I’m so pleased to be back in Chapel as an OG.
If Giggleswick helped make me what I am, Chapel and the Chaplain - in my day Mr Curtis - were key. I’m grateful to Mr Womack and the Head for renewing the invitation to share with you all this evening.
First I want to hear from you. Put your hand up if you are involved in or saw Charlie and the Chocolate Factory?
What do you think was the moral of the story? Have a think about it.
Put your hand up if you’ve got thoughts to share. Feedback
Roald Dahl’s novel and its adaptations - the film, play and musical - contain truth found in folktales from across the world. Charlie - poor, unlucky yet kind and likable - is rewarded, whilst other children who represent vices are punished. The message is “Don’t be like them, be like Charlie.” Another is “Bad parenting makes bad children”.
The moral I picked up from Roald Dahl’s tale full of delicious chocolate is: ‘Be good’.
‘Be good’ - this familiar parental greeting is the strap line of our scripture and my message this evening. ‘The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good’ (Luke 6:45).
I’m a writer and broadcaster. Over lockdown I prepared a book called Pointers to Heaven and a radio series of the same name. Both start with Mrs Foster, the lady across the road from our family home who stepped in to care for my brother and I when my parents were hard pressed. She exuded goodness and that fascinated me.
I remember the warmth of her smile. Through it her face became a pointer beyond herself to something more enduring. Allied as it was to her practical help offered to us seemingly at the drop of a hat, Mrs Foster pointed to a reason and purpose beyond herself.
Her self-forgetfulness was my first spiritual teacher. Her visits underlined goodness to me in such a way that I couldn’t see it as other than a gift much to be desired.
When she smiled down at me in my mishaps I felt uplifted. Facing her, to own up to wrongdoing, seared my soul because I was made aware of my own lack of goodness and how that hurted her.
People don’t get on in the world without people to look up to, and - with my parents and teachers - Mrs Foster was such a lady.
As I reflect on her with you, I judge her goodness to have been a pointer beyond herself to the world beyond this world our Dome points to, the world we call heaven, a place thrilling with the goodness of God so evident in this lady.
Pointers to heaven like the goodness of Mrs Foster have a ripple effect. Thanks to her and many good people including teachers, chaplains and former pupils of Giggleswick I keep up with - and my own crucial opening up to God himself - I stand before you this evening where I sat as pupil half a century ago.
‘The good person out of the good treasure of the heart produces good’. Seeking goodness for Christians is inseparable from seeking God and the purification he grants. Goodness as a moral quality builds through life experience but it can also diminish depending on where your heart is set. It is my conviction that the vision of God is transformative of the heart and its fullness will be at the heart of heaven. Conversely the heart of the human problem is the problem of the human heart. As Thomas More wrote: ‘whoever bids others to do right, but gives an evil example by acting the opposite way is like a foolish weaver who weaves with one hand and unravels the cloth just as quickly with the other’. Standing here - talking, writing and broadcasting about heaven - would be presumptuous unless my own heart were set in that direction and its problems being alleviated by the Holy Spirit.
As St John writes in his first letter: ‘Beloved, we are God's children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure.’ (1 John 3:2-3)
On my visits here I take time to look up into the Chapel Dome, filled with angels, to renew that hope and purification, when it's as if God says to me what I now say to you: Be good!
No comments:
Post a Comment