Sermon: People who Walk with Death

I was going to preach to you in quite a different way today.  The Miners’ Festival is always a great event in the life of County Durham, a wonderful celebration of the working people of the north-east.  But today the flag of this Cathedral is flying at half-mast, for the bombings in London have cast a shadow over this sunny July afternoon.  One day a city is exultant at the prospect of hosting the Olympic Games.  The next, it is a theatre of death and bloodshed: first hosannas, then crucifixion.  London has joined the roll-call of terror: 9/11, Bali, Istanbul, Madrid.  All we can do is to watch this happening before our eyes, feel for the victims, say our prayers and go on living with God’s help.

Well, not quite all.  This wake-up call raises sharp questions.  Our political leaders, for instance, how do they defend our democratic freedoms and not give in to terror, keep us safe and hunt down those bent on destruction, but not at the cost of a police state?  Our educators and the media: how can they form the minds of those easily influenced, especially the young, in ways that are wholesome and good, help them learn the meaning of citizenship and counter the allure of violence?  The international community: how can the war on terror be progressed, not only through collaboration and security, but by seeking to understand the root causes of terrorism and addressing them?  Our community and faith leaders: how do we resist political and religious extremism in all its forms, and foster respect for all human beings that builds understanding and friendship?

And we all have our own work to do after the London bombs.  First, we must not judge Islam by this, for the hydra-headed Al Qaeda does not remotely represent the high ideals, the dignity, the moral seriousness and the reverence for life that typify the vast majority of Muslim people in Britain who are as appalled at this outrage as we are.  Secondly, we must respond to the anxiety felt among the ethnic minorities who now expect an angry backlash from the white community, and offer them our friendship and understanding.  Thirdly, we need to recognise the fear actions like this generate and help one another face it calmly, for the paralysis of fear is precisely what the bombs are meant to achieve.  And fourthly, we need to do the work of God, which is to pray for our broken, divided world.

Most of us keep death at a distance: we don’t think too much about it until someone we know or love dies through illness or accident or age.  We aren’t used to the possibility that it may lie round the next corner, or that it could be waiting for us in tube train or bus or city street.  We are here to live, not to die, and living means banishing death and the thought of it to the margins of our lives.  I say this is how most of us think.  But perhaps this is not true of you here today.  For mining communities have always walked with death underground.  In the 20th century alone, we think of such mining disasters as Wingate, Washington Glebe, West Stanley, Murton Colliery, Louisa Colliery, Easington and Eppleton – and besides these, so many other tragedies, so many other lives lost. These are not just names.  They are places that hold painful memories of a father or grandfather, uncle or brother or friend.  One of the most poignant shrines in this Cathedral is the miners’ memorial where the names of those who died in the mines of this county are recorded and remembered. 

Our reading from the Old Testament is realistic about the risks and dangers miners face.  It pictures them working in the dark, out of sight and out of mind, swaying precariously in cavernous pits deep below the surface of the earth.  These men, says Job, put their lives at risk for the harvest if the earth’s fiery depths: gold, silver, copper, iron, precious stones.  But there is one commodity so elusive that it can’t be mined like minerals or coal.  You can’t buy it or barter it – you can’t even put a value on it, for it is beyond price.  You can travel to the ends of the earth but you will come back empty-handed.  Only God knows its place, says Job. What could this be?  Our reading tells us that its name is wisdom.  It has been there ever since the world was created, yet it remains hidden from mortals.  We can’t find it on our own, though we do our best to.  But there is a way to it, says our reading, and it is open to everyone. ‘The fear of the Lord, that is wisdom.’ 

But wisdom, in the Bible, embraces even larger concerns.  It is about how to live and know our place in the world.  Job speaks about ‘the fear of the Lord’.  That means rendering unto God that which is God’s, the honour and worship that creatures owe their creator.  It means giving him our loyalty and love, acknowledging that he is the Lord of all life and holds our destinies in his hands.  To live in this way is to put a new perspective on tragedy, as Job himself had to learn in the light of the suffering that struck him with such suddenness and cruelty.  We mine for wisdom in such circumstances, desperately seeking some explanation that makes sense: why me? Why here? Why now?  Faith puts these unanswerable questions into a new light.  It says that our God only wise, full of compassion and mercy, stands with every victim, feels their pain, sheds their tears.  For in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, he has entered into the tragedy of our condition; he has walked with death too, and bears for all time the marks of what was done to him in his hands and feet and side.

Tomorrow in this Cathedral, we shall commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.  We shall remember those who walked with death then, so many lives laid down for their friends.  Both tomorrow and today, the message is the same: to give meaning to those lives, recognise the infinite value God puts upon each one.  Each year at this Festival you throng the walls of this holy place as pilgrims have done for a thousand years.  When we come within this sacred space we find we are held by God’s mercy and care; we are reassured that his wise and loving purposes, however hidden and mysterious, are being worked out in his world and in each of us.  We know that we can safely bring our bewilderment here, our grief, our anger and our fear, and we can offer it to God, and can know through the grace of word and sacrament that ‘all shall be well’.

And here we can hope against hope.  We dare to carry on celebrating, not with callous disregard for what others are suffering, but because this is how we defy terror and destruction and keep hope alive.  We celebrate today because despite everything, it’s a wonderful world.  We celebrate our life together here in the north-east, the strength of our communities, our friendship and solidarity.  Above all, we celebrate Christ who once walked with death but is alive for evermore.  And he is the answer to our fear.