Category: KES Chapel Weekly Reflections

He was known of them in the breaking of the bread

April is the cruelest month of all, T.S. Eliot averred in The Waste Land, making a deliberate contrast with Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales that “when April with his showers sweet …then do folk long to go on pilgrimage.” But there is a journey, a pilgrimage of the soul through good and ill, a pilgrimage of the understanding, snow and wind and ice notwithstanding. It is all about the Resurrection and it speaks to the sufferings and the sorrows that darken our hearts especially at the loss of lives such as those of the Humboldt Broncos hockey team. We remembered them by name at the Wednesday assembly, placing them and the hearts of those who mourn and are in sorrow with God. Such, too, belongs to the Resurrection.

It gives us a way to face the hard and difficult things of human experience, the things of suffering and death. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb in grief and sorrow only to encounter the Risen Christ; “Touch me not,” he says to her. Doubting Thomas, so-called, encounters the Risen Christ behind closed doors; “reach hither thy finger, and behold my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust in into my side; and be not faithless, but believing,” Christ says. And all in the same chapter! Touch not and touch! Nothing affirms so completely the way in which the Resurrection speaks to the radical nature of human individuality and to the realities of the human body, to human experience, and, most importantly, to the forms of human knowing; yet without being collapsed into them. We are raised up to behold things in a new light, to find grace and consolation even in the midst of our sorrows and griefs. The Resurrection strengthens us.

The Resurrection accounts all turn on one fundamental principle: Christ is the great teacher of the Resurrection whose encounter with us overcomes every paradox, every contradiction. We are challenged to see the past in a new way, to see ourselves in a new way, to think the body in a new way. One of the distinctive features of the Resurrection is that it is inescapably a bodily event. It happens in the body and provides us with a new way to think about the dignity and truth of our humanity. Our bodies matter; they are part and parcel of our individual identity, part and parcel of the truth of our humanity as found in God.

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Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia!

Christos Anesté! Alleluia! Alleluia! Alethos Aneste! Alleluia! Alleluia! It is the ancient Christian proclamation and greeting at Easter. Christ is Risen! Alleluia! Alleluia! He is Risen indeed! Alleluia! Alleluia! And such too is a little lesson in Greek and Hebrew!

What is it all about? It is all about the Resurrection. Easter, itself an ancient Germanic word for the Goddess of Spring, has been co-opted for the spiritual spring of our souls. “All the winter of our sins, long and dark is flying” and suddenly there is an entirely new way to think about reality and about our humanity, about death and life.

The Resurrection changes everything. It means that death is no longer the final statement. Death itself has been changed, a point which John Donne makes very clear in his famous sonnet, Death Be Not Proud. Death is not “mighty and dreadful;” it is not the master of our lives. It is instead “slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men.” Death shall be no more; death is dead. Good Friday marks the death of death with God’s death in Christ on the Cross. Easter or the Pascha, the term used in other cultures that refers to the new Passover from death to life in Christ, celebrates new birth, new life; in short, a new creation.

The Resurrection makes no sense apart from the Passion of Christ and vice-versa. That, too, is part of the radical meaning of the Resurrection of Christ. Something new and comforting, a blessing even, is found in the suffering. And so we are given a new way to think about the realities of the human situation with respect to sin and sorrow, pain and death. It is not nothing but neither is it everything. So, too, with respect to our bodily reality. Our bodies are not nothing but neither are they everything. The Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of our bodies as being an integral part of our human identity and personality.

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Standing afar off, beholding these things

What things? The things of the Passion of Christ. Holy Week is the spectacle of our betrayals within the greater spectacle of God’s love without which we cannot behold these things.

Palm Sunday to Easter is really one long, continuous liturgy. We immerse ourselves in the Passion. In the classical Anglican understanding, that means all four of the accounts of the Passion by each of the four evangelists. It is an act of remembering in a very intense way what belongs to the Passion of Christ.

Passion here means being acted upon. Christ wills to be acted upon, to be delivered into our hands. Holy Week presents us with the whole range of human emotions in all of their disorder and disarray, in all of their confusion and uncertainty. We confront ourselves in our encounter with God in Christ and especially in his sufferings of which our sins are the real cause. The point is to find ourselves in the crowds which circle around Christ and his cross. We go from greeting Christ in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem with the shouts of Hosanna to the deeply disturbing cries of Crucify, Crucify. These are our contradictions, our confusions. Christ’s crucifixion shows us what they literally look like.

