12/4/2017 Homily to precede the Office of Tenebrae, Wednesday in Holy Week (Fr Jeremy Davies)Read NowThe cathedral congregation waits in rapt attention, the electric lights are dimmed and then extinguished, the organist comes to the end of J S Bach’s Nun Kom der Heiden Heiland. The ancient gothic spaces are now still, though packed with more than 1,500 people, attentive, silent and expectant. In the silence and the darkness a single, flickering candle is lit. Everyone in the cathedral can see it, tall and towering on its magnificent stand. The cathedral choristers at the far end of the cathedral sing
Palestrina’s setting of ancient words from scripture: ‘I look from afar’. And the Advent Procession at Salisbury Cathedral begins. This processional liturgy is called ‘From Darkness to Light’ and in the next hour and a quarter three thousand candles will be lit gradually from the the single Advent light. It’s a wonderful liturgical dance by candle light as the choir and the clergy process through the building, responding with as much imagination as they can muster to the words with which St John begins his gospel: This was the true light that enlightens every man and woman who comes into the world - the light shines in the darkness and the darkness has not overcome it. This liturgy of darkness to light is celebrated magnificently in church with all the creative resources that a great cathedral can bring to bear. But this is not a churchy service. It is about the world we live in. However prettily we illuminate the cathedral with the flickering flames of several thousand candles we cannot escape or ignore the fact that the darkness is real. The world we live in that God saw that he had made so good and was bathed in the light he had created - the sun to rule the day and the moon to rule the night - this world of ours is nevertheless a dark world. It is dark because we have made it so - not because God has abandoned us; not because sun, moon and stars have been eclipsed; but because we so often have chosen a dark way. Black holes are not confined to the world of astro physics. We occupy dark matter and are easily sucked into the moral equivalent of black holes. As Jesus says in St John’s gospel: this is the judgement - that light has come into the world and men and women loved darkness rather than light... for everyone who does evil hates the light, and does not come to the light, lest their deeds should be exposed. BUT ..... we wouldn’t be sitting here in church unless there was a but .... the darkness of our world is not the last word. ‘The light which enlightens everyone was coming into the world’ is how St John begins his gospel. It is the heart of the Christian narrative. When a baby’s birth is celebrated at Christmas we can readily believe that all is not lost: all is not darkness. A babe is born - joy has come into our dark world. But that joy - that blessedness is how the gospel puts it - lived out by Jesus, shared with his companions and put into practice in the values and the compassionate, self-giving love which Jesus lavished on all whom he met - that blessedness, that light that had come into the world was short lived. Light had indeed come into the world, it is true - but the darkness had overcome it. Sadly there are no buts. Darkness prevails - the lights have gone out. It was just over a hundred years ago in 1914 that the British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey looked down from his windows in Whitehall and saw the lamp lighter lighting the London street lamps. He made the observation that has since become famous ‘ The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our life time’. There seemed to him no way of avoiding the tsunami that was about to engulf not only Europe but the whole world. The Great War was about to begin. The world was to be plunged into darkness: the lights were indeed going out. In the Holy week texts you have on your sheets is a poem by Wilfred Owen, who was killed just a fortnight before the war ended. In it he described the futility and the darkness of the war despite the healing power of the warming sun. It’s called Futility. Move him into the sun-- Gently its touch awoke him once, At home, whispering of fields half-sown. Always it woke him, even in France, Until this morning and this snow. If anything might rouse him now The kind old sun will know. Think how it wakes the seeds-- Woke once the clays of a cold star. Are limbs, so dear-achieved, are sides Full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir? Was it for this the clay grew tall? —O what made fatuous sunbeams toil To break earth's sleep at all That poem records events which happened in the life time of people who are still alive today. That war was called the Great War - though with what extraordinary irony can the English language be stretched to describe that, or any war, as Great. This holy week which we celebrate now, was traditionally called Great Week. And at the heart of this week is a particular day we call Good - Good Friday. By what extraordinary irony can the English language be stretched to call this week Great, and that day Good. On that bleak day, in this bleak week, goodness was rooted out; and the lights not only in Europe, but in all the world, went out for all time, for all people in all places. That is what we are commemorating in this ancient office of Tenebrae. Tenebrae which is the Latin for darkness or shadows was the name given to the Office of Morning Prayer as it was celebrated during the Triduum - the last three days of Great Week. Although the Office was Morning Prayer it came to be celebrated in the Middle Ages in the evening - I guess because they wanted the sense of the encompassing