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SERMONS Sean Gilbert – 10/8/08 One of the vivid images I took away from Ian Price’s outstanding sermon last Sunday, was that of the wounded hip, the metaphorical limp or ‘sacred’ wound, if you like, that we all carry in life, some of us disguising it better than others, some not particularly conscious that one exists at all. Paradoxically, though, a wound, as Ian personally shared, is potentially the place of healing; raw and difficult places where the touch of mercy is most needed, and from where mercy can then flow. It is a very strange design, isn’t it? Odd by the world’s standards with its obsession with superhuman performance, yet always true and central to the great myths, legends and religious revolutionaries who change people’s lives for the good. In the words of a recent Taize newsletter, “Mercy
is what is most divine in God, In other words, mercy raises us up to a new experience and expression of human dignity, albeit clothed in deepening expressions of humility and compassion for others. For the wounded heart can ill afford to stand in judgement over others. There is but an unsaid knowing of what it means to be human. We are somehow all in this together. The ancients quite rightly saw a biblical pattern to all this, as just about all faith’s heroes and heroines arose out of obscurity or suffering, or great human limitation. Moses, Sarah, Jacob, Joseph, David, Ruth, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Peter and Paul, (again metaphorically speaking), all limping even sinking to a certain extent, yet by virtue of a merciful touch, a gracious encounter, they are all lifted up and dignified – made whole – in ways they could never have imagined previously. And remarkably as they are met in their particular situations and lifted up by what the ancient writers called the co(n)descension of God, their rising to new life, to new perspectives and behaviour, is also potentially the healing and rising of others; the contagion of mercy. You may recall the radio series of the early 90’s hosted by Caroline Jones, The Search of Meaning. Many of the interviews were collated into book form, and in one such encounter with Dr Jean Houston, a widely respected world religions and myth scholar with a keen eye toward personal application, we read: The issues of wounding, of course, are so important…. All the great myths (Persephone must be ravaged and carried down by darkness; Oedipus must have his eyes put out after he discovers what he did; Prometheus’s liver; Job’s boils; Christ’s crucifixion; Odin’s eye)…all the stories have the wounding. Now what the wounding does is that is opens us up from our complacency to a kind of deep availability. Now the problem is that we can close down, we can go into kind of deficient covering-ups – an inadequate response – we can fall into paranoia and think, ‘Oh, the whole world has really got it in for me’; or we can fall into inauthentic suffering, whining and quetsching on and on; or we can fall into cynicism; or we can fall into a sense of self destruction and we can incarcerate ourselves in a hard shell of distrust. Or we can probe our woundings for the deeper story. One of the things I do in some of my workshops, is to ask people to talk back and forth around the questions; ‘What happened? How were you wounded?’ It could be physical, it could be psychological…. And then you can say, ‘In light of this, what do you really want?’ Because often the wounding open us to the dimension of who and what we really are. ‘What do you really want?’ And people then talk about what they truly want in life. And then tell the same story you’ve told but tell it as
a myth or as a fairytale. ‘Once upon a time there was
a princess or a prince…’ And you tell the story past
the point of wounding, to the point of resurrection, to the ennoblement,
to the wounding having resulted in so much more life experience ,
so much more availability and compassion for others, that the person
has been so greatly expanded. And so what I would suggest to you this morning is that such ennobling mercy is dependent to some extent on the honesty and fullness of our confession, not in the sense of “Oh, I’m rotten sinner, God help me”, rather, “This is what my life is like, with all my hidden fears, foibles, inabilities, hurts and wounds. It lies open before you, save me, help me, transform me.” With all the emphasis to be placed on excellent human performances in Beijing in the next couple of weeks, our calling is to consciously revalue the redemptive place of that which has broken, that which has not succeeded to expectation, that which is wounded, yet open and available to deep change. Because it will only be that merciful and humble expression of humanity – not excellence for excellence sake - that will ultimately resurrect the world, that will lift us all in our dignity, and fire us in a new determination to celebrate the rights and visibility of all. Not just some, and not just the privileged or beautiful. And as you know, this has nothing at all to do with mere piety, with maintaining the church or getting people to come to church. That is not the important consideration at all. It is simply who we will choose to be in relation to God and others, and leaving the rest up to Spirit and Soul. As we’ve seen here of late, grace and genuine welcome weaves its own magic. Because often without many words being spoken, something is simply formed and fostered in this community by virtue of an openness and generosity of spirit. The healing condescension of Christ, no less, who through us, in us, and for us, reaches out an accepting and dignifying hand of care and friendship. Thanks be to God. Amen |
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