Article
- Date:
- Sunday 21st October 2007
- Place:
- Holy Trinity, Cuckfield
- Service:
- Evensong
- Readings:
- Nehemiah 8:9-19
Sermon
"Grieve not, for the joy of the Lord is your strength"
As technology has developed, we have gradually lost our sense of contrast. First there was fire which both narrowed the difference between light and dark and between warm and cold. Then came the wheel which narrowed the difference between here and there. Then came food storage which narrowed the difference between feast and famine. Next, writing narrowed the difference between now and then. Much later, electricity and gas narrowed differences in light, heat, storage and travel much further; and, finally, our use of electricity, gas and petrol have begun to soften the contrast between the seasons. We no longer have frost and snow as a counterbalance to our Summers; we seem to be drifting into a more Mediterranean mode with mild Winters and hot Summers.
Nonetheless, because of our culture and our memories we still feel a change in our temperament as the nights draw in, as the leaves turn from green to gold and then fall, as the last fruits are picked or shrivel, as the clocks are put back. Even if the difference is not as great as it was, we still feel the difference.
And so, it is good to be comforted by today's reading from Nehemiah. This book is one of the most joyful but most neglected works of the Old Testament. It tells of how the Jewish exiles returned from Babylon to their shattered and burned city. It tells of how they were free again to listen to the Books of the Law, the books attributed to Moses, what we now call the Pentateuch. Much of what they heard on this day of celebration had reached its final edited form while they were in exile and so they were able to celebrate the Passover in a way that their predecessors had not; the story of Moses was re-invented by the priestly order as if it had been that way during the almost 800 years between the liberation of the Chosen People from Egypt and their return from exile.
On this, the Day of the Lord, they listened to their own history of how they were chosen and liberated; and, having wept at what they had heard, Nehemiah exhorted them to weep no more but to rejoice and to feast.
And here again we have to go back to my first thoughts about contrast. For us who have fridges and access to produce from all over the world every day of the year so that we eat strawberries at Christmas and parsnips in July, it is difficult to understand what is meant by a feast. There was no nipping down to the takeaway and the off-licence, nor even giving a week's notice to a caterer. Animals had to be bred and fed until the day of slaughter, wine had to be brought to the proper pitch at the right time, what could be stored must be stored and what could not be stored, such as fresh vegetables, had to be subject to a strict plan to guarantee a supply chain from the farm and garden to the feast. But, more than that, the feast was in a different gastronomic zone to the everyday: Jews only ate meat on feast days; for the rest of the time it was grain and vegetables with fish if they lived near a lake or the sea. Likewise, most Jews only drank wine at festivals. For us, who find it hard nowadays to differentiate Christmas from the rest of our gastronomic calendar, it is difficult to imagine this contrast between the feast and the ordinary. But the feast described in Nehemiah was even more remarkable because it had to be realised within a building site without the planning that I earlier described. It was a case of bringing what people could find, it was like the liberation parties in French towns as the allies swept through in 1944; it was like the liberation parties in Eastern Europe as Communism was overthrown but, most of all, it was a liberation party of the theological imagination; those who were there could not have imagined that the Word of the Lord would ever be re-established in the Holy City of Jerusalem, in the Temple which was the centre of their hope, in words which became Torah, The Law.
There is, I think, a major, slightly counter-intuitive lesson that we can learn from all of this; it is that we ought to know by now that there is not much to be had by way of feasting out of the contents of a hypermarket trolley of food, presents and DVDs. We all somewhat vapidly ascribe to this truism by telling each other how over-commercialised Christmas has become as we add yet another item to our list; well, if we mean it, now is the time to do something about it before the real frenzy sets in. But our slavishness to the peer pressure of consumption cannot conceal our inner unease. As I said, we really do know that our feasting has to be more than consumption. True feasting only takes place when it is rooted in our understanding of the Day of the Lord.
