SERMONS

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Christ Church, Good Friday, 2009

A gathering, an absorption…

Throughout the season Lent, we at Christ Church have been exploring the theme of Openings, asking the question as to how might the Christian faith unfold both heart and mind, so as to live with an increasing sense of courage, honesty and grace. 

A simple and clear lens through which we’ve looked these past 6 weeks has been Wendell Berry’s poetry; Berry being a farmer and writer from the mid-north of the USA.  In a collection published in 1968, not surprising entitled Openings, the poet included this gem, The Sycamore, a portion of which is included on the back of the Order of Service.

And so, before this quite assaulting symbol of broken body and cross, allow the image of the gnarled, proud and healing tree to have an imaginative way with you.

The Sycamore

In the place that is my own place, whose earth
I am shaped in and must bear, there is an old tree growing,
a great sycamore that is a wondrous healer of itself.
Fences have been tied to it, nails driven into it,
hacks and whittles cut in it, the lightning has burned it.
There is no year it has flourished in
that has not harmed it.  There is a hollow in it
that is its death, though its living brims whitely
at the lip of the darkness and flows outward.
Over all its scars has come the seamless white
of the bark.  It bears the gnarls of its history
healed over.  It has risen to a strange perfection
in the warp and bending of its long growth.
It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and the radiance of its dark fate.
It is a fact, sublime, mystical and unassailable.
In all the country there is no other like it.
I recognize in it a principle, an indwelling
the same as itself, and greater, that I would be ruled by.
I see that it stands in its place, and feeds upon it,
and is fed upon, and is native, and maker.

It has gathered all accidents into its purpose.
It has become the intention and the radiance of its dark fate. 

The echoes of Good Friday are unmistakable, the practical conclusions drawn, quite compelling.  For far from being a highly transactional or gruesomely sacrificial story, the Sycamore is another tale altogether.  It’s almost human.  In fact, it is sublimely human:  The bearing of woundedness with dignity, with patience and honour.   The refusal to play or become victim.  The refusal to hurl anger and indignation at another.  The rising to new life as “a strange perfection,” even in the midst of what is most imperfect and potentially despairing.  The paradox of life – a coming to life - in the very midst of death.

The person of Jesus Christ for us?  Yes, I think so.  The Franciscan Richard Rohr says it oh so well:

Jesus receives our hatred and does not return it.  He suffers and does not make the other suffer.  He does not first look at changing others, but pays the price of change within himself.  He absorbs the mystery of human sin rather than passing it on.  He does not use his suffering and death as power over others to punish them, but as power for others to transform them. 

Like the sycamore, he is a truly redemptive and life-giving presence in our midst, yet without any religious formulas and clichés; an inviting model of what human life can be and is called to be.  And so no wonder the poet, before his beloved tree, says, “I recognize in it a (spiritual) principle, an indwelling, the same as itself and greater, that I would be ruled by.”  Why?  So that we also might absorb the mystery of human sin rather than blindly, blithely passing it on.  That we also do not use life’s sufferings, our own slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, as power over others to punish them, no, or put them in their place, no, but as a regenerative, redemptive grace for others to help transform them, if not the world. 

Richard Rohr goes on to say:
The cross is finally about how to stand against hate without becoming hate yourself. 

That surely is the noble, wise and enduring picture of the Sycamore tree, and that is also the life of Christ rooted and at home within us, if we allow it to be so.  A preparedness as individuals and communities to but gather and absorb, not be embittered or burnt out; an almost foolish desire to seek God’s deep streams of healing mercy even in the most rugged and waterless of places. 

So friends, we devote ourselves this morning not to a magical symbol, a slick formula to get right or even a rustic key to heaven, but we simply come before the living, redeeming presence of God.  This is the scandal, this is the great mystery.  God’s very nature and being of love is revealed here.  A self giving that gathers, absorbs and heals.

The question being, not will we simply admire it from a safe distance, but will we allow ourselves to be drawn to it, heartened and greatly changed by it?

Let us take a few moments for our own reflection…..