Sermon: Wanting Outward

Durham Cathedral Eucharist

9^th December 2007 Advent 2

Matthew 3.1-12

Wanting Outward

This year I am finding the business of preparing for Christmas slightly more disorienting than usual. On December 17^th I am flying out to India to spend some time with my daughter. All of a sudden I find that some of the Advent and Christmas themes feel a bit different. Not so much ‘look east' as ‘go East' and when I think of Christmas dinner my mind goes not to a turkey roast but to something a bit spicier.  Indeed I am promised not only curried goat but also a trip to market to buy the goat - still bleating.

On Tuesday morning I was in London queuing to get my visa.  The website said it was very busy and there was no guarantee of success.  So at 7.00am I joined the queue of over 100 people and started to wait, patiently, hopefully, expectantly.  It was, it occurred to me, a very appropriate thing to do in advent.  For waiting is a big advent theme.  But in our waiting-averse culture, waiting is seen as a nuisance, a waste of time.  We experience the red traffic light, the delayed train or the answer phone that puts us on hold with intense frustration.   It is not so in India.  The guidebook informs me that ‘Time for the Indians is not an issue'. 

By 10.30 am my waiting had been rewarded, I had my visa. I had booked myself onto the 10.00pm train from King's Cross and so I now had eleven and a half hours to spare. More waiting time. I decided against the shops and for the National Gallery, hired an audio guide and embarked on a few hours of looking and listening. 

Listening to the commentary while looking at the pictures was a real eye-opener. The carefully crafted sentences, even the odd word, would reveal details in the pictures that I could never see. The wasps in Botticelli's Venus and Mars, the three nails and the crown of thorns inscribed into the halo of the infant Christ in the Wilton Diptych. These tiny details draw you in and bring the piece to life. 

Surrounded by beautiful art I start thinking about Christmas cards.  But strangely, my eyes are drawn to Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus.  The resurrected, clean-shaven Jesus sits at table with Cleopas and his travelling companion at the moment when Christ reveals himself and they recognize him.   The disciple on the right is wearing the scallop shell of a pilgrim. I had never noticed that before.  For all I know someone broke in and painted it on him last night! But that's the point about art. It takes time just to see what is there. That's what waiting is about. Letting your eyes open, like flowers in spring. But if it's true about art, it's even more true about faith.

I love the Emmaus road story and in the summer I wrote a little hymn which included a verse based on it:

When walking on the dusty road,

We find your presence near.

And as you take and break and bless,

You cast out all our fear.

I shared it with my daughter who was off to India before it could be sung. She thought it was okay. ‘Like Little Donkey', she said. ‘Fair cop', I thought. The dusty road is part of our faith in more than one season. Jesus, like John the Baptist, is always calling us on a journey.  But it is always a journey to repent and never an invitation to rush.  ‘Spiritual growth begins when you start to walk a bit more slowly', says Rowan Williams.  ‘Walk' is a metaphor here. It means ‘spiritual growth begins when you start to live a bit more slowly.'  Part of the advent gospel is that God has a sense of pace and that our job is to find that and walk in it, live in it.  To the pilgrim, God's pace is more important, far more important, than God's place. And we are all pilgrims. Scallop shells or no scallop shells. 

In Caravaggio's picture, the pilgrim is caught at the moment of suddenly realising who the stranger is. He ‘sees' and stretches out his arms in a childish way, nonverbally offering an imitation of Christ. ‘You are the man who was on the cross,' he gestures.  The pose speaks louder than the words of the audio guide.  ‘This is what recognising Christ involves', it says. ‘When you see, when you really see, you fling your arms out, you open them wide in imitation of Christ's love and vulnerability.'

I move on and another of Caravaggio's masterpieces catches my eye, Salome receiving the head of John the Baptist on a platter.  It is a grim image.  John has been executed for speaking out. He was just too critical of the powers that be.  We heard him in the gospel ranting away and telling everyone to repent. To change their mind.  He really gave the Pharisees and Sadducees some stick. ‘You brood of vipers'. It is five star invective.  In the end he went too far, went out of his mind, lost his head and was decapitated.  It's horrific. Even Salome turns away. 