darkness of eventide to give poignancy to their understanding that during this week - the lights were indeed going out. And not just lights - but the light, the true light, was being extinguished. And just as at Advent candles are lit to remind us that in Jesus Christ the light has come into the world which the darkness can never overcome, so today we practice what a pianist would call contrary motion. The lights we had lit with so much hope in December now in the spring are being extinguished. One by one the lights of hope that illuminated our world to celebrate a baby’s birth - no ordinary baby but God’s Son - the Light of the World. One by one those lights are being put out. And we come to the point where love, hope and goodness are hung out to dry, and a man dies - the lights have gone out. We are left in the darkness we have made of God’s world; enveloped in the hateful darkness we have made out of the love that God so extravagantly poured upon us. I talked about Edward Grey’s famous comment a hundred year’s ago at the beginning of the Great War. Longer ago than that - indeed 400 years ago last year a man died whom many of us regard as the greatest poet and playwright the world has ever known - certainly the English speaking world. I mean of course William Shakespeare. It was Shakespeare who in his plays - especially his tragedies - described the darkness of our world, as well as describing the moments of human courage, goodness and compassion, that have illuminated the darkness and given hope to our world and to our humanity. In one of Shakespeare’s tragedies, Othello, the great Venetian general Othello is smitten with jealousy, because his lieutenant Iago, has wickedly planted false evidence which suggests that Othello’s wife, Desdemona, has been unfaithful to him. Othello jumps to this conclusion, as Iago intended he should, and consumed with jealousy he plans his wife’s death. Though still loving her he is driven by his inner demons, and decides to smother her in her bed. And then he says these words: She must die, or she’ll destroy more men. (He snuffs out a candle, and then continues) Put out the light, and then put out the light. If I quench thee, thou flaming minister I can again thy former light restore Should I repent me; but once put out thy light I know not where is that Promethean heat That can thy light relume. Desdemona wakes, but despite her protestations of innocence and despite her pleading for her life, Othello, demented with jealousy, murders her. He puts out her light. A candle he can light again; but he cannot restore the life he has ended. Here on stage, in the particular context of a cruel murder, the moral darkness of our world is enacted. Candles can be relit, seemingly dispelling the darkness. But the darkness into which Othello is plunged can never be escaped. He is plunged into the moral darkness of our human condition. What we do this evening is recognise that the darkness that engulfs one of Shakespeare’s tragic heroes is a darkness that enfolds our humanity. Tonight, one by one, we snuff out the candles of hope we lit with so much confidence before Christmas. The light has indeed shone briefly in the darkness, but the darkness has finally overcome it. We are alone, in the darkness, out in the cold, in the silence. Each candle represents a family killed in Raqqa, in Syria; every candle represents the people killed in the world’s capital cities, or tourist resorts in some mass shooting or bomb outrage; every candle represents a refugee child washed up on the sea shore trying to escape war or famine or persecution; every candle we extinguish is a family dying of starvation in Ethiopia, because of global warming and consequent famine. And as we survey the endless global darkness, we see, even in our relatively tranquil lives, that the shadows are lengthening, as darkness falls around us. Like Othello we have to admit, despite all our inventiveness and our cleverness: I know not where is that Promethean heat That can our light relume Plunged in darkness as we soon shall be, with nowhere to turn and with no light to direct our steps - there is sill a BUT. At the end of this service, one light remains - we may not see it for it will be hidden from view; entombed you might say. The darkness is real and on Good Friday we will be reminded just how real the darkness is - when love and hope and faith are hung out to dry, jeered at, ridiculed, derided. When goodness, beauty and truth can be so cruelly mistreated what hope is there for us? - why should God go on caring when we care so little? - why should he share his light with us when we so carelessly snuff it out? - why should God empty himself for our sake when we fill ourselves and adorn ourselves with things of no worth? Why? because God loves us, and nothing, but nothing, that we can do will ever change that reality. That is the light that comes into the world - God’s love for us. We prefer darkness to light, as Jesus himself recognised, but nevertheless the light, his love, shines on in the darkness (even though for a moment that lightgiving love is hidden from our sight) and the darkness will never, ever overcome it. Remember Psalm 139, which to read is worth a hundred sermons. If I go up into heaven thou art there if I go down to hell thou art there also; if I take the wings of the morning and alight in the uttermost parts of the west even there shall God’s hand lead me and his right hand shall hold me. For the darkness is no darkness with God, but the light is as clear as the day; the darkness and the light to Him are both alike.
0 Comments
Your comment will be posted after it is approved.
Leave a Reply. |
Details
Back to resources
Categories
All
Archives
March 2020
|