The cross is absolutely central. That is often a difficult concept for the contemporary world which is more inclined to see it as a symbol of cruelty and hate. The point of Holy Week in its concentration on the Passion of Christ is to see the cross as the symbol of love and forgiveness, of reconciliation and hope. By beholding the things of the Passion we participate in the Passion and its meaning for us in our lives. It is a great check upon our pride and presumption, upon the ways in which we get so caught up in ourselves and lose our very humanity.

The narratives are extremely intense and thought-provoking in the way in which they reveal things about ourselves in our “thoughts, words, and deeds” but in such a way that we are not destroyed by what we see about ourselves. They provide no place or occasion for complacency or self-righteousness. We are changed in some sense by what we see, or, at the very least, there is that possibility.

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God sent me before you to preserve life

It is a powerful and moving scene. “Joseph could not control himself before all those who stood by him,” and so he sends everyone away from his presence except for his brothers. He makes himself known to them. “I am Joseph, your brother.” It is a beautiful scene of reconciliation. We can feel the intensity of the moment and even more, the distress and dismay of his brothers. For in seeing Joseph, the brother whom they betrayed and thought was dead, they confront their own sin and evil. They confront themselves. And yet that is the good news and the real power of this remarkable narrative.

This week in Chapel we have continued with the story of Joseph. On Monday and Tuesday, we heard about the second journey of the brothers to Egypt to get grain, this time with their youngest brother, Benjamin, with them. Joseph and Benjamin are the two brothers from the same mother, Rachel. Joseph had not yet revealed himself to his brothers but sent them on their way with grain in the sacks and unbeknowst to them, their money. But in Benjamin’s sack, he had placed his silver cup. They leave but immediately, Joseph sends a servant after them to say, “Why have you returned evil for good? Why have you stolen my silver cup?” They are brought back to Joseph to face the consequences, knowing that if anything happens to Benjamin it will cause immeasurable sorrow to their father, Jacob.

Jacob is also Israel – one who strives with God. In a way, the story of Joseph reveals something of the true nature of our humanity’s struggles with God. The silver cup is an intriguing device and one which will have its antecedents in history and culture, particularly in terms of the Jewish Passover and the story of Christ at the last supper and the later significance of the chalice, the cup of the Passover. Christ will be betrayed at supper by Judas. And yet, that scene also marks the institution of the central Christian service of the Holy Eucharist, Mass, Holy Communion, or the Lord’s Supper – all different terms recalling the same event. The chalice, the cup, takes on a symbolic significance.

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Speak what we feel

Shakespeare’s tragedy, King Lear, ends with the words “speak what we feel, not what we ought to say.” Yet sometimes it is impossible to say what we feel, to put words to our feelings. And there may be times, too, when we what we feel should not be spoken.

In Chapel in these last two weeks of the bleak mid-winter, we have reading from the story of Joseph and his brothers in The Book of Genesis. An outstanding narrative, it comprises the last thirteen chapters of Genesis. All that we have been able to do is to focus on some of the highlights of this remarkable story. It is challenging, to be sure, and, yet, like all forms of great literature, such narratives speak to our hearts and minds. They teach us something about what it means to feel deeply and to think profoundly about ourselves and our dealings with one another.

The story of Joseph and his brothers, simply put, is a story of betrayal and forgiveness, of the triumph of love over sin and evil. That seems pretty commonplace and as such misses the real intensity of the story and the way in which we are drawn into the story such that there is the possibility of our feeling deeply and profoundly the nature of the contradictions in our own hearts and minds. The story too contributes to our appreciation and understanding of the Christian story of Christ’s betrayal and crucifixion.

The story plums the depths and the heights of our humanity. Joseph is the favoured son of Jacob, also known as Israel, “one who strives with God.” In a way, this story shows us something about what it means to strive with God such that goodness overcomes sin and evil. But that means confronting sin and evil in ourselves. In the story, the other brothers of Joseph, all the sons of Joseph albeit from different wives, resent him because he is the favourite son of their father. In other words, they are moved by the ugliest and most destructive of the seven deadly sins in the later Christian taxonomy of sin, the sin of envy.

