Over my Easter break I enjoyed reading Shirley
du Boulay's 'The Silent Melody', a personal memoir of spiritual formation
stretching back to the 1960s. It served for me as aide memoire so I found something of a reflection of my own soul's journey in
its mirror.
The last half century has seen the decline of Christianity in our land, a greater sense of the other faiths it stands alongside and many new movements expressing interest in spirituality.
Through her production of religious programmes for the BBC Shirley du Boulay chronicled much of this, notably in her encounter with the Beatles when they met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Her book recalls her struggle to be a Roman Catholic and her commitment to inter faith engagement which has had major impact on her spiritual development.
I valued her story despite its conclusion - she is no longer a church member! I was blessed by much of the insight she provides in a well written book which has insight from her previous biographies of among others Dame Cicely Saunders and Desmond Tutu.
Shirley du Boulay starts her book dismissing what she calls 'Anglican vague broadmindedness' but she ends with something very much broader! She struggles with the variety of faiths, their evident spiritual fruitfulness and how that challenges obedience to any one of them.
What I found most interesting were her quotations from Gregory of Nazianzen, Thomas Traherne and others on the ultimate unknowability of God and how spiritual seekers can be united in such, I use invented commas, 'faith'.
The Christian tradition does acknowledge unknowability in God but it holds this in tension with his knowability in Jesus Christ through his Church. Her book blessed and humbled me, but saddened me in the erosion of Christian commitment it documents, and what I would call her very 'subjective' approach to God.
This is my lead in to the beautiful Gospel reading about the risen Lord's appearance to Cleopas and his companion on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. If ever there was a passage that affirmed the 'objectivity' of the presence of God in Christ it's this one from the pen of St Luke, Chapter 24 verses 13 to 35.
While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. This was to change - their subjective reflections on Easter weekend were to be enriched, augmented and challenged by discovering the objective presence of the Lord right there before them.
The last half century has seen the decline of Christianity in our land, a greater sense of the other faiths it stands alongside and many new movements expressing interest in spirituality.
Through her production of religious programmes for the BBC Shirley du Boulay chronicled much of this, notably in her encounter with the Beatles when they met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. Her book recalls her struggle to be a Roman Catholic and her commitment to inter faith engagement which has had major impact on her spiritual development.
I valued her story despite its conclusion - she is no longer a church member! I was blessed by much of the insight she provides in a well written book which has insight from her previous biographies of among others Dame Cicely Saunders and Desmond Tutu.
Shirley du Boulay starts her book dismissing what she calls 'Anglican vague broadmindedness' but she ends with something very much broader! She struggles with the variety of faiths, their evident spiritual fruitfulness and how that challenges obedience to any one of them.
What I found most interesting were her quotations from Gregory of Nazianzen, Thomas Traherne and others on the ultimate unknowability of God and how spiritual seekers can be united in such, I use invented commas, 'faith'.
The Christian tradition does acknowledge unknowability in God but it holds this in tension with his knowability in Jesus Christ through his Church. Her book blessed and humbled me, but saddened me in the erosion of Christian commitment it documents, and what I would call her very 'subjective' approach to God.
This is my lead in to the beautiful Gospel reading about the risen Lord's appearance to Cleopas and his companion on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus. If ever there was a passage that affirmed the 'objectivity' of the presence of God in Christ it's this one from the pen of St Luke, Chapter 24 verses 13 to 35.
While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. This was to change - their subjective reflections on Easter weekend were to be enriched, augmented and challenged by discovering the objective presence of the Lord right there before them.
Luke's vivid narrative reflects the pattern of Christian
worship both early and late so that the Lord Jesus is encountered objectively
in two ways - the explaining of scripture and the breaking of bread.
What we are about this morning, what Shirley du Boulay sadly absents herself from nowadays, is engaging through preaching and sacrament with something or someone outside of ourselves who first appeared in this fashion to Cleopas and his companion on Easter Sunday.
Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures Luke records. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”...and, Luke concludes '(They told the eleven) how the Lord Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Any relationship we have has a subjective and objective side apart of course from the rather ambiguous relationship we have with ourselves.
Through friendship and marriage others become our intimates, standing away from us yet near to us, so our subjective thoughts of them are balanced by their objective presence and communication to us. In the Christian religion talk of that balance of subjective and objective can still be used, even though God is no object we can see, handle or contain. As Shirley du Boulay affirms in her book God is beyond our being as 'the ground of our being'.
