Grit, determination and passion

This list the text of a sermon preached at the Cathedral Eucharist on 13 January 2019. Opening the Saturday papers, there was a lot of comment on Andy Murray - his career, physical pain, achievements, character as he contemplated giving up competitive tennis.  

It sparked reflections about the weight of expectation he faced and how we sit lightly to 'success'. How this related to Jesus' Baptism was in part about the divine embrace of human flesh, but also the power of the Spirit. Given the Cathedral's dedication to the Holy Spirit, it resonated too with T. S. Elliot's Four Quartets - the ground of our beseeching.  

However, as well as remembering Murray win his first Wimbledon title, I was calling to mind the moment I heard about the Dunblane massacre - an attack on a school where Andy and his brother were pupils. There is underpinning this sermon something about trauma, resilience and redemption. The texts were Isaiah 43:1-7, Acts 8:14-17 and Luke 3:15-7, 21-22

In the summer of 2013, 17.3 million viewers watched tuned in to the Wimbledon final.

Many more, like me, listened on Radio 5 Live.

The duration of the Men’s Singles Final outlasted the journey time from Guildford down the A281 to Alford Church. Sitting in the car park, Evensong drew closer; waiting with baited breath for those three words: game, set and match.  Followed by the name: Andy Murray. 

And he cried - having squeezed out every last drop of talent in pursuit of victory.

And six years later,  he cried - the excruciating pain of his body is telling him to stop.

Journalists reach for cliches - speaking of blood, sweat and tears. They remind us of the gangly kid who became a sporting icon; the fierce competitor who would sulk and swear; the shy man with a dry wit and the conviction to challenge misogyny in tennis.

Like Jeremy Bates, Tim Henman and Greg Rusedski before him, Murray carried a weight of expectation: every time he stepped on to court, the people questioned in their hearts whether he might be the one; whether he might be the first British man to win Wimbledon since Fred Perry.

His role of honour is quantified in singles titles, Olympic medals, weeks at number one and being named as Sports personality of the Year. His greatness, if you like, is in the headline: the grit, determination and passion at the limit of endurance.

In the realm of sport, that weight of expectation never ends. Rankings are determined match by match. Greatness is a glittering prize; elusive and subject to judgement.

The words of Andy Bull’s tribute point to a different metric of greatness; to Murray’s character. Of the man who sold the red Ferrari and kept his VW Polo, he writes: It is rare enough for a sportsman to be so successful, much rarer still for one to be so unaffected by his success. 

Perhaps being unaffected by success will enable expectations to morph into legacy, mentoring and a new pattern of life.

Today we John the Baptist had found himself in the spot light; he carries a weight of expectation that he will be the one. The one who brings freedom; who’ll triumph in the name of God.  

He remains unaffected by the crowds, taking no claim of greatness for himself. 

Instead he continually points beyond himself; to the one who is to come.

By baptising with water, he has set the scene and prepared the way. 

His words sting with the rebuke to those who abuse power; and captivate those longing for new life. He invites all who hear him to turn back to God: to open their hearts, to change their lives, to expect something - or rather someone - more.  

That expectation is met in the one who comes and stands alongside us - embodying the fullness of God’s love in the frailty of our our flesh.

In the moment of his own baptism, Jesus is revealed as God’s Son; revealed in the physicality of the moment. In this moment of prayer. 

Baptism of Jesus - Daniel Bonnell

In baptism, the divine embrace of human flesh is declared. 

The voice of his heavenly Father declares Jesus’ identity and authority as Son; the power of the Spirit though which the work of our rebirth is completed is revealed. 

Jesus is the one who restores dignity to our humanity by being with us: his baptism is a sign of the way in which the world is reclaimed, healed, transformed and blessed by the Word of God made flesh. 

In him, our expectations are subverted and fulfilled. Greatness and success are re-defined. In him, we see God’s ways at work - persistently, gently, fiercely turning us away from death and toward life.

With a passion as strong as fire, Jesus calls us back from all those things which serve as substitutes for life lived with God: the desire for control over others or the desire to be at the centre of the crowd; the reliance on what we have to define who we are; the way we might chase multiple glittering prizes which leave us empty or unfulfilled.

