Catholic Contextual urban Theology, Mimetic Theory, Contemplative Prayer. And other random ramblings.

Sunday 14 June 2020

What stories will we tell about this time, when it is over?

Sermon at Parish Mass, the First Sunday after Trinity 2020
Vincent Malo  (1585–1649): Moses leading the children of Israel out of Egypt
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d'Archéologie de Châlons-en-Champagne
Via Wikimedia Commons


Exodus 19.2–8a                     
Romans 5.1–8                        
Matthew 9.35 – 10.8

What stories will we tell of this time, when it is over? What will those stories tell about who we are?
I remember my parents’ stories of the war, and my grandmother’s, too. Stories of resilience, hopefulness, comradeship. Stories of everyday life, keeping going, make do and mend, the inventive recipes of rationing. The time when all the windows got blown out, but the family was ok in the Anderson shelter. Not much about the dark times, the terrible threat of Nazism, or the global struggle. Historians tell us that there was a lot of crime and disorder in society at large, that the “blitz spirit” was largely a myth. But those weren’t the stories that I heard. The stories we tell about ourselves are about remembering who we are, and when people go wrong it’s because they’ve forgotten who they are.
What stories will we tell about this time, when it is over? What will those stories tell about who we are? Yes, there’s a great deal of anxiety and uncertainty in our lives at the moment. Yes, there’s tension, threat and violence on our streets, a cry for justice amid racism and inequality. But I hope the stories we’ll be telling in 20 or 40 years will be about how we got through, how things got better, and how in the midst of it we didn’t forget who we are. We will have learned more about who we are in this testing time., and our stories are about remembering who we are.
The people of Israel knew who they were because of the stories they told. The story of Exodus, liberation from slavery in Egypt, yes, but liberation into 40 years of wandering in the desert. Not knowing where they were going or when they would get there. Following Moses like sheep following a shepherd. And not always making a very good job of it. But learning to follow, learning to trust the one God who had revealed himself to them, learning to believe even in the darkness and the unknowing of the journey.
Exodus is the story that has been passed on. It’s what tells the people of Israel who they are. It’s not all of what happened. Archaeologists tells us that the arrival of peoples in the land that became Israel was more complicated, a series of migrations over a long period. But the identity of the people, as they looked back, is found in the story of slowly learned trust that was the story told in Exodus.
Cut forward many centuries, to the time of Jesus. The story is the same. The identity of the people of Israel is found in the slowly learned trust of the time of wandering and testing. But they had lost the thread of their own story. Occupied by the Romans, the ordinary people abandoned by the religious leaders. The crowds were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. They didn’t know who they were or where they were going. And Jesus had compassion on them. Like Moses of old. It’s a comparison that Matthew’s Gospel often makes, Jesus is the new prophet like Moses of old, the new Shepherd sent to guide and save the sheep of Israel like Moses in the Exodus.
So, Jesus sends his disciples, and they are named, twelve of them. Just as the twelve tribes of Israel had been named in their story. Naming them is the first part of giving them back their story, so the people can remember who they are. They are sent to the lost sheep of Israel, not to the Samaritans or the Gentiles. Those will come later, they will be included in Israel’s story, the revelation of the one God, the salvation that will reach to the ends of the earth. But Israel has to remember its own story first, before other nations can find their place in it.
The disciples are sent to cleanse, to heal, to cast out demons, all those powers of division and destruction that work against human flourishing. They are sent to raise the dead. Like Ezekiel of old, in the valley of dry bones that were the people of Israel, the people will be raised up, they will live. And because God’s Spirit moves, and they live, others will live as well.
The people will find their place once more in their own story. They will remember who they are.
Remembering. The word is the opposite of dismembering. Like the bones that came back together in Ezekiel’s valley, remembering is putting back together a body that it might live.
The Church continues that task of re-membering. The Eucharist is the Sacrament of re-membering, do this in remembrance of me. Putting back together and raising the dead, the story told at the altar that is our story, in which we find our place, in which Christ the good shepherd remembers who we are, making us his body, his ongoing story.
Healing, cleansing, casting out the demons of society. Which are very much in evidence at this time. We are broken divided, scared. The people are harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. We need to remember our story, to remember how to trust in wandering and affliction. 
What stories will you tell of this time, when it is over? Anger? Violence? Fear? Division? I don’t think so. Those things are all around us, but they are not who we are. There are others stories to tell. There will be stories of sorrow and loss, of course, people gone from us, and fondly remembered. But they will be framed by stories of goodness, of remembering that things can be better, of kindness, good neighbourliness, love, clean air.
And there will be the ordinary human stories, of keeping calm and carrying on. Stories of empty tube trains, bad haircuts, and face masks as fashion statements. Going to church in your pyjamas. All the stories we tell, the great and the ordinary, will remind us who we are, all will be stories of learning to trust in the darkness of unknowing.
What story will we, the Church, tell of this time, when it is over? The story we always tell, the story of who we are, of who we are in Christ. Found, gathered, healed, cleansed. Re-membered. Redeemed. God’s people. In all this, still.



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