Wells Cathedral Sermon May 11th 2014 Revd Canon Dr Graham Dodds
Well it happened the other day. I stood up in the study and went to the kitchen, opened the larder
door and stood and looked at the contents and tried to remember why I was there. What was it that I
had wanted 30 seconds ago that I now cannot for the life of me remember. And with an exasperated
sigh I sadly closed the door and headed back to the study. I had heard of such experiences from
comedians such as Mary Maxwell, an American after-dinner speaker who gladly told everyone that
she was 72 and last Sunday in her local cathedral, at the end of the service her husband had got
talking to someone and she had left and gone to the car lot, confidently got in the car and the chap
sitting behind the steering wheel said, ‘Oh you’re coming home with me are you?’. She looked at him
and he at her before she said ‘ Oh Archbishop, I’m so sorry’.
These types of experiences mark our passage through life as we realise we have encountered yet
another stage post of life’s journey. It reminds me of the late Bishop of Pontefract Rt. Rev Richard
Hare who said, ‘You know when you’re getting middle aged - when you bend down to tie your shoe
lace you think, I wonder if there’s anything else that I could usefully do while I’m here.’
Today’s gospel reading is about Jesus, the gate-keeper of life and salvation offering life in all its
fullness to his followers, his sheep. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. Yet it
sometimes feels like life is becoming less and less as we grow older, but I want to suggest the
opposite this morning.
What does life in abundance mean? – the Greek suggests it’s something more than we can imagine –
more than that which is sufficient for us. In other parts of the Bible we may think of the fruit of the
Spirit – love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self control. In
this time of Easter we might think of the fulfilment of the cross, grace, resurrection and eternal life. As
we journey through the Christian year we might consider, the new birth of Christmas, the revelation of
Epiphany, the passion of Lent, the forgiveness of the cross, the risen glory of Easter, the giving of the
Spirit at Pentecost, the dance of the trinity and the nourishment of harvests - all signs of abundant life.
And yet, we know we shall not experience complete fullness until we meet him face to face - for now
we are given a foretaste.
Now whilst this promise applies to all ages, to babies, children, teenagers and young adults, I want to
look at it this morning from a second half of life perspective. And we need therefore to imagine this
concept of the fullness of life as something that is expanding all the time. It’s deepening, widening,
growing larger and larger as we grow older. Of course we can experience abundant life when we’re
younger, but we can also experience it more and more as we grow older. It becomes richer perhaps,
purer, more mature, wiser with more integrity - as God fulfils his promise to us. Like the universe
expands, so the fullness of God is growing, or at least can grow, in us each day.
So I’m concentrating on the second half of life. Whether we say that’s 50 onwards or perhaps 45, it
doesn’t really matter, but it’s that period when we begin to let go of some of what Paul calls the
childish things, the shiny things that once attracted us, the somewhat unreal ambitions we held for we
didn’t know ourselves as much as we do now. And one of the reasons I want to explore this is
because of a book I read recently, Richard Rohr’s Falling Upward.
In my last sermon on Ageing, I preached on how we can go on growing through every stage of life.
This emerged from a group that I started some 18 months ago. One of the instrumental books in the
group is Falling Upward. And after that sermon, quite a few people in the Cathedral came to me to
ask if they could be a part of that group. It would become too big if everyone joined, but I plan to offer
another group here in the Cathedral in the autumn to explore the practical questions as we go on
growing.
But first let’s look for a moment at the parable itself and note that there are two distinct messages it
offers.
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One is about what the shepherd, the gatekeeper and the sheep do. The gatekeeper opens the gate,
the shepherd goes in, not climbing in over the fence, but legitimately through the gate and calls the
sheep, and, hearing his voice, they follow.
The second is about the relationships of the sheep, the shepherd and the gate keeper. The
gatekeeper gives access to the shepherd but the sheep only come when they hear the familiar call of
the shepherd. There is a permission giving between the gatekeeper and shepherd and a trust
between shepherd and sheep.
These may appear insignificant on first reading of the parable, yet they form two crucial parts of our
spiritual journey of faith. If we are the sheep in the story then we are called first to follow his
leadership. Our primary calling is to follow him – to walk behind him going where he goes. However,
the calling is not simply to a life of doing, it is also to a life of being, trusting and loving the one who
calls us.
