honeycombed with twisting alleyways, shafts of sunlight into beautiful courtyards, full of smells and spices and olives, fresh bread and sweet wine, and the sound of many languages, many voices raised in prayer, many cocks crowing.
It is also a place of great pain. David captured Jerusalem from the Jesubites 3000 years ago and David too destroyed it by force. Since then Jerusalem has been besieged, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, besieged, and fought over, again and again. The joy of the world and the pain of the world, side by side and somehow intermingling. “We are going up to Jerusalem,” said Jesus, “and the Son on man will be handed over to suffering a death.” The message they wanted to hear and the message they didn’t want to hear. They came together.
It is often said that Jerusalem is a focal point for three great religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam; but it is actually a focal point of four, because we must add another “ism” name Tourism. Tourism is the modern secular version of pilgrimage, in which we go to famous places to see well known sights, not to meet with God or to receive healing of blessing, but to see what our culture tells us what we ought to see, to expand our own horizons and experiences, to buy souvenirs that make us feel good when we get back home, to take photos and videos so that we can steal something of the reality of the place and make it our won private reality. Perhaps you go to Jerusalem to worship the God of secularism, the god of a liberal culture that tells you to observe from a critical distance, but not get involved. To sense the magic of the place, and then to buy the postcards. To say a prayer perhaps if that’s your kind of thing, but not to stay on your knees all day. We’ve to get back to the museum or back to the hotel for tea. Our reality must remain undisturbed. Take no notice of that cock crowing in the background.
In Jewish history and scripture there were two main reasons in particular for going to Jerusalem. You went to enthrone the King, or to pay homage. And you went there to meet God, to offer sacrifice, to celebrate his love, his salvation, his covenant. It was never quite that easy of course. To be near the king was to be in the danger zone. The way to the presence of God remained dark and mysterious, assisted and sometime blocked by priests and well intentioned stewards. And for long periods of Jewish history, ancient and modern, it was rumoured that God had abandoned Jerusalem, at least temporally. Enthroning the king and meeting God that was what Jesus was inviting his followers to do with all its multiple ambiguities.
But the disciples with their home spun bravado were not ready for the sort of enthronement that Jesus has in mind. When the Son of man goes to Jerusalem he must suffer many things at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and scribes and is killed and on the third day is raised. The disciples are not ready to see their hopes crucified. They are not ready to see their great expectations turned upside down and inside out in order to be fulfilled. They want the kingdom of God the way they’ve always wanted it. They expect it to be tough, they expect it to be challenged, it’s going to be hard, you may have to suffer, and you’ve not going to like it.
The disciples perhaps don’t penetrate the innermost meaning of the challenge. If anyone wants to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross, for anyone who wants to save his life will loose it, and those who want to lose their life for my sake will find it. What will it profit someone to gain the whole world, but forfeit their life, their soul; and their heart? The kingdom is coming and sooner than the disciples think. Their expectations will be more than fulfilled. But the only way for that to happen is for them to be first dashed to pieces, broken in fragments on the dusty floor, so that God can make a new jigsaw of them, one that conforms to his sort of, kingdom. Skilled craftsmen take months to make a conventional throne; it took the soldiers only a few minutes to construct one for Jesus.
When we think of Peter with his blustering confidence, his attempt to order Jesus about, we are bound to think also of the cock crowing in the early morning near the governor’s palace in Jerusalem. And we learn – and perhaps this is part of the lesson of all who would venture to a holy city, a holy shrine, to listen to the cock crowing every time we allow our own great expectations, in whatever field of sphere we may cherish them, to dominate our horizons and blot out the call to suffer, the call to lose our life, the call to take up the cross. We all have lessons for wanting to be enthroned, our private way of distorting his kingship so it suits our own aspirations and ambitions. Alas the way to Jerusalem must always be the way of thwarted expectations.
And the test of whether this journey to Jerusalem is genuine is to ask the questions whether you’re prepared for God to remake you and lovingly break the brittle you you’ve so carefully constructed. To be like soft clay in his hands, ready to be remoulded so that God can make of you what he had in mind all along. Jerusalem, that great city is a symbol of God’s great expectations, which will by no means coincide with our own. The only true way to enter Jerusalem is perhaps to go, like Abraham, no knowing where you are going, or what it is that you will meet there, perhaps to suspend a clinging and anxious belief, may be a sceptical unbelief, to simply to be, be open, to be still, to wait in silence for the strange God who still comes to those who wait in silence.
The way to Jerusalem stands for the deeply inviting, yet deeply threatening journey into the presence of the one true God, where all is known and all is unknown, where all is asked and all is promised. And those who like us are learning the pilgrim way, learn to listen, in scripture and sacrament, in silence and suffering for the voice of the one who loves us more deeply than we love ourselves. And that, whether or not we ever make the geographical journey to Jerusalem itself, is the journey to which we are all summoned.
Psalm 17 v1-8; Luke 19 v 28-44
The way to Jerusalem is paved with great expectations.
Jerusalem is after all the city of the great King, the joy of the whole earth. It is Jerusalem the golden, with milk and honey blest. It is the place where the living God has chosen to put his name. It is the city where David built his own house and then planned God’s house. It is the city of dreams, the Holy City, the ultimate place of pilgrimage. It was and is the city of breathtaking beauty up in the Judaean mountains, encompassing in itself steep hills and deep gullies, with stunning views and gorgeous buildings, honeycombed with twisting alleyways, shafts of sunlight into beautiful courtyards, full of smells and spices and olives, fresh bread and sweet wine, and the sound of many languages, many voices raised in prayer, many cocks crowing.
It is also a place of great pain. David captured Jerusalem from the Jesubites 3000 years ago and David too destroyed it by force. Since then Jerusalem has been besieged, destroyed, rebuilt, destroyed again, besieged, and fought over, again and again. The joy of the world and the pain of the world, side by side and somehow intermingling. “We are going up to Jerusalem,” said Jesus, “and the Son on man will be handed over to suffering a death.” The message they wanted to hear and the message they didn’t want to hear. They came together.
It is often said that Jerusalem is a focal point for three great religions. Judaism, Christianity and Islam; but it is actually a focal point of four, because we must add another “ism” name Tourism. Tourism is the modern secular version of pilgrimage, in which we go to famous places to see well known sights, not to meet with God or to receive healing of blessing, but to see what our culture tells us what we ought to see, to expand our own horizons and experiences, to buy souvenirs that make us feel good when we get back home, to take photos and videos so that we can steal something of the reality of the place and make it our won private reality. Perhaps you go to Jerusalem to worship the God of secularism, the god of a liberal culture that tells you to observe from a critical distance, but not get involved. To sense the magic of the place, and then to buy the postcards. To say a prayer perhaps if that’s your kind of thing, but not to stay on your knees all day. We’ve to get back to the museum or back to the hotel for tea. Our reality must remain undisturbed. Take no notice of that cock crowing in the background.
In Jewish history and scripture there were two main reasons in particular for going to Jerusalem. You went to enthrone the King, or to pay homage. And you went there to meet God, to offer sacrifice, to celebrate his love, his salvation, his covenant. It was never quite that easy of course. To be near the king was to be in the danger zone. The way to the presence of God remained dark and mysterious, assisted and sometime blocked by priests and well intentioned stewards. And for long periods of Jewish history, ancient and modern, it was rumoured that God had abandoned Jerusalem, at least temporally. Enthroning the king and meeting God that was what Jesus was inviting his followers to do with all its multiple ambiguities.
