Day: July 9, 2023

“At thy word”

“‘Take my camel, dear’, said my Aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.” It is a famous opening line from Rose Macaulay’s novel The Towers of Trebizond, an Anglo-Catholic classic. There are also great ending lines, too. “Grace is everywhere” or “all is grace” (tout est grâce) ends George Bernanos’ The Diary of a Country Priest. There are beginnings and endings that evoke a whole pattern understanding and which illustrate the character of our lives in media res, in the midst of things. And sometimes, mirabile dictu, there are opening and ending lines which go together and complement each other like what we have with this morning’s Epistle and Gospel.

The Epistle reading from 1st Peter begins with the strong phrase, “be ye all of one mind” and ends with “sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts.” The Gospel reading from Luke begins with the strong and compelling image of “the people press[ing] upon Jesus to hear the word of God” and ends with Simon Peter, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, and others “for[saking] all and follow[ing] him.” In each case everything in between is held together by these phrases. In the Epistle, what is in between is an exhortation to a godly life against the explicit forms of wickedness which so easily arise not only in our hearts, but also in the forms of suffering and persecution, terror and trouble, fear and anxiety that are part and parcel of human experience in a our common life together. In the Gospel, what is in between is the equally compelling image of the empty frustrations that belong to human experience: “ we have toiled all the night,” Simon Peter says, “and have taken nothing.” We have but laboured in vain, it seems.

“Be ye all of one mind,” Peter tells us. But what is that one mind? Is it mere unanimity regardless of what one is agreed about? Surely not. Peter is talking about the mind of Christ for he goes on to describe the qualities of the love of Christ towards us which must become the form of his life within us. Such is sanctification. But as the Gospel reminds us that is not simply about our doing, a human enterprise. It is and can only be the work of God’s grace in us. “Apart from me you can do nothing,” Jesus tells us.

Being of one mind is not simply about consensus. It is about truth as life in us corporately and individually. Within state and church, within society and parish, we can be of one mind about things which are wrong and unethical, for example, or we can arrive at a good and fine decision but in questionable and coercive ways. Do we not all with one mind cry out “crucify him, crucify him” in the drama and spectacle of Holy Week?

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