Pentecost 14 - Year A

At the beginning of her beautiful book on worship and architecture, The Geometry of Love, Margaret Visser recounts the following story:
“…I remember sitting at the back of a tiny, isolated church some years ago, on top of a hill in Spain. A Japanese tourist was driven up to the front door and led around the building by a guide he must’ve hired in the town. The guide told him, in English, the dates of various parts of the building and then proceeded to dilate upon the superb stone vaulting.
The tourist did not even raise his head to look at this. He stared aghast – as well he might – at a horrific, life-sized painted carving of a bleeding man nailed to two pieces of wood.
When the guide had stopped talking, the man gestured wordlessly towards the statue. The guide nodded, smiled, and merely told him in which century it had been carved.”
I can imagine that this story has played out in many forms and places, especially now that generations of people, my age and younger, have grown up without ever darkening the door of a church – until they come to be chance tourists in cathedrals like this one.
It brings to light the reality that although the image and act of the Crucifixion is, as far as I’m concerned, the most radical thing ever to happen in divine and human history, we have become used to it. We don’t take a second glance at the God of Creation, nailed to a tree of God’s own making by us, by empire and religion, in order to save us from ourselves. Imagine hearing that for the first time.
Of course in many cases in the history of the church, the image of the Cross has been misused, to bolster the very same power and institutions. For that and many other reasons it has, I think, lost some of its enchantment for us – some church communities have become immune to its power to shock, to bring hope, to stir us to action. Indeed, Peter is so shocked by the thought of Christ’s death that he rebukes Jesus in our Gospel. The newly-named rock of the church lasts about five minutes before struggling to incorporate these shocking, topsy-turvy narratives that are central to the Kingdom of Heaven. He would rather reject them and have a different, more comfortable story, something normal and expected. Jesus has harsh words for him and the Church in return.
So, as the Festival comes to a close, the tourists shuffle home, and all those incredible performances and exhibitions throughout the city which shock and bring hope and stir us to action are tidied away for another year, I’d like to invite you to take a deep breath and to wonder – how do we discover re-enchantment with our everyday, post-pandemic faith? How do we refresh, in the words of Paul, our zeal and spiritual fervour?
Today’s story from Moses is a wonderful place to start. Between last week and this, we have skipped from Moses’ birth and adoption all the way through to his encounter with God on Mount Horeb, but the context is important. In the interim, Moses has already tried to help his people through his own strength, committing manslaughter and worsening conditions for the enslaved Israelites in the process. He flees everything he knows and is now exiled, exhausted, alienated. He's disenchanted.
It is from the beginnings of some semblance of normality for Moses in exile, that God decides to shake things up a bit, in a drama worthy of an obscure Fringe performance:
He sets a bush on fire.
Note what happens next. God doesn’t call to Moses at first. God waits for Moses to notice this strange sight. And Moses doesn’t simply leave an online review of how beautiful and unusual a sight this burning bush is, and then go home to his dinner. He is changed by the encounter. He stops in his tracks, breath hitched, curiosity piqued, and then veers off from normality to seek God, the source and destination of all our joyful enchantment. Here I am, Moses says. Feet bare, eyes and ears open. So begins a remarkable relationship where God is named and speaks with Moses face to face.
This is what artists of faith have tried to recreate ever since – works of art which show that all of God’s Creation is like the burning bush – alight with the love of God, bounded but capable of withstanding that boundless love. Something beautiful that endures and draws us in.
But, as my icon tutor once wisely said – material beauty alone is ambiguous and has its limits. It can only take us so far, and then God calls us to go through and beyond it.
Moses does go beyond it. He is changed, and leads change for others, because he took the time to turn aside not simply to be enchanted by the unusual beauty of the burning bush, but to seek the God who lies beyond it. In spite of all his exhaustion and flaws and self-doubt, Moses answers God’s call to be the central human character in that great Jewish story of freedom and homecoming, to let God’s people go.
Here, I think, is the basis of a good practice of re-enchantment with faith.
Sometimes we need the novelty of a new piece of art or film, a new arrangement of the Magnificat, new forms of worship in order to feel enchanted by God.
And sometimes, we simply need to adjust our spiritual senses to the newness, the deep freshness of God that is all around us; in this very building, in our ordinary lives and in the radical self-giving love of the Christian faith. It is originality and creativity as returning to our origin, our Creator.
So, next time you are in the Cathedral in the normality of Ordinary Time, or indeed any other church, looking out your window, or in the drabbest, graffitied backstreet of the city; see what unusual beauty strikes you. Pause and turn aside. Where is the God who is? Because as Gerard Manley Hopkins famously penned –
the world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil.
We only need to look for it, and God will come calling.
You will hear me explore the idea of re-enchanting faith quite a bit while I have the privilege of being your curate, but I need your help. I would love to know about all the times, the experiences and the elements of this community and cathedral which like the burning bush have made you stop, draw closer to God and refresh your faith. Maybe the kaleidoscope of Paolozzi colour as the winter sun bleeds into the Resurrection Chapel, maybe a line from scripture or the resolving chord of an Evensong anthem, maybe a quiet moment of stolen prayer on a challenging day. Maybe even a sermon.
Because I have a feeling that when pieced together, these beautiful little asides will be the means by which we may rediscover enchantment with God, and maybe even lead a tired world out of exile, and home to the promise of hope.