But the disciples with their home spun bravado were not ready for the sort of enthronement that Jesus has in mind. When the Son of man goes to Jerusalem he must suffer many things at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and scribes and is killed and on the third day is raised. The disciples are not ready to see their hopes crucified. They are not ready to see their great expectations turned upside down and inside out in order to be fulfilled. They want the kingdom of God the way they’ve always wanted it. They expect it to be tough, they expect it to be challenged, it’s going to be hard, you may have to suffer, and you’ve not going to like it.
The disciples perhaps don’t penetrate the innermost meaning of the challenge. If anyone wants to come after me let him deny himself and take up his cross, for anyone who wants to save his life will loose it, and those who want to lose their life for my sake will find it. What will it profit someone to gain the whole world, but forfeit their life, their soul; and their heart? The kingdom is coming and sooner than the disciples think. Their expectations will be more than fulfilled. But the only way for that to happen is for them to be first dashed to pieces, broken in fragments on the dusty floor, so that God can make a new jigsaw of them, one that conforms to his sort of, kingdom. Skilled craftsmen take months to make a conventional throne; it took the soldiers only a few minutes to construct one for Jesus.
When we think of Peter with his blustering confidence, his attempt to order Jesus about, we are bound to think also of the cock crowing in the early morning near the governor’s palace in Jerusalem. And we learn – and perhaps this is part of the lesson of all who would venture to a holy city, a holy shrine, to listen to the cock crowing every time we allow our own great expectations, in whatever field of sphere we may cherish them, to dominate our horizons and blot out the call to suffer, the call to lose our life, the call to take up the cross. We all have lessons for wanting to be enthroned, our private way of distorting his kingship so it suits our own aspirations and ambitions. Alas the way to Jerusalem must always be the way of thwarted expectations.
And the test of whether this journey to Jerusalem is genuine is to ask the questions whether you’re prepared for God to remake you and lovingly break the brittle you you’ve so carefully constructed. To be like soft clay in his hands, ready to be remoulded so that God can make of you what he had in mind all along. Jerusalem, that great city is a symbol of God’s great expectations, which will by no means coincide with our own. The only true way to enter Jerusalem is perhaps to go, like Abraham, no knowing where you are going, or what it is that you will meet there, perhaps to suspend a clinging and anxious belief, may be a sceptical unbelief, to simply to be, be open, to be still, to wait in silence for the strange God who still comes to those who wait in silence.
The way to Jerusalem stands for the deeply inviting, yet deeply threatening journey into the presence of the one true God, where all is known and all is unknown, where all is asked and all is promised. And those who like us are learning the pilgrim way, learn to listen, in scripture and sacrament, in silence and suffering for the voice of the one who loves us more deeply than we love ourselves. And that, whether or not we ever make the geographical journey to Jerusalem itself, is the journey to which we are all summoned.
Psalm 17 v1-8; Luke 19 v 28-44
Monday, 18 April 2011
Monday - The Way in the Wilderness
Holy Week reflections by Ray Anglesea
The great Easter getaway has started. Press reports have already indicated that holidaymakers leaving for an extended Easter break can expect heavy traffic on the main roads and congested departure lounges as motorways and airports face their busiest week of the year so far. The travel chaos had begun.
For Christians the holiday getaway takes us in heart and mind to Jerusalem to remember and re-enact the events that are at the centre of our faith, the last days of Jesus life, his death and resurrection. Our travelling to that city may take us via various routes – each day of this Holy Week we might imagine one route which might take us there as we start out on this year’s spiritual journey and pilgrimage.
It is perhaps in the wilderness that the real choices are made. It is one thing to go with the crowds into the city chanting Hosanna it is another to go into the city on our own. There are too many pros and cons to weigh up, advantages and disadvantages, positives and negatives, to make that decision. Indeed it may not be easy to decide anything. When we come to make that decision there are dependents and partners to think about. And if we add to our turmoil and perplexity of journeying into the city a prayer and spiritual life that is dry and barren, the possible dilemma that we are not quite sure where we are and where we belong and where God is, then decisions may be virtually impossible to make. It is so much easier to stay where we are. It might be safer to stay with the crowds in Galilee than to risk going to Jerusalem, to stay with predictable certainty rather than setting out into unknown territories and unchartered waters.
One thing for sure you are never far away from the wilderness when you approach Jerusalem; when you are in Jerusalem the wilderness is just over the next hill. The wilderness comes in many shapes and sizes, just as the desert of Judaea and Sinai are by no means uniform the wilderness that surrounds Jerusalem comes in many forms; huge crags like Masada, there are gullies and crevasses, great rocky outcrops and hidden valleys. And it is perhaps in that place of wilderness that the decision about the journey into the city has to be made; for at the start of this Holy Week we may find ourselves in that place. Sometimes in that wilderness place we may hear many voices; being in the wilderness can be a frightening and a risky experience. Life may appear to be like a trudging journey across a lunar landscape of desert and rocky slopes, an environment that resembles more the ruins of some prehistoric catastrophe, a place of struggle and conflict, a place of loneliness and emptiness, banishment and thirst.
Moses the great law giver, prophet and enduring friend of God, the leader of the Hebrew people had been wandering around the Sinai wilderness for many years, following the call of his God, travelling like the patriarchs before him on an ambiguous and uncertain journey with his irksome, quarrelsome and difficult community. But now Moses hears the call to go to a land promised by God to his descendants, a land of milk and honey. A decision has to be made. The pillar of cloud stands outside the entrance to the tent of meeting. Moses prays.
The problem was that Moses does not want the land of promise without God, and the land of promise is nothing to the people without that same presence. God must go with them. Moses anguished prayers are answered. God will accompany him and his people and the rest of Canaan will be given to them. But Moses requests more. He is convinced that God’s favour does not rest upon him. He prays for a sight of God’s glory. He yearns for a special disclosure of God, not physical sight for he knows that no man can see God and live, but for a spiritual perception of who God is and what he will do for him and his people. God reveals himself by his name. Moses nestles in a rock to see the afterglow of God’s glory, he is to hear old truths in a new splendour, a veil is momentarily drawn back and God passes by, the strangeness of his friend remains with him.
Out there in our lives we may stand on the edge of Jerusalem in some mini wilderness of darkness, uncertainty even banishment as we struggle to move on, to take that step, to make that decision to go to Jerusalem. For Moses it was in a similar place that God met him and gave him directions that would change the face of religion for all time. In the wilderness God for Moses was his heartbeat. Closer than close. In the refuge of that rock Moses felt safe, protected, covered by the hand of his God, his friend.
It is difficult to know sometimes that God is with us, that God is for us, that God cares about our decision making, that God was even with his Son, Jesus, as he turns his face to Jerusalem and all that lies ahead of him. But the paradox is that even though we don’t know it, even though sometimes we don’t feel it – out there - God is with us. Ahead of us, before us, before we get there, he is waiting for us, hands open, to hold us as he did with Moses.
Moses the man who met God in the wilderness is often my inspiration. God met him in a new way and gave him direction and purpose, a blue print of his future plans for Moses and the people who were following him. He holds us as he held Moses. We know it will be all right, at that moment, later or at any time. We are in God’s hands; we may even feel something of that strange glory.
God is with us. Forward then to Jerusalem and may God have mercy on us.
