Enter the Mystery

On Tuesday Evening we celebrated the Liturgy of Healing with Laying on of Hands and Anointing with Holy Oil, as we seek the vision of the Heavenly City and a new world

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Stories are important. They connect us with one another. They are fragile too and can be easily abused and misused by others. Priests and preachers are, amongst many others things, storytellers and one of my favourite genres of literature is Autobiography and Memoir which give us so many stories and share the direct experience of others.

The story of journey of the actor David Harewood, from working class Birmingham to the bright lights of Hollywood, is told in both a TV documentary and in his memoir, titled, ‘Maybe I don’t belong here. He shares insights into his life lived after the experience of psychosis, and explores the impact of everyday racism on Black mental health.  He writes this:

“When I was seven years old, matters became irrevocably clear.  It was an incident I’ll never forget for it created a rupture that lasts until this every day.  Playing alone outside my house one day, I noticed an older, white gentleman walking towards me from across the road.  He wasn’t charging at me so I didn’t feel danger, but I could tell it was a purposeful walk.  I stopped what I was doing and watched as he got closer.  When he was finally within arm’s length, his face a picture of hatred and anger, he leaned in towards me and said, ‘Get the f*** out of my country, you little black B******.”

“And that’s when it happened, the two halves of me split.  There was now a Black half and an English half and I could feel myself coming apart.”

Maybe at times we feel we don’t belong, or just have a vague sense of feeling out of place or not at ease in the world, or we feel disconnected from others, from ourselves, from God. Maybe, like David Harewood, the injustices of society have literally made you sick.

Perhaps there have been times when Imposter syndrome has set in, when we doubt our abilities, question our own worth.

So many social ills can make us ill, from pollution to peer pressure, from unhealthy diets to reckless living, from racism to far right extremism, from crass decisions made for profit rather than for people.

Whole communities can become dis-eased   by disadvantage and deprivation and the uncaring decisions of people in power who keep them poor.  

We can tie ourselves up in knots at the anguish of others, can lie awake at night and fight with sleep, or worry ourselves to death.

Perhaps our faith is so fickle that we feel we don’t really have anything left to hold onto, and we just move through the motions, keep saying our prayers by heart when our heart is really not in it.

Perhaps the only healing we seek, is to be a bit stronger, more faithful, more loving, more loved. We may be showered in kindness and not yet learned how to be kind to ourselves.

Where is this New Jerusalem, the heavenly city, a bright new world with every tear wiped away, a world free of death and dying, sickness and pain.

As a child, I grew up with the background noise of the threat of nuclear war. Some of you grew up on the back and in the aftermath of the Second World War. And now in our own times, the post lockdown years, the threat of environmental disaster, the cost of living, the shadow of war in Europe, millions on the move seeking safety, the damaging political rhetoric, the fragile relationship across the globe, a polarised world.  We have every right to be fearful and to hope for a new world, a heavenly Jerusalem.

This time is an opportunity to place ourselves in the presence of him whom we love. To bow low, open our hands, raise our heads, and receive the balm of healing, the assured presence of Christ which we can experience in so many ways.

A time to hope for a share, a glimpse, of the world as it can be when all we seem to have is the world as it is.

We may feel so little that we shout to be heard. Our frustration expressed in anger, our sense of displacement making us impatient and despairing.

There is no need to shout to be heard or to wave our arms to be seen. Christ sees us, knows us, loves us, reaches out to us even as we reach out to him.

Our longing for a new kind of world, a different kind of life, is also God’s longing. That shared yearning is our meeting point, the interface of love. It’s a world that is heaven sent, where we rub shoulders with God who dwells with us, who walks the streets and fills the world with light but who also has a throne from which he reigns with the rule of love.

We are a bride for the bridegroom, children of God who is not an absent parent or a distant Dad. He is present to us, with us, for us. Enthroned and regal, seeking us out, bringing us home.  

So, hush, be silent, be still.

“Be still and know that I am God,” he says.

“And know that I am God”