With a fire of unquenchable love, Jesus restores to us the dignity and calls us into a community which reflects life lived with God: where we are loved; where we are supported; where we find wisdom and joy; where we can be vulnerable; where hospitality bubbles up.

And some days, it feels as if we are still waiting for that to be made real; still waiting to be noticed or heard; still waiting for expectations to be met; still waiting for our purpose to become clear; still waiting for radical love to extend its reach.

And the gift we are waiting for is nearer to us than we know; it is for us, our name and our charism. At a Cathedral Church dedicated to the Holy Spirit, dare we pray and call upon power from on high?

We are to pray as the apostles did in Acts: that the Spirt might descend to renew in our flesh, the reality of that divine embrace; to see that love stretching forth over one another. 

In our waiting and praying,  our bodies yield to this gift of love divine.

As one theologian [Willie Jennings: Acts] puts it: God will draw near and give lavishly in an intimate space created by bodies and created for bodies. 

To pray in this way expresses our longings; our desire to liberated from fear or failure; our need for love to be move loving.

As T. S Elliot puts it:

And all shall be well and 

All manner of thing shall be well

By the purification of the motive

In the ground of our beseeching. 

Our beseeching is met in the promise of being beloved. 

The intimacy of this echoes the words of Isaiah fulfilled in Christ: in him, we are called by name and redeemed; in the Spirit we are created and recreated; formed and reformed.  

In the assurance of such love, our motives and actions are purified; the chaff burnt away. In the assurance of such love, we are called to bring healing and hope to others.

Fire and Rose

It is through the intimacy of created bodies that God’s love is made known in the world: in Christ, God’s very self is given for us, defeating death and turning us towards life.

That life and light and love, is breathed through the world by the Spirit blowing where it wills: provoking, creating, protesting, healing, crying out. 

That Spirit is poured out on us today: on broken bread and outpoured wine becoming for us Christ’s body; on hearts and minds receptive to challenge and desiring blessing; on our bodies however energetic, frail, bruised or beautiful. We who are many become one body - living, breathing and moving in the world. 

May we live with grit and determination, passion and endurance - listening to what the Spirt might be saying to us in the words and music of our worship; in the papers we read and the people we meet. What might the Sprit be saying?

In the words of Elliot (text):

With the drawing of this Love and the voice of this
     Calling

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Through the unknown, remembered gate
When the last of earth left to discover
Is that which was the beginning;
At the source of the longest river
The voice of the hidden waterfall
And the children in the apple-tree
Not known, because not looked for
But heard, half-heard, in the stillness
Between two waves of the sea.
Quick now, here, now, always—
A condition of complete simplicity
(Costing not less than everything)
And all shall be well and
All manner of thing shall be well
When the tongues of flame are in-folded
Into the crowned knot of fire
And the fire and the rose are one.

© Julie Gittoes 2019

Have you found a lasting hope?

On the cusp of Holy Week our attention shifts from Annunciation and Nativity to Calvary; from expectancy and birth to suffering and death.  As we make that move, this painting holds birth and death together; it draws invites us to pay attention to an apple. An apple in the hand of Eve is a symbol of temptation, misdirected desires, and our human propensity to mess things up. An apple in the hand of Mary is a sign of redemption, self-giving love, God propensity to forgive and restore.

Chris Gollon: Madonna of the Apple (2012)

That is the overarching narrative of salvation - of a love that gives in perfect freedom with all the risk of hurt and failure that that entails; and a love that will not let us go when we face the reality of human vulnerability.  Steve Summers' articulated this, drawing on Simone Weil’s theology last week.  He identifies the paradox of love – of intimacy and separation.  We cannot insulate ourselves from pain – yet we are called to hope in the midst of it. A hope founded on God and the assurance that all shall be well.  

Eliot writes that history may be servitude; faces and places known and loved to us vanish, or are renewed.  The reality of the human condition is met by grace: Sin is Behovely, but / All shall be well, and / All manner of thing shall be well. All shall be well because our hope is in the faithfulness of God’s love; his yes to humanity. All shall be well because such hope does not disappoint, rather it engenders trust.  In stillness, in waves and sea Eliot describes A condition of complete simplicity / (Costing not less than everything) / And all shall be well and / All manner of thing shall be well / When the tongues of flames are in-folded / Into the crowned knot of fire / And the fire and the rose are one.