Psalm 91; Exodus 33 v 15-23; Luke 4 v10-13
The great Easter getaway has started. Press reports have already indicated that holidaymakers leaving for an extended Easter break can expect heavy traffic on the main roads and congested departure lounges as motorways and airports face their busiest week of the year so far. The travel chaos had begun.
For Christians the holiday getaway takes us in heart and mind to Jerusalem to remember and re-enact the events that are at the centre of our faith, the last days of Jesus life, his death and resurrection. Our travelling to that city may take us via various routes – each day of this Holy Week we might imagine one route which might take us there as we start out on this year’s spiritual journey and pilgrimage.
It is perhaps in the wilderness that the real choices are made. It is one thing to go with the crowds into the city chanting Hosanna it is another to go into the city on our own. There are too many pros and cons to weigh up, advantages and disadvantages, positives and negatives, to make that decision. Indeed it may not be easy to decide anything. When we come to make that decision there are dependents and partners to think about. And if we add to our turmoil and perplexity of journeying into the city a prayer and spiritual life that is dry and barren, the possible dilemma that we are not quite sure where we are and where we belong and where God is, then decisions may be virtually impossible to make. It is so much easier to stay where we are. It might be safer to stay with the crowds in Galilee than to risk going to Jerusalem, to stay with predictable certainty rather than setting out into unknown territories and unchartered waters.
One thing for sure you are never far away from the wilderness when you approach Jerusalem; when you are in Jerusalem the wilderness is just over the next hill. The wilderness comes in many shapes and sizes, just as the desert of Judaea and Sinai are by no means uniform the wilderness that surrounds Jerusalem comes in many forms; huge crags like Masada, there are gullies and crevasses, great rocky outcrops and hidden valleys. And it is perhaps in that place of wilderness that the decision about the journey into the city has to be made; for at the start of this Holy Week we may find ourselves in that place. Sometimes in that wilderness place we may hear many voices; being in the wilderness can be a frightening and a risky experience. Life may appear to be like a trudging journey across a lunar landscape of desert and rocky slopes, an environment that resembles more the ruins of some prehistoric catastrophe, a place of struggle and conflict, a place of loneliness and emptiness, banishment and thirst.
Moses the great law giver, prophet and enduring friend of God, the leader of the Hebrew people had been wandering around the Sinai wilderness for many years, following the call of his God, travelling like the patriarchs before him on an ambiguous and uncertain journey with his irksome, quarrelsome and difficult community. But now Moses hears the call to go to a land promised by God to his descendants, a land of milk and honey. A decision has to be made. The pillar of cloud stands outside the entrance to the tent of meeting. Moses prays.
The problem was that Moses does not want the land of promise without God, and the land of promise is nothing to the people without that same presence. God must go with them. Moses anguished prayers are answered. God will accompany him and his people and the rest of Canaan will be given to them. But Moses requests more. He is convinced that God’s favour does not rest upon him. He prays for a sight of God’s glory. He yearns for a special disclosure of God, not physical sight for he knows that no man can see God and live, but for a spiritual perception of who God is and what he will do for him and his people. God reveals himself by his name. Moses nestles in a rock to see the afterglow of God’s glory, he is to hear old truths in a new splendour, a veil is momentarily drawn back and God passes by, the strangeness of his friend remains with him.
Out there in our lives we may stand on the edge of Jerusalem in some mini wilderness of darkness, uncertainty even banishment as we struggle to move on, to take that step, to make that decision to go to Jerusalem. For Moses it was in a similar place that God met him and gave him directions that would change the face of religion for all time. In the wilderness God for Moses was his heartbeat. Closer than close. In the refuge of that rock Moses felt safe, protected, covered by the hand of his God, his friend.
It is difficult to know sometimes that God is with us, that God is for us, that God cares about our decision making, that God was even with his Son, Jesus, as he turns his face to Jerusalem and all that lies ahead of him. But the paradox is that even though we don’t know it, even though sometimes we don’t feel it – out there - God is with us. Ahead of us, before us, before we get there, he is waiting for us, hands open, to hold us as he did with Moses.
Moses the man who met God in the wilderness is often my inspiration. God met him in a new way and gave him direction and purpose, a blue print of his future plans for Moses and the people who were following him. He holds us as he held Moses. We know it will be all right, at that moment, later or at any time. We are in God’s hands; we may even feel something of that strange glory.
God is with us. Forward then to Jerusalem and may God have mercy on us.
Psalm 91; Exodus 33 v 15-23; Luke 4 v10-13
Sunday, 17 April 2011
Holy Week Reflections
Ray Anglesea's Holy Week reflections will be posted here day by day throughout the week
Palm Sunday: Protest and Extremism
From a sermon by Ray Anglesea delivered to a joint service of West End, Robert Stewart Memorial and Jesmond United Reformed Churches
It wasn’t Hosanna the jeering, hostile crowds were chanting but “Farewell Mohamed, we will avenge you.” Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street trader, didn’t mean to start a revolution. On the 17th December, a week before Christmas, this 26 year old Tunisian university graduate and street trader wheeled his barrow into the market square of Sidi Bouzid, a dusty town in central Tunisia. He set up his stall at the street corner and began calling out his wares. Within minutes he was interrupted by a municipal inspector who started to confiscate his merchandise; the inspector alleged he did not have a trading permit. Grabbing his fruit and vegetables back the local inspector slapped him in the face.
Perhaps that was the turning point that burst into a revolution. For an Arab man to be slapped by a woman in public was the height of humiliation. Bouazizi, embarrassed and enraged, stormed over to the municipal office demanding the return of his stock. There he was beaten again. Now angry and enraged he went to the main regional government office. He was turned away. “If you don’t see me, I’ll burn myself,” he shouted. At 11:30am, less than an hour after the 1st altercation, Bouazizi was back in front of the gates of the governor’s building. He sat down and poured two bottles of paint-thinner over himself and demanded once more to see an official. Then he lit his cigarette lighter and by the time the flames were extinguished he had suffered third degree burns over 90% of his body.
He was taken by ambulance to a hospital 70 miles away then later to a special burns unit in Tunis. On 4th January 18 days after setting fire to himself Bouazizi died. By then the protests had already started. Dissent and remonstrations began to spread like grassfire throughout the capital and regional towns powered by Facebook and Twitter. Police fired on the crowds in several towns. The death toll mounted. On the day of Bouazizi’s death the Jasmine Revolution erupted into full force. Within a week President Ben Ali of Tunisia had fled the country. A 23 year old dictatorship collapsed in a matter of days. Weeks later the 30 year old rule of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (who had amassed a family fortune of £40.5 billion), was at an end. Bouazizi had become a martyr. The very ordinariness of his life has given his story the power to overthrow dictators. The rage, frustration and poverty that first erupted on an ordinary Friday morning in a nondescript Tunisian backwater has now spread to Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Syria.
Does Bouazizi’s story ring any bells? A death on a Friday, a poverty stricken nobody from a backwater nothing town, the martyr a symbol of rebellion, beaten, spat on, abused, humiliated, mocked, abandoned. On this Palm Sunday of all days we remember the early morning madness, the protest, the repression, complaints and objection; an excited demonstration in the dense architecture of Jerusalem, a young servant king on a donkey fulfilling Zechariah’s messianic prophecy, who was to turn expectations of political deliverance on its head. Amongst waving palm branches the smell of defiance was in the air, a possible subversive peasant uprising, threats of arrest, and criticism by those who thought Jesus and his group were going too far, too fast. “This is the controversial field preacher and healer,” they shouted. “This is the son of a virgin who went to parties and turned water into wine.” Danger! Controversy! Fear! In the backwater of a destitute and penurious provincial town amid the Judaean hills there were too many authoritarian, conflicting and violent ideologies. And one of those unjust and immoral ideologies was religious extremism. Religious groups and individuals had become radicalised; a pathological illness which feeds on the destruction of life. In Jerusalem nothing has changed.
