the right reverend David Wilbourne
Sermons and Addresses.
Sermon for the Legal Service, Llandaff Cathedral
11th October 2009
A pregnant pause. The last thing you want when you’re a parish priest doing a home visit keen to keep the conversation flowing. Amongst snaps of the family on the mantelpiece, in pride of place I spotted a photo of a cleric beaming at us all, as clerics do. ‘Ah, I see you’ve got a clergyman in the family’ I desperately piped up. ‘No, not really. It’s just our Derek in fancy dress, playing at being a vicar. He’s a real card!’ Then there was another pregnant pause of elephant-gestation dimensions. It is difficult to communicate with people who clearly think your garb is ridiculous, especially when you know that already. I remember the first time I wore a Cossack, thirty years ago almost to the day, walking down Jesus Lane in Cambridge, feeling such a fool.
One thing the Law and the Church have in common is that we each have our fair share of dressing up, the significance of much of our dress lost in the mists of time, if it ever had any significance at all. But one advantage of that dressing up is that it gives us permission to think and act outside the box, to dare to be other than ourselves, to walk in another person’s shoes thereby counteracting the twist given to our loving and our judging by the demands of the ego. If we are able to wear the clothes of a bishop or a priest, a judge or counsel for the prosecution or defence, we can wear others clothes too and enter into their world: the clothes of those we serve, the clothes of those who bear witness, the clothes of those we judge. There’s a poem by Charles Williams with the catchy title Apologue on the parable of a wedding guest. Williams imagines a fancy dress ball hosted by Prince Immanuel, a coded name for Christ. Everyone is invited, but everyone must wear fancy dress, must dare to pose as the selves they would be had they been granted their heart's desire. 'This guest his brother's courage wore, that (guest) his wife's zeal, while, just before, she in his steady patience shone; there a young lover had put on the fine integrity of sense his mistress used; magnificence a father borrowed from his son, who was not there, ashamed to don his father's wise economy. No he or she was he or she merely...'
Wearing others’ clothes and qualities and weaknesses both enables us to be truly empathetic and enlarges our own sense of self. In our first reading David had Saul’s clothes, Saul’s armour, thrust upon him. To take on a giant you need a king’s protection. Yet the sheer weight of armour, no doubt reflecting the weight of regal office, paralysed David, forcing him to realise that it would have to be as himself, a shepherd boy, not as a king that he would take on Goliath.
Rabbi Jonathan Magonet in his book Biblical Lives claims that donning Saul’s armour actually made David realise its fatal flaw, its Archilles heel, or rather its Achilles knee. The joint at the knee was necessarily hinged and open. Aiming his pebble at this place in Goliath’s suit of armour jammed Goliath’s mobility, making him fall heavily and helpless to the ground, ripe for David to decapitate him.
Of course, in our version of the story the stone hits Goliath on the forehead, meitzach in Hebrew. But it is more likely that the original target was the kneejoint, mitzchat in Hebrew, and in the transmission of the text the two very similar words were confused mitzchat became meitzcach making the narrative more dramatic if less crafty, a smack on the forehead more exciting dramatically than a smack on the knee. Even so, dressing as Saul enabled David to have the nerve to stay David and gave him the idea for a cunning plan.
Our second reading invited us to don abstract qualities as if they were a suit of armour, truth, righteousness, peace, faith, salvation, spirit, God’s word. A priest dressing for a service plays a similar game: the white alb – make me pure, Lord. The long rope, the girdle, tied around his waist – wrap me round with truth, Lord. The stole, the scarf worn around the neck – warm me with prayer, Lord. Clothes can take you out of yourself and make your aspirations positively divine.
And our third lesson makes very sorry reading. A prisoner on a capital charge mocked and tormented in his final hours, stripped and dressed as a king before the whole jeering and brutal battalion. Ironic to the extreme: God-on-trial, the king of creation dressed as a king in a cheap purple cloak and a piercing crown of thorns. That episode should bring us up sharp. Every person whatever terrible charge they are on: when you strip them of their dignity, when you mock them, think on that you may be mocking and stripping Christ.
Alban, the first English Martyr, gave shelter to an unnamed priest when Christianity was a terrorist threat and Christians were ruthlessly pursued summarily tried and executed by the Roman state. To give the priest chance to escape, Alban donned his robes to distract his pursuers. He distracted them very successfully, so much so that he took the rap for the priest and was put to death.
It’s a strange story, Alban dressing as a criminal who dresses as a priest who dresses as Christ, running the whole gamut of the spectrum from base human to the sublimely divine. Perhaps flagging up that that spectrum is contained within each and every one of us. We, administers of the Law and of Grace, dress up so ridiculously to remind ourselves of that.
Also to remind ourselves of the one who dressed down, who emptied himself, took the form of a servant, was obedient even unto death, death as a criminal in order to convince humanity that before God we are as rich as kings.
