ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET

Sermon preached by the Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at Evensong and Benediction on the Fourth Sunday of Easter, 13th April 2008

Readings: Ezra 3. 1-13; Ephesians 2. 11- end;

The Friday before last I went to a concert at The Barbican given by the National Youth Orchestra. Among other things they played Richard Strauss' Four Last Songs. These are sometimes called his requiem because he wrote them shortly before his death in 1949. The Germany that Strauss had known as a young man had been laid waste by World War 2. His beloved opera house in Munich had been reduced to ashes. But he found the poetry of Hermann Hesse consoling and he set some of it to music.

In the third song (Going to Sleep) there's a dialogue between the soprano and a solo violin. Last Friday there was a beautiful moment. As the teenage violinist played the soprano looked at him intently. She, a woman in mid-career, gazed upon a youth embarking on his future.

What was in that look? Respect for a budding musician? I imagine so. A memory of performing at his age? Possibly. But there was also something else. It was a sort of love. The soprano was drawing out the cadences from the violin. This wasn't just a walk-through; no one was just doing the notes. This was music.

If I wrote a review of the concert and if I wrote it in New Testament Greek I would describe this moment in a phrase that Ephesians uses in this evening's second lesson. It was an hegenestheste engus, a bringing near. There was intimacy, unity perhaps even 'at-one-ment' (atonement).

As so often when Greek is translated into English the richness of the original language is lost. The Greek verb for the English to bring has a wide variety of meanings including to be born, to be created and to come to fruition.

Soprano, violin, conductor and orchestra were bringing something to birth. There was unity where there could have been division. I've been in audiences that have booed the performers on the stage. I once sang in a choir where there was little love lost between the singers and orchestra. The concert hall is a microcosm of the world at its best and at its worst.

Art and religion are similar but different. However much blood, sweat and tears there may be at rehearsal these are largely metaphorical. When it comes to religion (and especially the Christian religion) the blood, sweat and tears are for real because, as Ephesians reminds us 'now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.'

Talking about blood can make us squeamish but it's unavoidable if we are to engage with the scriptures. Central to Jewish thought is the Temple, the place of sacrifice. The first was built by King Solomon and was completed in 953 BC.*

At the west end of the Temple was the Holy of Holies into which only the high priest was allowed to enter once a year on the Day of Atonement. The room was a perfect cube and totally dark. It contained the Ark of the Covenant, gilded inside and out, in which were placed the Tablets of the Covenant on which the Ten Commandments were written. The Ark was covered with a golden lid known as the 'mercy seat' for the Divine Presence . Before he entered the Holy of Holies the high priest sacrificed a bull or calf to expiate (to cast off) his own sins.

The high priest then took two more animals - goats. One was designated as 'the Lord' and the other as 'Azazel' ('the Devil'). The high priest put on a white robe and phylacteries inscribed with 'the Name of God'. The high priest drew near and 'became' an angel, a divine being. He entered the Holy of Holies, killed the first goat and sprinkled the sacred space with its blood.

Separating the Holy of Holies from the rest of the temple was a curtain, a veil made of rich fabric. This represented the created order. Having killed the first goat and sprinkled some of the blood the high priest then covered his white robe with a robe of the same fabric as the veil and emerged from behind the curtain. Here was the Lord of the Universe entering his creation to enable it to 'flow smoothly'. The high priest demonstrated this by sprinkling the rest of the temple with the remainder of the blood. Now the cosmos was cleansed. What remained was the taking away of the sins of the people.

So the high priest took the second goat (Azazel, 'the scapegoat'), laid his hands upon the animal giving it all the sins of the people from the previous year. The goat was then driven out of the temple and over a cliff. It was killed in the fall and the sins of the people were gone forever. Atonement was complete - for that year at least.

Note the direction of the movement. The Israelites, like other ancient peoples saw temples as microcosms of the universe. It was the place where God dwelt. The temple was the place where it's always Day One of creation. In its operations the world becomes polluted. On Day Two, Day Three and beyond the world is sullied.

But the great insight of the Israelites was that it is God who sets the world to rights. When the world goes wrong it isn't up to the priest to offer a sacrifice to placate the deity and appease God's wrath. For the Israelites the high priest plays God and shows what God does. The high priest didn't so much offer sacrifice as act out a story. He's a shaman and a showman.

Sadly, Solomon's Temple was destroyed by King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon in 587 BC. The People of Israel were scattered and demoralized. The temple was rebuilt seventy years later and this evening's first lesson from the Book of Ezra is part of the account of this work. But the people were impoverished and traumatized by exile.

The Second Temple wasn't a patch on the first. The cult was much diminished. The new Holy of Holies was empty with only a slightly raised floor to indicate where the original furnishings had stood. The Second Temple became corrupt and its sacrifices much like the rituals of the pagan nations around it.

At the time of Jesus the Temple was being enlarged by King Herod but the high priesthood and fallen into disrepute and the office sold to the highest bidder.

So there was a hunger, a deep desire for a real and lasting Temple, one that had all of the truths of the First Temple yet without its vulnerability to the foreign invader and with a priestly theology that would once again represent what God is doing without being marred by human corruption.

There was also a desire (at least among some) to overcome the deep divisions that existed between Jew and Gentile; the circumcised and the uncircumcised; those who were near and those who were far off.

And into these deep desires came Jesus Christ.

The writers of the New Testament gave powerful expression to the priestly nature of Christ's mission. It's most evident in John's Gospel and the Letter to the Hebrews but in the Letter to Ephesians Paul (or a follower of Paul) testifies that God in Christ has once again drawn close with the purpose of bringing what is divided together.

Paradoxically, the new Temple is not made by human hands but has a human as its foundation. Christ is the cornerstone. The apostles and the (early Christian) prophets are the foundation. The saints and the likes of you and me are the household.

In Christ there is an intimacy with God and with each other that is both ancient and startlingly new. And beyond the perennial wars and divisions there's always hope and peace and finally rest. Or as the poet Hermann Hesse expressed it in the third of Strauss' Four Last Songs:

And the unguarded spirit
wants to float on free wings, so that
in the magic circle of the night
it may live deeply and a thousand-fold.

* I am indebted to James Alison for the following insights. See James Alison Theology 'Some thoughts on the Atonement' (Brisbane 2004)
www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng11.html