St John’s Church, Harpenden - It's been a funny few weeks really

It's been a funny few weeks really

It's been a funny few weeks really, and I'm left just now sorting through a pile of thoughts and feelings, which I thought I'd share with you today, in relation to the Bible readings we've just heard.

I'm just back from the Caribbean, where I spent ten days visiting one of our Link Diocese, that of the Windward Islands.  I had set myself a very ambitious timetable indeed, of visits to four islands, which of course is three countries.  I wanted to see all of the diocese as far as possible, and think I saw every church on each of the biggest islands.  I wanted my visit to include Grenada, to see for myself the devastation wrought by Hurricane Ivan last year, and to tell them that £23,000 was on its way from us to help, from our Red Bucket Appeal. They send their heartfelt thanks for this practical assistance.  I met a huge number of people and enjoyed some very useful conversations.  I hope very much that we shall build on our links with the Diocese of the Windward Islands, and with our two other link dioceses, of the North-East Caribbean and Aruba, 'NECAA', and Belize, in the years to come.  We have much to offer one another, not least to learn from one another that we are members of the same Body of Christ, with all its flaws and constraints.  I've brought you a map to show you where I went, which I hope you'll put up in the porch.

Then it was back to the usual round of duties, and to the mixed news, some happy and some sad, that greets us all when we've been away.  One of the items of news that hit me harder than I ever imagined it would was that of the death of Professor Maurice Wiles, who lectured to me in Modern Doctrine when I was a student.  He was a kind and gentle man, with a forbidding intellect, but that never got in the way of friendship with younger, less experienced clergy.  I feel a little more alone in the world with his passing, as if a great witness that truth is a very complicated matter has left us.  I valued his sense that all we can do and say for our faith is the best we can do for now. Then, later this week, I had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Giles Fraser, who is Rector of Putney and a regular writer in the Church Times. He spoke about Modern Art and Jewish Theology - about how Jews are banned from making any images, and therefore Mark Rothko is a good Jew, because he painted abstracts, whereas Marc Chagall is a bad Jew, because he painted pictures of things.

So I am presently caught up in a swirl of teeming impressions and reflections and feelings. I am still seeing the vivid colours of St Lucia, hearing the pounding reggae of the preparations for St Vincent's carnival; absorbing the sobering facts that 80% of one village's economy in St Vincent is based on ganga - marijuana - and having to accept that actually we buy the stuff; they grow it and sell it because there's a market.  At the same time, I am back in Oxford, a curate, but guest preacher at Christ Church Cathedral, with the terrifying prospect of addressing not only Professor Wiles but also Professor Macquarrie, and Professor Chadwick, and really not at all feeling up to the task.  And then I'm standing before one of Rothko's great canvasses, at a preview evening for local residents at the brand new Tate Modern Gallery, on the edge of my last parish, wondering how so apparently little can say so much.

It is against this background that this morning we are to think together about three readings. About Moses going into the cloud on top of the mountain where he was to meet God.  About how we are saved while we are still sinners.  About how we must give without expecting payment, because that's how we have been given to.

Giles Fraser reminded some of us last week that the whole point about Moses going into the mountain to see God is that he didn't see him.  He was shielded by God's hand, as he hid in a crevice in the rock while God passed by. Meanwhile, down below, the people were busy making an image of God, which God thoroughly condemned - which is why Jews to this day do not hold with any of that.  Giles went on to say that this is an ancient and abiding truth of our faith, that the nearer we get to God, the more we know we're not seeing him - this strand, starting from Exodus, leads us through the New Testament, where those closest to Jesus still asked, 'Show us the Father, ' and were scandalised to be told, 'If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.'  This profound understanding, that 'God is not in the wind or the earthquake' or in anything at all that we can see or touch or feel or describe, surfaces in attempts to talk about God throughout our faith's history, in saints and mystics throughout the ages - in the Cloud of Unknowing and the English Mystics, and lately in Don Cupitt, who caused huge offence with his quotation from Meister Eckhardt, when he said that 'Man's last and highest parting occurs when, for God's sake, he takes leave of God.  'And in the learned writings of Maurice Wiles. Beware the images you carry of God.  Beware the tendency not to bother with those you disagree with, who see God differently; beware the desire to make God in your image, with all your prejudices and all your preferences. God will not own any image.  We say, with the people of Israel, 'Tell us what God says, and we'll do it.'  And we prefer still to go our own ways, making God as we would have him, and condemning those who do not agree with us to perdition.

And how do we not make God in our image? Well, we listen, and we put two and two together so that they add up properly. We can really be rather obtuse about this.  Let's look at our myths about the Caribbean. Those people, we suspect, must be wasteful of resources - they always seem to be asking for help and for money.  I understand better now that I've been there. I discovered as I went around that my surname is known in the Caribbean.  There are Cunliffes out there, spelt Conliffe, but probably the same name. There's even another Archdeacon Conliffe.  The Conliffes are white, and if their family is the same as ours, they came from Lancashire and settled around Liverpool.  Perhaps it's dawning on you as it dawned on me, that the trade they were involved in was probably slavery.  Realising that in the Caribbean really does give pause for thought.  So, to summarise, the Caribbean islanders are living on these dangerous, volcanic, exposed, though incredibly beautiful, outcrops of rock in the first place because people, possibly our own family, took them there, made them grow crops that weren't native, to feed a market they hadn't created - and then we blame them for needing our help now that we've discovered slavery is wrong and actually sugar and cocoa can be produced so much more cheaply elsewhere.  I think perhaps we should be generous.

So let's try that. Not in terms of what we can give, at least not necessarily, but more in terms of our outlook and behaviour. The way we approach others must, given the experience of Moses and the fact that that thread keeps on surfacing, be based on a theological uncertainty, that we can ever know God.  Then, before assuming anything at all about another person, or race, or opinion, can we at least think and see what part we have played in where they are, and what we can do to make matters better.  Jesus said, 'You received without payment, now give without expecting to receive payment yourselves.'  And do so in terms of money, prestige, power, even thanks - and know that, as you surrender control, then you are standing where Jesus stood, and experiencing people as he experienced us.  And then - this is the hard part - knowing that, at this low point, he continued to love us.

Amen.