A fleeting insight into overwhelming and incomprehensible loneliness; a glimpse into the heart of Therese at the very end of the Patricia Highsmith's novel Carol. Todd Haynes has turned the book into a beautiful BAFTA nominated film, in which Cate Blancett embodies Carol with subtlety and power.
It's a psychologically complex narrative; an erotic novel in which love costs. Attraction, hostility, curiosity, vulnerability, misunderstandings, hopes - the process of making moral sense is laid bare. Highsmith conjures up an emerging world, distant yet familiar: perfume and cigarette smoke; departmental stores and cafeterias; a mother buying a doll; a wife in the midst of divorce.
According to Therese's definition, it's a classic: something with a basic human situation.
Something of our human situation was captured in the BBC's The Age of Loneliness. Regardless of age, marital status, gender, health, sexuality, social or economic circumstance people sought to express the in expressible pain of being lonely.
Any reimagining of Body of Christ must also start with paying deep attention to the basic human situation. Why? Because that is where God meets us and because that's where we are called to meet others. In multiple encounters in worship and daily life, we become more fully Christ's Body.
Our reimagining is a way of life and a story of reconciliation. It is love that endures, hopes and transforms. It is love in fleeting human gesture and sustained social engagement. It is love that is with us and with others, even in face of disagreement. Love is prophetic: patiently impatient, enlivened by God's daring Spirit. In short, it's generous.
Today we keep the Feast of the Baptism of Christ, we continue to reflect on the mystery of God with us, the manifestation of God's love. Perhaps it is as we recall Jesus Christ standing on the muddy banks of the Jordan that we are drawn into the depths of God's love for us.
In the Word made flesh, Godself identifies with our basic human situation in all its complexity. The one who made us becomes one of us. Such our Feast reminds us of our calling as members of the body of Christ - and perhaps think though what that means in our own lives and contexts.
In worship, we hold before God, our desires and fears, our grief and fragility, our intellects and responsibilities; all that haunts us, even the mysterious loneliness that sweeps over us. Here, our basic human situation is touched by God's love for us. In the silences that fall at the end of phrase... or as the chord fades away, we attend to soft echoes of mercy and grace. In the intimacy of our gathering together and in the spaces between us, we glimpse a hoped for reconciliation.
Paul in his letter to the Romans grapples with the reality of our human nature. He grapples with equal passion with God's faithful and loving response. Tonight we catch a but a glimpse of how he works this out - his argument is in full flow. If God's response to sin, is forgiveness, should we continue living as before that we might experience more grace? No, he says, because we are caught in a new reality. A new reality that breaks into our basic human situation.
Paul knew all about misdirected desires - greed, rivalry, lust, abusive of power. He wrestled with the guilt of doing what we sought to avoid; the betrayal of broken relationships; the mistrust of self and other. Like us, he saw creativity and compassion in human lives, and the echoes of God's love in our cries for justice and liberty. In his prison cell, perhaps he too knew the rushing wind of loneliness.
His letter is rooted in the assurance was that God's response to our human situation, was to meet us in it. Jesus identified with us in the burdens we carry - freeing us from the glittering prizes that seduce us. Encounter by encounter, step by step, Jesus' spoke words of freedom, love, challenge and forgiveness. In the agony of the cross and the coldness of the grave, he plumbed the very depths of alienation. In his resurrection power, light and glory break through. In the waters of, baptism our identity is reconfigured in him. Our old self is no more; we are set free.
Walk in the newness of life, says Paul.
Walking is a significant word in our thinking for what it is to be members of Christ's Body. To think of ourselves as a body means we are called to walk in the world, just as Jesus did. Every gesture, encounter, task and conversation is an opportunity to make manifest God's love. This body isn't reducible to a building or an institution. We are a worshipping people, a pilgrim people; led by the Spirit, we reflect God's love.
This new life is revealed in gradual shifts in character - as we learn to be a little more patient, joyful, kind. It bears fruit in the diligence of our research and as we collaborate with others in the pursuit of wisdom. It's seen as we delight in the other; in extending hospitality; in a risk taking generosity that sees beyond the surface of things. Walking in the newness of life is a foretaste of God's Kingdom. We see glimmers - light reflected in the darkness.
Isaiah speaks of an abundant feast overflowing with richness. He kindles a vision where those who have nothing are nourished by goodness. The bread that satisfies is the Word made flesh. We taste and see the love of God broken bread; in receiving his body is nourished and sent out. In a generation of increasingly loneliness - and increasing inequality - the life of the Body of Christ needs to resist being so preoccupied with its inner life that we fail to be compelling witness to God's healing love.
Generosity flows from God, a gift to the world; a compelling light that demands our attention: as Dan Hardy put it: The truth and purposes of God are 'refracted' – as it were spread like a band of colour – in other forms of life and thought; and the purpose of theology is to rediscover the dynamic of God's life and work in this 'band of colour' and from it.
That's a good summary of the vocation of the Body of Christ too. We pay attention to the intensity of the light of God in worship, abiding in faithful love and receiving forgiveness. We also pay attention to the refracted light in our world - walking as Jesus did conversation by conversation.
Such an imagining of the Body is costly for we carry with us the pain and prejudices of our world. Such an imagining of the Body is vulnerable as we carry within us the joys and longings of our world. Perhaps a global level we pray for a reimagined and generous Body as the Primates meet in Canterbury: refined by God's love in prayer, attentive to God's love in the cries of the world.
How we reimagine the Body of Christ will unfold over the term - from the digital to the erotic, the resurrected and the imprisoned. For now, dare we extend the sphere of intimacy in response to the other, bringing a balm in loneliness; dare we extend our compassion to the other, out of the vulnerability of our loneliness ?
May generosity, that is the Spirit's gift, sweep over us, mysterious and radiant. Not so thin it goes unnoticed; but that others walk with us in Christ's steps.
© Julie Gittoes 2016
Text of a sermon preached at Jesus College, Cambridge on 10th January 2016: Isaiah 55:1-11 and Romans 6: 1-11
