In Search of the Mystery of God

Cuthbert, now in his early fifties, senses his body beginning to feel the strain of his years of asceticism. He wants to spend his last remaining days in prayer and praise on his beloved Farne, so after just two years as bishop, he decides to retire. He takes one final tour around the diocese, visiting monasteries and other places, giving words of encouragement and exhortation. In the course of which he comes to one of Aelfflaed's houses on the Tyne at her invitation. This is possibly the last time he meets his spiritual daughter and they dine together. The story that follows was related by Aelfflaed, herself, to the author of the Anonymous 'Life' of Cuthbert, but Bede, while adding some amusing detail, has also softened its drama as he retells it, and supplied some unnecessary commentary relating to her behaviour. Nevertheless, it is another incident where Cuthbert sees, or senses, someone's death. In this case, a simple shepherd out on the hills, where Cuthbert, himself, started his life.

There was clearly something going on in Zacchaeus' heart before Jesus arrived in Jericho on his way to Jerusalem. Being extremely wealthy, and despised by everyone except others in his profession, wasn't the life he wanted; he was looking for a way out. He will have heard how Jesus touches lepers, welcomes children, talks to Samaritans, walks with prostitutes, eats with tax collectors, and castigates the religious elite. Here is a man who lives on the edge of society, yet exhibits the presence of God. So this dignified little man runs ahead and climbs a tree in order to see the wandering, healing rabbi. The story is so well known and equally as comical. But every time we hear it, Jesus' pronouncement of salvation never fails to fill the heart with joy.

And then comes another parable about Israel failing to share the gift of God, which was designed to multiply his blessing to the whole of his creation, in the same way that a single smile can spread through a room and change the world. Now it applies to us as well...

People have speculated for years what it is about children that belongs to the kingdom of God. Personally, I think its a bit like children and Christmas - that sense of uncontainable excitement and the exuberant thrill of expected joy and delight. Everything else goes along with this - trust, simplicity, and a sense of wonder; and a lack of baggage - greed, prejudice and anxiety, you know, all the things that us grown-ups tend to accumulate. The sort of stuff that led us to nailing Jesus to the cross.

Like Jesus insisting on letting the children come, and being unafraid of touching lepers, Cuthbert, in the midst of the plague, approaches a young mother, already bereaved, cradling her dying baby, and kisses him. These are the dangerous outsiders, the ones for whom (anti)social distancing was invented. But personal safety was of no interest to Cuthbert - he was unafraid of death. In fact, he was looking forward to passing through the door to meet Eternal Life. So he was free to live and to love.

Reminds me of a short poem by the American poet, Emily Dickinson:

The Blunder is in estimate.

Eternity is there

We say, as of a Station —

Meanwhile he is so near

He joins me in my Ramble —

Divides abode with me —

No Friend have I that so persists

As this Eternity.

This story of the healing of a young lad brought to Cuthbert on a stretcher reminds us of the paralytic lowered through the roof in front of Jesus. Here the story happens in a remote and mountainous region that has never been identified. However, further details from the Anonymous Life of Cuthbert (an earlier 'Life' from which Bede draws) tell us it happened half way between Hexham and Carlisle, and that the bishop and his retinue accessed the area by a Via, probably a Roman Road. Bede tells us booths were made as shelters from branches cut from the local woods for Cuthbert's stay. Bewcastle is a remote mountainous area, with a ruined Roman fort, that lies at the end of a Roman Road to the north of Hadrian's Wall, half way between Hexham and Carlisle. 'Bewcastle' means 'booths in the Roman fort'. Its church is dedicated to St Cuthbert.

Jesus keeps repeating these warnings about 'being ready', and his coming at 'an unexpected hour'. Ordinary, everyday life just continues as it always has done, as it always will, one day followed by the next. Up in the morning, dress, breakfast, the routine of the day... And then it happens, without any warning. And when it happens, we move straight towards it without hesitation, without looking back, without saying 'but what if...' What will 'it' look like? Who knows? Only that we'll know it when we see it. And so we persist, learning how to pray, how to 'live' in the knowledge of God's presence with us. And as we do so, we begin to discover joy, deep as the dark salt sea, silent as the cool mountain rock. As one of the Prayer Book morning collects says, 'in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom.'

Another of Jesus' parables about Israel failing to share the wealth of God's rich blessing on his people. The rich man is not named, but the one from outside the gate is given a name, Lazarus, and is therefore known by God. He ends up standing by Abraham's side, where Israel expected to find itself. The shock in the story, however, is not that the rich man is punished, or that the poor man is shown mercy, for that was commonly accepted and anticipated. It was that the request of the rich man to send messengers of warning back to his brothers was NOT granted. The warnings are already there for those who will see. But the failure to listen and understand is frightening. Prejudice, pre-judging, keeps us from seeing the human being before our eyes, and our complicity, as individuals and nations, in failing to share the blessing of our abundance. So who is Lazarus for us?

Cuthbert had blessed some bread and given it to a fellow, who put it in his bag (or pocket?), as you do. The fellow then forgets about it. Some time later he and some friends visit another ailing friend, Hildmer, who was well known to, and beloved by, Cuthbert. He had asked Cuthbert to send a priest to pray for his wife when she was ill, but Cuthbert had come himself after a prompting by the Holy Spirit (Day 15). While sitting around his bed trying to console the suffering man, our fellow suddenly remembers the bit of bread in his pocket, digs it out, tells his friends, and then they pray. They dunk it in some water and give it to Hildmer to drink, who then recovers. Although on one level the story can seem amusing, on another, it is about the participation of the wider body of Christ ('they were all laymen') exercising faith in the sacrament of healing. Cuthbert's only involvement was to bless some bread. If the faithful hadn't exercised faith, the healing wouldn't have happened.

