Article
- Date:
- Sunday 4th November 2007
- Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- Evensong
- Readings:
- Isaiah 65:17-22; 66
Sermon
"They will come and see my glory".
As the days shorten and the nights grow longer, we turn to Isaiah. Unlike many of the books of Prophesy in the Old Testament which consist almost entirely of doom and gloom (not, incidentally the case with the eponymous Jeremiah whose book contains a good deal of humour) with an artificially optimistic epilogue tacked on by the copyist of a later age, Isaiah is a much more dramatically balanced collection which, most scholars now agree, is made up of three parts written down at different stages of Jewish history. Chapters 40-65 are thought to have been written by what we call Isaiah the Third near or at the end of the Babylonian exile. It is here that we find the transformation in the Jewish outlook from a rather flat, grim monotheism very much rooted in the day-to-day to the birth of the idea of future salvation in the person of a Messiah.
What the Jews brought out of exile with them was a sense of hope. This did not mean that they were less venal or more faithful, just as being Christian does not make us more moral than our atheist friends, but it gave their religious observance a sense of looking forward which was reflected at the time of Jesus in the Pharisaic belief in life after death. This sense of what we would call hope illumines the religious sensibility of Judaism after the exile, making it quite distinct from earlier collections; you might think about the difference between the quality of light in, say, Botticelli and Caravaggio or the bloom of the poetry in Shakespeare compared with the mystery plays or the other worldliness of Bach compared with folk music.
Our concentration on Isaiah at this time of year feels right as well as fitting the Church's liturgical year. When we reach for our Bible on a grey morning or in lamp light we want something with depth. We don't mind reading accounts of kings and thinking of the more slender prophets on a warm Summer morning or as the light turns to gold in the mid Summer twilight but Autumn requires something particularly sustaining to carry us through until the turning of the year.
To this natural symmetry we should, of course, acknowledge the fitness of Isaiah for our Advent reflections; but today we are pointed in a slightly different direction. Our Reading, the culmination of the Third Isaiah, coincides with the Feast of All Saints and so the hope of the prophet for the Messiah underpins the hope we can all enjoy through our celebration of the saints.
The idea of sainthood is frequently misunderstood by Christians who swallow atheist propaganda about us. I said a few minutes ago that being Christian does not make us morally superior to our atheist peers but it is a charge which they lay at our door with the obvious rejoinder that we fail to live up to this expectation and that, therefore, religion is of no use. Likewise, we tend to use the word saint (as in the patience of a saint) to mean a person who lived a superior moral life to our own. Of course we don't know whether this is true. Only God knows the hand each of us is dealt and how we play it. But what the lives of the saints supply is a variety of reactions to our hope of salvation based on faith in Jesus Christ's salvific promise, under written irreversibly in the Resurrection. The saints help us to make some kind of reality out of the very unreal promise of eternal life, unreal because it is impossible for imperfect creatures fully to understand the idea of perfection. We are necessarily imperfect because that is the only condition in which we can exercise the free will to love God, the purpose for which we were created, but our hope is that in exercising our choice to love we will, consequently, be enfolded back into the perfection of the creator from whom we came. The saints give us a glimpse of how that life of hope can be lived in an imperfect world.
Like those among us who cause least trouble, the true lives of saints are frequently distorted by panegyric. Those people we call saints are, more often than not, pious doormats who would not say boo to a goose and who certainly would not stand up to bullies, racists or blasphemers. The real lives of real saints certainly did not consist in the pious and indifferent avoidance of controversy. For all its tendency to authoritarian centralism and resentment of challenge, the Church of Rome rarely rewards toadies with sainthood and, frequently, after a lapse of time in which it struggles with its collective conscience, recognises the worth of many who have, in its own dogmatic eyes, been trouble makers.
