1.
28th October, 2001Simon and Jude
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THE HUMAN EDIFICE :
a sermon praught by Richard Major
in the church of St Ascension and St Agnes, Washington D.C.,
at the Solemn High Mass of St Simon and St Jude,
28th October, 2001.
Richard Major 2001;
Deuteronomy xxxii1-4; Ephesians ii13-22; John xv17-27.
From the Epistle:
ergo iam non estis hospites et advenae
sed estis cives sanctorum et domestici Dei :
superaedificati super fundamentum apostolorum et prophetarum
ipso summo angulari lapide Christo Iesu.
In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti: Amen.
I
‘m not preaching you a sermon, I’m showing you a movie. Or since this movie hasn’t been made yet, I suppose I’m just selling you the pitch, or perhaps I mean ‘treatment’.
In fact this movie is never going to be made, but that doesn’t get in our way, especially if you close your eyes.
Pouff! all the light in this church vanishes. A screen comes down. On the screen you see Nothingness: absolute void, utter emptiness, unimaginable, infinite, without any possibility of light, without any possibility of heat. There are no objects, no atoms, not even direction, nor dimension. Total negation, illimitable cold. Blackness beyond blackness, impenetrable: blackness beyond blackness . . . . And just when this vision, or non-vision, is becoming intolerably bleak, the whole screen – in fact, the whole universe – blooms in one millionth of a second into a single intense fireball, at first a few inches across and dense beyond even the powers of mathematics to describe, but at once plunging outward at the speed of light, seven hundred degrees hot, filling the void within a fragment of a second with blinding brightness. For this explosion contains in itself all matter and light and energy that will ever exist. It is the rose of fire that is the cosmos, and begins to congeal as it blooms into throbbing nebulæ and spinning galaxies, and infinite turning wheels of suns. You can understand why I am showing you only an imaginary film, because of course this event could not be shown on a screen, it cannot be pictured very well in the mind – still, the mere numbers are enough to exhilarate us. For what we have just seen is God creating the universe.
Scientists call this the Big Bang: I suppose they want to give it a cute, patronising name to protect themselves against being dazed and befuddled by the awe of it. For this first scene of our movie is beautiful beyond measure, since all the beauties that will come to exist in the millions of years ahead, from the beauty of the constellations to the beauty of a mote of dust dancing in a beam of sunlight on a winter afternoon, are contained within that primal heave of pure power. And could we really see it, the excessive splendour would sear our brains. How dreadful this sight is how it crams us with dread! And yet, also, how awesome! What terrible and frightening beauty!
T
hat was the first scene of our movie. I suppose there’s a rampaging soundtrack by Richard Strauss, all kettle-drums and cymbals. Suddenly that music crashes into silence, and that gigantic bursting flame and energy fade off the screen; and we find ourselves looking into a small room, silent, nocturnal, lit by oil-lamps. This second scene occurs fifteen thousand million years later, at about seven on a Thursday evening – a very specific Thursday, since it’s the Thursday evening in that week which is the centre of all time, the week in which the universe was remade, the week we commemorate two thousand years later as Holy Week. The cameras show us a rented room on the second floor of a house in Jerusalem. A young Rabbi is keeping the festival of Passover with His family and followers. Mary His Mother is there, also Simon Peter His lieutenant, also James and John and Andrew, His most prominent followers, and with them a gaggle of more obscure disciples whom we’d be hard put to name. Among the most obscure are two chaps called Simon – not Simon Peter, a much more obscure figure known as Simon Zelotes – and Judas – not Judas Iscariot, a much more obscure figure called Judas or Jude, and sometimes frankly called Jude the Obscure. On the stone reredos behind the High Altar you can make out a bas-relief of this event. Simon (not Simon Peter) and Jude (not Iscariot) are somewhere in the crowd. It all looks quiet enough, but something tremendous is occurring: the long-ago-created cosmos is being shaken.
