Homily for 2 June 2013

1 Kings 8:22-23, 41-43. Psalm 96:1-9. Galatians 1:1-12. Luke 7:1-10.

This morning’s reading from Hebrew Scripture commends ministry to outsiders, not just to members of the club. That message also comes across in Paul’s letter to the Galatians. Paul is gravely disappointed that the Galatians should have been foolish enough to listen to people who said that only Jews – that is club members – would be saved. He is very cross – incandescent I’d say – that he has to tell them again that that isn’t the case. And in the Gospel, we see Jesus healing an outsider. An outsider of outsiders, in a way: not a Jew, not even a Roman, but the servant of a Roman. The servant could have been from anywhere. That theme, that Christianity is for all, not just the chosen elite, is something that all churches need to take seriously: as we welcome people, as we give out notices—it’s easy to assume if I say ‘tell the Wardens’ that people will know who the Wardens are, as I’m greeting people before and after services. It’s easy for us to fall into chatting with people we know, and ignore those we don’t. We’ve talked about that before, and doubtless will again. But not today. Today I want to consider healing itself.

We say medicine is about the relief of suffering. In Christianity, and I suspect in many of our childhood experiences, there’s always been something of a suffering-is-good-for-you masochism. It’ll make a man of you. Sportsmen proudly bearing their scars as a token of ‘hardness’. Some Christians seem to glory in suffering. Their aim is not to avoid pain but to embrace it. And I suspect we all know people who make a virtue of enjoying ill health. ‘After all’, they say sanctimoniously, ‘Jesus knowingly goes to the cross, and in this suffering I’m imitating Our Lord, present alongside those who suffer’. This is not a view I’m keen on myself. My idea of suffering is running out of ice cubes. The logical position for these people would be to eschew antibiotics, elastoplasts, pain-killlers, hip replacements. And the rest.

Other faiths are more sensible than some Christians. Members of other Abrahamic faiths have no problem with alleviating suffering, accepting contraception when a pregnancy is likely to threaten a woman’s health, even the killing of the unborn in certain circumstances. Jewish writers denounce the glorification of suffering, and even prefer to forego future reward if it involves present agony. So let’s not kid ourselves that we need to be miserable, despite the emphasis on the suffering servanthood of Christ that is pushed by some branches of Christianity.

Let’s consider healing. As I’ve said before, healing is not about cure. After all, we’re all going to die sooner or later, and there is no cure of that. Medical cure today of one disease simply means that we’ll die tomorrow of something else. Not recognizing that is one reason why so much money is poured into the health services; why doctors are so well-funded by the folly of patients who think that they should live for ever; why people pay for unnecessary plastic surgery and cosmetics; why people obsess about their appearance. This obsession with perfect health and appearance is saying that we are intolerant of imperfection and disability. I speak with some insight here: there was a time when I spent money on gym memberships in the quest for some physical ideal. You can see how far I have fallen short, and how that money was wasted. We are all afflicted to some degree or other. But the quest for perfection and immortality is, I think, a perversion by satanic elements in our culture of a perfectly reasonable spiritual quest for wholeness.

Surely, that’s what healing is about: the quest for wholeness. Here are some other words and ideas that mean the same: salving, restoring integrity, soothing, and the one I like best: coming to terms with the situation we’re in. When we have come to terms with our situation, we do feel better, we know we need to ask for help, and that is itself a form of healing. At the bedside, I often pray that we will have grace to bear what must be borne, and patience to cooperate with the healing process.

In today’s Gospel, it’s easily missed that the centurion and Jesus never actually met. It’s healing from afar. You could say that Jesus did nothing, because by the time he was told of the servant’s condition, the centurion had already sent out messengers to say that the servant was healed, so Jesus needn’t go any further. It seems to indicate that healing began as soon as the need for it was acknowledged. I think this is absolutely true. When I realize that I have a cold, or manflu or whatever, I can relax a bit and accept the fact that I won’t be able to do this or that or the other. And concentrate on resting to allow biological healing processes. It’s as if the healing process is locked away inside us and can’t begin until we consciously realize that we need to let it start working.

