New Beginnings and Nick Cave

Many of you will have come to church this morning and thought to yourselves, ‘Oh no, it’s him again.’ But I assure you Cortney asked me to prepare a sermon for today because it’s been such a demanding week for her, what with eight parishes, like a litter of puppies, all vying for her attention.

Then I discovered that the lectionary readings didn’t do a lot for me and I wanted to write a general op ed sort of piece: I could have chosen the new Archbishop of Canterbury, or the concerningly sad attack on a Manchester synagogue. Or, I said to Cortney, I could do ‘new beginnings’, and she replied something like, ‘Well, that hits it on the nose.’

So, that’s where we’re at, not altogether untopically, in this season of political party conferences, when politicians of all stripes promise that they will lead us into the sunlit uplands of economic security, law and order, and equal opportunity, with oratory that they hope will stir the audience to shouts of Amen and Alleluia. (I always remember the story of a preacher who noted oratorical dynamics in the margins of his sermons, and on one page had written, ‘Argument weak; shout louder’. That could be a motto for party conferences. Besides, a politician is scarcely likely to say things will be disastrous under our stewardship.

There is a Biblical text that springs to mind – from the Revelation of St John the Divine, the last book in the Bible, where the One that sits on the Throne says: Behold I make all things new – which is actually a vision of a new heaven and a new earth and the consummation of history. Perfection.

We live in time: and things come and go. The scientific word for it is ‘entropy’: the inevitable decay, or increase in disorder, of matter. Things fall apart (like church buildings) and have to be renewed. I think of the resurrection in terms of ‘Behold I create all things new’, but not once and for all, but again and again and again. There is no end to the resource for healing, forgiveness, and new beginnings.

And yet we are wary of change. We cherish the old. We know we are rooted in something.  Anglican theology recognises this. In 1593 the priest and scholar, Richard Hooker, published The Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity in which he said theological authority stems from three things: Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. I.e. The Bible is a source of revelation; its New Testament contains the only information we have about Jesus of Nazareth, the originator of the Christian faith; the Bible’s ideas are developed in the subsequent writings and debates of theologians, and it is right and proper for us to temper these ideas with our own rational critique. (Discussion groups!)

So, in an important sense we should not get into a rut and ought always to be renewing our theology – our understanding of God.

One of the main tasks of the Church is to translate the insights/revelations of the past into a vision for the future which is actually realistic and actually understands the mindset, and vocabulary, and developing intellectual paradigms of the immediate future – which, for us, includes Artificial Intelligence, the shifting balance of global power, and the changing insights of contemporary physics on the nature of the universe.  

Besides Jesus thought within the intellectual paradigms of his time on earth – a three-tier universe and a view of our origins set out in parts of Jewish Scripture, the deliverance of Israel from captivity, Roman domination, a rural economy (all the shepherd stuff), and the social divisions implicit in the Good Samaritan story, or the healing of the Centurion’s son, and Jesus’ so-called gospel for the poor.

Of course, we might observe that his message was not a physics class, but more a values and ethics class: love thy neighbour, go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, be alert and ready for God’s judgement etc. Those values haven’t changed. Or am I simply being bland in saying that? Those values have developed. When you think about it, the insights of psychology have led to a more nuanced understanding of human behaviour, which was once judged in black and white, and where stealing a loaf of bread could get you deported to Australia, or stealing a sheep could see you hanged.

Jesus began his ministry with a manifesto given in the synagogue in Nazareth: good news to the poor, freedom for the prisoners, recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.

As Sarah Mullally takes over as Archbishop of Canterbury and Cortney takes over the Ray Valley Benefice, they have to show that Christianity is a natural place to be, not a freaky place to be, and that spiritual priorities can helpfully transcend materialist priorities. Again, that might sound a bit bland.

Recently introduced to Nick Cave by a parishioner from another parish who has become a friend.

Rock Singer (Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds) and committed Christian. Lost two sons and has spent much time since reflecting on the meaning of life. In many ways, I think, his approach typifies much contemporary thinking and sums up the search the Church must respond to.

A reading from Nick Cave

'As the ground shifts and slides beneath us, and the world hardens around its particular views, I become increasingly uncertain and less self-assured. I am neither on the left nor on the right, finding both sides, as they mainly present themselves, indefensible and unrecognisable. I am essentially a liberal-leaning, spiritual conservative with a small ‘c’, which, to me, isn’t a political stance, rather it is a matter of temperament. I have a devotional nature, and I see the world as broken but beautiful, believing that it is our urgent and moral duty to repair it where we can and not to cause further harm, or worse, wilfully usher in its destruction. I think we consist of more than mere atoms crashing into each other, and that we are, instead, beings of vast potential, placed on this earth for a reason - to magnify, as best we can, that which is beautiful and true... I have an acute and well-earned understanding of the nature of loss and know in my bones how easy it is for something to break, and how difficult it is to put it back together.

I am comfortable with doubt and am constitutionally resistant to moral certainty, herd mentality and dogma.

I stand with the world, in its goodness and beauty. In these hysterical, monochromatic, embattled times, I call to its soul, the way musicians can, to its grieving and broken nature, to its misplaced meaning, to its fragile and flickering spirit.'