What is happening is that the young Rabbi is giving them His own flesh to eat in the form of bread; and the young Rabbi is God made man. God, who created the universe, is here working a more staggering creation still, for He is creating the Mass. This is the meal which will last for ever; and when the universe, when time and space (which we have just seen made) are unmade, this feast will go on. This is the food that makes you outlast time. This is matter which will outlast matter, uncreated divinity made material forever. Great Peter and great Andrew, and Mary, greatest of all, are dazzled by such giving, and tucked away in a corner little Simon and little Jude quake with joy that runs over into bafflement and terror. For the young Rabbi by this gift of His Body is forming them into His Body. He is giving them Himself, and He is making them His Body. How dreadful this meal is! How it crams them and us with dread! And yet, also, how awesome! What terrible and frightening beauty!
O
ur third scene is thirty years on: a dusty unpleasant afternoon at the end of October; an obscure city on the borders of (of all places) Afghanistan. The camera skims over an enormous riotous crowd of Persians. At the centre of the action are our dear obscure friends, Simon-not-Peter and Jude the Obscure. What are they doing on the edge of Persia? Well, they have been obeying the command of Christ and trying to spread the Gospel throughout the world. They have been doing what He told them to do at the Last Supper, trying to share that meal with all mankind. While the greatest of the twelve apostles went west, Jude and Simon headed eastward, to preach the Faith of Christ to the Persians. Have they been a success out East? No. They’ve made hardly any converts; and they’ve stirring up the hatred of the locals. That’s what’s happening in this third scene of our invisible movie this morning: revenge. We hear agonised howling in the midst of the mob. The camera closes in and focuses on horrors: for Jude has been tied to a stake and is being battered to death with a club, and Simon is being sawn in piece with a huge saw. The scene is hideous, and we’d turn our faces away if we didn’t realise that there is also splendour here. For these two men are so in love with Christ that they prefer Christ to life. They could have lived if they had been more careful; they might have escaped torture and death even this afternoon, perhaps, if they had flinched, and renounced Christ. But they chose this agony rather than that, and amidst their torment they manage, a bit, to rejoice. And so how dreadful this scene is! How it crams us with dread! And yet, also, how awesome! What terrible and frightening beauty!
O
ur fourth scene takes place on the feast of St Simon and St Jude, which is to say it is again late October, 28 October – a day now kept holy throughout the Christian world in honour of those two obscure disciples, and of their appalling deaths. The camera shows us a huge congregation in a tall, white-washed church interior. The ladies are in hats and gloves, the men in broad-lapelled drab suits with colourless ties; for the year is A.D. 1956 and people are cautious. The centre of attention in a bald man in an immense pointy hat – it’s the local bishop, and he’s hard at work consecrating their newly-enlarged altar and dedicating the huge, brand-new mural they’ve had painted above the altar. The mural isn’t just an image, it is an icon, which means it is meant to invoke what it shows. Its seven more-than-life-sized saints –Thomas à Becket, Agnes, Athanasius, Mary, Alban, Queen Margaret of Scotland, Vincent – are not just being portrayed, they are being summoned from Paradise as witnesses. What will now happen that Sunday, and every Sunday for the next forty-five years, on that altar, happens beneath the gaze of those seven. And what happens is that Christ’s Body comes and is shared out among the people who are Christ’s Body. Therefore how dreadful this scene is! How it fills us with dread! What terrible and frightening beauty!
O
ur fifth and final scene also takes place in late October, on the Feast of St Simon and St Jude, and it is in the same place as scene four. The camera moves slowly up the nave, showing us a mixture of silent worshippers no longer quite so conservatively dressed. They are holding finely-printed bulletins portraying St Simon, grasping the saw that killed and glorified him, and St Jude, grasping that club. The same seven giant saints gaze down with solemn and ecstatic eyes. Up in the pulpit a balding chap is banging away, preaching – inadequately of course. But that doesn’t matter. In a few minutes he will stop, and get on with the climax of the scene, for by his hands Christ is about to be present again in physical form, just as present as He was on Maundy Thursday in that upper room in Jerusalem, and keep the feast with Simon and Jude and His other disciples. Angels are traditionally imagined to throng a church when this feast and sacrifice is made, covering their faces with bright wings at the excessive glory. For how dreadful is this scene of Eucharist! How it crams us with dread! How awesome it is! What terrible and frightening beauty! And yet, as you’ll have realised, that awesome scene is this scene, and the tremendous day of the miracle is today, and the actors in it are us.