Perhaps the greatest Scottish poet of the 20th century, Hugh MacDiarmid, a passionate nationalist and convinced Marxist described his time as an age “whaur extremes meet.” Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve who was no stranger to extremism; indeed the extreme political beliefs that bewitched many during MacDiarmid’s time in the 1930’s possessed something of the quality of religious faith. The result of the extremes of global recession in the 1930’s caused many Jarrow miners and ship builders from this region to walk over 300 miles, with their MP Ellen Wilkinson, to London, demanding employment and an end to abject poverty.
Hand in hand with extreme political views is the extremes of religious intolerance and fanaticism that sometimes goes with it; recent decades have been characterised by worldwide suffering of many as a result of the actions of radicalised religious groups. Complex religious views still prevail - the murder of a Catholic police officer Constable Ronan Kerr, 25, killed after a booby-trap device exploded under his car, in Omagh, County Tyrone: the attack on a United Nation base in the city of Mazar-e Sharif which killed 14 people, seven of them UN staff, as a result of an American pastor who burnt the Koran. "The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran,” said Mr Obama “is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry; to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.” Yet don’t let’s deceive ourselves – it was the Christian evangelical fundamentalism and neo-conservative ideology that underpinned the Bush administration that took the American nation to war in Iraq, aided and abetted by the British Government; “a war widely perceived without any basis in international law and a war that could not be described as just or moral,” stated Prof. Michael Northcott, Professor of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh University in his book An angel directs the storm. Perhaps the engineer’s song’s from the musical Miss Saigon “The American Dream” has faded, to many minds the extravagant new life of the American dream has now become the American apocalypse.
But that was last week’s breaking news. Senior church leaders have brought to the forefront of all our concerns at the start of this Holy Week the situation of Christians who are living with the daily threat of violent persecution often in unstable environments. Our thoughts this Holy Week are with the leaders and people of Jerusalem, the Middle East and the African Ivory Coast faced with massive instability and uncertainty, and with many disturbing signs of what may come. We also think with anguish of the sufferings and anxieties of the Church in Pakistan, in the context of the brutal killings that have occurred in recent months and weeks; the murder early in March of Shahbaz Bhatti the minister for religious minorities in Pakistan, a Christian and a critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, who was shot dead by gunmen on his way to a cabinet meeting in Islamabad. The continuing attacks on Christian communities in parts of Nigeria and Gays in Uganda are a matter of deep concern, and in Zimbabwe Christians are still subject to constant attack because of their brave stand for justice. In Southern Sudan, after a referendum more peaceful than most people dared to hope, the Church faces the huge challenge of helping to shape a new nation; the same challenge of witnessing to a unity beyond political boundaries inspires the continuing courageous ministry of the Church in Korea.
At the beginning of Holy Week, we stand with Jesus before the gates of the city of Jerusalem, the Holy City in a world dominated by news of religious fanaticism and extremism. Simon Montefiore in his new book Jerusalem: The Biography describes the city as “the global focus of the struggle between the Abrahamic religions; the shrine for increasingly popular Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism. Jerusalem is the house of one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions. She is the only city to exist twice, in heaven and earth. The city which is the cosmopolitan home of many sects, a hybrid metropolis of a hybrid people with many interlinked and overlapping cultures and layered loyalties, each of which believes the city belongs to them alone.” It is a city of religious extremism indeed; an illuminated stage for the cameras of the world in the age of 24 hour news.
As believers and as human beings, we stand today at the gates of the city at the start of Holy week – a 'city of wrong' as one great Muslim writer, Kamel Hussein, called it in the title of his fictional meditations, City of Wrong: A Friday in Jerusalem as he meditates on the last week of Jesus’ life; a city where so many sufferers are silenced and where so many innocent on both sides of the terrible conflict are killed and their deaths hidden under a cloak of angry, selfish, posturing words, whatever language they are spoken in. “We know in our hearts,” stated the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently “that so much of what fuels the violence of religious extremism is in ourselves too: the passionate longing for power and control, the impotent near-mindless fury that bursts out in literally suicidal ways in cities around the world, and brings destruction to so many. We know the urge to defend what can't be defended because we can't lose face.” We search for any drop of the elixir of tolerance, sharing and generosity to act as the antidote to the arsenic of prejudice, exclusivity and possessiveness. “We too are citizens of this city of wrong.”And as Ian Cowie reminded us in his poem Welcome to the City – “ don’t interfere with politics or economics – if you get it wrong for our city, who knows? We, too, might have to liquidate you.”
And in this city of protest, of religious extremism, in this city of wrong, we stand at its gates to remember the extremes of a different kind, the extremes to which one man was driven because of faith, and draw a very different message. The Easter narrative helps us to understand that what the world needs is not a retreat from faith, and religion’s moral codes, but an approach towards the mystery of creation marked by the humility of Jesus and infused by the sympathy that He showed to all mankind. The extremes to which Jesus was driven were the furthest reaches of human suffering. Scourged, beaten, tortured and crucified, His body was robbed of all dignity, like the Tunisian street trader, his existence extinguished in excruciating pain. Jesus’ journey on the Via Dolorosa was a consequence of others’ actions, specifically the rejection of His message, and the promise of redemption through faith which He offered. He was betrayed by the religious leaders of His time, who put a rigid adherence to rules, hierarchy and status before the message of love. He was condemned by the secular powers of the Roman occupation, who chose expediency rather than principle. He was, ultimately, denied by His own disciple, Peter, who sought the good opinion of others before the truths of his own heart. In each case, suffering came because men lacked zeal and passion, would not stand up for what was right and preferred a course the world seemed to deem prudent rather than the path they feared would render them exposed. Those in the Easter narrative who betrayed Jesus did so because they acted in a manner which was political, calculating and worldly.
The journey to Calvary that Jesus made was, however, for them as much as anyone. He confronted the ultimate extreme — a painful death and the cries of the world jeering in His ears — to prove that compassion can triumph over calculation, and that sacrifice can redeem sin. He required a faith that might be considered so strong as to be extreme. But His quiet adherence to the principle of love, and the willingness to sacrifice His interests for others, and then His Resurrection, completed a symbolic but real journey, and began a new phase of human spirituality.
The extremists who challenge our peace this Easter in Ireland, in the Middle East, in fragile African states come not as Jesus did, to redeem, but as His tormentors did, to uphold an arid purity and proclaim a vengeful power. Their faith is a political religion, like MacDiarmid’s Marxism, their vision is exclusive and self-indulgent, and their hands are clenched round a gun. The faith of Jesus was of a very different kind: His outstretched hands on the Cross were there to embrace all mankind. If the world is to overcome the dark passion of those whose hate drives them to violent extremes, it can only be helped by contemplating the message of compassion from the One who went to the ultimate extreme for love.
