KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 23 October
admin | 23 October 2019You are standing on holy ground
“Put off your shoes from your feet; for the place where you are standing is holy ground.” What do we mean by holy spaces? Morning after morning we meet in Chapel. It is “holy ground.” Why? Because of what Exodus 3 presents to us. It is, we might say, the quintessential story for the understanding of sacred or holy spaces.
It would be hard to overestimate the significance of the story of ‘the burning bush’ in which God reveals himself to Moses not only as “the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” but, more importantly, as “I Am Who I Am,” the universal principle of all reality, of the being and the knowing of all things, we might say, philosophically speaking. Here is the defining moment for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. What is that? The principle of ethical monotheism.
We are going to spend some time with the Book of Exodus. Not only does the idea of ‘exodus’ belong to the project of education – the idea of our going out from ourselves into a larger understanding of things – but the book itself is, I suggest, an ethical treatise to be considered alongside Plato’s Republic and Aristotle’s Ethics. In a world where some political leaders think they are above the law, we need to reclaim an understanding of the ethical upon which law fundamentally depends. The ethical is about what is the good from which we might begin to determine what is right to do. The legal depends upon the ethical and not the other way around. The Book of Exodus teaches us much about the ethical and connects to a whole world of philosophical and religious thinking about what is good and what is right.
The story of the burning bush is definitive for Jews, Christians, and Muslims. It is about ‘Revelation,’ the idea that things are made known to us through what is seen and heard so as to be understood. Here we have a story which is the premise and presupposition of the Genesis story of creation. A bush burns and yet is not consumed. That is not natural. Exactly. That is the whole point. It is entirely about revealing the prior principle upon which the world as any sort of intelligible reality ultimately depends. God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush to reveal himself, not just in terms of particular and tribal identities – read our current identity politics – but in terms of something utterly universal, the famous ‘name’ of God as “I Am Who I Am.”
We come to things universal through what is particular. The tendenz of our age is to focus on the particular, upon the politics of identity, which paradoxically undermines a deeper understanding of our humanity and only serves to divide us from one another. The idea of holy spaces is about the making known of things universal that elevate us beyond the immediate and the particular. We are part of something greater.
How do we come to this defining moment in Exodus? Moses, after all, has been raised as an Egyptian, named as Moses by Pharaoh’s daughter. How does he become the founding figure of Israel, of Judaism? In what precedes this story, Moses sees an Egyptian beating up an Hebrew. He intervenes and kills the Egyptian. Then he sees two Hebrews fighting one another and again he intervenes, only to be challenged about ‘what makes you think you are the boss of us?’ The take-away point is about law, about a principle that transcends tribal and local loyalties, that transcends mere bullying, that transcends the politics of power. This is one of the ways in which Exodus speaks to our current confusions. It opens us out to a transcendent principle upon which law depends and which shapes and informs our individual response to the questions of our day.
“I Am Who I Am,” God says to Moses. It is the defining moment, the defining truth. It is very much about how we come to the universal. Such is Revelation. Something is made known through the things of the world without that principle being collapsed into the world.
Just so here in the Chapel. The story of the School has to do, undeniably, with a certain history. The school’s history is Christian and Anglican. Through that particular identity we seek to grasp a deeper understanding of our humanity. We stand on holy ground in this holy space. This moves me to speak about some of the things which you see and which surround you in the Chapel. I call your attention to the windows in the nave which articulate a narrative of history and education through which we are opened out to truths transcendent and ethical.
Just consider the window which depicts Augustine of Canterbury, the first Archbishop of Canterbury. This is about ‘English Christianity’ and in turn connects to the specific cultural history of the School. He was sent to England by Gregory the Great in the sixth century. The story is that Gregory saw in the slave market in Rome, blond haired youths. He asked who they were and was told they were ‘Angles’, one of the tribes in Britain. Gregory memorably said, “non angles, sed angeli” – not Angles but Angels. He sent Augustine to bring the Gospel to the Angles, to the British Isles. Then in the back corner of the nave we have an image of St. Theodore of Tarsus, a Greek-speaking Archbishop of Canterbury not so long after Augustine. Greek speaking! Interesting. Then we move to the Anselm window.Anselm is a most attractive and important figure of the Medieval world. He wrote in Latin and was an important scholar as well as Archbishop of Canterbury in the twelfth century.These windows remind us of the importance of a classical education that is also part of our School’s history.
Next is Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, one of the three great contributors to the development of early modern English. He is the architect of the Book of Common Prayer which, together with the works of Shakespeare and the King James Version of the Bible, has contributed enormously to the English language and expression. Below the feet of Anselm and Cranmer there are inscriptions which capture their intellectual significance in the exodus journey of education. “Fides quaerens intellectum” is a famous Anselmian remark that takes us back to Plato. ‘Faith seeking understanding’. Below the feet of Cranmer is a wonderful line from one of his prayers: “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest.” It signals an approach to learning. It is all about taking a hold of what is being revealed and shown to us. It changes us. Such is, we might say, the real ‘ethical’ imperative. Such is the holy ground of our learning.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy