Out of the Ashes Flies a Bird of Great Beauty!
Gregory the Great, Giles of Provence, Aiden and Matthew 18:18:

‘Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven’.[1]

This week has given us great opportunities for contemplating many saints who have left us an inheritance of great value. On Wednesday we had the feast day of St Aiden, that great missionary of Iona who evangelised much of northern England. Aiden was the pupil of St Columba and came from the tradition of Monks from the great Monastery on Iona of the sixth, seventh and later centuries. Other monks of this tradition include Cuthbert and Bede, but it is Aiden who first took up the mantle from Columba and laid a very solid platform in the north of our country which others were to later build upon.[2]

Then on Thursday we had the feast day of Giles of Provence, a very popular hermit of the eighth century. In the centuries following his death, a huge cult began to grow around Giles and even here in England many churches of tenth century origin bear his name. Today, however, very little is now known about this hermit, aside from his endearing legend as a man of great self-sacrifice and faith.[3]

On Saturday we had the feast day of Gregory the Great, the greatest of the popes who bear the name Gregory. He died in 604AD. Gregory the Great was the first pope to come out of the cloister, first becoming a monk at the age of thirty five. It appears that Gregory had great skill in uniting people of different nations under the one religion and managed to order Rome’s assets so that more money could be used more efficiently for the poor. It is said that after Gregory saw an Anglo-Saxon for sale at a slave market in Rome, he felt compelled to send missionaries to England: over forty monks from his own monastery, which included the man we know as Augustine of Canterbury.[4]

The sixth and seventh centuries were times of great action and vigour in Christian endeavour, and it is right that we should look back at them with much fondness. It is to the likes of Aiden and Gregory that we owe a huge debt of gratitude. But we should be equally careful not to view these times through rose tinted spectacles. Whilst it is clear that the Spirit was truly active at this time and especially within these individuals, it was not all easy sailing.

Gregory’s great achievements came on the back of a time when the Western Church had been very vulnerable indeed, and much of the reordering that Gregory brought about was in direct response to problems that he had inherited.

Equally, Aiden’s great success in proclaiming the Gospel and evangelising the North of England came out of a period of great darkness. There was a reason why the North needed evangelising!

Be that as it may, many find what took place during these centuries and the great spiritual focus that developed within the whole society as a result quite awe inspiring. This was a time when much of the Western world appeared very spiritually alive and very much in tune with the natural order. Especially when we look at the kind of society we seem to inhabit today.

For many of us, the riots that we experienced a few weeks ago came as a shock, but not a surprise. The spiritual poverty that has been developing in our society over the past forty or fifty years comes at a price. A society impoverished from its spiritual core brings with it spiritually impoverished thinking and actions. If every individual is educated in the pursuit of individual self-interest and monetary gain at the expense of all else, then we must expect increasing numbers of our society to do whatever they can to benefit themselves alone. Thus, today’s world can look like a very dark place indeed.

But before we give up on it all, we should perhaps take a step back, because ‘whatever we bind on earth will be bound in heaven and whatever we loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.’ This is a very sobering thought, and a very important one. Our world appears dark only because we have forgotten what it is like to be completely spiritually aware, completely in tune with the natural order of things.

The great saints of our church were not born into sainthood. They simply discovered this spiritual awareness and once in-tune with the natural order of things then mastered the ability to teach others the same. This can be our focus too...

Last Saturday I returned home from a holiday in Ireland. It was a beautiful holiday, but a very tiring one. We took our own car and drove and so just the outward and inward journeys alone took 12 hours each. After arriving home, I needed a day just to recover! So on Sunday I settled down to a nice relaxing afternoon listening to the football. My beloved Arsenal were away to Manchester United. 8 goals later...   Arsenal experienced their worst defeat for over a century.

But out of these ashes began to grow glimmers of hope. Over the next few days, Arsenal purchased a world-class Brazilian right-back, a world-class German centre-half, a world class Spanish midfielder and a world-class South-Korean striker. Suddenly the future begins to look very bright indeed.

The same is true of our Christian inheritance. Throughout Christian history cycles have emerged which see great gains in spiritual awareness followed by periods of complacency, inward focus and a pursuit of worldly values. These rock the faith to its core. Whether these periods are necessary for fresh further spiritual growth or not, they are very uncomfortable to live through at the time. Western Christianity may well just be coming out of one of these periods, but in amongst the ashes we can see the embers of something very exciting indeed.

The phoenix is a bird enfolded in mythology. It is a sacred firebird that can be found in the mythologies of the Arabian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Egyptian, Chinese, Indian and Phoenician cultures.[5]

A phoenix is a mythical bird with a colorful plumage and a tail of gold and scarlet. It has a 500 to 1000 year life-cycle. Mythology has it that when it nears the end of this period it builds itself a nest of twigs. It then ignites and both nest and bird burn fiercely and are reduced to ashes. All seems lost, but then from out of the ashes rises a new, young phoenix reborn anew to live again. The new phoenix is destined to live as long as its old self and is twice as splendid. Out of the ashes flies a bird of great beauty!

