EVENSONG & BENEDICTION, PALM SUNDAY, Year C: March 28 2010

Preacher: Fr Peter Waddell
John 12:1–11

A story from the sayings of the Desert Fathers, those early heroes of the faith and pioneers of the monastic way. A junior monk, hungry to progress further in the spiritual life, goes to an elder to ask his advice: 'Abba, as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else can I do?' Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, 'If you will, you can become all flame.'

If you're anything like me, this story will cause you rather mixed emotions. It is of course, splendid: you can become all flame — your life with God can become so much more than a matter of routines and pattern and discipline, so much more than the rather pedestrian and half-hearted discipleship that characterises most of us, most of the time. You can become all flame. And it is also frustrating, precisely because it seems so far off, because our lives and our love are simply not like that and we cannot imagine how they might be. That kind of pure, energised, incandescent love seems no more likely for us than the tips of our fingers bursting into flame.

Tonight's Gospel reading has something of the same character. 'Mary took a pound of costly perfume made with pure nard, annointed Jesus' feet, and wiped them with her hair.' Actions speak louder and truer than words, and in this action is spoken pure love, pure devotion. It is, as Judas is swift to point out, wildly extravagant, beyond all reasonableness and calculation. Extravagant, and wasteful, and — if Mary had slowed down to think about it — perhaps deeply, deeply embarrassing. And yet, despite all that — perhaps even because of all that — it is also just the right thing to do: just the right human response, however stumbling, however inadequate to who Jesus is and what He is about to do.

And that is why it is a good Gospel to have here, right at the beginning of Holy Week. There are all sorts of responses which are rightly called for from us throughout this week. The mysteries we approach should fill us with awe, and sorrow, and horror, and bewilderment. They should make us pray, and think, and amend our lives. But first, and most deeply, they should make us love — to realise that this week is not supremely about ideas or rituals or obligations, but about a Person. A Person who first and and most deeply asks us for our love; who asks us to drop our defences and simply adore Him, as Mary did that evening long ago.

I am not all fire, and I imagine you are not either. For many of us, keeping our little rule, saying our prayers and living in peace is hard enough. But this Gospel is a prompt to us, this week, to see where in our relationship to God, where in our worship, there is that Mary-moment, that flash of passion and extravagance. Different traditions might find it in different ways — in the singing of love-songs to Jesus, perhaps even in the gift of tongues. In the tradition of this place, one way is what we shall do in a few moments — in Benediction, in holding ourselves still and open and exposed before the holy bread and wine, Jesus' sacramental body and blood. Long, silent reverence and adoration for those precious gifts — the world might think it extravagant, wasteful of time if nothing else, and perhaps, if we slowed down to think about it, rather embarrassing. And yet despite all that — perhaps even because of all that — it is just the right thing to do, just the right human response, however stumbling, however inadequate to who Jesus is and what He is about to do.

But perhaps you feel that your response will be especially inadequate, especially stumbling. Other people's adoration may be worthy of Jesus, but yours is a worse than useless thing. If that is where you are tonight, let me just say two things in response. Firstly, welcome to the club. Secondly, and rather more usefully, some words of Archbishop Michael Ramsey. What should you do when you pray?

'Try to think of it more simply: it means putting yourself near God, with God, in a time of quietness every day. You put yourself with Him just as you are, in the feebleness of your concentration, in your lack of warmth and desire, not trying to manufacture pious thoughts or phrases. You put yourself with God, empty perhaps, but hungry and thirsty for Him; and if in sincerity you cannot say that you want God you can perhaps tell Him that you want to want Him; and if you cannot say even that, perhaps you can say that you want to want to want Him. Thus you can be near Him in your naked sincerity and he will do the rest, drawing out from you longings deeper than you knew were there [...] Forgive me for putting this so clumsily. I am trying to say that you are 'with God' not by achieving certain devotional exercises in his presence but by daring to be your own self as you reach towards Him.'

I, for one, do not think that was clumsily put. May we each learn Bishop Michael's lesson deeply this Holy Week, and may we, like Mary, come ever closer to being all flame.