Easter 4

Acts 9:36-43, Revelation 7:9-17, and John 10:22-30

Jesus is walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. A portico is broadly equivalent to a cloister – think of the cloisters at Durham cathedral – and was used in much the same way, an open but sheltered space where study and teaching took place. Solomon had built the first temple on this spot, a thousand years earlier. That temple had been destroyed by the Babylonians, and the nobility carried off into exile. When the Babylonian Empire fell to the Persians, the Jewish exiles were allowed to return, and in time a second temple was built on the site of the first. This temple was later expanded by Herod the Great, and stood until it was destroyed by the Romans in AD70.

Some say Solomon’s portico was a surviving structure from the first temple that had been incorporated into the second. Whether that was factual or fictional truth, it was an area within the temple associated with his legendary wisdom and the body of Wisdom Literature his patronage made possible. And it had come to be associated with Jesus. He taught there, addressing anyone who would stop and listen, when he attended the great festivals; and this was carried on in the practice of the early Church. From Pentecost, until the persecution following the martyrdom of Stephen, the believers met within Solomon’s portico on a daily basis.

Jesus is walking in the temple, in the portico of Solomon. And those gathered around him want him to speak to them plainly. To speak in unambiguous terms. But those are not the terms on which Jesus spoke. He spoke in parables, in which his hearers discover that they are characters in a great drama. He spoke in proverbs, such as his lists of blessings – Beatitudes – and woes. He spoke in metaphors, such as the ‘I am’ sayings John is so fond of recording. He spoke through actions, such as weeping or touching untouchables. He spoke through symbols, such as bread and wine.

Our reading from Acts, or the story of what Jesus continued to do acting through the Church after his bodily ascension into heaven, presents us with just one example of those times when we do not have the words we need to speak about what we need to speak of. Birth and death and love and sex and beauty – these are just some of the moments that are holy, that are set-apart from all the other moments to be sacred, handled with the greatest reverence and wonder. They are mystery, to be entered-into.

I ran a straw poll this week, asking ‘How do we speak about things for which we have no words?’ These responses came back, some several times over:

tears; empathetic touch; employing universally-understood words and actions; telling stories; listening to songs, and music; by our actions; poetry; symbols; platitudes; metaphors; silence; recognising our limitations before God and accepting – even embracing – them; pictures (say a thousand words); making up new words; euphemisms.

In the face of her death, Tabitha’s friends need to show something of what she had produced – her skill; her labours of love – to someone who had not known her; as well as standing alongside one another, and allowing tears to flow.

There are so many times when we just don’t have the words to express something that has touched our very soul. Not just that we can’t adequately communicate it to another person; there are times when we can’t articulate our thoughts and feelings to ourselves, let alone anyone else. And this can leave us feeling incompetent, unqualified, lacking confidence.

But it is perfectly normal, because life is bigger and more wonderful and altogether scarier than we can imagine. The Eastern Orthodox bishop and theologian Kallistos Ware says of mystery: ‘In the Christian context, we do not mean by a “mystery” merely that which is baffling and mysterious, an enigma or insoluble problem. A mystery is, on the contrary, something that is revealed for our understanding, but which we never understand exhaustively because it leads into the depth or the darkness of God. The eyes are closed—but they are also opened.’

To return to the portico of Solomon, wisdom is not the same as gaining more information, in ever greater detail, and being able to communicate it plainly. It does not allow us to become an expert, to view ourselves more worthy – or less worthy – than others in a hierarchy of status. No, wisdom is to do with relationship with one another and with the fathomless giver of life-beyond-measure.

In this Easter season, our Sunday readings come from Acts and Revelation. They present us with What Jesus Did Next, from an earthly and from a heavenly perspective. On the whole, Acts can be told using plain words. With Revelation, on the other hand, we are clearly presented with a narrator struggling to find ways to express the vision he has been given. A fabulous fantasy of incredible creatures, pointing not to a fairy-tale but, rather, expressing the deepest reality.

And this is where coming together as the gathered church equips and trains us for the whole of life.