Hope demands that we inhabit the Gospel story afresh. As we immerse ourselves in Holy Week,  that invitation to immerse ourselves in this narrative is more acute. It allows space to ask questions about loss and renewal, grief and gift; questions which are more spacious than answers.

This painting is an impossible moment of infancy and death; eternity caught in a span. It is love with us, the source of hope. Not an ending, but a new beginning.  Perhaps we will catch a glimmer of hope and renewal that we come know, with baited breath, like a breaking dawn, as resurrection.  That is perhaps conveyed in ‘A blinding brightness’.

Catherine Clancy: A Blinding Brightness (2014)

 

Denise Inge thinks deeply about this resurrection hope in her book ‘A Tour of Bones’.  She discovers that preparing to live and preparing to die are in the end the same thing.   She writes about the Spirit brooding over us, refining us, rushing through us and drawing us on.  Whispering the assurance: Do not be afraid.  As we face the frailty of our human nature we are invited to rediscover hope by placing God centre stage and responding to an invitation to turn, to follow to set our Christ, setting our eyes on him.  Do not be afraid.  Learning to die well, learning to let go, extends our horizon so that we might live well. 

Denise’s journey takes her to various charnel houses across Europe: each places ‘tells’ her something. At Sedlec she ponders the quest to find a lasting hope and the story of resurrection, and hope amidst doubt.  For her it isn’t about believing the impossible – but leaving room for the improbable… it is the daring act of staking a claim in the unprovable. That is what makes it hope rather than optimism, because it is active. It does more than wait to see what will be; it acts prior to proof. It is audacious.

Such an audacious hope in resurrection is life-enriching; it is an invitation to live without being afraid. She writes: we think we need a dream. We are urged to ‘climb every mountain’ till we find it… but what we really need is hope. Humans cannot life without it… Hope is not the same thing as optimism. Optimism says that things will get better. Hope says that the good we envisage is the good we work towards. Optimism is largely passive: it is about waiting for what is better to come to you. Hope is active: it goes out and does. It falls and fails sometimes, but it is tenacious and unafraid… it will not let go of the notion that the good is real, and that we can find it.

Have you found a lasting hope? Anchor yourself in the eternal abiding (for me this is God). Feed yourself with something stronger than optimism. You are in a constant state of growth and transition, so let change transform you.

Catherine Clancy: Bird of Hope (2014)

If hope in the resurrection is the paradox of continuity and transformation, then we are drawn more deeply into an act of faith: the sensing of light while it is still night.  Perhaps it's an intuition shaped and formed by the Holy Spirit, so often depicted as a bird in flight.  There are powerful hints of faith and hope and love; of a deeper communion beyond the dark cold and empty desolation, beyond the waves and the waters. In ‘Little Gidding’ Eliot writes of a dove descending – an incandescent flaming love redeeming us and freeing us from sin and error.  Perhaps we should also pay attention to his words in ‘Ash Wednesday’ – words of hope, inviting us to put God centre stage, and allowing our cries to come to him:

Although I do not hope to turn again

Although I do not hope

Although I do not hope to turn…

Teach us to sit still

Even among these rocks,

Our peace in His will

And even among these rocks

Sister, mother

And the spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,

Suffer me not to be separated

And let my cry come unto thee.

© 2015 Julie Gittoes

Hope - darkness and intensity

We have talked about finding still points in the midst of confusion; of glimpses of assurance.  Such language is reminiscent of T. S. Eliot's 'Four Quartets'.  In 'East Coker', Eliot draws us urgently into a journey through darkness towards a deeper communion. He invites us to pay uncompromising attention to flesh and bone, waves and whispers, houses and fields, to time, rhyme, music and dancing.  This is the stuff of life - we would add our own concerns and joys to that list. 

He urges us to seek the eternal moment amidst the disorder of the natural world; he looks beyond the vacant interstellar spaces, beyond the motives, flaws and pettiness of distinguished human lords. Paradoxically, he writes that We must be still and still moving / Into another intensity.   We are perhaps called to pay attention to what confronts us; to the waves, clouds and storms; yet somehow moving forward into the intense communion of God's love.  

