A sermon about views
Sermon on the Second Sunday of Lent at the Church of the Holy Trinity, Llandudno in the Ministry Area of Bro Tudno
The Ministry Area’s order of service with the lections, including a poem in addition to the Old Testament Reading and the Holy Gospel, can be found here.
I remember staring through the train window at the immensity of Loch Lomond below.
It’s sixteen years ago and I’m on my way to Iona Abbey. I was going there, or rather I’d been sent there, on retreat. My boss at the time, a holy, liberal man, thought, I think, that I was little bit too Anglo-Catholic, a bit too High Church, a bit too angular, and that I needed to mellow a little, to broaden my views a little, to become a little less conservative…
And so, he sends me on retreat. And so, here I am, winding my way on the slow train from Glasgow Queen Street Station to Oban on the west coast of Argyll, where I’ll stay the night before getting the boat to Mull, and, from there, the bus and the final boat to Iona itself.
And, as I’m going on retreat, I feel the need to make a spiritual effort, and so I’ve brought a copy of the Gospel of Mark with me in my pocket. And as the views, first of Loch Long and then of Loch Lomond unveil themselves to me outside the train window — grey waters, pine forests, mountains and mist — as I’m enveloped by this epic view, I read the whole of the Gospel, from beginning to end.
It’s the first time I’ve ever read any book of the Bible completely in one sitting. And this short Gospel holds on to me, shakes me, slaps me, almost. There was something raw and elemental about the Gospel of Mark that I encountered that day, as raw and elemental as the landscape I was travelling into. And I know that, in some way, without that encounter, I wouldn’t be standing here, today.
We think that the Gospel of Mark was probably written in the eighth decade of the first century, probably in Italy, in Rome. Imagine its author, perhaps in a house on the Via Labicana; a view of the Colisseum, perhaps, from his study window, and beyond it, the Forum — the heart of the Roman Empire, and centre of the world.
Each of the four Gospels is a universal gift, but each of them was also written in a particular place, at a particular time, by particular people, for a particular congregation. And that context helps to give each Gospel its character, helps to give each depiction of Jesus Christ its depth, its wisdom, its incarnation.
The Gospel of Mark places the person of Jesus Christ at its centre. Jesus is there, as the Son of Man, speaking and acting with intensity and urgency and a rough vigour, from the very outset. His first words — the fifteenth verse of the first chapter, are “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”And, from those words onwards, Jesus’s physicality and the force of his personality reinforce that message as though they’re traying to make it a reality. Jesus is always on the move, always directing, crossing boundaries, challenging lazy expectations. He stretches out his hand to touch the unclean leper. He invites himself to dinner with the tax collectors. He heals in the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stills the wind and the sea with a blunt command, “Be still.” When he preaches at Capernaum, the congregation “were astounded… for he taught them as one having authority.” There’s a vivid momentum — a violence, almost — that teems through the pages — that leads, that drives towards Jerusalem, and Passion, and Cross, and bursting from an empty tomb.
And, today, when Peter questions the drive, the direction, Jesus rebukes him: “Get behind me, Satan.” And to his disciples, he insists on his way, the only way: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
You can see why, for somebody in their mid-20s, who’s not quite sure what they believe or where they’re going, those raw, elemental pages inspired conviction. One can imagine the author of the Gospel, sat in Rome, wanting his rather comfortable congregation to be more convicted, more compelled, more committed to this immanent, disruptive Christ, and so including in his eighth chapter those words of challenge: “Amid the temptations, the majesty and the glory of this imperial city, deny yourselves, take up your cross, and follow only him.”
And, for all of those reasons, Mark is usually a good Gospel for Lent. A wake-up-call of a Gospel. A challenge to repentance and service and faithfulness.
But I wonder whether, this Lent, we quite need that kick, that slap, the urgency, the passion that the Gospel of Mark serves up neat for us.
I feel some sympathy with Idris Davies, in the poem we heard, sitting in the chapel on a Sunday afternoon, an urgent, passionate sermon being preached from pulpit, to a congregation in the coal-mining town of Rhymney, where Idris Davies had been brought up at the beginning of the twentieth century, himself working in the mine’s darkness from the age of fourteen — this urgent, passionate sermon being preached to this exhausted congregation, and Idris Davies sitting there, staring through the chapel windows, at the view of the red, setting sun and the purple ridge, and seeing there an image of a man who understood him, who had compassion on him, who knew what it was to be burdened, but who was also free.
Stuck a home, surrounded by the noise of the virus, tired of it, which of us hasn’t felt like Idris Davies this year, wanting to see the sun like a perfect tomato touching the hill, the red sky promising a better tomorrow.
The view of Loch Lomond, raw and elemental. The view of the Colisseum and the majesty of Rome. The view of the man on the ridge through the chapel window.
My final view is yours, this Lent, as you look out from home. I imagine that for most of us it’s not that different to the view twelve months ago at the end of the First Week of Lent in 2020. But I wonder whether you see it differently now? After a year when so little has happened, but so much has happened, how is that view different today — how do you see things differently now?
Perhaps you see value in different places by now — I think that I’ve learnt the value of simple, solid things — a meal shared, a long conversation with friends face to face, a Communion Table set.
Perhaps you see yourself differently now — I think that I’ve learnt the need to take care of myself better, to be more balanced, to know better what I need and what matters to me.
Perhaps you see God differently now — I think that I’ve learnt to not just look for God and give thanks for God in specific, good and happy things, but to know that God is everywhere, that the whole created order is upheld in and through God, not just the nice, pleasant parts, but the lonely, sick, boring, isolated parts, too, all of it, all of us, all of me.
There’s a time for urgency, and passion, and sacrifice, for taking up our cross and following the Son of Man to his fate. And there’s also a time to learn, to understand, to gaze at the view, for there, too, for the wearied and waiting ones, the King of Glory passes on his way.