Five months ago Bouazizi was a frustrated, poverty stricken nobody in a nothing city. And that, I suspect, explains his astonishing posthumous power as a symbol of rebellion, anger and political upheaval; peaceful protestors demanding basic human rights: the humble fruit-seller who had a bad day, and couldn’t take it anymore. In the ongoing aftermath of the North African and Middle East revolution that fills our newspapers and television screens, Tarak Ben Ammar, formerly a manager of Michael Jackson’s world tour is planning to make a film about Bouazizi’s life and death. A Kuwaiti businessman has offered $10,000 to buy his cart. A square in Paris is to be named after him. Two thousand years later the ongoing Jesus revolution too is still turning the world upside down. Jesus turned out to be the only beloved son of God, who died that our sins may be forgiven, and that those who believe in him might have eternal life. And for that assurance and promise of that priceless gift we can say with the cheering Palm Sunday Jerusalem crowds. Alleluia!
Amen
Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships.
It wasn’t Hosanna the jeering, hostile crowds were chanting but “Farewell Mohamed, we will avenge you.” Mohamed Bouazizi, a Tunisian street trader, didn’t mean to start a revolution. On the 17th December, a week before Christmas, this 26 year old Tunisian university graduate and street trader wheeled his barrow into the market square of Sidi Bouzid, a dusty town in central Tunisia. He set up his stall at the street corner and began calling out his wares. Within minutes he was interrupted by a municipal inspector who started to confiscate his merchandise; the inspector alleged he did not have a trading permit. Grabbing his fruit and vegetables back the local inspector slapped him in the face.
Perhaps that was the turning point that burst into a revolution. For an Arab man to be slapped by a woman in public was the height of humiliation. Bouazizi, embarrassed and enraged, stormed over to the municipal office demanding the return of his stock. There he was beaten again. Now angry and enraged he went to the main regional government office. He was turned away. “If you don’t see me, I’ll burn myself,” he shouted. At 11:30am, less than an hour after the 1st altercation, Bouazizi was back in front of the gates of the governor’s building. He sat down and poured two bottles of paint-thinner over himself and demanded once more to see an official. Then he lit his cigarette lighter and by the time the flames were extinguished he had suffered third degree burns over 90% of his body.
He was taken by ambulance to a hospital 70 miles away then later to a special burns unit in Tunis. On 4th January 18 days after setting fire to himself Bouazizi died. By then the protests had already started. Dissent and remonstrations began to spread like grassfire throughout the capital and regional towns powered by Facebook and Twitter. Police fired on the crowds in several towns. The death toll mounted. On the day of Bouazizi’s death the Jasmine Revolution erupted into full force. Within a week President Ben Ali of Tunisia had fled the country. A 23 year old dictatorship collapsed in a matter of days. Weeks later the 30 year old rule of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt (who had amassed a family fortune of £40.5 billion), was at an end. Bouazizi had become a martyr. The very ordinariness of his life has given his story the power to overthrow dictators. The rage, frustration and poverty that first erupted on an ordinary Friday morning in a nondescript Tunisian backwater has now spread to Algeria, Yemen, Jordan, Egypt, Libya and Syria.
Does Bouazizi’s story ring any bells? A death on a Friday, a poverty stricken nobody from a backwater nothing town, the martyr a symbol of rebellion, beaten, spat on, abused, humiliated, mocked, abandoned. On this Palm Sunday of all days we remember the early morning madness, the protest, the repression, complaints and objection; an excited demonstration in the dense architecture of Jerusalem, a young servant king on a donkey fulfilling Zechariah’s messianic prophecy, who was to turn expectations of political deliverance on its head. Amongst waving palm branches the smell of defiance was in the air, a possible subversive peasant uprising, threats of arrest, and criticism by those who thought Jesus and his group were going too far, too fast. “This is the controversial field preacher and healer,” they shouted. “This is the son of a virgin who went to parties and turned water into wine.” Danger! Controversy! Fear! In the backwater of a destitute and penurious provincial town amid the Judaean hills there were too many authoritarian, conflicting and violent ideologies. And one of those unjust and immoral ideologies was religious extremism. Religious groups and individuals had become radicalised; a pathological illness which feeds on the destruction of life. In Jerusalem nothing has changed.
Perhaps the greatest Scottish poet of the 20th century, Hugh MacDiarmid, a passionate nationalist and convinced Marxist described his time as an age “whaur extremes meet.” Hugh MacDiarmid was the pen name of Christopher Murray Grieve who was no stranger to extremism; indeed the extreme political beliefs that bewitched many during MacDiarmid’s time in the 1930’s possessed something of the quality of religious faith. The result of the extremes of global recession in the 1930’s caused many Jarrow miners and ship builders from this region to walk over 300 miles, with their MP Ellen Wilkinson, to London, demanding employment and an end to abject poverty.
Hand in hand with extreme political views is the extremes of religious intolerance and fanaticism that sometimes goes with it; recent decades have been characterised by worldwide suffering of many as a result of the actions of radicalised religious groups. Complex religious views still prevail - the murder of a Catholic police officer Constable Ronan Kerr, 25, killed after a booby-trap device exploded under his car, in Omagh, County Tyrone: the attack on a United Nation base in the city of Mazar-e Sharif which killed 14 people, seven of them UN staff, as a result of an American pastor who burnt the Koran. "The desecration of any holy text, including the Koran,” said Mr Obama “is an act of extreme intolerance and bigotry; to attack and kill innocent people in response is outrageous, and an affront to human decency and dignity.” Yet don’t let’s deceive ourselves – it was the Christian evangelical fundamentalism and neo-conservative ideology that underpinned the Bush administration that took the American nation to war in Iraq, aided and abetted by the British Government; “a war widely perceived without any basis in international law and a war that could not be described as just or moral,” stated Prof. Michael Northcott, Professor of Christian Ethics, Edinburgh University in his book An angel directs the storm. Perhaps the engineer’s song’s from the musical Miss Saigon “The American Dream” has faded, to many minds the extravagant new life of the American dream has now become the American apocalypse.
But that was last week’s breaking news. Senior church leaders have brought to the forefront of all our concerns at the start of this Holy Week the situation of Christians who are living with the daily threat of violent persecution often in unstable environments. Our thoughts this Holy Week are with the leaders and people of Jerusalem, the Middle East and the African Ivory Coast faced with massive instability and uncertainty, and with many disturbing signs of what may come. We also think with anguish of the sufferings and anxieties of the Church in Pakistan, in the context of the brutal killings that have occurred in recent months and weeks; the murder early in March of Shahbaz Bhatti the minister for religious minorities in Pakistan, a Christian and a critic of Pakistan's blasphemy laws, who was shot dead by gunmen on his way to a cabinet meeting in Islamabad. The continuing attacks on Christian communities in parts of Nigeria and Gays in Uganda are a matter of deep concern, and in Zimbabwe Christians are still subject to constant attack because of their brave stand for justice. In Southern Sudan, after a referendum more peaceful than most people dared to hope, the Church faces the huge challenge of helping to shape a new nation; the same challenge of witnessing to a unity beyond political boundaries inspires the continuing courageous ministry of the Church in Korea.
