Wells Cathedral - Sermon 9 July 2017 4th Sunday after Trinity Revd Canon Dr Graham Dodds
Come to me all you who are weary and are carrying a heavy load and I will give you rest…rest for your souls.
I’m going to recount a personal experience for two reasons which I’ll come to in a minute.When I was at my all-boys secondary school I took woodwork. I really enjoyed the subject and became quite proficient in Mortice and Tenon joints - I shouldn’t imagine I could make one nowadays, but, nevertheless at the time I was a bit of a whizz and I remember the teacher, who was unfortunate to have the name Mr Laverty (and you can imagine the fun we had in giving him his nicknames - I won’t go into that from the pulpit), I remember Mr Laverty coming round the desks and commenting on my Mortice and Tenon joints, how accurate they were - no gaps, very neat. And so, he did what he often did when he wanted the whole classroom’s attention. He bellowed around the workshop - ‘Boys - Stand by your vices!’ - which we dutifully did, not realising what he said. Indeed, it wasn’t until long after I had left the school and reflected on his very familiar phrase, that I realised the fun he must have had, each and every day, bellowing his command - ‘Boys - stand by your vices!’.
The two reasons I recount that experience is first because the great St Paul, in the Romans reading this morning, acknowledges his own vices. He says, ‘I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate - sin dwells within me.’ He struggles with his own personal behaviours, and asks who will save him from himself - and towards the end of the passage he gives thanks for Jesus. I’ll come back to that in a moment.The second reason is that in January this year the Chapter went on an awayday and I told the story of Mr Laverty to colleagues and the Dean said if I could weave that story into a sermon he would put a tenner in the Vicar’s Close development fund. It’s been nearly 6 months but Mr Dean - let’s see the colour of your money!
To be serious, it’s interesting this morning that we have a very close link between the epistle and gospel. In the epistle, Paul states the problem - he struggles with life, his vices, his behaviours and his faith. And in the gospel Jesus says,‘Come to me all who labour and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.
The truth is that, at times, we all do what we don’t want to do - we drop clangers, we get it wrong, we have our vices - some more apparent than others, some greater than others, some easier to bear, some that make us struggle greatly, some that we are comfortable to declare, as Paul did, others that we keep private at all costs. They are part of what it is to be human yet sometimes we can become discouraged and weary, angry and grumpy, burdened and exhausted. And God says, ‘Come to me and I will give you rest’.
The sense of rest, described in the Greek word anapausinis the notion of a string on an instrument finding its natural state. When it is bowed, or struck or plucked it becomes taut and does its work in the music, but when it settles back to a natural state it may be said to be anapausin - at rest.
In the Book of Common Prayer Communion service, I can never read those comfortable wordsjust after the confession and absolution of our sins, without stopping for a moment. They are magnificent and moving words in the context of forgiveness.
Hear what comfortable words our Saviour saith unto all that truly turn to him, Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you
So how do we find this rest, this refreshment promised by Jesus? It’s easy to identify the pressures of contemporary living, but it’s more difficult to allow God to ‘take from our souls the strain and stress’ as the hymn writer puts it. Earlier in the gospel Jesus speaks of a generation that is immature - they will not dance at the sound of the flute, nor will they mourn when in the presence of wailing - they are sulky, abrasive, argumentative.They are restless soulsrather than souls at peace. Over the centuries many of the great mystics have concerned themselves with calming their souls and those of others through a life of prayer. One of them, that I’m beginning to study over the summer of this year is Teresa of Avila and particularly in her treatise on prayer entitled,The Interior Castle.
Teresa lived from 1515 to 1582 in Spain,and there’s a famous story about her (and it maybe apocryphal, but nevertheless),thatonce, when she was travelling, she was knocked off her donkey and fell into the mud, injuring her leg. “Lord,” she said, “you couldn’t have picked a worse time for this to happen. Why would you let this happen?”And the response in prayer that she heard was, “That is how I treat my friends.” Teresa answered, “And that is why you have so few of them!”Teresa was a wonderfully playful character with a vivid imagination. In ‘The Interior Castle’, she likens our bodies and souls to that of a transparent glass castle with God at the centre. Our journey is to find God in this crystal maze, yet she speaks of us being so bound up with external fashions andourlooks that we forget to see deep into ourselves and find what is at the core of our being. She says:
As to what good qualities there may be in our souls, or Who dwells within them, or how precious they are - those are things which we seldom consider and so we trouble little about carefully preserving the soul's beauty. All our interest is centred in the outer wall of the castle - that is to say, in these bodies of ours.