If we look for a moment at the kind of people that we would make saints if we gave ourselves the power we would think of Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mother Theresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the victims of genocide, terrorism and civil war in the murderous 20th Century. None of those I mentioned led straightforward lives; none of them were who they were because they said their daily prayers, read the Bible and kept their heads down. None of them resorted to the platitude of naturally conservative English public life that religion and politics should not mix. None of them would have passed a purity test. All of them, in the world they found, had to start from where they were, confronted more often than not between a choice between two or more evils. Above all else, saints of every age have been courageous, not because of an egocentric drive (although you could make a strong case for St. Paul) but because they came to see that, living in the shadow of the cross, made ever darker by the light of the Resurrection, they could do no other.
In thinking about today and the period of waiting for the birth of Jesus, the thought I want us to take away is that this courage is not spontaneous. Like almost all good writing, it is achieved by regular, hard self schooling and not by some inspirational call from above. So when I seemed to deride piety, prayer and the reading of scripture I was not; I was pointing out that this is not enough on its own; it must be undertaken with a fierce adhesion to the objective of helping us to ground our spiritual ambition in the world where we live. If we read the story of Ruth but then casually allow people to insult exiles in our midst, our reading has been in vain. If we pray the Magnificat every sunday, as we have just done, but then fill ourselves with good things and send the poor empty away, we have prayed in vain. If we have lit our candle to the Virgin but sloppily designated the children in our community as feral, our piety has been in vain.
We shall all, says Isaiah, see the Lord's glory. We shall indeed, even the weakest of us; but the reality of that hope, foreseen in Isaiah, irreversibly confirmed in the Resurrection, places a responsibility on all Christians to punch above their weight, simply because of what we know. It is not a question of doing better than our peers but of trying harder.
We will see His glory.
Prayers
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
Lord God, Heavenly Father, we see your glory in the physical and spiritual gifts which sustain us in holiness:
Lord of The Saints:
- 1. We thank you for the inexpressible hope in creation which we squandered but which was promised in the incarnation, secured in the Crucifixion, under-written in the Resurrection of Your son and which is sustained by the Holy Spirit; help us to live that hope in word and action, in silent prayer and in the companionship of your church, in care for ourselves and for others; and may we remember how to affirm
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever. - We thank you for the Queen of all the saints who worship you in heaven, for the mother of your son, Our lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, for her humility and courage, for her steadfastness and suffering, for her motherly intercession; help us to be like her in all we do, seeing her virtues as human and not confined to women so that we may all temper our ambition with compassion, our guidance with gentleness, our justice with mercy and our striving with patience; and may we remember how to touch
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
- We thank you for the apostles, saints and martyrs who are gathered around your throne, for those who loved the gift of your creation, whose blood was mingled with Our saviour's blood, whose spirit was mingled with the Holy Spirit; Help us to learn from those who went before how we might find more ways to be closer to you through worship, thanksgiving, service and silence; and may we remember how to praise
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
- We thank you for the pattern of the saints, for their courage and calm, for their restlessness and wisdom, for their obedience and rebellion, for their contemplation and prophesy; help us to remember that we may be like them as vibrant children, warm within your heart, created to love freely, redeemed to love safely, sanctified to love fully; and may we remember how to give thanks
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
- We thank you for our pilgrimage in Grace, for all who walk the way, for all who minister to those that stumble, for those who, having stumbled, start again, for those who walk ahead and those who walk behind, for those who sustain and serve, cheer and comfort; help us to rally when the world seems bleak, to praise your name to drive away the dark, to raise your light aloft for all to see, to say your name when others turn away; and may we remember how to pray
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
- We thank you for all who have been transformed from The Church Militant to the Church Triumphant, who have been enfolded back into the mystery of love, for those whose lives are jewels of the church, for those whose lives are ornaments of home, for those whose lives have gone without a trace; help us to seek ourselves in heavenly light made brighter by the shadow of the Cross, to hear ourselves in what you say to us in holy scripture, and to know ourselves in you through the Sacrament of the Eucharist: and may we remember how to remember.
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
May our earthly vision of your glory be fully realised when we are called into your heavenly presence. Amen.