We don’t need to hide our broken-ness. At the Eucharist, there’s great significance in one little act immediately after the Lord’s Prayer. The bread which we break is a sharing in the body of Christ. It was the wounds to Jesus’ body that did the healing work. We don’t need to pretend we’re perfect. We are human: we can never be perfect. It’s our imperfections that help us to understand one other. When we see someone else’s faults, and that they acknowledge them, we feel more kindly disposed to them. This is the first stage of healing. This is why people who never acknowledge their mistakes are so scorned. Why spin doctors are reviled. I view it as one of my tasks to make plain my faults for all to see. Some people want their ministers to be perfect. Good luck with that one. Let’s put aside any facade of perfection, and acknowledge that we all need healing from something: childhood hurts; or resentments that we refuse to let go; or addictions to attitudes, to chemicals, to ways of behaving. We need healing from all the things that are thieves of our true selves.

In hospitals, patients tell me their secrets. They whisper them to me, and we talk about them. They smile nervously as they do so. And then I can see them sinking back into their pillows. I can see the relief. This is a coming to terms operation. It’s a setting down the load operation. It’s an acceptance of who they are, and when they see that they are not condemned for being who they are, it’s a healing.

You and I are human. We have no need to pretend to be anything else. In the Christian way of thinking, our humanity was raised to the level of the Divine at the Ascension. Made like him, like him we rise. We begin to be healed when we accept our need for healing. Just like the centurion and his servant.

How is your hearing?

Sermon for 21 April 2013.

Jesus said: My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life. You may know about sheep. I know more about dogs. I expect their behaviour has much in common. Our dog is called Og. Og is an Old Testament bad guy, the King of Bashan, the sort of chap that you wouldn’t want to meet in a dark alley late on a Saturday night as the pubs are closing. Or so the Israelites thought. I thought Og was a wonderful name for a dog. Og the dog. Not that Og the dog is in any way like Og the king. You wouldn’t mind meeting Og the dog in a dark alley. He is a rescue dog, and was apparently abused. He is a timid creature, fearful of anyone in a hoodie, of anyone holding a pole or stick, and of traffic. ‘Now, this is all very interesting’, I  hear you say, ‘but what has Og the dog to do with sheep and shepherds?’ Well, boys and girls, it concerns animal behaviour. Og the dog, like Dolly the sheep, will not be hurried. If you try to hurry him he lies down and will not move. If you carry him to where you want him to be, as soon as you put him down, he runs back to where he was before. After all, dog is god in reverse. If you keep quietly walking, cajoling, leading and showing, he will eventually follow. Cajoling, leading, showing, encouraging: these are tips on how to be a good shepherd. Jesus as the good shepherd is modelling one type of leadership.

This calls for persistence, a sort-of pretended nonchalance in the shepherd. The shepherd needs to have faith in the sheep—faith that they will indeed follow eventually. The shepherd must have patience. I am profoundly gifted in this regard—with impatience. When I hear of the need for a shepherd to have patience and compassionate persistence, I am brought up sharp against yet another of my inadequacies.

But the story is not only about the shepherd’s voice and manner. It’s not just for  clergy in their role as shepherd. It’s also about sheep—you and me—and the need for us to listen to the shepherd’s voice. Listening is not just about hearing words. It means attending—giving your attention—to the speaker. Watching the face, the emotions. Observing the body language. Being alert to nuances in the tone of voice. Picking up, you might say the vibrations in the environment. This is hard work.

Hearing is about picking up vibrations from the environment. That’s what our eardrums and ossicles and cochleas are for, and the hearing parts of the brain. Eardrums and ossicles evolve from the things that in fish do exactly the same thing: they pick up vibrations from the environment. If you watch a shoal of fish, you will see that they all change direction together. How do they do this? They are picking up vibrations from the watery environment so they know when to turn. How do we pick up what you might call ‘spiritual vibrations’ from the environment so that we know when to change direction? Turning, re-turning, re-pentance, transformation, pupation, metamorphosis. It’s not about changing the environment, about moving to a new place or a new job. It’s about us ‘hearing’ what that still small voice that whispers in our ear is telling us. The trouble is, there is so much noise that assails us: noise from outside, nose from advertising that tempts us to greed and envy, noise from inside that tempts us to pride. Noise of the ego.

