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Thought for the Week 18 July – 7th Sunday after Trinity
“La couche du soleil, monsieur, c’est magnifique ici.” So said a lady to
us when we first saw the terrain on which our house now stands. She was
eventually to become our neighbour and she was certainly right in what she
told us because the rear of the house faces directly west, with no
interruption to the view over the Lot valley. Many of you, I’m sure, will
have a similar scene from your home – maybe not of the sunset but of an
equally magnificent sight. France is full of such beautiful and awe inspiring
visual experiences, with its lovely towns and villages, magnificent churches
and breathtaking views of the countryside. Many of you will have books with
pictures of these attractions, probably collected over the years. Looking at
the photographs and reading about the places and then seeing them on
holidays, no doubt contributed, to a significant extent, to the decision to
come and live out here. Such experiences can, for many people, be totally
uplifting, taking us out of this world, as it were, to a moment which we
would say touches the eternity of God. We do not find it easy to explain or
describe such moments of great joy, just as we would find it difficult to
give a detailed explanation of a piece of favourite music. The Bach double violin concerto was being
played in a lovely rural church near to us this last Tuesday. Many people say
that this is a magnificent piece of music but very few can explain why.
Equally so, there are great paintings and works of literature which have the
same effect on us. Similarly there are many, many other beautiful works of
the human mind or hand - the list is almost endless. For some people these
experiences, they would say, are sufficient to give them a belief in the
‘otherness of life’, what they might call ‘God’ - the experience of being
lifted out of the present moment. But for mainstream Christianity they are
contributory experiences to a more fundamental belief in God and Jesus
Christ. In
that magnificent passage in the second lesson, we heard Paul describe for us
his experience of Christ. It is like us making the attempt to describe one of
those experiences I have been talking about, but we would not be able to do
justice to Paul’s language. ‘Christ is the
image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; for in him all
things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible,
whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers – all things have been
created through him and for him. He himself is before all things, and in him
all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church; he is the
beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might become to have first
place in everything. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell,
and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether
on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.’ In
the Orthodox tradition, there are magnificent images of Christ as Pantocrator
– the ‘Ruler of All’. Christ is
sitting at the centre of creation in awe-inspiring majesty. These
representations of Christ can be seen as overwhelming images painted on the
ceiling of the apse of some Orthodox churches. Another form of this same
image is as an Icon, like this one which is now in a museum in Moscow. In
this picture, Christ is shown with his right hand in a gesture of blessing
and holding an open book of the Gospels with the text: ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgement ye judge, ye shall be judged.’ It is a beautiful and evocative Icon and we
could well have a meditation on the understanding of what the painter is
trying to convey to us about the nature and being of Christ. This
unimaginable power and authority and majesty of Christ comes as a result of
an enormous cost – the terrible and ghastly crucifixion. ‘God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, by making peace
through the blood of the cross.’ The salvation of humankind was made possible
through the self-giving sacrifice of God in human flesh – the suffering,
dying, and rising of Jesus. As we read the passage and re-read it, the power,
the majesty of Christ, radiates out through the language. It is as if we
become disciples on the Mount of Transfiguration with Peter, James and John,
experiencing with them that blinding vision of our Lord in majesty, and
catching, for a moment, the glory of God hidden in his humanity. The
experiences I spoke of earlier, which lift us out of the present moment into
that experience of ‘otherness’ are, what I would want to say, allowing us to
touch that awe and majesty of God in Christ within the context of creation.
Sometimes for us, the only response we can make to such an experience is a
prayer, made in our own language and thought forms, made through our
inadequate and sometimes pitiable human faculties. Hopefully, such times
enable us, yes, to touch something of eternal worth, something of the nature
of God, but also, hopefully, they enlarge us human beings. This Icon, for
example, shows us something of the nature of Christ – sensitive, caring and
at the same time severe, ‘Judge not,
that ye be not judged.’ As
the passage in the second lesson continues Paul told us that this same majesty of Christ is present in each one
of us and in the worshipping community of the Church ‘Christ in you, the hope of glory’. This truth is in spite of all
the obvious failings and humanity of the church– such as we saw in the
turmoil over women bishops at the General Synod meeting of the Church of
England last weekend. ‘I became a
servant of the gospel, says Paul, for
the sake of his body, the church’. Paul’s words are true for each one of us, just as they were equally true for
Martha and Mary as we heard in the gospel reading. Here were two sisters,
different in character, perhaps one more extrovert, the other more introvert,
who approached life differently and, indeed, seemed to irritate one another.
Martha asked Jesus to talk to Mary, to remonstrate with her, no doubt because
she could not easily get Mary to help her with the household chores! But
Jesus did not react in that way, instead he told Martha to settle down to one
thing at a time and not be worried and distracted. He also said that Mary had
chosen the better part – the better way. The understanding of the deeper
things in life, the way of the Lord, and coming to know the awe and majesty
of Christ is, indeed, the better way. Martha did certainly have something to
learn from Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to him. Equally so,
Martha had something to say to Mary about the need to live in the real world
where domestic chores have to be done. We
cannot dwell all the time in the realm of seeking the awe and majesty of God
in Christ. We need to be anchored in the world in which we live, sharing in
the practicalities of daily living with all its messiness. But our seeking
and searching for a deeper understanding and experience of our faith, should,
indeed must, make us endeavour to be more Christ-like with all people. Let us remember the words of St Paul: ‘providing that you continue securely
established and steadfast in the faith.’ Amen. Revd John King: Anglican Chaplaincy of
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