At the beginning of Holy Week, we stand with Jesus before the gates of the city of Jerusalem, the Holy City in a world dominated by news of religious fanaticism and extremism. Simon Montefiore in his new book Jerusalem: The Biography describes the city as “the global focus of the struggle between the Abrahamic religions; the shrine for increasingly popular Christian, Jewish and Islamic fundamentalism. Jerusalem is the house of one God, the capital of two peoples, the temple of three religions. She is the only city to exist twice, in heaven and earth. The city which is the cosmopolitan home of many sects, a hybrid metropolis of a hybrid people with many interlinked and overlapping cultures and layered loyalties, each of which believes the city belongs to them alone.” It is a city of religious extremism indeed; an illuminated stage for the cameras of the world in the age of 24 hour news.
As believers and as human beings, we stand today at the gates of the city at the start of Holy week – a 'city of wrong' as one great Muslim writer, Kamel Hussein, called it in the title of his fictional meditations, City of Wrong: A Friday in Jerusalem as he meditates on the last week of Jesus’ life; a city where so many sufferers are silenced and where so many innocent on both sides of the terrible conflict are killed and their deaths hidden under a cloak of angry, selfish, posturing words, whatever language they are spoken in. “We know in our hearts,” stated the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, recently “that so much of what fuels the violence of religious extremism is in ourselves too: the passionate longing for power and control, the impotent near-mindless fury that bursts out in literally suicidal ways in cities around the world, and brings destruction to so many. We know the urge to defend what can't be defended because we can't lose face.” We search for any drop of the elixir of tolerance, sharing and generosity to act as the antidote to the arsenic of prejudice, exclusivity and possessiveness. “We too are citizens of this city of wrong.”And as Ian Cowie reminded us in his poem Welcome to the City – “ don’t interfere with politics or economics – if you get it wrong for our city, who knows? We, too, might have to liquidate you.”
And in this city of protest, of religious extremism, in this city of wrong, we stand at its gates to remember the extremes of a different kind, the extremes to which one man was driven because of faith, and draw a very different message. The Easter narrative helps us to understand that what the world needs is not a retreat from faith, and religion’s moral codes, but an approach towards the mystery of creation marked by the humility of Jesus and infused by the sympathy that He showed to all mankind. The extremes to which Jesus was driven were the furthest reaches of human suffering. Scourged, beaten, tortured and crucified, His body was robbed of all dignity, like the Tunisian street trader, his existence extinguished in excruciating pain. Jesus’ journey on the Via Dolorosa was a consequence of others’ actions, specifically the rejection of His message, and the promise of redemption through faith which He offered. He was betrayed by the religious leaders of His time, who put a rigid adherence to rules, hierarchy and status before the message of love. He was condemned by the secular powers of the Roman occupation, who chose expediency rather than principle. He was, ultimately, denied by His own disciple, Peter, who sought the good opinion of others before the truths of his own heart. In each case, suffering came because men lacked zeal and passion, would not stand up for what was right and preferred a course the world seemed to deem prudent rather than the path they feared would render them exposed. Those in the Easter narrative who betrayed Jesus did so because they acted in a manner which was political, calculating and worldly.
The journey to Calvary that Jesus made was, however, for them as much as anyone. He confronted the ultimate extreme — a painful death and the cries of the world jeering in His ears — to prove that compassion can triumph over calculation, and that sacrifice can redeem sin. He required a faith that might be considered so strong as to be extreme. But His quiet adherence to the principle of love, and the willingness to sacrifice His interests for others, and then His Resurrection, completed a symbolic but real journey, and began a new phase of human spirituality.
The extremists who challenge our peace this Easter in Ireland, in the Middle East, in fragile African states come not as Jesus did, to redeem, but as His tormentors did, to uphold an arid purity and proclaim a vengeful power. Their faith is a political religion, like MacDiarmid’s Marxism, their vision is exclusive and self-indulgent, and their hands are clenched round a gun. The faith of Jesus was of a very different kind: His outstretched hands on the Cross were there to embrace all mankind. If the world is to overcome the dark passion of those whose hate drives them to violent extremes, it can only be helped by contemplating the message of compassion from the One who went to the ultimate extreme for love.
Five months ago Bouazizi was a frustrated, poverty stricken nobody in a nothing city. And that, I suspect, explains his astonishing posthumous power as a symbol of rebellion, anger and political upheaval; peaceful protestors demanding basic human rights: the humble fruit-seller who had a bad day, and couldn’t take it anymore. In the ongoing aftermath of the North African and Middle East revolution that fills our newspapers and television screens, Tarak Ben Ammar, formerly a manager of Michael Jackson’s world tour is planning to make a film about Bouazizi’s life and death. A Kuwaiti businessman has offered $10,000 to buy his cart. A square in Paris is to be named after him. Two thousand years later the ongoing Jesus revolution too is still turning the world upside down. Jesus turned out to be the only beloved son of God, who died that our sins may be forgiven, and that those who believe in him might have eternal life. And for that assurance and promise of that priceless gift we can say with the cheering Palm Sunday Jerusalem crowds. Alleluia!
Amen
Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships.
Wednesday, 23 March 2011
A Saving Face
An Oscar is a little golden god. Colin Firth’s acclaimed role as George VI in the film The Kings Speech won him that little god. In his acceptance speech his face was golden with happiness, shining as the statuette he was proudly yet nervously clutching. Win a Golden Globe – a planet – and you could believe yourself to be a golden god, adored by the whole world. Win yourself a Bafta, as Colin Firth did for his role in the same film, and you get a golden mask.
Golden gods, golden masks, shining faces. What produces a shining face? A golden Oscar perhaps; 15 smiling Welshmen victorious over a Scottish rugby team; Liam Jones from Durham, 2010 BBC boy chorister of the year; Kate Middleton as she approaches her wedding day or Steve Whiteley a heating engineer from North Tawton who hit the jackpot at a meeting at the Exeter racecourse. He won £1.45m on an accumulator, after placing an original bet of just £2. Perhaps we might see shining faces on the peoples of Tunisia and Egypt as they hopefully look forward to a world of security and just relationships. Much better to have a shining face than an Annie Walker glare or a Bet Lynch put down. As my choir musical director says – we sing with sparkling eyes, high cheekbones and smiling faces.
Some people with shining faces exude a presence when they walk into a room. I know the Queen would if she was invited to Roker URC; the Dean of Durham cathedral too has a presence when he comes into the bookshop, his face shines. Ron Dale, a retired preacher tells the tale of a day he attended a lecture given by Professor Joachim Jeremias, a leading world NT scholar renowned for his work on the parables. Ron Dale recounts that 30 years later he had forgotten everything from the Birmingham lecture except for one small detail. Coming from the lecture he held the swing doors for the person he had sensed behind him. To Ron’s astonishment it was Prof Jeremias. As he walked past something happened. Ron Dale looked into his face and as he did so, for the first time in his life, he looked at the sheer burning holiness in the life of another person. So great was the sense of holiness of God in the face and body of Prof. Jeremias he could actually feel heat and light radiating from him. Ron Dale writes that he was struck by his radiance. It was a face almost transparent with love, goodness and grace. It was the face of a man who had spent long hours communing with God, and it showed in his face. It was transfigured with an unearthly radiance. Even now, wrote Dale years later, he could in his mind’s eye still see that face and feel that radiant warmth of love.