This is no simple naïve utilitarian task. It’s true it demands obeying his commands, but it also
demands more than that – a growing up, a growing into maturity, eating solid food, not milk, as Paul
reminds us. And growing up can have some significant surprises for us. And that is precisely what the
ministry of Jesus is all about. He comes to take the ordinary and transform it into the extraordinary.
Like the ordinary bread and the wine becoming for us his body and his blood, the sheepfold is
transformed into the extraordinary metaphor of the gift of abundant life. And so our ordinary lives can
become the transformed life of abundance for ourselves and others.
Richard Rohr’s book Falling Upward describes something of this extraordinary journey as he outlines
a spirituality of two halves of life. The first half, he says, is the half that shapes and moulds the
container. He takes the thought of Carl Jung that life involves two halves. Right at the beginning of the
book he says:
There is much evidence on several levels that there are at least two major tasks to human life.
The first is to build a strong container or identity; the second is to find the contents that the
container was meant to hold.
Now I’m not completely convinced of this two halves of life theory but I can see some merit in thinking
that way. My own experience suggests to me that there has been a gathering of skills and
experiences in my life which I later have wanted to hone and use. On the other hand there have been
things that I enjoyed but have not taken further and there are new capacities that I’m still learning. But
I get his drift, and just going with him for a moment, what he is saying is that the first half of life is a
precursor to the second, which he calls a further journey. He quotes the French philosopher, Paul
Ricoeur:
Beyond rational and critical thinking we need to be called again. This can lead to the discovery
of a ‘second naivete’ which is a return to the joy of our first naivete but now totally new,
inclusive and mature thinking.
This resonates for me with TS Eliot in the famous passage from Little Gidding:
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
The agenda of life does not change, it is about love, people, following God, but we are twice called first to become vessels for these things and then to be poured out. Rohr tries to describe this:
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There is gravitas in the second half of life but it is now held up by a much deeper lightness or
‘okayness’… There is still darkness in the second half of life – in fact maybe even more. But
there is now a changed capacity to hold it creatively and with less anxiety.
I am, as many know, a great fan of John Henry Newman, the Victorian theologian, one of the best of
the English theologians we have ever produced. In the 1850s he was called to establish a university
for Roman Catholic Irish young people, who were effectively barred from attending Oxford or
Cambridge. In support of this great project he gave nine lectures in Dublin, which eventually became
known as his Idea of a University. This work is perhaps the greatest theology of education ever
written.
His aim was to educate the young people of society to become Gentlemen (and I’m sure that if
women were in a position to receive education he would have employed similar principles). By the
word ‘Gentleman’ what he meant was someone who had maturity, living life to the full. Newman’s
thoughts about becoming a gentleman are quite expansive, and of course culturally bound in
language, but here is a taste of it:
The true gentleman… has his eyes on all his company; he is tender towards the bashful,
gentle towards the distant, and merciful towards the absurd; he is seldom prominent in
conversation, and never wearisome.
He has too much good sense to be affronted at insults, he is too well employed to remember
injuries, and too indolent to bear malice. He is as simple as he is forcible, and as brief as he is
decisive.
Newman’s letters, of which there are numerous, show that he wanted people to discover the fullness
of life in every situation through loving God, which in Rohr’s strange terminology is to fall upward.
When we speak of love we often speak of ‘falling in love’. Rohr is encouraging us to think of this
falling in love as a falling upward to God – falling in to God’s fullness, God’s abundant life.
One of our daughters is getting married in the summer and I’ve been looking at the marriage service,
and one of the most beautiful prayers is the prayer as the couple kneel after they have made their
vows. It begins like this:
Blessed are you, O Lord our God,
for you have created joy and gladness,
pleasure and delight, love, peace and fellowship.
Pour out the abundance of your blessing
upon this couple in their new life together.
Let their love for each other be a seal upon their hearts
and a crown upon their heads.
And the prayer concludes with the image of the banquet, which is perhaps the ultimate image of the
abundance of God - a banquet that we celebrate and foretaste today.
In your mercy, bring us to that banquet
where your saints feast, for ever, in your heavenly home.
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