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Christ Church Morningside
A reflection given by Michael Paterson
on the Sunday after the death of
It’s evening. The lights are low. The atmosphere intimate. The music discrete. The voice of dear old Ella Fitzgerald enters the room:
It’s evening. The light is fading. The
atmosphere tense. The company familiar. The voice of one about to be
betrayed fills the air:
“Could you not watch one hour with me?”[1] It’s evening. The light fluorescent and harsh. The atmosphere clinical. Those present beside themselves with pregnant anticipation. The voice of a medical stranger pierces the silence: “I’m sorry. There was nothing we could do. He’s gone.”
Suddenly the
sterility of the setting is overpowered by the outpouring of
inarticulate pain and the protest of disbelief. I remain silent and bewildered, aching within and without. My ministry with the dying has brought me here so many times before and yet tonight is no more bearable for that. Unable to bear such grief I withdraw to the hospital chapel to draw breath and to be alone. I know that chapel well. The lighting is low. The atmosphere soothing. The décor familiar. But not tonight. Tonight what I find haunts me. Normally on opening the door, I am confronted with an imposing painting of the Death-Conquering, Risen Christ dominating the wall above the altar. Whether I like it or not, I can’t help but notice it. But tonight that wall is bare, the painting is missing. And my padded chair is unable to soften the blow of just how disturbingly appropriate that absence seems. I have just come from one of the most painful and meaningless of human situations to seek respite and solace in the house of God, and IT IS EMPTY! There is NOTHING and NO ONE here! Despite what Paul says in today’s second reading - there is no resurrection here, only a blank wall with holes indicating where the image of the death-defying Risen Christ had once hung. And as I sit there, my eyes glued to this nothingness, I wonder if this is indeed the most profound statement I have ever encountered in my theological career. The Real Absence!
As T S Eliot puts
it:
‘humankind cannot bear very much reality’
[2]and so before long I
find myself desperately searching for old certainties. I want to know
that everything is alright really when nothing is alright really. I want
to suspend my disbelief and lull myself into believing with Scott
Holland that “death is nothing at all … life means all that it ever
meant, It’s the same as it always was, there is absolute unbroken
continuity”
[3] And yet I know that
nothing could be further from the truth, since life will
never
be the same again. In fact nothing
will be the same again.
Everything
is different. And with
Cole Porter and Ella Fitzgerald I
wonder:
Today we find
ourselves mourning the loss of our dear friends Alan Winchester and Anne
Mason. Two very different characters – one quintessentially English and
old school, the other as Scottish as tartan itself and every bit a
matriarch. They met here at Christ Church – befriended each other in
their widowhood, became sparring partners and were very generous
benefactors of this Church. Alan’s death has been expected since
December, but Anne’s came without any warning whatsoever. And today we
also stand in support and solidarity with Amy Wilson, the coordinator of
our children’s church as she mourns the equally sudden and untimely
death of her father on holiday in Spain.
And against this
background of loss and sorrow that the readings set to be read in every
church throughout the world today, give us these words from St Paul’s
First
Letter to the Corinthians: “If there's no resurrection for Christ, everything we've told you is smoke and mirrors, and everything you've staked your life on is smoke and mirrors. If corpses can't be raised, then neither was Christ. And if Christ weren't raised, then all you're doing is wandering about in the dark, as lost as ever. If all we get out of Christ is a little inspiration for a few short years, we're a pretty sorry lot. But the truth is that Christ has been raised up, the first in a long legacy of those who are going to leave the cemeteries.” [4] And with those words Paul propels us out of a dreich February morning in Morningside to a humid Easter morning near Jerusalem. It’s the first day of the week. The atmosphere is subdued. The voice of an angel stops some grieving women in their tracks. ‘He is not here. He is risen!’ The story is told as Good News but was it really so readily acceptable? I can only imagine the utter turmoil of battered hearts and minds having to do somersaults to cope with all that they had been subjected to. One minute Hosanna, next Crucify Him! One minute the dereliction of his death, next the rumour that he is Risen! Indeed: ‘How strange the change from major to minor.’ Confused? Bewildered? Offended by this attack on the human psyche? Janet Morley puts these words on the lips of the holy women: [5] Like those holy women on that Easter morning who came expecting to find a grave, no-one asked me if I was ready for the rolling back of a stone. Indeed no one asked me if I was ready to have my friends torn away from me. And no one – not even a God - can tell me how their going does not leave me the poorer. Perhaps the Hasidic saying is true: “God is not nice. God is no uncle. God is an earthquake.” I can just about handle that kind of theology. But at the end of a week in which I have sat with three sets of bereaved families as well as suffered the personal loss of a family friend, I need much more than theology and God-talk. I need a spirituality that can show me how to live in the thin place that lies between death and resurrection not only on a personal but also on a global scale: between civilisation and rampant barbarism, war and peace, the threats of bombers and the celebration of racial difference. I desperately need a spirituality that can speak to the thin place between the rich resources of the north and the crippling poverty of the south, between world development and international exploitation, between justice and mercy, life and death. On my Emmaus Road, so slow to believe that all is not lost, my shrivelled heart needs time to thaw out let alone burn within as I sense that the Risen One is perceptibly still around teasing me with hints and guesses of his Presence and then, just as I recognise Him, vanishing from my sight. And so today, after a week from hell, in the intimacy of friends gathered round this table, I go on believing passionately while paradoxically having less words than ever with which to express that belief. Meister Eckhart, the great Mystic of the Rhine, held that “Between God and Us there is no between”. If that be true, and I pray that it is, then in memory of Alan and Anne, and indeed all those we have loved and lost - ‘we have a gospel to proclaim’. Amen. |
| Let the dead things go, and lay hold on life. Purify yourself as He bids you Who is pure. Then the old will drop away from you, and the new wonder will begin. You will find yourself already passed from death to life, and far ahead strange possibilities will open up beyond the power of your heart to conceive. |