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SERMONS Sean Gilbert –17/1/10 At least on two occasions this week, I’ve been in that happy and familiar place of raising a glass, sharing a toast. Most memorably was with Perea and Nick on the eve of Perea (my eldest daughter) leaving for a new life of teaching in Loxton. I don’t know what we said, but I do know what I felt: a mixture of pride, love, sadness for the impending loss of her presence. It’s the very nature of life, isn’t it? “L’chayim” or “to living”; a hopeful toast, in spite of the tragedies, in the face of pain, before and within the wonder that is the grace of each new day. We go on toasting, we go on believing that even in the midst of mere routine, responsibilities and losses, life itself will carry us forward into something new and better, something more joyful and revealing: “L’chayim! To living”. As the very first sign within John’s gospel that Jesus is mysteriously the embodiment or “glory” of God, his turning water into wine is tremendously instructive as to the writer’s lived experience of God. Words such as abundance, friendship, belief, love and even life itself appear and reappear over and over again in the text. Jesus is no religious conformist, nor are his actions and words in any way conservative. There exists dynamism, almost a danger of over-statement; that being, that the sheer extravagance of God’s grace and kindness doesn’t simply push boundaries, rather it is bold strokes with the crayon, and it crosses over them with splashes of colour, with the recklessness (foolishness) of compassion. On Monday Russ emailed me both the poem and acceptance speech of the 2009 Blake Poetry Prize winner, Mark Tredinnick from Sydney. It will surprise you to know that I’m going to overlook the poem and concentrate more on what he said about William Blake, and about his own take on all things religious, and I say that given the that this prize like its visual arts cousin, arises out of the faith community. He writes and says: “You don’t get to heaven, Blake believed, by being good. You especially don’t get to heaven by being right. I like this about Blake: his generosity and lack of sanctimony. ...I’m pretty sure he would have added – if you were just and kind and merciful. But heaven is not for the pious or the conforming. As a matter of fact, heaven, Blake felt, wasn’t a place you went to anyway, for heaven was here and had been all along. This was it, or the part of it anyway, our souls are capable of seeing and sharing, for a time. But if there were a heaven, ...you got there, by loving much and delighting in the body of the world and one’s own body and the bodies and minds of others, by exalting in the beauty of things, by finding heaven in a Wild Flower or a wild night or a child, by coming into a deeper and deeper understanding of the nature of the real world and one’s obligations to and within it; by enjoying and accepting the passage of time, by greeting death as the starting point of the next bit, or the return to nothingness where it all always begins; by knowing grief and guilt as part of joy, woe as part of delight; by forgiving oneself and others just about everything but sanctity and conformism; by pursuing the exacting disciplines of beauty.” This is the Jesus I love and know. I don’t know the insurance salesman, the moral policeman, the careful ethicist, the perfectionist, nor the scientist. I think I do know the pourer of good wine, the breaker of ragged bread, the human heart alive to the beat of another’s. The conveyor of soul and forgiveness, the restorer of life and dignity to those long told they deserved none of it; the giver of human happiness, no less. The One concerned for the wine of human gladness, not as a narcotic but as an awakening to life and its full potential and responsibility. The modern day saint, John Vanier (I love saying his name as much as reading his material) tells the story of having the desire at the age of 13 to leave French Canada and join the British Navy, training to be an officer in the UK. It was the early years of World War II, his parents well known in diplomatic circles and devout Catholics. Even at such a tender age, Vanier was greatly concerned about the Nazi advance and the increasing crimes against humanity that were being committee. He writes: I went and he (my father) said, “Explain to me what it is you really want and why you want to join the navy?” I forget what I said but when I had finished I remember his answer. He said, “I trust you and, if that is what you want, well then that is what you must do.” I did not realize it at the time but that was probably one of the most healing moments of my life. Because my father, whom I loved and admired, trusted me, then I could trust myself. Had he said, “That’s childish, you’re too young, wait four years and then you can join the navy,” I would have accepted that. My own intuition as to what I should do was so fragile. I wouldn’t have rebelled. But I would have lost trust in my deep intuition and in my desire. I believe that desire came from a holy point or a holy part of my being. It came from the sanctuary of my being. Because my father had said, “I trust that; I trust intuition; I trust that your desire is a holy desire, a desire that comes from what is right and from what is God,” then I could trust in myself. I believe deeply that in children and young people a light is present. We must listen to children. We must hear what they have to say. They are people in whom the light of God exists. They will never be able to trust themselves unless someone trusts them. Water to wine, I believe, is a great metaphor for religious practice not based upon guilt, shame and obligation to a cause (however good and just), but for the presence of holy desire warming our hearts and therefore being trusted to animate our nervous, fragile step forward. This miracle or sign is at that point, not about alcohol, but a gift of love and trust that gets us going on life’s journey often tasking us beyond the safety and security of perceived lines or fences. It is a wine that touches us at the very centre of who we are, and desire to become: The wine of permission, encouragement, mercy, joy and truth. The very essence of transformation and human growth – whether it be personal or communal. All of us know the pressures that decry such freedoms, such liberty of being. Indeed the institutional voices of fear and control hounded Jesus to his death. But through every sign, every instance of his teaching in John, the message is the same: “L’chayim!” To the living! Because that is where grace is found, that is where the joy and presence of heaven is most fully known. .. . In this very world, at this very present moment. Our response is one of praise... Hymn 179 – “Praise with joy...”
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