ALL SAINTS MARGARET STREET
Sermon preached by Fr. Gerald Beauchamp at High Mass on the Fourth Sunday of Epiphany, 31st January 2010
Readings: Ezekiel 43. 27 - 44.4; 1 Corinthians 13; Luke 22. 22-40
Last Sunday afternoon a group of us went to the National Gallery to see the exhibition The Sacred Made Real. This was an exhibition of paintings and sculpture from 17C Spain. There were works by Velazquez, Zurbarán and others: extraordinary depictions of Christ and his Passion as well as the saints as they contemplated his suffering. (Don't worry, this sermon isn't a lecture in art history. I know that some of you think you have too much of that already: 'Fr Gerald - Margaret Street's answer to Sister Wendy.') But the exhibition did offer a strange experience that some may have missed: an unintended bi-product of how the exhibition was mounted.
In the room entitled Meditations on the Passion there was an almost life-size sculpture of Christ as the Man of Sorrows. It showed him from the waist up after his scourging. The sculpture was freestanding so you could walk around it and see it from all sides: his face full of woe; his head crowned with thorns; his arms crossed; his wrists bound; his back whipped; blood running down to his loincloth. The sculpture was created for intense personal devotion so you were encouraged to get very close to it. To protect the sculpture it was sealed in a glass box.
As I stood contemplating the back of the figure, my eye travelled upwards and over his shoulder. Looking beyond I noticed that because the room was dark, the glass on the far side of the case acted as a mirror. This reflected the face of Christ. It was very moving to see both the front and the back at the same time. But stranger still was that as other people moved towards me from the far side of the case their features and Christ's features merged into one. The face of anyone who was about 5'8" or 5'9" and standing centrally 18 inches or so from the glass morphed into the face of Christ.
I had an unexpected attack of piety. It seemed to me that this was a perfect example of prayer: prayer not of the 'give me this, give me that' variety but prayer as the pure consciousness of others in the presence of divine love: a divine love that knows what it is to be human. The humanity of Christ unites with our humanity at our lowest ebb - alone, betrayed, battered and bruised, bleeding and hurting. As St Paul says now we see in a mirror dimly. Paul goes on to promise, however that in the future we will see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall understand fully, even as I have been fully understood.
This 'seeing' leads us on to think about what George W Bush called 'the vision thing'. 'Vision' is one of those words that's gained a lot of currency in recent years. We expect leaders to be able to talk about their vision for what they're heading-up. 'What's your vision for the company?' CEOs are asked. 'Where do you see the organization in five years time?' And that's quite right. As it says in Proverbs: Where there is no vision the people perish (29. 18). But vision cannot be simply an end in itself. Plenty of people have 'visions' in the sense that they know how things ought to turn out. In William Golding's novel The Spire a dean champions the building of a great addition to his cathedral. His plans become ever more grandiose and he ends up crippling himself and others around him. Visions can become despotic even demonic.
Visions can also get marooned in history. Some visions, powerful though they may be at the time can look very odd later on. One of the paintings that we saw on Sunday was Alonso Cano's The Vision of St Bernard of Clairvaux. This is also called The Miracle of Lactation. Early in 12C as St Bernard, the founder of the Cistercians knelt at prayer he had a vision of the Virgin Mary breastfeeding her child. St Bernard wanted to be fed as well. Alberto Cano depicts this literally with direct reference to the ancient myth of the origin the Milky Way. Our Lady had a very good aim. This vision obviously worked for St Bernard and its representation had a draw for people five hundred years later but to us four centuries further on it surely looks kinda strange.
Christian vision is about how we see and not just what we see. Last Sunday evening Fr Alan drew our attention to what the church in Corinth was like when St Paul was writing to it. It was a far cry from the church we know now. There were no church buildings and the numbers would have been not more than a couple of hundred but there was no shortage of controversy. All the problems that have beset the church for the last two thousand years were there in the first twenty: issues of leadership, conduct and what happens at the Eucharist were all stirring people up and causing a fuss. St Paul confronted these head on.
Yet in the midst of his polemic St Paul rises above it and writes his great hymn of love - If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love... Paul's word are about love they are not addressed to love. The Corinthian church was surrounded by plenty of gods of love - Eros, Aphrodite and even the Egyptian god, Hathor. Take your pick. But this lead to a certain 'falling in love with love' and that never did anyone any good.
The Christian vision of love as the highest and best to which we are called, the Christian proclamation of God as love is sure but not 'set in stone'. Instead, it's incarnated in flesh and blood. Its dynamic not fixed. It's greatest vehicles are not rarefied places (sacred groves or vast temples - enchanting those these can be), nor are they works of art (paintings or statues - dramatic and moving as these can be), nor are they simply other people (loving and loved though many may be); the greatest vehicles of Christian love are the sacraments of the church, sacraments expressed in things that are commonplace: water and oil, bread and wine.
The church in developing its art and culture couldn't but surround these with the best craftsmanship and most precious materials. Museums are crammed full with fonts, ewers and baptismal shells, oil stocks, chalices, patens and monstrances but what these were created to hold and contain are of no interest to curators only to worshippers: people like us. Our sacraments are not solid and imperishable but always on the move: water and oil are poured, bread is eaten, wine is drunk.
The strange phenomenon that some of us saw in the National Gallery has a name. It's called Pepper's ghost after the 19C scientist, John Pepper who popularised it. Tricks with lights and mirrors are nowthe stuff in trade of many a conjuror. But we, we Christians aren't magicians or wizards. We're not trying to con anyone. We're sharing good news with those who'll listen, the greatest thing in the world: the love of God himself made available in the simplest things that we have to hand. It's not a trick. It's truth: a truth that's plain for all to see.