In our gospel this morning Matthew tells us that from start to finish the keynote of this Transfiguration story is glory. Jesus’ face shone like the sun and his garments glistened and gleamed like light The Jews well knew the promise of God to the victorious righteous “Their face shall shine as the sun.” No Jew could ever have seen the luminous cloud without thinking of the shechinah, the glory of God resting upon his people. No fewer than three times in eight brief verses there occurs the little interjection: “Behold! Look you!” It is as if Matthew could not even tell the story without a catch of the breath at the sheer staggering wonder of it. But amongst the spectacle of the event the story holds an aspect we mustn't miss. The transfiguration of Jesus is framed in St Matthew by predictions of how he must suffer and die. The Christ whom Peter has recognised will not go up to glory before he suffers pain; or to put it another way, the glory of the transfiguration will turn out to be the glory of his self emptying for us in his death on the cross. A sombre Lenten thought we need to keep in mind as we journey towards in the events in Holy Week.
The story of the Transfiguration is pivotal in St Matthew's Gospel. It's a point of climax when Jesus is revealed for who he is, the one St Matthew wants his readers to know and follow. For a moment, the mists dissolve, and the secret is laid bare: he is disclosed as the anointed one who has come in fulfilment of all that the law and the prophets longed for. In his flesh and blood and in his shining face we see nothing less than Israel's God who had once disclosed himself in another transfiguration at a burning bush and spoken his sacred name. From now on, Matthew’s narrative darkens as it descends towards the passion - but we know what we didn't know before, which is that the man destined to die is none other than the Son of God.
Did you notice that throughout the Christmas and Epiphany season that little word glory appeared again and again? “Glory to God in the highest!” sang the angels, the Gentile kings worshipped and glorified Jesus, Jesus at his baptism was told by his father, “this is my son who I love” - the same message which was spelt out again on Mt Tabor. At the Wedding of Cana, the gospel writer bible tells us - “Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him.” And now the band of three sees Jesus’ face, radiant, shining, shimmering with the light of the glory of God.
St Paul tells us that ‘We see the Glory of God in the face of Jesus” “God who made his light shine in our hearts has brought us the knowledge of glory in the face of Christ.” All three synoptic gospel writers have the story of the Transfiguration recounted in their gospels, with different emphasis. But when we study the Gospel of John we find no story, no record of the transfiguration. Why is that? Because for John Jesus is glorified on the Cross. It is on the Cross that the power and the radiance of God shine forth. And so when St Paul speaks of the glory of God ‘in the face of Jesus’, he is speaking of the glory of God as Jesus dies on the wood of the cross. It is on the Cross we see God’s love powerful and alive, even in the very darkest place, even in the horrifying events that are unfolding in Japan, in North Africa and have occurred in Christ Church, New Zealand.
The First World War chaplain Geoffrey Studdart-Kennedy recalled the occasion, when on the 7 June 1917, he stumbled over a young soldier with a wound in his stomach and a hole in his head. It seemed to him that the boy had disappeared and there in his place lay the Christ on the Cross who cried “inasmuch as you have done it to the least of these my little ones, you have done it to me.” “From that moment on,” he records, “I never saw a battlefield as anything but a crucifix. From that moment on, I have never seen the world as anything but a crucifix. To see the world as a crucifix means that we understand Christ not merely suffered once, but still suffers amongst people afflicted with natural disasters and wars. Christ is with us, suffering with us now, enduring with us our present sufferings and facing tragedy and death with the same trepidation, regret and fear as we do. His glory is the freedom to love, even when we are buried in the darkness of suffering, God is free to love us. That is why we see glory in the face of Jesus Christ.
Last Monday I conducted a funeral service in Durham for a 96 year old lady, Joyce Hart, she was a member and was married at the former Sorely Street Congregational Church. During the service I reminded the mourners of this very same verse - that it was “only in Jesus Christ that we saw the glory and goodness of God fully shining in a human face.” I gently reminded the mourners that it is also true that in the goodness of every human being we can see the face of Jesus Christ, Admittedly faces incomplete, flawed, but nevertheless a mirror of his love. How can we see Jesus in each other’s face – well as I understand it - it is because those who live with Jesus, who are his disciples, their lives begin to echo the life of Christ as Joachim Jeremais did. But also here is church – look around - we grow in wisdom, we reach out like him in healing to the wounded of the world, we love children, we have compassion on the weak and suffering, we make our hearts known to our friends, we take up our crosses, we forgive others and ask to be forgiven. We glimpse all these facets in the faces of those we rub shoulders with day by day, in our places of work, in our families, in our churches, in our communities. When in our lives, in our words and actions, we point to the freedom to love, then we show God’s glory.
When we gather as a congregation this morning, we should see in one another the glory of God. When you look at the person next to you, the glory of God is there! By looking in love at the world and working with one another, we somehow allow glory to come to light - so that for people outside or on the edge of faith they may find their own awareness of the world mysteriously changed by the way we as Christians look at it. God calls us to be at every level agents of transformation - in a ruined and exploited natural environment, in a world of deep divisions and much poverty, and in a Church whose communion can be undermined by fear or suspicion. It is for us to show the love of God to one another by showing that light in our faces. Alas and sadly, those who are still in darkness are those who have not seen love in the face of another person. The deepest darkness, the worst darkness, is to feel that you are not loved. So as we try to show one another the love of God, then we make a light in the darkness; we begin to make it possible for those who live in darkness or despair to see glory. Wherever we are; whatever the difficulty, whatever the challenge before us we are still able to make that light shine. It was Bishop Tom Wright who said “Let’s be like him so that we can speak of him.”
I can't pretend it is easy. Loving and trying to transform the world! Like Peter, I blunder about in the presence of glory: I miss the point by trying to capture it instead of paying attention to what God is doing. The voice from the cloud tells us what we must do. ‘This is my Son, the Beloved: listen to him!'. If we can discern his voice amid the clamour and chatter that bid for our attention; if we will listen and obey and follow, then we can know transfiguration, glimpse glory in our ordinary days. It's no good going in quest for it as if it were the Holy Grail or the Golden Fleece: it must find us. But it will, for his pledge to us is: ‘where I am, there you will be also'. And maybe, just maybe, this service could be that mountain top, that burning bush, that place where we see the glory of the crucified and risen Lord, and know and love him once again.
Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across church partnerships in the synod
Sunday, 13 February 2011
Valentine
A sermon preached by Revd Ray Anglesea at Cromer Avenue United Reformed Church, Gateshead on Sunday 13th February 2011
Matthew 5.21-37; 1 Corinthians 13.1-13
St Valentine's Day tomorrow: and a gift to the preacher, for our thoughts turn to love: The Beatles sang about it, Barbara Cartland, the pink chiffon queen of Romance wrote about it, Sinatra crooned about it, Elvis the King rocked about it, Shakespeare wrote sonnets and Schubert composed Lieder songs about it; servicemen and women laid down their lives because of it and the Chaucer’s Prioress in his Canterbury Tales had her broach inscribed with it. What are we talking about - Love! At my son’s wedding I presumed to offer him some fatherly advice as he looked at his beautiful bride...........from Ronan Keating.........
“The smile on your face lets me know that you need me
There's a truth in your eyes saying you'll never leave me
The touch of your hand says you'll catch me wherever I fall
You say it best, when you say nothing at all!”
And for the those Valentines in serious long term marriages it was Goethe who said that “the human condition is compounded of so much joy and so much sorrow that it is impossible to reckon how much a husband owes a wife or a wife a husband. It is an infinite debt; it can only be paid in eternity.”
