Then… - 3 September 2021

 

In the lectionary for next Sunday we find this matchless poetry from Isaiah.  You will recognise some of it from Handel’s Messiah:

Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened,
and the ears of the deaf unstopped;

then the lame shall leap like a deer,
and the tongue of the speechless sing for joy.

For waters shall break forth in the wilderness,
and streams in the desert;

the burning sand shall become a pool,
and the thirsty ground springs of water…

A highway shall be there,

and it shall be called the Holy Way;

the unclean shall not travel on it,

but it shall be for God’s people;

no traveller, not even fools, shall go astray.

No lion shall be there,

nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it…

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be on their heads;

they shall obtain joy and gladness,

and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

I should stop there… it needs no improvement from me, I know.  Then the eyes of the blind shall be opened… but the poetic then is… when? – it is never now, it is always not yet… if ever.  Now is bewilderingly different.  Matthew Arnold expressed it in his poem, Dover Beach:  The Sea of Faith was once too at the full, and round earth’s shore lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.  But now I only hear its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar, retreating to the breath of the night wind, down the vast edges drear and naked shingles of the world… And we are here as on a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night. 

If we look at how things are these days, there is not a lot to suggest that it will all come right… as they say in movies, everything’s gonna be just fine… they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away…  We are people of faith and hope, and yet it is as though the world is collapsing into irreligion, or violent, divisive, silly, distorted religion, into endemic strife, government by warlords, sociopaths or tyrants; climate change fuelled by mismanagement, neglect and greed; refugees and desperate homelessness, disease…  a darkling plain swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, where ignorant armies clash by night.  What will our grandchildren face? 

Fr Laurence Freeman wrote recently: It seems to me, more and more, that meditation is not an optional extra for children facing the kind of world that we are giving them. It is an absolutely necessary life skill.  Those of us who follow contemplative life and prayer, are now on the frontier of what it will take to live and grow in faith in the time that is upon us.  We are in a kairos – remember that word? – and any profession of faith that can’t deal, for instance, with the roots of fear, with the need always for certainty, with the dominance of the ego… any faith that can’t relinquish hatred and resentment, that can’t cope with change, that has never found how to be still, how to bear pain, how to let go of possessiveness… any faith, in other words, that refuses to grow up, is unlikely to survive.  One day we will come to Zion with singing.  One day sorrow and sighing will flee away.  We can’t speculate how, or when.  But we hold the hope because it is true, decent and loving, and Jesus is risen, and we live the faith that sustains that vision and that hope.