You Are My Beloved

You are My Beloved

Mark 1:4-11

by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones

Cathedral of Hope – Oklahoma City

11 January 2009

 

 

 

For Christ plays in ten thousand places,

Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his

    To the Father through the features of men's faces.

 

    Sometimes we do not feel at home in this world. As I said last week, every morning we wake up in a world that we did not make.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins, the poet, often did not feel at home. Hopkins was a gay man in Victorian England. A gay man who became a Roman Catholic priest. His unrealized attractions to other men appear to have been a source of pain. It should be no surprise that Hopkins experienced depression.

    This depression was heightened near the end of his life when he was assigned to teach in Dublin. His residence was substandard, foul smelling, and cold. The Dublin of his day was a poor city. He was not a good teacher. His work was drudgery. This artistic, sensitive man was living an ugly, soul-draining existence.

    His depression brought him to the brink of despair and a struggle with God. From the poem "Carrion Comfort:"

 

Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, Despair, not feast on thee;

Not untwist – slack they may be – these last strands of man

In me or, most weary, cry I can no more. I can

Can something, hope, wish day come, not choose not to be.

 

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me

Thy wring-world right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan

With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,

O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?

 

    Yet in that very struggle with God, Hopkins found his source of hope through the despair. Because God was there, even in the struggle. "Carrion Comfort" ends with the line

 

    That night, that year

Of now done darkness I wretch lay wrestling with (my God!) my God.

 

    What appears to have helped Gerard Manley Hopkins through the darkness was his ability to experience God everywhere, in everything. Hopkins is the great poet of finding the sublime in the everyday.

    His great poem "God's Grandeur," which we have used in worship before, opens

 

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed.

 

    Hopkins experiences the glory of God in the ooze of oil and in the sparkle of light that you get when you shake tin foil!

    One time when I was at Rolling Hills Baptist Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, I wanted "God's Grandeur" read in the service. The delightful Bill Merrifield, retired math teacher and harmonica player, was the reader that Sunday. Bill actually brought a piece of aluminum foil and hid it under his robe and at the moment in the poem when he read, "it will flame out, like shining from shook foil," Bill shook the foil out. It was a wonderful moment. I think half the congregation was shocked and trying to figure out what had just happened. But Bill got it. God was here, even in aluminum foil!

    And this theme runs throughout Hopkins' poetry. He experiences God in the flight of a bird, the color of a cow's skin, a plowed field, a doorkeeper staying faithfully at his post, the swimming of children, an old man taking off his clothes, even the sinking of the ship the Deutschland which killed a group of nuns. It is this poem, about such a depressing thing as the drowning of nuns, which contains the words I print in our Easter bulletin every year:

 

Let him easter in us, be a dayspring to the dimness

    of us, be a crimson-cresseted east

 

They are among the most glorious words I know. A celebration of the resurrection. A call for Jesus to resurrect us, bring us new life and new hope. And the occasion for their writing was the drowning of nuns.

    Gerard Manley Hopkins developed an unparalleled ability to experience God in everything. So, let me read once again the poem that was read earlier today, "As Kingfishers Catch Fire." Pay attention to the earthy, everyday things in which God is experienced – a bird, an insect, rocks tossed into a well, cowbells, and finally you and me.

 

As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame;
    As tumbled over rim in roundy wells
    Stones ring; like each tucked string tells, each hung bell's
Bow swung finds tongue to fling out broad its name;
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
    Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
    Selves – goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying What I do is me: for that I came.

I say more: the just man justices;
    Keeps grace: that keeps all his goings graces;
Acts in God's eye what in God's eye he is --
    Christ. For Christ plays in ten thousand places,
Lovely in limbs, and lovely in eyes not his
    To the Father through the features of men's faces.

 

    We experience God not just in the things of the world, we find Christ in ourselves. This is not just some abstract doctrine, that we are supposed to know and understand. It is a reality we are to experience as play, "for Christ plays in ten thousand places," you and I included.

    The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. That theme is continued in today's gospel text – the baptism of Jesus. Jesus comes to John for baptism. As he is coming up out of the water, the heavens are torn apart and the Spirit of God descends upon him as a voice from heaven says, "You are my Son, the Beloved, with you I am well pleased."

    And we are offered this same baptism. John says, "I have baptized you with water, but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." We too enter the waters of baptism as a sign of our commitment to follow Jesus and covenant with the church. When we are baptized the heavens are ripped open and the Spirit descends upon us and though we may not hear it, it is true of us too, "You are my Children, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased."

    It is this great revelation which brought Hopkins back from the point of despair – the reality of his closeness with God. And it can be the source of strength for our lives.

    So, this year as we celebrate Baptism of the Christ Sunday and renew our baptismal vows, I invite you recommit yourselves to cultivating your souls. To developing the spiritual sense by which we experience God in everything. The practices that help us to find our home with God and each other in this world.

    This year the Spiritual Formation Team is asking the entire congregation to pledge three things. First, is to pray every day for the church and those on the church's prayer list which comes out every week in our e-mail newsletter. The second is to read every week the assigned lectionary texts, four readings from the Bible. To help with this pledge, our Formations Class at 4:30 will now be a time to discuss that week's readings. The Team will also prepare weekly guides to accompany the lectionary readings. The third pledge is to seek other avenues for learning and spiritual growth, which may be some personal spiritual practice, reading a book, joining a Bible study class, etc.

    In our baptism we take on a new identity. That identity is a follower of Jesus. With it comes a new name – Christian. This names a new reality, that we are filled with Holy Spirit. That wind which moved over the waters of creation, that filled the tabernacle in the wilderness, that blew through the disciples on Pentecost, and that descended upon Jesus here at his baptism. The power and glory of God have come to play in us. We are God's Beloved. Let us rejoice.