What Jesus means to me
"Rector’s Letter"
January 2003
It has become a tradition at St Peter’s for members of
the congregation to be asked to give a ‘sermon’ on a given theme during
Advent. This year we continue this by printing as a Rector’s Letter, the
sermon given by Armorel Young on Sunday December 15 2002
Thank you, Andrew and the PCC, for inviting me to speak. I wasn’t quite
so sure that I wanted to thank you for the topic of this series as it was
first put to me: “What Jesus means to me”. Isn’t that choice of words a bit
un-St-Peter’s-like? It sounds rather dangerously personal, an invitation to
describe at a rather profound and intimate level what makes us tick, a
request for a sort of personal testimony. Isn’t there a church just down the
road from here where you can go if you want to hear faith talked about in
those sort of terms?
But if we don’t feel entirely comfortable with the language of “What
Jesus means to me” let us allow the meaning of the question to re-clothe
itself in slightly different words. I’m in reassuringly good company here
because the Rector did exactly that in his sermon on this topic two weeks
ago. Andrew pointed out that “What Jesus means to me” is simply another way
of saying: “And who do you say that I am?” We’ve have heard that somewhere
before. All three of the Synoptic Gospels record how Jesus put this question
as he walked with his disciples in the territory of Caesarea Philippi. That
question was addressed not to one person but to all the disciples, and it
echoes down the centuries to all of us: And you, who do you say that I am?
Age of uncertainty
To the first asking of the question, Peter of course replied with that
great confession of faith: You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God, to
which Jesus responded with the affirmation on which the church and this
church would be built: “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my
church”. When the question comes to us, what can we say, speaking as the
people that we uniquely are and as people of our time and place? What can we
say that comes from the heart, that expresses not what we have learned by
rote or feel that we ought to say, but what we have felt and lived and truly
believed? The confidence of Peter’s statement of faith might well not come
so easily to us. It is, I think, for us both a freedom and a burden that we
live in an age when everything can and is being questioned, an age that has
more questions than it does answers, an age of uncertainty. Questions lead
readily to doubt, and doubt leads to fear, and before we know where we are
we can find ourselves in a very dark and inhospitable world indeed. There
cannot be many of us here who have not at times in our lives experienced
just how deep the darkness of an apparently godless night can be. Let us not
be afraid to acknowledge that and to find ways of sharing and exploring that
experience if we need to.
But to return to the task in hand. Today it is my turn to, as it were, be
tapped on the shoulder by one of those market researchers in Clumber Street
and to be asked, not what mobile phone network I use or whether I watch
digital television, but what I have to say about Jesus. Of the many possible
answers I am going to give just a brief one which to me both says little and
says much. It’s an answer a bit like that trick where a magician pulls a
handkerchief out of his pocket and it turns out to be a whole string of
knotted handkerchiefs that appear to have no end. You go on unpacking the
parcel and find there is always more to be discovered. I am going to say
that for me Jesus is the person who, on the night that he was betrayed, took
bread and blessed it.
Facing darkness
Just think for a moment about the first part of that phrase. On the night
that he was betrayed. On the night before his execution. On the night
preceding a day of torture and trial, humiliation, pain and death. What
would you do if you knew that these things awaited you tomorrow? For my
part, with the best will in the world, I think that I might be tempted to
follow the advice which used to circulate in the school playground:
When in danger or in doubt
Run in circles, scream and shout”.
But this of course is not the way of Jesus. He has another way to show
us. It is not the way of panic or despair or self-pity or self-absorption.
It is just the way of being there. For it seems to me that in this night of
his betrayal Jesus stands alongside every person living and departed who has
also faced the night of darkness and despair, whether this darkness be
physical, psychological or spiritual, whether it be external or internal. He
stands alongside every person who has been tortured or killed for no other
reason than that he or she holds the wrong views or belongs to the wrong
ethnic or religious group or has incurred the displeasure of a tyrannical
government or a lawless mob. He demonstrates a way of being alongside every
person who awaits the doctor’s diagnosis or the results of hospital tests,
everyone who painfully participates in the progression of another’s illness
or decline, everyone who watches the lives of young people be dissipated in
joblessness or meaninglessness or anger; everyone who wonders fearfully what
the news of tomorrow may bring in personal or national or international
terms. And therefore sometimes in a tense or frustrating or difficult
situation I will simply say to myself “In the night that he was betrayed…”
These are words that give me an alternative to the way of panic or despair;
they are words that can continue to reverberate in my mind, underpinning
whatever is going on at an outward level; they can take on a life of their
own and live in me even when I am not consciously attending to them. Those
of you who are familiar with the repetition of the Jesus Prayer will I think
recognise a parallel with what I am talking about.
