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SERMONS Sean Gilbert – 29/6/08 The Guest House This being human is a guesthouse. A Joy, a depression, a meaness, Welcome and entertain them all! The dark thought, the shame, the malice, Be grateful for whoever comes, The truly welcoming heart is far more than a sign on a wall or a shingle hung out to passers-by. It is a disposition, a conscious stance toward life – within all relationships. Henri Nouwen puts it this way, yet in his terms of hospitality: Acceptance, welcome, hospitality, all being conductors if you like for a free, life-giving space; the very essence of the gospel and the undying hope we have in it. That somehow, the risen presence of Christ within us, translates into a selfhood secure enough in its own worth and goodness, that the stranger no longer is a threat or an invader. Rather, a potential guide and teacher for life and faith itself. It is simply a matter of stopping to listen and to see. The film a number of us viewed here on Monday night, As it is in Heaven, picks up on this almost now mythological (European) theme, using music as the gift the stranger brings to help open hearts and radically change lives. But of course there is resistance. We are talking about the human condition after all! For there is always moralism and judgementalism that parades as but righteousness and truth. Yet in the end, hearts affected by grace defy the powers that be and break out, literally in this instance, into a new song. A song that is as disturbing as it is melodious, for in the village where the story unfolds in severs long standing relationships, and breaks unhealthy co-dependencies right apart. Indeed, for me at least, it gives a whole new meaning to the words of Jesus that immediately preceded today’s reading when he said, “Think not that I have come to bring peace, but to set people against one another…” Such is the entirely revolutionary nature of his message and the conscious positioning of Spirit and life above and beyond institution and respectability. The important list of criteria; does it give life, is it justice making, does it lead to genuine peace, is it hopeful, freeing and compassionate, being the true guides for faith decisions and responses, never just religious formulas, prosaic pronouncements or wishful thinking. This welcome, this acceptance, this Christ inspired hospitality we are called to practice and embody, would stretch us to the limit (and back again). Far more than mere politeness and courtesy (good things in themselves), it is an expectation, even a longing that we be taught new things and be taken further on in the paths of wisdom and compassion by virtue of our attentiveness to another; our prior respect for the other. And often it is the surprising other, the stranger who seems to flout the rules, but who in actual fact, is a doorway to life, or at least someone holding the door open for us to walk through. To conclude, and with just one more reference to the film in question, the cost of such a welcoming and expectant disposition is high. Significant and difficult changes do happen in the Swedish village, and within the church choir in particular; there is open conflict, there is the articulated pain of victim and perpetrator alike, but like any new birth, it all remains wholly worthwhile for the sake of the brand new child, so to speak. So friends, rest assured, life in the Spirit of Christ is always about new beginnings, long labours included then. A poem of Brendan Kennelly to finish: Begin Begin again to the summoning birds |
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