I am convinced that this is the future of our Christian faith. Having lived through the building of the nice comfortable nest and then watched it begin to disintegrate before our very eyes, we now find ourselves confronted with something materializing that is twice as splendid as what has gone before. Out of the ashes will fly a bird of great beauty!

Whilst the works of Gregory, Giles and Aiden might seem magnificent, and they truly are, they are no more magnificent than the daily works of the people I see before me. Just like these saints of the first millennium, you are the ones whom God calls to bring about a renewed spiritual focus for our time. Therefore, use whatever you have at your disposal to help those in our society out of their spiritual impoverishment. Who knows, they might just become the Gregory and the Aiden of the next century.

Out of the ashes will fly a bird of great beauty!

Amen

R.T. Parker-McGee 2012

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[1] Matthew 18:18

[2] D. Attwater & C. John, The Penguin Dictionary of the Saints (London: Penguin Books, 1965), p.30

[3] Ibid. p.159

[4] Ibid. p.162-163

[5] See: R. Van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix - According to Classical and Early Christian Traditions, (Leiden: E.J.Brill, 1972).

11^th Sunday After Trinity 2012 

It would appear that we are enslaved to food. Some of us worry about every little detail of what food contains. How many E numbers, preservatives; am I allergic to this or that? Some of us love food so much that we cannot get enough. In the developed world we are bombarded with food health advice and constantly harangued about our over indulgence. Our children, we are told, are the most spoilt in world.

In much of Africa, Asia and South America, however, children are not so spoilt. Instead of searching endless supermarket shelves selfishly looking for the next fix of treats, children in these countries spend their time searching endless piles of refuse looking for anything that might settle their empty stomachs for just one hour.

Of course Jewish society was, at the time of Jesus, just as obsessed with food as we are now. They recognised that God was very interested in what we ate and the way in which we went about it. For first century Jewish society, the teaching of a religious leader about food would form a huge part of how that leader was regarded – perhaps the same could be true today. So Jesus’ words about eating his flesh and drinking his blood will have caused major ripples indeed.

We are so used to hearing these words and associating them with our church belief that today their meaning can easily fall on deaf ears. But Jesus’ words are intended to shock - both then and now. The self-inflicting violence of these words is calculated.

People were, and are, intrigued by what Jesus has to say. They believe that basically they can choose. Is he an important religious leader moving them closer to God or not? Some pieces they like and some pieces they don’t. So they pick and choose. They listen when it suits them and return to their comfortable, fashionable immorality the rest of the time. But Jesus is not an optional extra.

These words of Jesus, ‘eat my flesh and drink my blood’, up the ante: they force people to make a choice. They lost Jesus many followers at the time and they arguably lose him many now. It is these words, and others like them, that open Christianity up to accusations of superstition, but they also reveal the essence of true faith. Jesus is not a luxury, he is not a fad to satisfy our latest craving, he is life and the only possible source of it. This world of misery and pain, of longing and craving – this world where we rely on other kinds of food and become obsessed with it one way or another – this is not the real world. The real world is fed only by Jesus – created by him, redeemed by him and sustained by him, and him alone.

The bread that we bless in the Eucharist, through our belief and God’s grace, becomes Christ’s body. The wine that we bless in the Eucharist, through our faith and God’s grace, becomes Christ’s blood. When we eat his flesh and drink his blood he enters and transforms us. Slowly, so long as we take the Eucharist seriously, we become a little more like him and a little more able to do his will in this world. The more we receive him in the Eucharist, the more we are transformed.

But the story doesn't end there. Having received Christ and his spirit we are sent out to do his bidding, with no shoes on our feet and only one tunic on our backs. Christ provides us with all we need.

But again we have a choice. We can sit in our comfortable homes and pretend that we are doing all we can, but then we become a part of the deceptions of this world and instead of becoming more like Christ, Christ simply dwindles within us.  

Or we can do what we know in our heart of hearts Christ is calling us to. A life of compassion and humility, a life of love and care. In so doing, the little piece of Jesus that enters us in the Eucharist has a chance to take hold, to grow and to flourish.

Living such a life is not easy, however, and it is not easy precisely because it goes against so much that this world teaches us. It means not avoiding difficult issues, but facing them head on. It means not pretending that things aren't happening in order to try and keep our comfortable lives safe - but making ourselves vulnerable so that others may benefit. It means going out to the fringes of our society and transforming our scepticism into compassion.

If we take our faith seriously, when we see fear or suffering we are obliged to respond. We cannot sit back to wait and see which way the dust settles, because by then the damage is done.

When terrible things are happening in our world, we are called to be in the middle of it offering people a glimpse of Christ’s real world of compassion and love. There can never be any limit to our attempts to show compassion, love, nurture and care of those in our communities. In this way, the body and blood of Christ that we receive in the Eucharist takes hold, fuelling us and giving us the courage to go further than before.  In this way, the Church community may strive forward as the true body of Christ in this place, today!

Amen

R.T. Parker-McGee 2012