When God sent his Son Jesus Christ he was showing us his love objectively, that is outside of ourselves. Christ died, rose and passed into the sacraments so we encounter God from Easter on through the physical order primarily in the words of Scripture we hear and read and in the breaking of the eucharistic bread as well as in personal prayer and Christian fellowship.
Our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with both a subjective and an objective side. God is 'in' me but God also stands 'away from' me, over against me, guiding me, loving me, chiding me.
What disturbs me about so much so-called New Age spirituality, in which Shirley has been immersed, is its reduction of the transcendent God to being like 'the genie in my lamp'. There is a loss of vision and a reduction or even domestication of God.
Some of my most telling encounters with God have been more like those of Cleopas, encounters coming from outside of myself from scripture, eucharist or in one case the leaves on a tree, that have woken me up to get going once more to serve God's way, which is a way beyond me taking me out of myself.
When we come to Church to worship we're reminded by the faith of those around us what we believe is part of something bigger. In hearing the sermon we see the words of the Bible striking us, exciting a fuller vision of God. In participating in the offering, blessing and consuming of bread and wine we meet God at a visceral level.
The road to Emmaus is my road, your road, week by week, as it was Cleopas' road that first Easter. It's a road where our subjective sense of God is built up healthily, as in any relationship, by encounter with God the awesome Friend who walks beside us.
This relationship, as our service reminds us, isn't just one-to-one. It is knowing the love of Christ, as Paul explains to the Ephesians, having the power to comprehend, with all the saints (with the whole church) ... the breadth and length and height and depth of his love that surpasses knowledge and fills us with all the fullness of God.
May Our Lord bless us as week by week he speaks to us through his word and comes to be our Food in the eucharist!
May our subjective perception of God expand and deepen through encounter with his objective presence we find here, where two or three are gathered together in his name, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all glory and honour henceforth and for evermore. Amen.
What we are about this morning, what Shirley du Boulay sadly absents herself from nowadays, is engaging through preaching and sacrament with something or someone outside of ourselves who first appeared in this fashion to Cleopas and his companion on Easter Sunday.
Beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures Luke records. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognised him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”...and, Luke concludes '(They told the eleven) how the Lord Jesus had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread.
Any relationship we have has a subjective and objective side apart of course from the rather ambiguous relationship we have with ourselves.
Through friendship and marriage others become our intimates, standing away from us yet near to us, so our subjective thoughts of them are balanced by their objective presence and communication to us. In the Christian religion talk of that balance of subjective and objective can still be used, even though God is no object we can see, handle or contain. As Shirley du Boulay affirms in her book God is beyond our being as 'the ground of our being'.
When God sent his Son Jesus Christ he was showing us his love objectively, that is outside of ourselves. Christ died, rose and passed into the sacraments so we encounter God from Easter on through the physical order primarily in the words of Scripture we hear and read and in the breaking of the eucharistic bread as well as in personal prayer and Christian fellowship.
Our relationship with God in Jesus Christ is a personal relationship with both a subjective and an objective side. God is 'in' me but God also stands 'away from' me, over against me, guiding me, loving me, chiding me.
What disturbs me about so much so-called New Age spirituality, in which Shirley has been immersed, is its reduction of the transcendent God to being like 'the genie in my lamp'. There is a loss of vision and a reduction or even domestication of God.
Some of my most telling encounters with God have been more like those of Cleopas, encounters coming from outside of myself from scripture, eucharist or in one case the leaves on a tree, that have woken me up to get going once more to serve God's way, which is a way beyond me taking me out of myself.
When we come to Church to worship we're reminded by the faith of those around us what we believe is part of something bigger. In hearing the sermon we see the words of the Bible striking us, exciting a fuller vision of God. In participating in the offering, blessing and consuming of bread and wine we meet God at a visceral level.
The road to Emmaus is my road, your road, week by week, as it was Cleopas' road that first Easter. It's a road where our subjective sense of God is built up healthily, as in any relationship, by encounter with God the awesome Friend who walks beside us.
This relationship, as our service reminds us, isn't just one-to-one. It is knowing the love of Christ, as Paul explains to the Ephesians, having the power to comprehend, with all the saints (with the whole church) ... the breadth and length and height and depth of his love that surpasses knowledge and fills us with all the fullness of God.
May Our Lord bless us as week by week he speaks to us through his word and comes to be our Food in the eucharist!
May our subjective perception of God expand and deepen through encounter with his objective presence we find here, where two or three are gathered together in his name, to whom with the Father and the Holy Spirit be all glory and honour henceforth and for evermore. Amen.
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