Leonard Wilson was Bishop of Singapore during World War II, was captured by Japanese warriors and was cruelly and systematically tortured. He survived the experience, amazingly free from bitterness.
Whilst being tortured he had tried to be like Christ, to put on Christ, and say ‘Father, forgive them.’ But the words seemed hollow and pretentious and he felt unworthy of imitating Christ.
Next he looked into the face of his torturers and tried to imagine them as little children, long before nationalistic fervour had twisted their minds, little children: happy and content in their parents’ love. But as the pain threatened to overwhelm him he dressed them not as they had been in the past, but as they might be in the future, redeemed by Christ, shining with his light and joy and love. Legend has it that long after hostilities had ended, Wilson was conducting a confirmation service when one of the candidates kneeling before him looked up into his eyes, torturer looking into the eyes of the tortured and both being transformed.
Priests looking into the eyes of penitents; Judges looking into the eyes of criminals; Men and women looking into the eyes of Christ: and seeing themselves reflected therein. Daring to clothe ourselves in the other, which is none other than Christ, wherein lies the redemption of us all.
Governing Body Bible Study, Univeristy of Wales Lampeter
16th September 2009
John 21:1-14, Easter in September: surely we’re out of time? Yet this event moves through time, in that though John stages it after the resurrection, Luke stages something very similar at the very beginning of Jesus’ ministry, signalling that it can speak to every time and place, even an autumnal mid-Wales 2000 years on. A dog is for life, not just for Christmas: Resurrection is for life, not just for Easter!
Many New Testament Scholars claim that John 21 is out of time with the rest of John’s Gospel, an appendix penned by another author, a ghost writer. Yet if so, this is a ghost with John’s trademark: multi-layers of meaning; resonances with the rest of Scripture; a mystical reworking of events from the other gospels which is positively eerie, X Files stuff, as if Jesus wasn’t X Files stuff to start with.
‘I am going fishing!’ Peter and co, seven in number, (a veritable bench of male disciples) fed up with hanging about after the resurrection decide they are going to do something. It’s the voice of muscular Christianity, reeling from one project to the next, ‘Let’s do something tangible rather than wallow in all this introspective, airy-fairy spiritual stuff. Look at us and all our works, aren’t we busy, Christianity must be relevant after all!’
The seven disciples tire of waiting and return to their fishing, the job they could do backwards. Just as they tire of waiting at the beginning of Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, the Praxeis, the doings of the Apostles, and fish for a new apostle in place of Judas. They catch the sprat Matthias who is never heard of again. If only they’d waited as Jesus had bidden them waited for Paul, who never really got over being neither in nor out of their club, they’d have saved the Church an awful lot of trouble. ‘I look back to my time as Archbishop of York,’ (I’m quoting here!) ‘and think of all the hopes and plans with which I began. And now after twenty years the ending. Certainly there was enough and to spare of doing. Yet after all the ceaseless process of doing, what was actually done? How many souls were brought nearer to God by all this doing? The words of the Methodist hymn spring to mind: ‘Doing is a deadly thing!’ So wrote Cosmo Gordon Lang as he prepared to move from York to Canterbury in 1927.
Doing, Returning to fishing brings them little comfort. They were rubbish disciples and now they couldn’t even cut the mustard at their former trade. ‘You haven’t got a tasty morsel, have you?’ some landlubber on the beach asks them, the answer obvious as their empty smack rides high toward the shore.
Prosfagion is normally translated fish, pysgod but it actually means tasty morsel or relish. The stranger on the shore is really rubbing salt into their wounded pride: ‘You haven’t even caught enough for a shrimp sandwich, have you?’ ‘The Son of man did not come to earth to make small talk,’ quipped Kierkegaard. Our Lord has the nerve to get to the heart of the matter, even put the knife in.
They answered him, ’ou, No! For twelve years of my life I’ve lived in Hull, and virtually every day there I was only a cod’s throw from the fish docks. Had I said to the crew of a trawler, riding high on the dawn tide, ‘You haven’t even caught a sprat have you?’ I can guarantee they would have answered me with more than no. John delicately leaves us to provide our own expletive in our own tongue. But it’s a picture worth staying with, seven disciples telling the Lord of heaven and earth where to go: hands that threw stars into space to cruel four letter words surrendered. When do we, by our obsession with activity, impatience, sheer bad temper tell love incarnate to get lost?
‘Cast your net to the right side,’ the landlubber tells the experts. Though weary, worn and sad, they obey him. ‘Come on, one last shot, one last throw,’ our risen Lord urges us, who have toiled through Wales’ long night and not netted much at all. ‘Have you caught any fish?’ someone asks an angler ploughing his weary way home. ‘No, but I think I influenced a few!’