Everyday lives
In the night that he was betrayed, Jesus took bread and blessed it. Those
few words, of course, mean so much because they point within themselves to
the story which comes after, the story with which we are so familiar because
we commemorate it here week by week. Jesus took bread and blessed it and
shared it with his disciples. Countless books have been written and sermons
preached on the eucharistic theme. To attempt to say anything more about
that myself feels indeed like fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.
But let me do just one thing, and that is tell you about a picture.
If you go to Belvoir Castle, not very far from here, you can see a
picture of the Last Supper painted by the Flemish artist Pieter Coecke van
Aelst, the father-in-law of Brueghel the Elder, in the first half of the
sixteenth century. As in the famous picture of the Last Supper painted by
Leonardo da Vinci some fifty years earlier, the twelve disciples sit with
Jesus around a long table as he blesses the bread and wine. In da Vinci’s
picture the disciples are attentive and reverent, immersed in the
significance of the moment and their devotion to their Lord. The painting
you can see at Belvoir shows something quite different. In the centre a calm
and dignified Jesus blesses the food placed upon the table, but all around
him is chaos and disarray. Several of the disciples are engaged in animated
private conversations with their neighbours; others are looking bored and
have turned away to stare vacantly into space; one has much too large a
pitcher of wine and to cap it all a couple of dogs are fighting under the
table. It is a picture of confusion that makes me smile, but does it not
have a serious point too? For the gift of bread and wine is given not just
into the reverence and serenity of a setting such as we enjoy in this
ancient church, but into the disorder and muddle of our everyday lives. It
is the muddle of the real world, where all sorts of things overlap and
conflict and happen simultaneously, the world where, in W H Auden’s words,
momentous things happen “while someone else is eating or opening a window or
just walking dully along”.
One of the privileges of having been a member of this church for quite
some years is that one builds up relationships, gets to know people, and I
dare say, gets to be known by them. The truly interesting thing that happens
then is that what might to the visitor seem an undifferentiated sea of
ordinary faces takes on a quite different range and depth as one gets to
know people and events past and present which have made them who they are.
On any one Sunday in this church there will be people facing a whole range
of different problems and challenges, some of which will be of almost
overwhelming difficulty and complexity, although you probably wouldn’t know
it by looking at the faces of those concerned. There will be others who are
celebrating happy or exciting events in their lives; and yet others who are
perhaps bored or finding life a little humdrum because not a great deal is
going on for them at all. Life is rarely neat and tidy and it is certainly
not one size fits all.
So the bread is broken and shared, not apart from life’s complexities but
in the midst of them. It is shared without distinction with the friend and
the betrayer, with the bored and the attentive, with the pious and the
worldly, with those who think they understand and with the completely
uncomprehending. And perhaps the uncomprehending have got a point, for who
would have thought that this sharing of bread and wine could be an answer to
any sort of problem at all? It is as though there has to be a different
framework, a new perspective, a way of seeing things with fresh eyes, and
perhaps the invitation to participate in the eucharist is an invitation to
step into this world where things are different.
Let us just return to that phrase with which I started out. “On the night
that he was betrayed, he took bread and blessed it”. I said that for me part
of the attraction of these words is that they encapsulate so much more than
at first glance they appear to say. It’s a bit like those words of nurse
Edith Cavell on the eve of her execution: “Patriotism is not enough”. That’s
not much of a statement, you might say, but what is the corollary to it?
“Patriotism is not enough: I must have no hatred or bitterness for anyone”.
Where would road rage be if we all took those words to heart, not as a glib
slogan but as an aspect of faith that we have allowed to take root and grow
within us. And similarly the words “On the night that he was betrayed, he
took bread and blessed it” can take root and grow to reveal more of the
presence and the intimacy and the mystery and the hope of this Jesus who
meets us here today.
Armorel Young
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