Nothing is more destructive of life in community than envy. It embodies our fear of not having something which another says and wanting to have it for ourselves at their expense. Even more, it is our refusal to rejoice in the good of another. That leads to the will or desire to lash out and even destroy those whom we envy. It is a most insidious and destructive evil in our souls: to hate the good of another because we fear that we have been excluded.

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“They hated him yet more for his dreams and for his words”

Lent is a serious season of focussed discipline which has its parallels in the traditions of the other world’s religions, like Ramadan, for example, in Islam. The term, Lent, derives from an old English word for the lengthening of the days, something which we have been seeing throughout February, especially with the increasing progress and power of the sun. Late March will bring us to the spring equinox in terms of the seasons of nature and to Holy Week and Easter in terms of the Christian faith.

In the Christian understanding, we are invited to “the observance of a Holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance, by prayer, fasting, and self-denial, and by reading and meditation upon God’s holy Word.” There are things which we learn about ourselves and one another as well as about God through the Scriptures. The Scriptures read in the Chapel, either from the Hebrew Scriptures which Christians know as the Old Testament or from the New Testament, challenge us about how we think about ourselves and one another and our relation to the world and God. They do so through a rich variety of literary forms of expression.

This Thursday and Friday we have embarked upon a brief consideration of a wonderful narrative sequence in the later chapters of The Book of Genesis. They are about Joseph and his brothers. They are the sons of Jacob, also known as Israel after his ‘wrestling’ with God (or an angel) and being renamed Israel. It means one who strives with God. Lent, too, is about our striving with God – not against God! I am aware of certain atheist groups (churches?!) that have Lenten programmes as well such as ‘giving up God for Lent’! But the story of Joseph and his brothers is a powerful story about the destructive nature of envy, about evil in the form of betrayal but even more about how conscience is convicted and about how good comes out of evil. The story as such has some interesting parallels to the story of Christ’s Passion. In both we confront the nature of human evil and the greater power of God’s truth and love.

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Where are our hearts?

Love is certainly in the air, especially in the providential and yet paradoxical conjunction of Valentine’s Day and Ash Wednesday this year. We are being challenged to think more carefully and more deeply about love. “In faith, I do not love thee with mine eyes,” Shakespeare says in one of his celebrated love sonnets, “for they in thee a thousand errors note/ But ‘tis my heart that loves what they despise,/ who, in despite of view, is pleased to dote.” And not just our eyes, but our ears, our tongues; indeed all five sense and all five wits, find failings and faults in our loves. Our senses are not the means or the ends of our loving. It is our hearts. Where are our hearts? This is the question which the Gospel of Ash Wednesday raises, reminding us that “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.” It is really a question about our loves, both what we love or desire and how we love.

The poet and preacher, John Donne observes in a poem celebrating marriage that “fire ever doth aspire, And makes all like it self, turnes all to fire, / But ends in ashes.” His point about love and about marriage is that it is not wanted that it should end in ashes. God seeks something more for us.

Ash Wednesday marks the beginning of Lent, a beginning not an ending of the pilgrimage of love. We begin with ashes. It is not wanted that we should end in ashes. Ashes are the proverbial and biblical symbol of repentance which is always about our turning back to God in love from whom we have turned away in sin.. They are part and parcel of the project of penitence. “New and contrite hearts” are “created and made in us,” but only through “the lamenting of our sins and the acknowledging of our wickedness.” That can only happen through humility?

We are turned to the dust of creation in the words that belong to the Imposition of Ashes, the words of the Penitential Service. “Remember O Man, that dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return,” words which are said at The Imposition of Ashes. Note the connection between words and actions. We are reminded of the dust out of which we have been formed, the dust of creation which connects us to every other living thing. And the ashes? They remind us of our sins and follies which in acknowledging signals that we seek something more. There is something more than dust and ashes in the mystery of Lent.

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Love itself is knowing.

Along with the winter winds and rain, sleet and snow, thaws and freezes, there is something else which is in the air of February. Love.

What do we mean by love? How do we think about love? Can we think about it or, better yet, how can we not think about love. Is it simply a chemical? Is it merely a biological urge? It is something erotic and physical? Or do we think of it in terms of romanticism and sentimentality? How do we think love?

