Smorgasbord!
One of the mild pleasures of my life comes to me here in the monastery on Wednesdays and Sundays when we eat up our leftovers. Brethren and guests often put the strangest combinations of food on their plates, combinations they would never normally have: a piece of fish and a piece of meat; soup with a pile of vegetables in it; a vegetarian concoction with a chicken stew; and then two or three desserts on a single plate. I do it myself and enjoy the strange mixture of tastes and textures. Today’s readings are rather like this smorgasbord of food. At first sight, there is not much connection between the three readings. Put them together on one plate and connections emerge as they speak to each other. We started at Mattins with the prophet Jeremiah: “Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, and before you were born I consecrated you.” Now I have to say, I really hate those long periods of the year when we are subjected to readings from Jeremiah. They are so depressing. I feel so sorry for Jeremiah. He loves God and wants to serve him but God gives him endlessly gloomy, complaining prophecies. God ensures he is hated by most of the people in Jerusalem, and to no purpose. They do not change their ways. God doesn’t let them off the hook. They suffer and go into exile. Even Jeremiah, who was utterly faithful to God is forced in the end to leave his beloved Jerusalem and get dragged off to loathsome Egypt. It is hard being a prophet of God.
Yet buried in all these gloomy prophecies are a few promises of real beauty, and today’s is one. How many of us have reflected on our own vocation as priest, or monk, or faithful Christian in a harsh and uncomprehending world, and found inspiration. Why did I choose this life? Well I didn’t. God chose me for it before I was even born. The modern world would regard that as abuse. God took away my freedom and imposed a hateful life on me. I regard it as privilege. It is part of the amazing love of God that he should go to so much trouble to make me the person I am and give me a life so different from others, yet so much fun. And if in the end I can be part of God’s own activity “to pluck up and to break down; to build and to plant”, that, too, is a gift for me to enjoy. What a privilege it is to share with God the work in this world that he does and loves so much. At the end of the first week of the Ignatian exercises we have the Call of the King to join him in his work in the world and thus to enter into His father’s glory. Christ knows how weak and sinful we are. He knows how often we fail, and yet he still calls us to work with him. What could be a better sign of his love? Then we have the woman in Luke’s Gospel whose crooked back Jesus heals. I could do with that myself! Going round with a crooked back is uncomfortable, and tiring, and even humiliating when you catch sight of yourself in a mirror. It is typical of Jesus to notice this woman. She is a common woman, unknown to most. She is not sick with a spectacular disease like leprosy or demon possession. But Jesus notices her and heals her. Why her, and not the thousands of other bent men and women in Galilee we do not know. He changes her life, and this common woman with no name has become famous: for two thousand years people have read her story and preached about her. That’s a delightful irony. Yet the story contains a warning to us. Does Jesus do it on the Sabbath deliberately to show we must sometimes break rules that are important to us? Jesus loved God and loved the Sabbath – the day when one can really enjoy being with God. The Sabbath is not a pain, or as cage, or a place of misery. It is a joy because he is with God. But love calls him to work as well. We know how important our monastic rules are – the silence, the space, the cherished isolation, the freedom from worldly cares. We must keep those rules to make our monastic life real and fruitful. But at times we must break them for love. Yet, how often do we use them as a defence against people we don’t want to be involved with? That is not love. And finally we come to Hebrews. The scene changes radically. From a Jewish synagogue with a bent old lady and some grumpy Pharisees we are transported to the glorious reality that is behind all this: “you have come to Mount Zion and to the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to innumerable angels in festal gathering, and to the assembly of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, to God the judge of all, …and to Jesus.” It is Jesus who holds all our readings together – Jesus, who knew us before we were born and called us; Jesus, who shows his love for even the least noticeable of people by healing a bent old lady, scandalizing the rule keepers, and now to Jesus who is himself God. We set off on this journey of Christian life, or monastic life not knowing where it would go. Sometimes it has gone through grubby and not very attractive places. Today we catch a glimpse of the glory to which it is leading us, to Jesus and to God.