SERMONS

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Sean Gilbert – 23/8/09

Christ Church - John 6:56-61

            The Real World  (Sean M. Gilbert 2009)
I’ve walked these stairs before;
’96, ’02, ’08,
now 2009.

Impressive slabs
of black slate,
yet bowed,
chipped and
polished
over time
by human traffic:

Religious folk like me,
going up and down,
down and up,
heading this way and that,
out and beyond
this place,
this real world
of Silence,
Eucharist
and Prayer.

There are 23 steps in all,
a number of no significance
or weight that I can tell,
other than a Psalm
that continues to shine
through veiled skies.

I will run and walk
the bowed stairs again;

these ascending
and descending pathways
within my life,
constructed for my life.

It is a genuine tension, isn’t it? The world of flesh and blood, responsibilities, houses, kids, bills, sicknesses, death and taxes etc. This other equally real world of spirit, soul, will wisdom and love; a far less tangible  world perhaps, but no less pressing, possibly even more demanding, so far as our need of attentiveness is concerned;
Hidden yet felt; veiled yet clearly seen.
Not surprisingly, the Jesus of John’s gospel places a high priority not upon action per se, but upon the motivation or depth of spirit behind the action. “It is the spirit that gives life; the flesh is useless”, he says – a provocative and debatable statement, in anyone’s language, but deliberate and targeted nonetheless. A true religious reformer at work, restating the ageless human need to move beyond mere externals to find something more enduring and life-giving at play in and at the heart of things. But by doing so, of course, he opens himself up to ridicule, to misunderstanding, even to dissent, all for daring to use poetic metaphor in a prose flattened, literalistic religious world. “These teachings are too difficult”, his disciples say. “Who on earth can accept them?”

The point here being that he is not wanting to be taken literally; his words, images and strange metaphors, all given to open the religious imagination, stir the heart, and stimulate the mind; to awaken the interior world – the real world which directly impacts on and shapes creatively the outer world.
It’s been my experience that attention given over to spiritual formation /growth (personally and as minister) is not a self-serving or ethereal exercise, as is assumed. For as many would know, retreats, prayer, meditation and contemplation (worship even) are not flights into fantasy land, nor do they seek to skirt around the big issues and all-too-real life challenges. They are needed/given opportunities, often within the gift of silence and stillness, to weigh, sift, remember, rehearse, rekindle and redirect energies. None of which sounds terribly religious or intimidating, for it is the stuff of being human, a human being, alive to the possibility of deeper meaning and purpose for life.
Real life is not an avoidance of spirit, rushing about getting things done; it is consciously, deliberately entering into the flow of the spirit at play in our midst.
            (Mary Oliver says this wonderfully well in her poem “Mindful”.)
The great Catholic writer of Vatican II and beyond, Karl Rahner, once said that the future of Christianity and the Christian Church, would either be mystical or it would fade away into nothingness. And by that he meant, unless our faith is grounded and nourished in a spiritual encounter with the God of grace and peace, unless there is a living bread and wine within us to share liberally and companionably with the world, there will be no future or emerging or alternative church. There will just be structures and hollow frameworks, and even more angst as to how we keep it all going.
            So, it may seem counter intuitive, even foolish, to focus as I do upon spiritual nurture and development when so much of the machinery and function of the church is faltering. But that is where I believe we are being called, each of us contributing to the building of a community – this ever expanding community - that in itself is a generous embodiment of spirit and soul, of warm human flesh and blood, alive to the real world of God’s presence and alive to the daily possibilities of love and service in God’s name.
Let us pray so.            Amen.