There is a rich tradition of thinking about love in the discourses of religious philosophy. In other words, there is a theology of love. Frequently in Chapel, the service begins with a Scripture sentence from the Gospel according to St. John. “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God.” In the Jewish Scriptures, too, there is a rich and wonderful seam of love poems that reflect on God’s relation to his creation.

One of the most remarkable books of the Jewish Scriptures is what is variously called The Song of Songs, The Canticle of Canticles, or The Song of Solomon. It is a compilation of erotic and sensual love poems spanning many centuries before being set down in its present form about the 3rd century BC. It never mentions God but has been received in the Jewish understanding as depicting the nature of God’s relation towards and with the people of Israel. Intimate and evocative, it is full of famous and memorable phrases about love and has contributed to a rich tradition of thinking about love in ways that go beyond the erotic and the sensual much like Plato’s dialogue The Symposium. There the operative word is eros and yet that word, so erotically and sexually charged, leads us on an upward journey of education, leading us to the Form of the Good.

The Song of Songs has been viewed at times in the Christian tradition as part of the theology of amor, to use another word for love. Not a very long book, it nonetheless inspired Bernard of Clairvaux in the 12th century to give a series of eighty-six sermons on various passages of The Song of Songs to the monastic community of the Cistercian order. It is a kind of treatise on love and reminds us that love is an essential feature of intellectual and spiritual communities such as our School. It belongs, in other words, to the cultivation of a culture of learning. It is about the love of learning without which our schools become merely factories producing automatons, chained in little cubicles, enslaved to the digital economy.

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A light to lighten the Gentiles

Light is such a powerful and important religious and philosophical image and one which pervades even our secular culture in its exuberances and its despair. Candlemas is the popular name for a very complex story and set of feasts that belong to early February in the life of the Christian Church. Candlemas – a mass of candles – belongs to the Feast of the Presentation of Christ and the Purification of Mary. A double-barrelled feast, it speaks to the deeper meaning of our humanity in union with God. It marks the transition from light to life, from the light of Christmas to the life of Easter, to the overcoming of darkness and its parallel in the conquering of death.

Candlemas marks the first time that Christ comes to Jerusalem. It happens forty days after his birth, in the constructed time sequences of the Church, and so is celebrated now on February 2nd. No mention of groundhogs, I am afraid! It also marks, in the Jewish custom, the purification of the mother forty days after child-birth. There is something quite profound in these traditions: the one honouring God for the birth of a child; the other, recognizing the uncertainties and wonder of child-birth itself. In the classical Anglican understanding, for instance, the latter sensibility contributes to a special liturgy known as “The Churching of Women,” a service of “Thanksgiving after Child-Birth,” which also includes a prayer for the loss of a child in child-birth. Joy and sorrow are powerfully intermingled. Pretty powerful stuff about the realities of human experience and expectation. It is a wisdom we would do well to ponder.

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Who is this?

Yearning for miracles is not the same thing as learning from miracles. The readings in Chapel of late have been about what is learned about God and about his will for our humanity. The miracles are not something accidental to that interest but belong fundamentally to it. The miracles teach. They do so, in part, by way of questions.

“Who is this?” A great question wonderfully explored in the hymn sung in Chapel on Monday and Tuesday where the first phrase of each four verses is the question, “who is this?” and which is repeated in the third verse. Thus, five times the question is raised “who is this?” in relation to the Christian story of the significant moments in the life of Christ. In each of the four verses of the hymn, there is a response, an answer given at the beginning of the second quatrain of every verse: “‘Tis our God.”

The question is at once an Advent and an Epiphany question albeit in different ways. In Advent, the whole city of Jerusalem was moved at the spectacle of Christ’s triumphant entry into the city to ask this question, “Who is this?” It is raised in the context of the one who comes to our world. In the Epiphany we have the same question, “Who is this that even the wind and the sea obey him?” It is in the context of a story, a remarkable story about Christ rebuking the wind and calming the sea in the midst of a ship in a storm. The difference between the Advent question and the Epiphany question is that the latter is about an awakening that happens from within the conditions of our natural world, a world, too, of tempests and storms. There are not only the storms of nature but also the storms and tempests of the human heart and mind. What is so amazing about this story is the idea that God cares.

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