Love directs and advises all our relationships, as the Dean of Durham recently explained – “love given, love received, love longed for and love unrequited, love disappointed and love fulfilled; the memory of love and the hope of love; love's endeavour, love's expense, immortal love for ever full, the love that moves the sun and the other stars, God's love.” And as I speak like this I ask myself as a semi retired super-sixty baby boomer whether I want to add to the millions of words spoken about love down the centuries, whether I can add anything?
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Nothing in this world
Could keep me from you!
Roses Are Red
Violets Are Blue
God made Me Pretty
What happened To you?
Well, perhaps I should try. Here’s a start.
The message on St. Valentine's Day which we celebrate tomorrow is simply this – love each other. Love each other - not with the love that depends on chemistry, mood, and feelings – roses, cards and a romantic M&S dinners for two, nor even with the love that depends on the behaviour of others, but love each other with the kind of love that Christ refers to in the reading from the Sermon on the Mount, our gospel lesson from Matthew a couple of weeks ago.
For some the beatitudes are a gospel in a nutshell. Who went up the mountain to bring down the laws of God........? The Ten Commandments....... who later sat down to teach? – Moses. In Matthew’s eyes Jesus is the new Moses – Jesus went up a mountain to sit down to teach the beatitudes. Clifford Longley on a recent BBC Radio 4 Thought for the Day programme quoted President Obama who recently described modern Egyptians as "heirs to an ancient and great civilization." He might well have added "as are we all." And of Friday night fireworks lit the skies of Cairo as protesters in that ancient and great civilization shed tears of joy as they celebrated the end of President Hosni Mubarak's 30 years of power. That same Moses who wrote the Commandments was himself a highly educated Egyptian, raised by a pharaoh's daughter. He would have known about the great experiment with monotheism. He would have known that to get into the Egyptian afterlife the deceased would have to pass a series of tests, which included: "I have done no murder. I have not stolen. I have not set my lips against anyone. I have not lusted after someone else's wife or husband. I have not coveted that which belonged to another." Ring any bells?
Love, murder and revenge are disturbing headlines used to advertise Graham Greene’s new film Brighton Rock, now on general release in local cinemas. Murder, anger, adultery revenge are every day stories on the soaps... look at Tracy Barlow and John Snape from Coronation Street - heaven help us when the new Dallas soap kicks off later this year. Murder, anger, adultery are heavy topics which occupy Matthew’s thoughts and instruction. Matthew that most Jewish of all the gospel writers tells the story of Jesus rooted in the culture and heritage of Israel in organised and orderly ways that he hoped would help Christians to keep the faith and share it; very relevant for us in today’s church that appears to have a menagerie of different opinions. He cared deeply about the mission of the church, was concerned for community, practical matters and was a clear and caring pastor. And here in this section of Matthew’s teaching are some of the most important sections in the whole of the New Testament. No fewer than 5 times does Jesus quote the law in this passage, the Law of Moses, the laws from the Ten Commandments, only to contradict it and to substitute a teaching of his own. In other words Jesus fulfils and goes beyond the Ten Commandments, the Law of Moses, and the sacred texts of the Israelites. The former Bishop of Durham, Tom Wright, writing in his commentary on this passage suggests that Jesus is not so much saying don’t commit murder, adultery and the rest – Jesus is saying that your heart has to be right also, for this is the way to safety and security. It not just what we do it’s what we think we might like to do which is just as important.
In Edinburgh last weekend my wife and I went to see the 2010 psychological thriller film “The Black Swan” directed by Darren Aronofsky and starring Natalie Portman. The plot revolves around a production of Swan Lake by a prestigious New York City ballet company. As is usual with all productions of the ballet, the production requires a ballerina to play both the innocent White Swan and the sensual Black Swan. One dancer, Nina (Portman), is a perfect fit for the White Swan, while Lily (Kunis) has a personality that matches the Black Swan. When the two compete for the parts, Nina finds a dark side to herself. It is not a film I enjoyed.
Like the character of Nina who wanted to be both the White and Black Swan to some extent we all have some sort of split personality; there is part of us which is attracted to good, and part of us that is attracted to evil. One voice incites us to take the forbidden thing; the other voice is forbidding us to take it. Plato likened the soul to a charioteer whose task it was to drive two horses. The one horse was gentle and biddable to the reigns, the other wild, untamed and rebellious. The name of one horse was reason; the other horse was named passion. Life is always a conflict between the demands of the passions and the control of reason. The reason is the leash which keeps the passions in check. But a leash may snap at any time.
Part of growing up as Christians is to realise that tough choices are being asked of us; the choices are real, reflected in our reading this morning. Jesus after all didn’t say “If anyone would come after me they should go with the flow and do what comes naturally.” To love - to change your heart - can often be one of those hard choices – this is not a wishy - washy sentimental love. It is the love that goes beyond what seems right according to the letter of the law, and enters into the Spirit of what God wants for us, the love that enters into feeding others, into healing others, into showing grace to others, into giving peace to others, the love that values others, regardless of who they are or what they have or have not done. Love is total - it is unconditional - or it is not love at all. Think of the words of Jesus we heard read a few minutes ago. They were words addressed to a people used to compromising, going with the flow, to altering love's demands as they are found in the law of God so that those demands would be easier to fulfil.
To be sure there are no loopholes to be found in Jesus' words. No compromises, no deals, no escape hatches. What Jesus does is crystallize the issues involved in loving God and our neighbours so that we can know - without doubt – just where we stand, and exactly what we need to aim for. There is a story about an old pilgrim making his way to the Himalayan Mountains in the bitter cold of winter when it began to rain. An inn keeper said to him, "How will you ever get there in this kind of weather my good man?" The old man answered cheerfully - "My heart got there first, so it's easy for the rest of me to follow." The gospel of Jesus Christ teaches that we can meet all the demands of love that are expressed in the law in one way – and only in one way - we can do so if with our hearts we go there first.
If Paul’s words from his letter to the Corinthian churches are to mean anything, it should surely be that our love for God is re-awakened - or rather and put in a different way - our awareness of how God so loves us. Our lives are journeys in love, a new discovery of it each day as we walk towards heaven. Our journey is a daily transfiguration, a life-changing encounter with the beloved Son whose voice we have heard and whom we love because he first loved us. Without love we are nothing says St Paul. But once touched by it we glimpse glory, we see into the face of the divine. Life is not the same after that. What we once thought it was worth burning out for we are learning to see in a different way. Like the journey of the magi and their return home, we read about at the beginning of this Epiphany season, we are no longer at ease with these old gods. The epiphany we have glimpsed has lit up something within us, made us see the world in a new way. We feel and know that we want to turn away from dead things to seek after the living God. It is disquieting and disturbing; but it is transfiguring too as our gospel reading later in Lent will tell us.
And finally, the prayer I used before the sermon “Come Holy Spirit of God, pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love,” is from an old and beautiful prayer in the church’s liturgy. The reading is Paul's great hymn to love in the 13th chapter of the First Letter to the Corinthians: ‘now abideth faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love'. The ancient prays: ‘send thy Holy Spirit and pour into our hearts that most excellent gift of love, the very bond of peace and of all virtues without which whosoever liveth is counted dead before thee'. ‘Love', caritas, the love that never fails because it is divine.
Tomorrow - Valentine's Day – the martyred saint - I urge you - let your hearts go - love God and love each other as deeply as you can. When you do - you will find, no matter how many mistakes you may make on the way, that goodness and blessedness will blossom along your path, and all that God has planned will come to pass. Amen.
Revd Ray Anglesea is a self supporting minister working across synod church partnerships
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