by CCW | 23 April 2020 13:08
“April is the cruellest month,” T.S. Eliot says at the beginning of his poem, The Waste Land. He is playing on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which invokes April as a time of pilgrimage, of rebirth and renewal.
We find ourselves, I am afraid, in a wasteland here in Nova Scotia after the rampage of madness in the mass shooting that has killed so many people in one of the rural parts of our province. It is heart-breaking and shocking, a reminder of the radical nature of evil. We confront dark and difficult things. How do we face them?
By being recalled to who we are in the sight of God. “The deepest longing of the soul is for that which is greater than itself,” the great Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus teaches (3rd. cent. AD). Such an idea has its roots in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle and carries over into the spiritual imaginary of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions of the Mediterranean cultures and from there into Europe and beyond. God “governs us as masters of ourselves,” Aquinas observes a thousand years later. It is when we forget or deny such ideas that we become empty. Such is nihilism out of which comes such mindless madness, desolation, death and destruction that has turned Nova Scotia into a wasteland.
Yet providentially, it seems, the lessons in Chapel this week speak to these dark and difficult times. Psalm 23, the so-called Shepherd’s Psalm, begins with the idea of God as Shepherd. “The Lord is my shepherd.” Jerome who translated the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek New Testament into Latin (4th/5th cent. AD), actually provided two translations of the Psalms into Latin, one based on the Hebrew, the other on the Greek Septuagint resulting in “The Lord rules me” or “the Lord shepherds me.” Aquinas wisely notes that “He who shepherds, rules,” a profound image about the true exercise of power that is not about domination and destruction but about building up and caring for those whom you “rule” or better “shepherd.” A lesson for leaders everywhere.
The two Latin versions vary in another respect. One speaks about walking in the midst of the shadow of death, the other in the valley of death. Miles Coverdale’s 1535 translation of the Psalms became an English classic and has remained embedded in the classical Books of Common Prayer. With a wonderful poetic sensibility, Coverdale joined together valley and shadow to produce the memorable phrase, “the valley of the shadow of death.” We all walk through “the valley of the shadow of death,” to be sure. But the psalmist says “I will fear no evil.” Why? Because “thou art with me.” Who? God. The Lord. And that makes all the difference.
This argues for a principle that is greater than the nothingness of evil. Holy Week and Easter are about how God is in the midst of our suffering world and that the power of God’s love is greater than all and every form of human evil in every age. In the midst of “the valley of the shadow of death,” there is comfort and life. “Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.” That comfort is about being strengthened by being recalled to the true and deepest longings of the human heart and about being shepherded by the God who governs us as masters of ourselves. That is our challenge right now.
Along with Psalm 23, we also read the story of Christ the Good Shepherd. Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd and tells us its radical meaning. “The Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep.” Love is sacrificial; it gives of itself and perhaps never more so than in our times of need.
The message of Easter is that the tomb becomes the womb of new life. The Resurrection is born out of the Passion. It doesn’t eclipse the past but provides us with a new way to think about things. One of the wonderful stories of the Resurrection is the story of Mary Magdalene. The first to discover the stone rolled away from the tomb she ran to tell the others who, in turn, ran to the tomb. But Mary also returns to the tomb in grief and sorrow, weeping. She sees two angels in the tomb who ask her, “Why weepest thou?” “Because they have taken away my Lord and I know not where they have laid him,” she says. She came seeking a corpse but there was no body in the tomb. Turning about she sees Jesus but does not recognise him. He asks her “Why weepest thou? Whom do you seek?” What are the deepest longings of our souls? Somehow she mistakes him for the gardener not expecting the living Christ. Jesus simply says, “Mary.” She replies “Rabboni,” meaning master or teacher. Then Jesus says something extraordinary. “Touch me not.”Noli me tangere.
It is a most touching scene, paradoxically, about not touching. What he means is don’t cling to me, don’t hold me back, don’t impede me, don’t keep me from my purpose. He is on a mission. He is the mission. “I have come that they may have life and have it more abundantly” he said before identifying himself as the Good Shepherd. He sets Mary in motion. She is sent, apostle apostolorum, the apostle to the apostles, for she is the first witness to the Resurrection. She came weeping but left rejoicing. Such is the resurrection in us. Jesus tells her to go to the disciples and tell them that “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” There is both a sense of the universality of God in these words, of God for all people and not just for some, and a wonderful sense of intimacy. The Risen Christ gathers us into his love, having gone “through the valley of the shadow of death” for us and with us.
Such is the comfort and strength of these stories. Mary Magdalene’s story has especially inspired the artists down throughout the centuries. I think for instance of Giotto’s representation of this story in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua or Fra Angelico’s fresco in the Priory of San Marco in Florence. Fra Angelico depicts this scene as in a garden, a paradise; the wasteland transformed. But both Giotto and Fra Angelico show the Risen Christ with the marks of the crucifixion. The past of sin and evil is not ignored or eclipsed; it is transformed by love. Christ’s “touch me not” to Mary is about her being raised up into a new and deeper understanding of Christ, not clinging to the past nor buried in grief but set in motion towards others.
It is about reaching out and touching one another even when we cannot touch or be with one another physically. She is raised up into a spiritual and intellectual understanding which does not deny the physical and the material but belongs to its redemption, to grace and new life even in the midst of the wastelands of our nihilism. She is set in motion and so may we towards one another in prayer and care, in loving compassion. It is about letting the lessons of the Resurrection live in us. Living the learning.
(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain, English & ToK teacher
Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2020/04/23/kes-chapel-reflection-week-of-23-april-2/
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