In her vision, she sees the King of glory in the centre of this diamond castle, with 7 mansions, as she calls them, surrounding,which guide the soul to God’s presence.
The first three mansions lead the soul into a discipline of prayer. In the next four, the journey is more like a weaving together of lovers in the beauty of creation. She envisages the soul as a fountain standing near the river of God with water flowing into it and,drop by drop,the rain God sends, the water from the river and the spring of God conjoin until at last the human soul reaches a resting place with the King of Glory.If we’re ever feeling down or depressed it’s worth meditating on her words. She says:
There is a secret place. A radiant sanctuary.As real as your own kitchen.More real than that.Constructed of the purest elements.Overflowing with ten thousand beautiful things.Worlds within worlds.Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries…This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.
Teresa’s journey all those years ago involved both the founding of houses of prayer, places of stillness and quiet, but also active service. The rest promised by Jesusis indeed a stilling and shunning of distractions but it isalso enacting faith, living the story, becoming a witness of what our souls embrace.
Teresa relatively recently was acknowledged as a theologian of the Church a doctor. She reminds me of one of my favourite contemporary theologians whoalso embracesprayer and faith in action, Ann Morisy. In a contribution to the book Sacred Space, Ann offers 7 ‘cairns’, as she calls them - road markers on the way to the centre of God. I wonder if Ann’s cairns are based on Teresa’s mansions. They are quite similar.
She speaks of encouraging self-forgetfulness, fostering a sense of timelessness and risking the possibility of being overwhelmed. She encourages churches to engage with the tough communal emotions present in many local communities, making us ask deep questions about tragedies such as those that we’ve seen recently in say Grenfell Towers, about national security and how God’s love, justice, grace and compassion can be discovered. She comments on the darker places in society and how holiness might be imparted. She ends by commenting on the prayerfulness of the churches of East Berlin before the breaking down of the wall. She says:
Prayerfulness doesn’t just help us to respond humbly to the signs of the times, it also gives an extraordinary sense of timing;…they (the East Berliners) knew when the time had come for them to begin their acts of commitment and passion, when they had to walk arm in arm…to break down the wall
Prayer enables the right timing and in the last month I’ve visited some churches who, out of their prayerful lives, are helping people and communities to find God’s rest for their souls.
One is an urban situation where an incumbent describes the mission of the church as providing a home of grace. There, they are attempting to be as inclusive as they possibly can. The ‘they’ is not just the church, but the church school as well. And in a socially deprived area, with many people heavily laden with problems, people who are weary with fear and burdened with addictions and debt, the Church isfeeling that the time is right to focus on offering rest to the captive souls of the community. And I note that they are one of the growing number of parishes that are opening up their buildings with a prayer room for any who want to pray in the light of turbulence, tragedies orterrorists.
In another benefice, and these are both in our diocese, is a priest with a heart for the homeless - to bring relief and generosity - to find rest for those who tramp the streets. Rest literally does mean rest and his vocation is to work among the homeless community with physical relief and spiritual care. And at the heart of it is a prayer life that energises his ministry.
Before I end this morning,I want to issue an invitation. Over the summer, I’m going to read and studyTeresa of Avila’s The Interior Castle,because to find God’s rest he bids us ‘Come’ - we are to make the journey towards him and that’s precisely what Teresa did. And it occurred to me that there may be some in the congregation who might like to do the same. It may just be one person or ten or more. But the invitation is to get hold of a copy of the book and read it over the summer and join with me in late September to discuss it. If you would like to do that then let me know at the end of the service, and I’ll get some details together for next week. There’s no pressure - just an invitation if you’d like to take this further.
So here we are. We’ve confessed our sins, our vices - how we have fallen short of God’s perfect way - and God, knowing our weaknesses, forgives us and beckons us to come to him and place ourselves in his loving arms. He offers us grace to continue on, and says to anyone who will hear him: Come unto me all that travail and are heavy laden, and I will refresh you.
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