Sunday, 9 July: Zechariah 9:9-12, Romans 7:15-25a and Matthew 11:16-19, 25-end
Last Saturday night, resisting the compulsion to dance and sing was impossible. We knew the lyrics - most of us having belted out Disco 2000 before the turn of the millennium. This is what Pulp does for an encore. Heart-wrenching indie-Brit pop at its best; a joyous ecstatic reunion of 45,000 people standing in a field.
Jarvis Cocker’s moves were as sharp as ever, youthful even, but we’d aged too. The ballad Something Changed was tinged with sadness as he dedicated it to bassist Steve Mackey who died in March. “It's about how somebody can enter your life and really change it all” says Jarvis; and we kinda know that that’s true, and when we lose them we weep.
It couldn’t end without Common People: perhaps the band’s best loved and most iconic song. It’s become part of our cultural fabric to such an extent that satirical social media content creator “Joe” spliced it with statements from Jacob Rees Mogg set against the refrain, I want to live like common people.
The original, though, is acerbic and poignant enough - as it moves from flirtation, amusement to a brutal evocation of class divides, fear of failure and the reality of life without a safety net. Jarvis’ lyrics perhaps as poignant now as they ever were: I said pretend you’ve got no money; she just laughed and said ‘oh you’re so funny’. I said yeah? Well I can’t see anybody else laughing.
Today’s readings are shot through with joy and grief, comfort and challenge, weariness and rest. With the same searing insight as a lyricist such as Jarvis, the reality of the human condition is peeled back; power games, guilt, accusations, wretchedness; the stuff of flesh and death. But we’re also given a dazzling glimpse of grace and hope - the searing light of God’s loving gaze.
Sometimes we resist that, as Jarvis puts it in Sunrise: I used to hate the sun because it shone on everythin’ I’d done, made me feel that all I had done was overfill the ashtray of my life. And yet, we are invited to mourn the world’s grief and injustice; but we are also invited to learn to sing and dance to the new music of God’s ways with the world.
Let’s start with Pau’s unflinching look at his life: as he considers, á la Jarvis, everything that he had done, he does not understand his own actions. He sees the ashtray of his life - he confesses that he cannot always do what is right.
He doesn’t mince his words by describing poor choices or making mistakes; nor does he say that it’d all be fine if he tried harder or had more will power, as he was politely declining the last piece of cake.
He names a struggle that acts as a force on us: body and mind. Sin is in a way a short hand for those things we do which harm ourselves or others. Some of that is personal - the impatience, selfishness, prejudice or unkindness that can distort our behaviour; some of that is structural - the way wealth, greed, power and vested interests can exploit people, resources and creation.
As the American theologian and preacher Barbara Brown Taylor puts it, we need to retain the language of sin because abandoning it ‘will not make sin go away. Human beings will continue to experience alienation, deformation, damnation and death no matter what we call them. Abandoning the language will simply leave us speechless before them, and increase our denial of their presence in our lives. Ironically, it will also weaken the language of grace, since the full impact of forgiveness cannot be felt apart from the full impact of being forgiven’.
Because that's the flip side of those times when we, like Paul, feel wretched as we look at the ashtray of life - held captive by compulsions or systems. Yet, for him as for us, this is just one part of the story: there is the possibility of rescue. The sun will rise bringing new hope - comfort, life, love, forgiveness.
We can rejoice with the prophet Zechariah because God will come to us triumphant and victorious over sin. He will come with humility, in flesh of our flesh, not simply as a mentor, teacher or guide but as the one who comes to save. He comes to set us free because of a covenant, a promise of love.
In our beauty and brokenness, in our potential and vulnerability, Jesus comes to save us: the power of the cross is to break the power of dominion - to command peace from sea to sea, to the ends of the earth, even to the depths of our hearts.
As Jarvis puts it: life could have been very different but then, something changed.
Thanks to God, says Paul, through Jesus our Lord. For in him, we die to sin and are made new. We are, in the language of our tradition of faith: simul iustus et peccator - simultaneously justified and sinner, sinner and saint.
Something has changed, as the lyrics continue: Do you believe that there’s someone up above? And does he have a timetable directing acts of love?
Well, yes, only this is no cupid firing arrows at random. It is the law of love of which Paul spoke; it is the sacrifice of love of Jesus which we touch, taste and see in bread and wine; it is the Spirit of love breathed into our bodies bound together in Christ’s body.
This is less a timetable and more a way of being in community which directs acts of love, helping us to see and understand what is going on.
There will be times when we need to hear a message of repentance - literally turning back to God to seek forgiveness. There will be times when we celebrate around a common table as saints and sinners - embracing the hope and joy of God’s kingdom.
Jesus invites us along with his hearers to be wise in knowing when to sing and when to mourn. He ends this part of his teaching with the comforting invitation to find comfort and rest in him. When we are weary and overburdened, when we know we can’t make it on our own, he brings relief and solace with humility and gentleness.
There is someone up above who directs our acts of love: the one who gives life, renewal, refreshment and rest. The one who invites us to take up a lighter yoke - one of compassion and mercy, not judgement and despair.
This is the full impact of forgiveness and being forgiven. This is hope. This is grace. This is love.
Life could have been very different; but then something has changed.
