Here's my reflection for today's lunchtime Eucharist for St Martin-in-the-Fields:
This day is set aside to remember all who witnessed to their Christian faith during the conflicts in church and state in England, which lasted from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries but were at their most intense in the sixteenth century. Though the reform movement was aimed chiefly at the Papacy, many Christian men and women of holiness suffered for their allegiance to what they believed to be the truth of the gospel. As the movement grew in strength, it suffered its own internecine struggles, with one group determined that they were the keepers of truth and that all others were therefore at least in a state of ignorance and at worst heretical. In the twentieth century, ecumenical links drew the churches closer to each other in faith and worship and all now recognise both the good and evil that evolved from the Reformation Era.
This description of the Feast Day for the English Saints & Martyrs of the Reformation Era is very revealing. It makes it clear that, although these martyrs died for their beliefs, internal conflict within the Church is not what God intended for his people and that relating to our brothers and sisters in Christ on the basis that we hold the truth of Christianity in ways that others don’t is a far from adequate basis for real relationship in a body of people called by their Lord to be united. The final sentence about the ecumenical movement indicates a better way forward which is that of relationship on the basis of our shared fallibilities, failings and lack of understanding.
That is the message of 2 Corinthians 4. 5-12, a passage that we have come to know and love at St Martin’s through the work of the Disability Advisory Group and through the Light the Well community art project which resulted in an installation in the Light Well.
The artist Anna Sikorska worked with us on the installation which was set in the Light Well of St Martin-in-the-Fields during November and December 2017. It was the culmination of a community art project in which individuals from across St Martin’s – Church congregation, Chinese community, clergy, staff, clients from the Connection and members of our International Group – gathered together over time and over tables of clay to carefully form the porcelain lanterns which then filled the Light Well.
The lanterns were glazed ceramic globes whose size, surface decoration and character differed, although the base material - and overall look - was consistent white ceramic, roughly made. In the Light Well these lanterns were joined together with cord covering the stone floor in a random constellation. The cord also connected a light bulb within each lantern, so each one shines from within. Each lantern glowed when lit from within because of the translucency of porcelain.
Porcelain, like all clay, is malleable when wet and able to be moulded and shaped but, once formed and fired, is firm but fragile at one and the same time. Porcelain, however, unlike most other clays, is also translucent meaning that light can be seen through it. It glows with a transparency individual to itself. All these aspects of porcelain are factors in verses from 2 Corinthians 4: 6-12 which say that ‘God … has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ’ and that ‘we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us.’
If the clay jar, the container of the light, were to be perfectly formed, then the light inside would not be seen from the outside. The light of Christ would effectively be hidden. People would look at our perfect life and not Christ, because they would only see us. Instead, St Paul says, because we are not perfect and have difficulties and flaws we are like cracked clay jars, meaning that it is then clear that where we act or speak with love and compassion, this is because of Christ in us, rather than being something which is innate to us or simply our decision alone. He used this image of light in containers seen through cracks, or thin translucent clay, to assure the Corinthian Christians that they had the light of God in their lives, despite the fallibility and frailty of those lives.
The cracked translucent lanterns of this installation lit from within are a visible realisation of St Paul’s image of light in clay jars. By linking the lanterns together, this installation also highlights another aspect of this passage. Paul writes that ‘We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies.’ Paul writes of us in the plural. We are afflicted, but not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. It is as we come together to engage with affliction, perplexity, forsakenness, and being struck down that we carry in our body the death of Jesus and show the life of Jesus. It is as we come together, linked, like the lanterns, by the light of Christ that we become the Body of Christ.
These verses picture us as fragile clay or porcelain containers. We all, as individuals, have the light of Christ within which can be seen by others as a result of our fragile nature; either the lines of stress in our lives or the thinness of our skin. Each of us are like cracked or translucent clay jars because of our flaws and vulnerabilities. It is through these lines of stress – the suffering, rejection and scorn with which we engage - that the light of Christ is seen. It is as we join together in living for the sake of others – linked together as the lanterns were linked in the Light the Well installation – that we become the Body of Christ and reveal him most fully in the world. In this way, this installation shows us what it means to be the Body of Christ – the Church – in the world today. When we come together as fragile individuals glowing with the light of Christ in and through our fallibilities, we are the Church as it is intended to be.
Prayers
Lord Jesus, in your face we see the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. Your light in our lives is like a flame inside a cracked clay jar, with your light seen through the lines of stress and tension that characterise our lives. As flawed people in a fragile world, we recognise that there is a crack in everything. We recognise, too, that it is through the cracks in our existence that your light gets in and shines out. We share in the vulnerability and suffering that was your experience of death in order that your life is also seen as being our strength in weakness. May we not be crushed, driven to despair, forsaken or destroyed, but in the stresses and tensions of our lives know your power loving and sustaining us. May we no longer strive after perfect offerings and pray instead that every heart to love with come, but as a refugee. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Lord Jesus, in this wilderness before the promised land, we pray for all who are dispossessed and homeless. In their wilderness wanderings may they seek rest not only in a material land of promise but also in the one who left all he had to serve humanity, die and be raised to glory. In the tension of the now and the not yet, we pray for all who have asked for healing or release and to whom it has not been granted. In the depths of their loss may they encounter one whose preaching released long dead imprisoned souls. In these times between times, may we fully utilise the gifts of your Spirit - gifts of community and relationship, gifts of forgiveness and life-giving – to imagine new possibilities in the midst of the old problems of our world. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Lord Jesus, who in suffering and then death was made nothing, we bring to you those who are experiencing loss through suffering and bereavement. We ask that nothing and no-one will trivialise their loss and that in the heart of their loss they will experience rebirth and resurrection. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
Lord Jesus, through your rising from the grave, you broke the power of the grave, you broke the power of death and condemned death itself to die. As we celebrate this great triumph may we also make it a model for our living. Help us to identify in our lives all that should rightly die - redundant relationships, tired habits, fruitless longings. Resurrect in our lives faith, hope and love as surely as you raised Jesus Christ from the grave. Lord, in your mercy, hear our prayer.
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U2 & Daniel Lanois - Falling At Your Feet.
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