Throw the ball backwards
Sermon on Ash Wednesday
Holy Trinity Church in the Ministry Area of Llandudno
There’s a church in north London — a large, rather intimidating Victorian building; and on its noticeboard, as its message to passing shoppers and busy families and the outside world — on its noticeboard, as a greeting to anyone who turned aside, used to be the not entirely welcoming words, the little poem, “Tired of sin? Then come in.” And, almost inevitably, somebody had graffitied underneath, “But if you’re not, telephone 020 765…” [I’m grateful to Canon Oakley for the story…]
This Lent, as in every Lent, we’re invited, we’re called, we’re commanded to turn. As we receive ashes shortly, we’ll be told to “turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.” Our Lent study, which a group will follow together on Thursdays this year, is called Turning aside — an invitation to move our gaze from the daily and the earthly and the mortal, to shift, and to refocus for a while on the important thing happening over there. Some of us on Wednesday evenings this Lent will be reflecting on our pastoral ministry to those who, due to birth, marriage or death, “come in” to our churches in Llandudno each year, looking for something of God as they have cause to turn aside on their life’s journey.
What does it mean to turn, to turn aside, to turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ, to stop a moment, and shift our gaze from here [outside] to there [altar-table], from here [down] to there [up]? What does it mean to turn aside and be faithful? What might turning aside and being faithful actually look like for us this Lent?
Turning aside and being faithful means taking some time to seek understanding, to learn more about God. Lent is, by ancient tradition, a time for penitence and frugal lunches and giving things up; and a time for almsgiving and acts of charity, housing the homeless and taking up good works to help our neighbour. But it has also from the earliest days been a time for study, for learning, for seeking to understand more of God. It was for centuries a time when those preparing to be baptised at the traditional ceremonies on Easter Eve would complete their catechesis, their induction into the faith with which they were about to be clothed. What do you need to do to learn more about God this Lent? What will your catechesis be?
Turning aside and being faithful also means allowing our understanding of God to deepen, to mature. We’re always at risk of making God too small. In our minds, God can easily become the lump sum of what we do — God can equal going to church, or doing kind things, or being nice. God can become trapped in this building — beautiful as it is, our understanding of God can be caught somewhere between the choir stalls and the high altar. Worst of all, we can make God a person, a thing, an object — someone or something to be pleased or appeased, someone of something we bargain with, or beg to, or hide from, or befriend. But God is as wide and as deep and as uncontainable as the sea that stretches out beyond Penrhyn Bay; God’s energy and mercy and force is as unending as the tide that teases the promenade, as incessant as the waves that crash against the Orme. God is nothing less than the life that flows from you, from me, through all creation. In D. R. Thomas’s poem [see the order of service] God is both darkness and light, our guilty conscience and that melting feeling when we know we’re forgiven, our judge and our lover, unknowable and known to us in the depth of our hearts, our source and our final destination. How will you keep in touch with the width and breadth and depth and height of that God this Lent? How will you stop making God so small?
Turning aside and being faithful also means coping with the stuff of faith being difficult and challenging and honest. When we spend time with a poem, when we allow ourselves to sit in silence gnawing on a bit of Scripture we’ve read that’s interested us, when we think back on our own lives trying to understand God’s call and our response through the times of pain and joy and confusion, when we do all those things, the real stuff of faith, the real stuff of understanding God, we’re doing stuff that’s difficult and challenging and honest. It demands courage and patience and vulnerability. How will you push yourself this Lent to do some of that difficult stuff, some of that challenging stuff, some of that honest stuff?
Turing aside and being faithful…
I am not, to my father’s great disappointment, a rugby player. Watching some of the six nations over the weekend, though, reminded me of that basic but odd rugby thing — that when you pass the ball, you have to pass it backwards. Even though your momentum is forward, towards the try line, you have to turn aside and throw the ball back if your team is going make use of all of the width of the field to move forward with confidence. Don’t be afraid to turn aside and throw the ball backwards this Lent — to ask questions of basic things, to revisit your faith’s foundations, to do the difficult, challenging, honest work in your heart and soul. For it is in such turning aside that we learn how to move forward in faith t’wards Easter’s light.