There are our five scenes. The final scene is us. The movie ends.
I
hope it’s clear that, not just as a gimic of story-telling but in very truth, these five scenes make one story. The creation of the universe; the re-creation of the world in Holy Week; the death of St Simon and St Jude, one of the minor consequences of what they experienced in Holy Week; the dedication of huge painting of the saints above a new altar in a certain parish church on the feast-day of Simon and Jude; this latest moment in the life of that church, this moment, also on the feast-day of Simon and Jude – all these form a unity. Our film has one plot. You could call this movie A history of the Cosmos, but it would be just as accurate to call it A history of the Church Militant and Triumphant. We might even call it The origins and purpose of the church of the Ascension and St Agnes, Massachusetts Avenue N.W., WashingtonD.C.(though I admit it’s not a snappy title).
I said I was showing you a film rather than preaching, and so I’m not going to labour the point. Through all time God has been working toward the redemption and glorification of mankind. On the hugest scale he has moved galaxies and history to build a road from finity into infinity, from man to God. The Incarnation of His Son as a Man was the masterstroke, the corner-stone, but before and after that event He has worked on this great scheme. And the raw material He has used has been people.
What is the Church? She is people. I don’t mean she’s people merely standing around together, as in a club. She is a gigantic Temple made of people who have been reworked. She is a huge building, higher than the TwinTowers were before enemies cast them down, for she rises higher every century, she lasts forever, she reaches up to Paradise. God created the universe in order to have a Church, God founded her on Christ, God builds her up. The process does not stop. The movie has one continuous plot.
Other religions are founded on a sacred book or a set of rules. Catholic Christianity is founded on humans, and on their continuity. We ought to remember how daring that is, for humans are fragile and unreliable. Nonetheless, it is God’s method. We are God’s method: His characters, the point of the whole film.
On this day we keep the feast of Simon not Peter, and Jude the Obscure, the two least important of the twelve disciples. It’s a good day, because we, also unimportant disciples, see once more what we are: immortals: necessary bricks in the eternal Church. Today, once more, those seven huge saints gaze down on, summoned by our prayers to share the sight of the Sacrifice offered once more. Agnes and Thomas of Canterbury and Athanasius, Simon and Jude, Francis and Charles Stuart, and all that cloud of witnesses, do not, in their blazing charity, find us obscure: they hail us as fellow citizens of the City that does not fall.
If this were a sermon, and not the pitch for an impossible movie, I’d begin with my text, and explain why it matters. Because this is not a sermon, I’ve just shown you pictures, and finish with my text– one of those triumphant blasts of prose you get in St Paul’s writings, echoed in today’s Collect, echoing roaring through our minds:
ergo iam non estis hospites et advenae
sed estis cives sanctorum et domestici Dei :
superaedificati super fundamentum apostolorum et prophetarum
ipso summo angulari lapide Christo Iesu :
in quo omnis aedificatio constructa crescit in templum sanctum in Domino
Ye are no more strangers and foreigners,
but fellowcitizens with the saints, and of the household of God;
And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone;
in whom all the building fitly framed together groweth unto a holy temple.
Therefore may Blessed Simon and Blessed Jude,
Agnes and Francis and all the Saints,
aid us with their friendship, and pray for us to God,
until the Temple of God be complete,
and we come to be with them and with Him
in highest heaven, where He reigns forever,
Father, Son and Holy Ghost,
ever One, world without end.
Amen.