Catherine Clancy: Dark Night of Crucifixion (2014)

Clancy's 'Dark night of crucifixion' captures something of both bearing with and moving on  through what Eliot calls the dark cold and the empty desolation / The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters. In the darkness, there is that scorching flash of colour - a crown of thorns, a shedding of blood.  Might that be a source of hope; of divine love with us, holding us and drawing us onwards?

Catherine Clancy finds in Eliot's verse a wayfarer to explore with us the exhortation, assurance or longing within the phase 'Do not be afraid'.  He knows of light and of reference points; the disturbance of storms and the disorientation of being overwhelmed. Dawn points, and another day / Prepares for heat and silence. Out at sea the dawn wind / Wrinkles and slides. I am here / Or there, or elsewhere. In my beginning.  

He writes too of our human fears: fear of fear and frenzy, their fear of possession, / Of belonging to another, or to others, or to God.  In darkness, wind and storm, Clancy confronts us with the fear; yet that radical de-centring allows us to seek after wisdom. Those things are intimately related for The only wisdom we can hope to acquire / Is the wisdom of humility: humility is endless.

Clancy's paintings echo the traces Eliot's journey of assurance in the midst of all that disrupts; hope in the midst of turbulence; and the longing of waiting in silence.  Eliot confronts the intolerable wrestle / with words and meanings in pursuit of wisdom, allowing images to resonate, disturb and delight. Clancy takes us in to density of darkness in such a way as to compel us to attend; to risk stillness amidst movement; allowing our eyes to adjust to see the incremental breaking in of light. 

Clancy describes this as negative capacity leads to surrender and trust; for creativity and renewed perspective.  Amidst the darkness and storm, it is the Spirit that comes like wind that moves across the deep like a flash of violet.  It is the Spirit who gives us life; bringing us to a safe harbour, drawing us to love. It is the Spirit that brings a blinding brightness; evoking in us the depth of reverent praise.

At a human level, our hopes and loves are often thwarted, transient or unfulfilling; we focus on the wrong thing.    Wait without hope / For hope would be hope for the wrong thing, writes Eliot, inviting us to suspend our human inclinations.  This is so hard to do.  We long for trust in our relationships – whether in the intimacy of our personal lives or the pressures of our working life. We might hope for short term satisfaction – believing the advertisers that we just need this experience or product. We might be fearful about our financial security – about our pensions and mortgages. Those concerns occupy our institutional life too – as we face questions about our national vision in the run up to a General Election; as we think about the priorities for mission and ministry within our parishes, diocese and cathedral.  

Do we hope for the wrong thing? So often what we think of as financial or personal issues are in fact spiritual ones. How can we encourage one another to have the assurance to place God centre stage? To fix our eyes on Christ, as Andrew described it last week; to discern where the Spirit might be leading us. Sometimes it does feel as if we are stepping into the darkness – as clouds and waves encompass us. And yet, we abide in the assurance that all hearts to love will come. 

In the risk of stillness we find meaning; the beyond, the transcendent, the eternal breaks in.  A new hope emerges in the face of the turbulence.  So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing writes Eliot, as he grapples with finding faith, hope and love in the waiting.  

 Catherine Clancy: All Hearts to Love Will Come (2014)

This paradox of movement and attention finds its focus in Good Friday. In Jesus Christ, God's love for the world is poured out: Beneath the bleeding hands we feel / The sharp compassion of the healer's art. Clancy expresses this intensity, union and deeper communion in darkness, waves, warm haze and light.

Love is most nearly itself

When here and now cease to matter.

Old men ought to be explorers

Here or there does not matter

We must be still and still moving

Into another intensity

For a further union, a deeper communion

Through the dark cold and the empty desolation

The wave cry, the wind cry, the vast waters

Of the petrel and the porpoise.  In the beginning is my end.

The sharp compassion of the healer’s art takes us to the depths of human despair; and to the foot of the cross. Where we fear that there is no remedy, God’s love meets us. When we are spent and exhausted, there hope is renewed.  These things are held together in the mystery of the incarnation – from the warmth of the womb to the darkness of the tomb.

© 2015 Julie Gittoes