19 May 2013
The Reverend David Moore
Prayer for the Week:
God of fire
you flow through our history
leaping from one generation to another;
releasing captives, affirming the poor,
welcoming outcasts,
inspiring visionaries.
You speak with the accents of all people.
We acknowledge our selective hearing.
As a child I grew up with a mild form of epilepsy and a significant speech disorder. I stuttered and stammered and, as a consequence, spoke extremely rapidly in an attempt not to stutter. This was self-defeating in that I then added spluttering to my stuttering! You might say ‘a vicious circle’.
At that time forming relationships with girls was more than a bit tricky! Fortunately somebody had spotted me long before I noticed her! When in due course I ‘got the message’ the welcome mat was already in place! When I first walked Dorothy home and met her mother .... well ... as soon as I had left, her mother would say to Dorothy “what did he say?”
But there is more ... once a year the young people from the Church Youth Club which I attended would conduct an evening service for a congregation of up to 250 people. The Minister would plan the service and Club members would share in the announcing, praying and the preaching. The sermon was made up of three five-minute slots. The Youth Leader and Minister sorted out who did what.
I was 17 and I knew that I wanted to take part. I attended the planning meeting. The Youth Club leader began by saying “Well David, it is no good asking you to say anything, nobody will understand you, you can help with the collection.” It was like a knife through my heart! All the jobs were allocated and we left. Do you know the cartoon character who has a permanent cloud over his head? Well that was me!
Fortunately not all history is in continuous, non-reversible straight lines! On this occasion the person chosen to do the final part of the sermon was taken ill a few days before the event and I immediately volunteered to deputise. There were no other volunteers - I saw to that - so the job was mine.
So, it was with fear and trembling I climbed the pulpit steps. Sixty years on I can recall the emotion, the steps beneath my feet, the feel of the white painted handrail. I took a deep breath - bit hard on the end of my tongue to moisturise my mouth and did it - without one verbal glitch. My mother’s eyes were almost popping out of her head with pride. I was completely exhausted! And so it was that I started preaching. In the pulpit I was fine, out of the pulpit I was still rubbish!
At first I imagined the ‘freedom of the pulpit’ was the result of some sort of direct line from God, a divine version of a fairy’s wand, which somehow supported and enabled me to preach without stammering .... BUT much, much later I learned something even more wonderful - that standing up before people and preaching involves a different area of brain activity to that of everyday conversation. So what might that mean for my religious view of God?
Looking back to that first pulpit ‘event’ I do not think in terms of God’s ‘finger‘ directly energising me, but rather I considerate it in terms of recognising the ‘Ancient of Days’ - that which breathed shape into all life, including human DNA.
Suddenly I am engaged, not with a capricious God who may or may not choose to act/help but rather I am tied into all human history .... so that now wherever you or I may come from, at the most profound level - at the level of deepest personal identity - we are all one. ‘One’ not as sinners but as human beings - marked with genetic code.
And this, to my mind, may be what occurred on the Day of Pentecost - disparate people finding a common identity, an identity way beyond any of their wildest imaginings or hoping. When strangers meet and converse - whatever their native tongue - there is always the potential for a ‘homecoming’, for discovery, for recognition, for mutuality, for new forms of collective wonder, a new spin on human history - the future can be opened up. So, my desire to remain in the European Union is total and is theological - I seek to affirm the deepest aspect of who we all are.
The Pentecost power I speak of is not the power that makes war and spills blood - just the opposite - it is the power to find common cause with strangers and enemies; the forming of unfamiliar friendships, discovering the new harmonic of ecumenism and internationalism.
Some of you will have heard me speak before about the remarkable man Archbishop Helder Camara - his Diocese was in the poor City of Recife in Northern Brazil. Camara was a constant thorn in the flesh of the Pope, the Cardinals, but mostly to the Brazilian Generals who ran the Junta for 23 years.
Last week a friend, Roger Williamson, wrote me a note about the day he met Dom Helder Camara .... it was a note scribbled while curating an exhibition in Brighton. (Any passing visitor to that exhibition would have no idea of the profundity being penned in public).
Roger, now retired, spent all his working life with International Peace and World Development agencies. This is what he wrote in his note to me:
“I met him (Helder Camara) in 1986 and particularly wanted to talk to him about the death of his assistant, who had been killed, not least as a warning to Camara. I said that the story of the young man’s funeral was very moving. In the middle of the service Dom Helder went across and embraced the man’s mother - he said “It was a perfectly natural thing to do.” Yes, perfectly natural, but not very Bishop-y”I am sure that you, like Roger, will find these words incredibly moving - might they not offer us a real, honest, way into the Pentecost narrative? How different nationalities, different cultures, different interests, can find common cause, form new common identity. But to form a common identity means we must all also let go of something, misconceptions, false assumptions, self-interest?
I asked him if he felt guilty because of the young assistant’s death. He said “No, he made his choice, he knew what he was doing, “I said “Yes, but he was killed partly to warn you.” His reply was ”He committed his life to the poor and there is no better way to die than in the service of the poor.”
The faith stories, as handed down to us, come as jewels, puzzles, conundrums, invitations - as life stories. The trouble with using stories like that of Helder Camara is that, for me, it inevitably puts me on a collision course with the dominant motifs of our contemporary political life - values which do not encourage me to embrace and cherish the poor, or to dream of building a common wealth, of discovering ways of holding our greatest ‘treasures’ in common.
If nothing else, the multinationalism of the Day of Pentecost raises questions as to how we treat the ‘outsiders’ in our midst. There are members of this congregation who had no option but to flee their homelands; this congregation has members from diverse Christian traditions and ambitions. But we are all here together - either we engage or we bypass each other. If we fail to grasp the fundamental undercurrents of our life together, I fear we will have lost or squandered the pearl of great price - that which should be cherished above all else.
Pentecost 2013 - the scribbled note from Roger reminded me afresh that choosing to prioritise the poor is not a priority for the majority of our parliamentarians. Do we raise our voice or do we remain silent?
Maybe it was the fact of being ‘beyond the pale’, of not being the ‘main act in town’ in terms of the political establishment, that was the very thing that gave Pentecost such a memorable OUTCOME.
Some time later today find ten minutes to get out your Bible and read the concluding four verses of Acts Chapter 2 - the emergence of Fresh Expressions - not only prayers and songs - but practical sharing. The Pentecostal imperative, it would appear, requires economic change - a strategy of sharing. Now there’s a thing!