We draw on stories – in which we might just find ourselves. We draw on the words of others – not sound-bites, but words tried-and-tested in community, such as the Creeds. We draw on music, and song. On dramatic movement and symbolic action. On visual representation, such as the stained glass of the East Window or the carvings on the pulpit – both of which express something of that vision found in Revelation. We lean-into silence. We don’t need to have all the answers, to our questions or anyone else’s. Kallistos Ware again:

‘We see that it is not the task of Christianity to provide easy answers to every question, but to make us progressively aware of a mystery. God is not so much the object of our knowledge as the cause of our wonder.’

In relation to what experience do you ‘know that you don’t know’ today? That place, right there, just might be the door that opens onto heaven…

BCP April 2016

John 16:16-22

I was present at the birth of all three of my children. Susannah, our first, was born at the hospital, in a brand-new maternity wing. Noah and Elijah were both born at home. We benefitted from a one-to-one midwife system, where we saw the same midwife throughout pregnancy, labour, giving birth, and for follow-up care. At the hospital, Jo had made use of a birthing pool to relieve labour pain. She had found it so helpful that we took advantage of the midwives’ scheme of delivering inflatable birthing pools for home births. Both Noah and Elijah were born in such pools at home. So not only was I present, but I was actively involved, in inflating and filling the pools, and regulating the water temperature. It just so happened that when Jo went into labour with Noah, one mid-January, our boiler broke down. I borrowed electric urns from our church kitchen and had pans of water boiling on all our oven hobs!

I am led to believe that my experience of childbirth as a man puts me very much in the minority, historically. Most fathers have been kept out of the room, out from under the women’s feet. Our best understanding of Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth is that Mary gave birth in the main room of a family home, attended to by her husband’s female relatives and most likely a couple of other women who fulfilled the role of midwives to the community; while Joseph, along with any other male relatives, waited anxiously in the smaller guest room he and Mary were staying in at the time.

Of course, the adult Jesus would have no conscious memory of his own birth; but he would no doubt be familiar with childbirth, as would his disciples. For the majority of humanity, birth has always taken place in the home, and has almost always come with genuine uncertainty, and therefore anxiety, as to whether mother and child will both survive. For the majority of humanity, the moments surrounding birth have been those where men – whether the father or any other relative – have found themselves most helpless, most dependent on women, most returned to their own infancy. For the majority of humanity, birth is both a familiar everyday event and a significant crisis. And one where, if it goes well, the men benefit from something they did not bring about.

In our passage from the Gospel According to John, we listened-in on Jesus talking to his disciples on the night before his death. But the context – and in particular, the verses immediately preceding our reading – makes it clear that Jesus is not simply trying to prepare them for his death and resurrection. Indeed, how could they prepare for what lay just ahead? But more than that, Jesus is trying to convey something of what will be brought-about through those events. And the best way of putting it that the greatest communicator who ever lived could find is to compare it to childbirth.

Something new is about to be birthed. They won’t get to witness it. The process will remain for them a mystery. They will play no part in making it come about, other than the clumsy awkwardness of betrayal and denial and desertion and standing utterly bereft at the foot of the cross and standing at the threshold of the tomb unsure of what to do next, and being dependent on a woman to bring them news. They will play no part in making it come about; but they will get to benefit from it. They will get to rejoice, with joy that no-one can take from them.

What is this new thing that is about to be birthed? It is one-ness with the Father – a heavenly Father who is not at a remove in heaven, in the next room so-to-speak. Jesus is both ‘going to the Father’ and, in so doing, making the way for us to experience that one-ness too, not just in some future point but in the here-and-now.

In this regard, we are all men, whether male or female, and whether we have given birth or not (just as in another context we might speak of being, corporately, the bride of Christ, whether we are female or male). We don’t make one-ness with God come about through our efforts, our labour. We are simply recipients and beneficiaries. True, we might experience pain, though not alone, for the Father who would be with Jesus in his pain is consequently with us. And the deepest response is rejoicing.

We find ourselves on the other side of the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth (and, indeed, on the other side of his ascension, though we’ll come to that next month). The question we are presented with is this: are our lives remarkable on account of joy that is not dependent on circumstance?

If so, we shall rejoice indeed. If not, Jesus continues, instructing us ‘Ask and you will receive, so that your joy may be complete.’