In Acts 9, some of which we hear today, we learn of people transformed. Paul eventually hears the divine voice, after having spent so much of his life persecuting it. He is brought, as it were, from death to life. We learn that Aeneas, sick of the palsy, hears the divine voice, and is healed. He is brought, as it were, from death to life. Tabitha/Dorcas is brought from death to life. Last week we heard that Peter, who denied Jesus three times, was nevertheless affirmed by Jesus who asked him to ‘feed my sheep’. He is brought, as it were, from the death of denials to new life.

This is about liberation. Never mind whether the man was actually paralyzed like someone who’s had a stroke. Instead, think of how we can be paralyzed by guilt, how we can be kept captive by regret or resentment, looking backwards, never daring to move on. Never mind whether Tabitha was biologically dead or not. After all, people in coma can appear to be dead. People who breathe unaided can be brain dead (it’s too tempting – I can’t resist it – to point out how many people appear to fall into that category). We talk of a living death: think of team building exercises, or synods.

The message is renewal, transformation from spiritual death to fullness of life. Moving from being constrained to the wide space of salvation. It results from being attentive to the divine voice, the still small voice within. As I say, it’s hard work. C S Lewis wrote: God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It was when Tabitha and Aeneas and Peter and Paul were in pain that they heard the voice. It is so often when we are in pain or distress or perplexity—and not until we are—that we begin to see the need for us to change, to turn.

How can we become more attentive to that still small voice? The goal is transformation from spiritual death to fullness of life,  from imprisonment in ego to the wide space of salvation.

Pigs are very like humans, or is it the other way round?

In a moment of utter madness some months ago, I agreed to have a Pet Service. The dratted date comes up soon. Why did I do it? What will I say? I should make the point that we humans are mammals, just like cows, elephants, dogs, cats and most of our pets (though I feel that cats, to which I’m allergic, are best housed under the wheels of very heavy trucks).  I should make the point that humans are apes—and that apes tend to behave rather better than the worst specimens of humanity. I should point out that by lavishing love and affection on our pets we are in fact making idols of them, worshipping them even. I might say how we eat animals, wear animals, and get glue from animals. I have been a medical scientist, and I could point out that the drugs that heal us are tested on animals, and how some surgical procedures were practised on animals. Pigs are very like humans in their internal anatomy, or is it the other way round?

Instead, I expect I’ll talk about companionship and care and how pets bring out the best in some of us. How they repay our love by guarding and sometimes leading us. How they can sniff out cancers. How the unconditional love of a dog can teach us a thing or two. How they don’t worry, so we needn’t. (How do we know they don’t worry?) And so on. But I feel strangely conflicted.

I asked some school pupils recently if they thought we were animals. They said not. Apes? ‘Certainly not’. Why is it that people can’t see that when we get down on all fours, we are just like other animals? that we are not better than other creatures, just slightly different from many of them? We are ‘creatures of this earth’ just like all the others, from viruses to Einsteins. We are to be custodians of creation, not rulers (the Hebrew of Genesis 1:26 is often mistranslated, with unfortunate implications). The privilege of our intelligence brings responsibilities. We need to remember that crocodiles have been around for aeons, that they and bacteria and insects will still be around long after we apes are extinct.

Ah well, we’ll enjoy ourselves, we’ll parade round church and I will bless the animules and their custodians. I will do my best to have All creatures of our God and King (some of the verses anyway) but not to have All things bright and beautiful which I dislike—no, I hate (the purple headed mountain in verse 2—I ask you!), and others.

Oh Lord, it’s just occurred to me: I hope this is not a slippery slope leading to holding stones, imagining my worries passing into them, and then washing them in water and feeling my cares disappear down the plughole. As if.