Let there be Light

 I cannot recall a time when I didn't believe that the material world was caused, and indeed kept in existence, by a mysterious and much greater reality than we can normally perceive.  I remember walking during my primary school years down Rattray Street beside a green corrugated-iron fence and feeling that if you just scratched its surface you might see the glory beneath which enabled the fence to exist in the first place.

This kind of insight was not a feature of my Sunday School education.  Fences green, corrugated or otherwise, had no part to play in that.  Instead, there was a picture on the wall of a blond blue-eyed Jesus sitting in a well-tended garden in the midst of a group of well-brought up children.  But I'm afraid that I didn't trust the central character.  

Jesus was the Saviour, of course, but he apparently had conditions, and it seemed that not everyone was likely to meet them. Not Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, nor unbelievers, nor anyone who had never heard of him.  They had not been washed in the Blood of the Lamb, an so they were all going to spend eternity burning merrily down below.

It was a fate which I found impossible to reconcile with the wonders of nature, let alone the nature of God.  I was sure that if even one conscious being was destined for everlasting agony, God should have called the whole thing off before it began.  How could eternal agony, even for a mere earthworm (let alone a human being) be a part of the divine dispensation? 

Some years later I received a most unexpected answer.  The room in which I was standing suddenly disappeared, and all I could see was a great golden light which surrounded and enveloped me. As I remember it this light was present only for a split second.  There were no greetings, no profound revelations, no messages for me or for  anyone else.  The Light did not even identify itself. But this almost instantaneous event was, and has remained, the most important experience of my life. 

I spent the next thirty minutes or so in a kind of bliss, slowly becoming aware the the Light I had experienced so briefly was the Ultimate Reality, unchanging and eternal.  It was the source of all life, wisdom, power, beauty and love.  And it was entirely free from anger and wrath - righteous or otherwise.

I surmised then that the purpose of death and the meaning of life belong together.  Death is the gateway to an eternal and wonderful life with God and his creatures, probably including (as John Wesley had hoped, and as many Orthodox believe) the Lesser Brethren of the animal kingdom, raised to a higher level than they had known in this life - just as many human beings hope and believe that we shall be.

Here the crucifixion of God seemed to make sense. You cannot defeat evil by evil means without sharing in the evil yourself.  The sacrifice of the cross showed the infernal powers that they could not corrupt the Incarnate God even although he had deliberately made himself defenceless.  They could not make Christ embittered, vengeful and despairing like themselves.  Thus they were defeated - and thus we are saved.

If our human evil could not be overcome without our destruction there would be no hope for us.  Hence the unconditional love of God can be our only assurance.  Only such a love can turn us around and remake us, however long it takes, either in this world or the next.  This seems to me to be the only faith worth having.

By Any Other Name

Today is Quinquagesima Sunday.  Or perhaps you don't agree.  Perhaps you think of it simply as the last Sunday after the Epiphany.  Or perhaps (heaven help you!) you think it should be 'The Eighth Sunday of the Year' as the Roman Rite followed by the great majority of Catholics in the western world call it - and as does the Anglican Church in these islands, I'm sorry to say.  

The more recent liturgical revisions of other Anglican Churches such as the Church of England fudge the issue with terms such as 'The Third Sunday before Lent.'  

None of this is particularly offensive - except perhaps for the remarkably banal and bleak 'Sundays of the Year' - but it is in my opinion still altogether wrong-headed. Not surprisingly it makes things sound matter-of-fact, simple and easily comprehensible - in other words just plain ordinary! 

But is Christianity ordinary?  Is is comprehensible?  I rather doubt it.  There has been no merely ordinary (let alone comprehensible) time since the birth, life, death and resurrection of God. Truly!   

We sometimes talk about the 'Mystery of Christ' but I wonder if we really begin to comprehend what that means.  I think it was Archbishop William Temple who claimed that we could only be saved by one thing: Worship.  But I believe we can only truly worship what we cannot control, let alone fully understand.

To my mind this is where somewhat elevated and perhaps unfamiliar language is both helpful and appropriate.  Its oddness and specialised use can be effective in speaking of the holiness and mystery of God.  But at least it doesn't have to be banal - and you can't say that 'Quinquagesima' is banal!   

Sacred and Profane

The recent obliteration of HRH the Duke of York has not exactly been a surprise.  Ever since Randy Andy made the carelessness of his enthusiasms clear in his youth, I imagine the Lolita Express had just been waiting to bear him on plastic wings to the private islands of rich public figures such as (the late) Jeffrey Epstein.  The royal Icarus should have known better than to do what he did, and then get photographed with Ghislaine Maxwell - not to mention with the girl concerned as well.  But times have changed.  Not even the prime minister of the United Kingdom can have rowdy parties in the back garden of No.10 Downing Street during lockdowns, not to mention on the day just before Prince Philip's funeral as well.  

I have always thought that the monarchy was a specifically religious, indeed Christian, institution.  The colour film of the Coronation left a remarkable impression on me after I had seen it as a small boy, and a good deal of that impression remains with me still all these years later.  I also presume to think that the Queen herself would agree.  The anointing of the Sovereign is a sacramental act which imparts grace to the one anointed.  It is, in fact, much the same in that respect as the ordination of a bishop, priest, or deacon.
How strange that sounds now!  This is the age of Happy Holidays! it seems.  The sacred has been banished from much of our public life - or perhaps worse (if the various fundamentalisms of our time are anything to go by).  The Christian religion is about a transcendent reality from which the reality we know here and now derives its meaning and even its very existence.  An anointed sovereign should remind of this, and thus remind us that our secular life should be sacred too.  But don't hold your breath.  Jerusalem wasn't built in a day.