i-church :
"How far can you see?"

A Homily for Holy Communion on Saturday the 13th of October 2007 at S. Andrew’s, Linton Road, Oxford being the Gathering of i-church members from England & America.
“How far can you see?”
When a group of us were on a tour of the Upper Library at Christ Church yesterday afternoon I was explaining how when I was an undergraduate it was said to the second most beautiful room in Oxford. The most beautiful of all was the upper library at Queen’s College. Well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and Tim, my only friend at Queen’s was blind, so it felt mean to get him to show me something he could never see himself, and it was many years before I saw it. (Incidentally, I’d been misled all those years, they were wrong, Christ Church library is no. 1.) Since then I’ve come to know Tim rather better, and have got used to the way he uses the language of vision just the same as everyone else – “see you soon”, “I see what you mean”, “we’ll have to wait and see”.
So not for nothing were the prophets of all called in English “seers”. They could see things that others couldn’t, and they shared their – here it is again – “insight” with the rest. Often they could see bad things, and that usually made them unpopular. When you’re feeling comfortable and safe, you don’t want the threats to your security – or the dubious means by which you achieved it – to be pointed out to you. When the prophets spoke of the enmity of other nations and the plundering of Israel’s poor, Israel’s rich and complacent looked away. So too, I guess, did many of the poor. When they spoke of idolatry, and the failure to remember God, they stopped their ears too. The most famous bit of Joel is about visions and dreams – we like that bit. But do we want to hear about the Valley of Decision? And what about the holy mountain of which “foreigners will never again set foot in it”? Hmm. Not quite so keen now.
Well, I like foreigners! That might be a relief, or even a surprise, to some of you here. My grandmothers were Irish and Italian, my in-laws were Spanish and Brasilian, I never really stood a chance of being a Xenophobe. Seeing beyond nationality has never been a struggle for me. But for many it is. And for ancient Israel it was often – but not always – hard to see beyond the tribe, or rather, the twelve tribes. Some writers envisage the people of Israel sharing their God with the whole world. Others, like Joel, from a later, more purist time, are more inward-looking (notice the language of vision again). Here I think Scripture issues us with a challenge – here is a valley of decision all right – The tribe, or the whole world? Choose!
And here too, the New Testament (as so often) helps us out. Our Gospel reading is also about peculiarity of vision. When I saw a two verser I thought – Excellent! – in that lazy way preachers have. Then I read it. Happy the womb and breasts? Can there be happy body parts? When your down in the dumps do you take comfort that your duodenum is having a good day? Your fingernails are feeling ropey, but my, what a happy thigh! Couldn’t this lady have said – which surely she means – translated into English vernacular, “yer Mum dun good”? Here too is a failure of vision. There’s the one the text up, which we’ll come to, but there’s this other one too – a person isn’t a set of organs. A body isn’t only parts. God’s creating gift to us is relationship – one to another, and all to God.
And so we hear Jesus’s reply – “happy are those who hear the word of God and keep it”. Happiness – although the word is more solemn than that, and means blessedness too – isn’t a random gift conferred, like the gift of a child. God’s gift to Mary wasn’t just Jesus, it was the spirit that said “be it unto me according to thy word” which made her a co-operator in God’s design for our salvation. There’s a part for all of us to play, using our own individual gifts and choices collaboratively and creatively together. The ability to see what those gifts are – our own, and others’ – helps to build up the body of our common life.
And here we are, native, foreign, and in my case, mongrel, building up the body of our common life, which for many of us has hitherto been at computer monitor. And do we find ourselves somewhere entirely new? No, I don’t think we do. That monitor has opened my eyes, expanded my horizon, I’m no seer, but I see further because of it. I’ll end with some dimly remembered (another visual image!) words of William Penn, a Christ Church graduate (as it happens …) who hard a part to play in America too. “Life is eternal, and love is immortal, and death is only an horizon, and a horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight”. God, give us grace to see. Amen.