Article
- Date:
- Sunday 2nd June 2024
Year B, The First Sunday after Trinity - Place:
- Holy Trinity, Hurstpierpoint
- Service:
- Parish Eucharist
- Readings:
- 2 Corinthians 4.5-12
Mark 2.23-3.6
If we are lucky there will be a time in our life or a strand of our life when we will experience an all-consuming passion: it might be the passion of meeting that special person which, over time, morphs from falling in love to being in love; or it might be, thinking of the recent retirement of Jurgen Klopp as Manager of Liverpool, an engagement so deep that you are feeling every tackle and kicking every ball. All of which is fine as long as this beautiful experience does not tip over into obsession. To be fair to Klopp, he says that football is only the most important of the unimportant things, but reading Saint Paul's Second Letter to the Corinthians I could not help thinking of Klopp because Paul feels every tackle from the church's opponents and he kicks every ball. His life is so integrated with Jesus that he talks about dying to be re-born in Baptism, about living in the Body of Christ and about an almost physical association.
This, in a nutshell, in spite of some theological rough edges and some attitudes appropriate in his time but not in ours, is why I love Paul; there are simply no half measures. He is Saint Peter on steroids.
A passion for Jesus combines the discovery of love with a sustained involvement; but we need to ask ourselves about our emotional attitude. Personally, I have always found religious emotion slightly embarrassing, particularly when it results in direct speech to Jesus. I was brought up with a religion of self-restraint where we were taught that to pray our thoughts aloud was egotistical and I still find it difficult. My way of love is the way of the academic and the painstaking follower.
But I have recognised in the past few years, since the arrival of the Eleven O’clock Service that my way is not enough, that if Christianity is to survive to the end of this Century it will require the passionate commitment of its adherents: being consistent, being coherent, even being right, even leading a holy life, is not going to be enough.
We are, of course, all creatures of self-parody: the British, we tell ourselves have a gift for understatement, a dry sense of humour and a deep scepticism about emotion. Well, for all the first two may be admirable, though often over-stated, the third is no good at all. If God in the form of the Incarnate Christ dies for us, the very least we should expect of ourselves is overwhelming gratitude; but if somebody rescued us from a blazing house we would probably go a bit further, we might even hug them and shed a tear.
Nobody in the 21st Century, in an age of the touchy-feely and the emphasis on personal emotional experience over rational argument, is going to commit themselves to a theologically coherent, abstract structure. Our tradition concerns an active God who was in an interminably passionate relationship with the Chosen People who then became Incarnate in a human being who suffered terrible torture and death to save the very people who were doing the dreadful deeds. At the very, very least, we have a remarkable story to tell.
As I said, I began to change my outlook when I came into direct, regular contact with our new leaders and our new congregation. I have not abandoned my habit of mind, developed since I was a tiny boy, but I now have an added dimension to my outlook; I can see that my engagement cannot be the same as it is with a Greek philosopher. For all its broad church theory, Anglicanism has become too Anglican: culturally elegant, linguistically beautiful, morally cautious, liturgically even and theologically curious but it often does not feel like a religion founded on love and gratitude; indeed, it is rather suspicious of public piety and public affirmation. The richness of Christian tradition over 2000 years is being worn away but that does not matter if our traditional approach is replaced by a passionate commitment to the man who died for us.
I suspect that my discomfort is temperamental but I know that I have to overcome my temperament, whether this is simply a matter of preference or the need to make sacrifices. We cannot go on thinking that we can have God on our own comfortable terms; and we can certainly not draw others to Christ on our own comfortable terms. If we do not radiate passion we will ignite nothing.
Such changes in our outlook as we need to make will not come easily nor quickly, so I would suggest thinking of the following steps:
First, think literally about the suffering and death of Jesus, not what it means in terms of our salvation but what it meant to Jesus as a man;
Secondly, think about the reason why God in Jesus came to earth and why Jesus died but try to focus on the wonder of it rather than any personal implications;
Thirdly, imagine a life without Jesus;
Fourthly, imagine the life of others without Jesus. Imagine lives without the anchor of belief, the sense of crisis without relief, the condition which causes so much mental illness today.
Finally, remember the good news and our duty to spread it.
Looked at from this perspective it is hard to understand why we are not more passionate.