Sermons
Wednesday 5th March 2014, Ash Wednesday
2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10
by Revd Chris Palmer
I’m very grateful to a person from our parish who sent me this poem a couple of days ago. It seems appropriate for the start of Lent:
“Please” by Hilde Domin
We were deluged
and washed with the waters of Noah's flood
we were soaked through
to the skin of our heartsLonging for a landscape
this side of the border of tears
doesn't work
longing to hold on to spring blossom
longing to remain unscathed
doesn't workWhat works is to ask
please
that at sunrise the dove
will bring the olive branch
that the fruit will be as colourful
as the blossom
that even the rose petals on the ground
can become a shining crownAnd that we, out of the flood
out of the lions den and the
fiery furnace
will be released
renewing ourselves
even more wounded and even more healed.
‘Deluged… and washed, wounded… and healed’. The message of this poem is something we can only learn through the rubbish that life throws at us. - and the rubbish that we do. Before we’ve had any experiences of pain or abandonment or temptation we can’t sit there with some innate wisdom and say, ‘I can’t hope and pray that life will always be sunny and wonderful; I should rather pray that the trauma of life will make me a fuller and richer person.’ This is a perspective that comes only through experience.
And it doesn’t always come even with experience. After all, there are plenty of people who live resentful of the bad things and just want to change the past, who see themselves as the innocent victims of cosmic injustice, and cling on to their deep belief that they’re hard done by and entitled to a life in which what happened hadn’t happen.
But for those who avoid this dead end, soul-destroying approach to living, who discover that ‘longing to hold onto spring blossom/ longing to remain unscathed/ doesn’t work’, there is the gift of a fuller life. And a little bit of experience can go a long way. When we first discover that ‘What works is to ask/ please…/ that the fruit will be as colourful/ as the blossom…’ – then we can make the conscious choice to embrace the neediness and limitation and dashed hopes and opposition that just do come our way, as the route to a life ‘even more wounded and even more healed’.
Paul’s got it in the first reading we heard: he is utterly accepting of his ‘afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments’ and so on. But he knows that out of his loss and what seems to diminish, there is belonging and joy and truth: ‘We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Lent is about that conscious choice, the decision to embrace limitation and letting go as the hopeful and renewing path of life. Of course, Lent isn’t about searching out suffering or engaging in self-harm; only a warped understanding of following Jesus actually invites injury. But it is about embracing self-denial, choosing not to exploit every opportunity, not to use every resource, not to indulge every pleasure – with the faith that God makes us more loving, more generous, more hopeful, more joyous people as a result.
Hilde Domin, who wrote the poem I started with, shows this in her life. She was born into a Jewish family in Germany in 1909. As a young adult, because of rising anti-Semitism she escaped, first to Italy; then Italy also became unsafe, so to England. And then, needing to get out of Europe, they went to the Dominican Republic; it was the only country that would give her a visa. She could have been defined by resentment that her own country became a source of terror to her; she had every reason: her husband’s whole family died concentration camps. She could have been embittered that so many countries shut the door to her, fearing an unmanageable flood of refugees. But she knew that ‘longing for a landscape/ this side of the border of tears/ doesn’t work’. Instead her spirit expanded to love her refuge in Santo Domingo. And when she started writing poetry, she borrowed its name as her pseudonym. She was able in the mid 50s to return to Germany, relinquishing resentment at her own country’s complicity in genocide. Her poetry – her whole demeanour – suggests a person of hope, accepting of her story, accepting advancing years: ‘even the rose petals on the ground/ can become a shining crown’.
In the poem I read, she talks about Noah’s Ark, and Daniel in the lions’ den, and Daniel’s friends in the fiery furnace – these are obvious biblical stories for someone from a Jewish family. But, for Christians, the obvious story to illustrate this is the death and resurrection of Jesus. The risen Jesus, with scars in his hands, is ‘even more wounded and even more healed.’
And Lent points to this Good Friday and Easter story. Lent was originally conceived as the final approach to baptism at Easter for new Christians. Baptisms is above all the sacramental grasping of this belief that ‘what works/ is to ask/ please… / that out of the flood…/ we will be released’. In baptism we enter the flood waters, we die with Christ, so that we might be released to new life.
Lent got extended as a good idea for all Christians each year a centuries passed, because this grasping of baptism, of our dying and rising with Christ, is something we need to take hold of again each year, each day, each hour:
We are better off as forgiven sinners… than if we’d never sinned.
We are better off as healed people… than if we’d never got hurt
We are better off befriended by God and God’s people… than if we’d never lost our first relationships
We mustn’t choose to sin, choose to be injured, choose to be abandoned. But we are invited in Lent to accept – wholly and unconditionally – the reality of sin and sickness and broken promises in our lives. That acceptance is the gateway to renewal. And we are invited to choose self-denial during Lent – which is not at all the same as self-harm. We live in a culture so bloated with over-work, so drunk with over consumption, so traumatised by the short-term pressure to feel good, that consciously not doing something, not consuming something, not satisfying the desire for a quick fix is a prophetic and healing and hope-filled decision. So much of our compulsive behaviour is driven by a fear of missing out. To fast is to choose to miss out on something, believing that the longings of our heart are fulfilled beyond our loss, in God. This is ‘what works’: from our giving up we are gifted, from our dying we are born, from our fallen blossom we bear fruit.