Maybe Jesus at shore level spotted the shoal the tired experts missed, the authority which comes from faithfully watching, reading the situation and spotting the remedy. R S Thomas at the end of the Llyn watching and watching and watching for the migrating birds to return: Jesus, as eternal stranger on the shore, watching and watching and watching for redemption and resurrection’s bumper catch. After all, ‘Everything is redeemable and resurrectable’ is our creed. And the Church in Wales like the Church of England doesn’t half send a lot of dead stuff our way to practise on!
But with the positive bonanza of a catch the penny drops, ‘It is the Lord!’ Maybe his trademark was the breaking of nets as well as the breaking of bread.
And then the account turns more than a little odd. We have bolts from the Synoptic blue all over the place here. Peter recklessly plunges into the sea to greet his risen Lord. He doesn’t try to ape Jesus’ trick of walking on water as he did in Matthew 14, but instead just puts on his clothes, for he was gumnos, literally naked. Stripped for work: New Testament Scholars interpret, who I guess have never ever fished all night on a chilly lake in early spring.
But I put my money on that great Father of the Church Dougal McGuire from Channel Four Series Father Ted. ‘So, Ted, let me get this straight: a group of seven lads on a little fishing smack all night on a lake. And they don’t catch a thing. And they’re all in the buff. Ha, ha, what were they up to, then,Ted?’
I guess John is sending us multi signals here when he describes Peter’s nakedness. Maybe resurrection dawns when you are vulnerable, exposed, with nothing else but the courage of your own tenderness.
Or maybe Peter was as naked as the day he was born because this was a new birth, Peter really had been crucified with Christ and now plunges into the waters of Galilee born anew.
Or the nakedness could be a flashback to the unnamed young man’s nakeness in Mark’s Gospel a streaker in Gethsemane.
Or a flashback to Adam as he became aware of his nakedness after the Fall. If so, we’re into revisiting and healing and restoration here, having the nerve to rewind and replay and work to a different outcome.
It would all seem a bit speculative if it wasn’t for the charcoal fire, dan golosg, 'anqrakia in Greek. In the whole of Scripture charcoal fire is only mentioned in one other place John 18:18, as the soldiers and servants in the courtyard of the High Priest make an 'anqrakia a charcoal fire to warm themselves against Maundy Thursday’s chill and Peter joins them as his Lord shivers.
We have another dawn here, another cock-crow, a fall and a restoration ironically channelled by John into one word: ’anqrakia charcoal fire. ‘For calling, recalling and further recalling manifold, thanks be to God,’ prayed Lancelot Andrewes. ‘He that is down needs fear no fall,’ quipped John Bunyan, in a rare moment of comfort. But he that is down does need to fear redemption, because God will not let any of us go. Visiting, revisiting and further revisiting manifold is God’s ever patient trademark. When things come round again on the Governing Body’s carousel maybe this time in God’s time there may be outcome other than betrayal and resentment and crucifixion.
This event is out of time and I am running out of time. Just one post-script: 153, 153 fish. It could have been that that’s what there were, 153. say each weighed in at 5lb, then the catch would weigh as much as five men, too heavy to haul aboard. A record amount dictating a record count, as the disciples whiled away their time on the beach totting up their squamous catch. A bit ridiculous really, like that Dad’s Army episode where Mainwaring’s hapless platoon try to tot up the turkeys at a farm. Maybe John’s giving us a bit of a laugh in the midst of serious resurrection stuff. Or maybe he’s giving fodder for conspiracy theorists and X Files buffs, who see symbolism squatting under every bush and every wave.
It helps if you have a degree in Maths, because 153 is a very special number. Not only is it 17 x 9, it is also the sum of the cube of its digits, 1 cubed is 1, 5 cubed is 125, 3 cubed is 27. 153 is also the arithmetic sum of 17, 17 + 16 + 15 and so on down to +1. 17 itself is the sum of 7 and 10 the two numbers in the ancient world which flagged up perfection.
Or as the Victorian Bishop Wordsworth helpfully pointed out 153 is the sum of 12 squared and 3 squared, 144 plus 9. 12 = the number of disciples, 3 = the number of persons in the Trinity, the net therefore containing all of the disciples and all of God, with taking the square leaving ample room for Fresh Expressions.
Ingenious solutions abound, making actually counting the fish seem not that incredible after all. I had my own X files moment here in that in the very early days of computers, I was writing computer programs from scratch for my daughter at infant school. You had to give a binary number to every letter of the alphabet, drawn on a chess-board grid. J (for Jesus of course) was 153. How did John know, when there wasn’t even a J let alone a computer in his world!
My hunch is that far-sighted John put the 153 in as a sort of ecclesiastical sudoku when Governing Body got a bit boring! Maths is my first love and it has breathed the life of resurrection into many a church or secular situation where otherwise I would have died of tedium. As I said, Everything is resurrectable, so Happy calculating!
Let us pray: Lord, Breathe into our frenetic activity your manifold tranquillity, that in all felicity we may celebrate your simplicity. Amen.