Readings Isaiah 5 :1-7, Hebrews: 11:29-12:2, Luke: 12:49-56

Sight, time and courage. 

You know the gospel I want to share today.  I simply invite you to live it.  This came from a close friend, RC priest Bernard Lynch, and a conversation we had about our mortality.

Bernard gave me a quote from Celtic spirituality:

The beauty of the curve of the wave is only made possible by the retreat of the one that has gone before it.  The Ocean is all we know of Time…It is our under music of Eternity….

The beauty of the curve of the wave is only made possible by the retreat of the one that has gone before it. 

I immediately saw a painting in my mind, because it captures something of this beauty of the curve of the wave.  Here it is.   And I have spent hours, transfixed, by this beauty of a moment in time.  As a child I sat before it, in the lounge of my Great Aunt and Uncle in Bristol UK.  The painting is faded now, but their house was grand. Visiting them was a journey into greater wealth and comfort.  I would soon be bored by adults’ conversations I did not understand, and I let myself enter this picture.  All those adults have gone before me and left thepainting to me, the beauty of the curve of the wave, that is my life.

Then I remembered another beautiful thing.  I saw it just four weeks ago.  It is on the front of our worship bulletin today.  It isa tapestry about Sight, from Paris in the Musée de Cluny.  This is one of six tapestries considered one of the jewels of the artistry of the Middle Ages.  Each is for one of the senses, and a sixth sense that is bigger, and mysterious. 

The Lady and the Unicorn are in each of the tapestries, along with many rabbits.  The one for Sight includes the Unicorn with front feet in the lap of the Lady, whilst she has one arm on the Unicorn’s shoulder blades and the other holds a mirror reflecting the Unicorn.  It suggests to me the myth of narcissus.  There’s a famous Pre-Raphaelite painting by John Waterhouse,of Narcissus staring into his own handsome reflection in a lake with the wood nymph Echo nearby. In the myth.Narcissus had refused Echoe’slove, and all before her.  Heartbroken Echo goes into the woods fainter and fainter until she dies.  Nemesis, a relative of Aphrodite the goddess of love, noticed his refusal and cursed Narcissus to only love his reflection. Sight became his curse.  This may seem abstractbut this week I met a real Echo.  Echo is the name of Camp Cosmos Executive Director.

Camp Cosmos has been a huge success with a mix of children from low income families, including Ukrainian children who are so fragile and traumatized.  Bravo for Camp Cosmos and our church to share in a little healing, and the creation of new friendship and reminders of human qualities of care, fun and safety.   Here is a little video of the end of camp gala.(from my cell phone). I asked Echo how she became involved with Camp Cosmos.   She told me she first hear of Camp Cosmos when she worked for Montreal City Mission legal clinic, Just Solutions.  This included women escaping domestic violence with little money to pay for childcare.

It is interesting to me that the real Echo is the opposite of Narcissus in the myth.  She is giving to others and passionate to make a positive difference.   I am glad we could host this camp.  It is always a little uncertain, has great responsibilities. There are risks of accidents and challenges to meet cross-cultural differences between families, with individual needs and woundedness.

The choice Narcissus to refuse to love, in the myth, is well known to Bible writers, who spoke for love and especially God’s love for all of creation and we heard it in the each passage.  In the Epistle reading the long list of heroes of the faith, is like the waves that have gone before the Hebrew Christians.  The cry of prophet Isaiah reminds people of the care of God to their ancestors, to give them a safe and rich country, like a fruitful vineyard, yet their behaviour has spurned this care and become a contradiction: he expected justice but saw bloodshed.  The sight is not a beautiful curve.

For Luke, he remembers Jesus also taught to look, in faith, for signs and to trust them.  This was not such a big deal because people did this with nature, seeing rain clouds come from the west, the Mediterranean sea and dry winds from the south, the continent.  Luke tells us Jesus anticipated his suffering and death as part of God’s time and purpose and he brings it up to date for his church, to warn them to expect dramatic and difficult times and divided families.  Clearly following Jesus is transforming. It makes sense of the present moment but relies on what has gone before;it is about seeing signs and living by them, alert to the truth of God.  Another friendof mine, Paul Glass, a Methodist minister in the UK, like me, living thanks to the wave of John Wesley, wrote this poem for today, as a sort of contemporary prophet Isaiah:

How on earth do we do it?

Interpret the current time?

Work out where the madness is going –

this nightmare of a mime?

As racists open fire

and politicians vault over each other wanting to see

who can be the most outrageous liar

…and get away with it.

As experts and the wise are ignored because we

don’t want to know the truth,

or think that we know better.

As the world burns and the climate screams

We continue to live as if it was all a dream

As slavery flourishes and anger and violence erupt.

As injustice rages and the cost-of-living soars.

As we witness war and the rise of the corrupt.

How to interpret? How do we make sense?

Do we rant and shout against the dying of the light?

Do we bury our heads in the sand and pretend it’s all right?

As politicians rage and the lives of the innocent are

destroyed.

As the world shrugs and carries on.

We must speak and act, surely?

Rather than just watching and waiting –

and hoping that things will get better.

And here is Jesus saying loud and clear

Interpret these times you are in without fear.

Speak out for love,

Hold on to hope.

Get angry, seek justice

Despite what it feels like – grace can cope.

So let’s look around us with eyes open and clear.

Let us be honest but not give into fear.

The world needs us now as never before

To speak out for love and read the signs

of these strange, head scratching, desperate times.

Isn’t all this summed up with that Celtic wisdom, to let ourselves see the beauty of the curve of the wave knowing it relies on what went before, knowing this is the beauty of our lives, here in this place, because of the gift of so many waves, in making the building, in praising God, in facing hard times, a beauty of living not for our own sakes, not clinging to a life for its own sake, like a mirror, but to give life to others, to catch the wave.

Sight, time and courage.

Amen.