This is no Christmas card.  Too gruesome. Better the Wilton Diptych  where no one will notice those  nails inscribed in the infant's halo. Better Bellini's Madonna of the Fields where no one will notice that the baby is draped across his mothers lap in a pose anticipating the pieta.  Better Piero's The Nativity, where the angels catch our eye and no one notices the two little goldfinches - symbols of the passion because they eat the seeds of thistles - and while everyone spots the magpie on the roof of the shed they will see it as a decoration.  But there are no decorations here, only meaning. And the meaning of the magpie is ominous indeed for the little boy. Advent and Christmas remind us that our faith embraces the darker side of life, though we do what we can to hide it or disguise it as decoration. 

I wander back to Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus? Could it be a Christmas card?  It just might possibly work because there in the middle of the table we see not broken bread but a nice roast chicken.  That looks a bit more festive. Certainly it speaks more of a traditional Christmas than does goat curry.  Though the thought of slaughtering a goat pales into significance in the light (or do I mean in the dark?) of the horrors of decapitation or crucifixion which is what John and Jesus found as they walked life's dusty road.

A week ago I was leading our diocesan Seeds of Hope weekend at Ushaw. About 50 people from different parishes nervously gathered to explore the themes of searching, wanting, waiting, growing and hoping.   During the weekend we encourage people to slow down, to realise that ‘it' - whatever ‘it' might be - does not all depend on them.  We encourage some deliberate ‘waiting' and try to undermine the culture of busyness which, to our shame, pervades the church as much as the world. Busy is a common but self-important often slightly pompous word.  Patience, on the other hand, is uncommon and humble.  ‘Busyness' is based on muddling up the ‘urgent' and the ‘important'. The danger is that when we are busy we get lots of things done but lose the plot. That's why, alongside your ‘to do' list it is good to have a ‘to don't' list or a ‘not to do' list.   It is important to honour both lists. But for many of us it is the ‘to don't' list which presents the spiritual challenge. How ironic then, that so many of us ignore the advent invitation ‘not to do' and turn it into a very long ‘to do' list.

At Seeds of Hope we did some work in small groups.  In the session on ‘wanting' we passed around a gift-wrapped box (it looked like a Christmas present) and as we did so we told each other what we felt the world wanted us to want. A new car. A nicer home. More security. More wealth. More time. More everything.  Then the box was replaced by one wrapped in brown paper (an Advent present, perhaps). ‘Now, can you say what you really want?'  Suddenly the atmosphere changed. Things slowed down. There were lumps in throats and words came out hesitantly.  This was the heart speaking, the soul finding its voice.  As it did so the busyness of worldly anxiety melted away.  People waited courteously for each other to speak - gave each other time. In my group everyone spoke of wanting something for someone else - their health, their wellbeing, their happiness.  One lady put her finger on it. It's about ‘wanting outward', she said. A beautiful phrase: ‘wanting outward'.  

The world today seeks to persuade us that it is good to take the waiting out of wanting. But this is literally hopeless. Of this we must repent.  We must change our minds, shake up our mindset and let the advent God put the waiting back into our wanting so that in the waiting our desires might be transformed.

It might be a bit much to send Caravaggio's Supper at Emmaus as a Christmas card but how about it as an ‘Advent card'? For it can remind us that the coming God invites us to walk along life's dusty road at a measured pace and with open eyes, expectant hearts and alert minds. It can remind us that as we set out to seek God we find that God is already travelling with us. It can remind us that it is our task to imitate Jesus and John in vulnerable witness by opening wide our arms, sticking out our necks and putting our heads on the block.

As Advent card, the Supper at Emmaus helps us see that the roast chicken of festival takes second place to the everyday bread of faith.  But it also conveys this deep but warming mystery: that the Advent God keeps us waiting so that we can be changed and renewed to become people whose passion can indeed be described as  ‘wanting outward'.

Stephen Cherry