The second idea we can salvage from today's reading is, again, very practical. If we want to enjoy our feasting it would be as well to involve ourselves in a little fasting. The meat was all the more succulent, the wine sweeter, for having been rarely enjoyed. How much contrast we create between the ordinary and the feast is in our hands. Much of our society becomes ever less differentiated but we can, in the contemporary jargon, make a difference; literally make a difference to our own life calendar.
What underlies all these thoughts is the need to understand the value of what we have, the value of creation, to enable us to see the world we live in not as a vulgar market, as the forum for competitive consumption, but as the place where we can enjoy the gifts of God because we recognise that they are the gifts of God. We will not do well if we persist in the rather hypocritical and definitely heretical notion that there is a dichotomy between the physical which is bad and the spiritual which is good. If the physical looks ugly it is not that it is so of itself but that we have made it so; we have individually and collectively defaced creation.
And here, finally, we need to take stock. Shall we go on as before, becoming slaves of our own tradition and the collective pressure of our culture or shall we sit back and think now, right now, about our next major Festival of Christmas? It is in our power to live such lives between now and the 25th of December that our Day of the Lord is truly special: that we savour the meat and the wine as rare gifts of God; that the gifts we give are of us and not of our creditworthiness; that the joy we feel is exalted by anticipatory self denial.
There is much in our lives over which we have little or no control. We live in a complex society, many of whose forces are global but we should not lose sight of what we can vary for ourselves. Not only can we choose to consume or refrain from consuming, we can also build up within ourselves and our community the capacity to rejoice. This is not simply a matter of contrast but also of affirmation. We can rejoice in the Day of the Lord whatever the tabloid newspapers say, calculated to bring us down. We can rejoice in the Day of the Lord because it is our day; it is in our hands; it is in our heads; it is in our hearts; it is the purpose for which we were created.
The joy of the Lord is our strength.
Prayers
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
Lord God, heavenly Father, we are gathered here to celebrate your goodness; as your beloved children we do not grieve but rejoice in thanksgiving for your gifts:
Lord of the Feast:
- We thank you for your Autumn gifts, for all that has been given out and gathered in, for the joy of of singing and the tension of acting, for the stimulation of discussion, the serenity of study and the stillness of prayer: help us to treasure your gifts and the world from which they come, the people who give and the people who receive; and may we remember how to laugh:
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever. - We thank you for love and friendship, for the pleasure of the walk and the swaying of the dance; for the beckoning of the light and the welcome of the fire, for the companionship of the table and the safety of the bed: help us to share all we have with those we like and yet more with those we do not like, valuing what we give more than what we retain; and may we remember how to love:
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever. - We thank you for the example of your son, for his affirmation of love and condemnation of judgment, for his trust in the humble and his care for the poor, for his healing of sickness and forgiveness of sins; help us to remember to take the lowest place at table, to give in silence and secret, to be courteous in speech and gentle in action; and may we remember how to serve:
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
- We thank you for all creation as Your boundless sacrament, for the Church which is the sacrament of your Son, and for its sacramental life, for the water of life and the eternal feast of the Eucharist; help us to honour that sacrament in our stewardship of the world, in the bonds of community, the obligations of family and the dignity of all your children; and may we remember how to cry:
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
- We thank you for all those whose vocation is to care, for teachers and doctors, for youth workers and child minders, for our Bishops and priests; help us to remember that we live to care in witness of your Son, that professionals are our companions and not our substitutes; and help us to remember how to heal:
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever. - We thank you for all those who have completed their days in The Church Militant and praise you in the everlasting feast of the Church Triumphant, for saints, martyrs, priests and scholars, prophets and mystics, for writers, composers and painters, for those whose stories we retain in our memories and our bones; help us to learn from those who have gone before and to live as best we can in the shadow of talent and holiness; and may we remember how to mourn.
v: Lord, God we thank you
R: Now and Forever.
May our earthly feast be to us a celebration in anticipation of that heavenly banquet where all your children will be gathered. Amen.