Encounter, not meeting, changes us, and we are left different. Something touches our inner being, and we begin to flower. Or wither. Encounter has the power of life or death.

Mountains are metaphors of encounter with God - "who will ascend the mountain of the Lord?" asks the psalmist. The Ark on Mt Ararat. Moses on Mt Sinai. Elijah on Mt Carmel. Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration. The Sermon on the Mount.

These encounters of creature with Creator burn through us, transforming us into our true selves, revealing our true natures, and liberating us from the terrifying guilt most of us know we are too frightened to face. And so begins our journey from self-centredness to love, from isolated individual to catholic priesthood, from mere resemblance to true personification, from fallen image to risen likeness.

But encounters are transient, momentary. In a blink they are gone. Did it really happen? All that is left is an indelible mark on our soul, and a piton driven into our memory. But that piton acts as a life-saving anchor. When we slip, lose our grip and fall, they hold us fast. They are God's timeless presence with us. Always.

The Bewcastle Benefice sermon for the Sunday before Lent (Year A)

Poem: 'The Incarnation, And Passion' by Henry Vaughan

OT: Exodus 24:12-end

NT: 2 Peter 1:16-end

Gospel: Matthew 17:1-9

The parable of the unrighteous manager always throws folk. But its a parable, not a story. The key is in v9 : 'And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.' They may receive you? Who? Eternal dwellings? Really? How does that work? The parable is about God and Israel. The master's property, in the hands of his manager, is God's blessing promised to the world through his people that they never gave. Unrighteous wealth is unmerited wealth. Remember Abraham's faith? It was credited to him as 'righteousness' because he believed God. But this is 'unrighteous' because it is not 'credited' to Israel. It was given as a blessing to be given as a blessing. Faced with the judgement of God the manager, at last, starts to give it away. So, at last, the angels might welcome the people of God to their eternal dwellings. The warning is clear. But so is the gracious mercy of the master, and therefore hope.

Nuns fleeing the barbarian army. Some things never change. Cuthbert finds them a home, but one of them, a relative of one of Cuthbert's priests, Aethelwald, has a severe illness. It's a simple story of prayer and anointing, the sort of thing that goes on in the Church all the time, and has done since her earliest days. Sometimes the healing takes place this side of the curtain, as here, sometimes the other, but always the healing happens. Remember Easter? We now see through the torn curtain into the other side.

While the parable of the Prodigal Son, so familiar to many of us, is perhaps meant to tell of the relationship between God, Israel and the Gentile world, its sheer humanity works on many levels, not least the personal. It is difficult not to feel the intense and desperate love the father has towards both his children. Who could fail to be moved by it? This is our God.

Cuthbert is both a pastoral and a monastic bishop. In this, he follows in the footsteps of one of his, and Bede's, favourite Fathers of the Church, St Gregory the Great - the first Pope from a monastic background. Despite having a diocese that stretches from the East coast to the West, and travelling generally by foot, he still finds time to visit individual parishioners. In this story, Bede deliberately draws the parallel with Jesus' healing of Peter's mother-in-law in Matthew's Gospel. Bede is telling us this is what it looks like to be a true disciple of Christ in Anglo-Saxon Northumbria.

Cuthbert again travels to Carlisle on administrative purposes. While there, word reaches his old friend, Hereberht, who lived as a hermit on the most isolated of the islands in Derwent Water in the Lake District. It remains uninhabited to this day (apart from occasional wild campers!), and is still known as St Herbert's Isle. The conversation between them is so foreign to most of us in this day and age, yet it derives directly from a life of lived prayer and praise. So, too, with Bede's tentative explanation of Herbert's final, fatal, painful illness. There is no talk of 'fighting the illness' here. Instead, it all has to do with joining with Christ, taking up our cross, carrying the pain and fallenness of the world in our own bodies, and persisting through in prayer as a form of intercession on behalf of the world.

Which is precisely what Jesus is talking about to the crowds that follow him. Count the cost, for cost there will be. Carry the cross, the symbol of brutal and painful death through the persecution of the world. For in some way, our suffering with Christ as his bride and body, brings wholeness and holiness into the world. That is the point of talking about salt.

In the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin, Jesus presents himself as both a shepherd and a housewife. But what astonishes is the extraordinary joy and delight, beyond any ridiculous measure of comparative value, of the return of one who was lost - the whole of heaven celebrates. Over even just one of us. Something to ponder there, and allow it to sink in.

St Cuthbert's Day

Cuthbert is aware that the hour of fulfilment of his prophecy to Aelfflaed concerning her brother, King Ecgfrith, is drawing near. So he goes to Carlisle to be with the queen, to be with her when it happens. As it happens, he is on a tourist trip round the city (still worth a visit, incidentally), when the event takes place. What is especially interesting here, though, is the manner in which he senses the battle and the king's death: the whole of creation shudders, although only Cuthbert can feel it, being so close to it through his life of prayer. It brings to mind St Paul's description in Romans 8 of creation groaning, waiting for the redemption of the children of God.

Healing on the Sabbath (again), weddings and banquets. But who is invited? It turns out, everyone. But who will come? Only those who know their need. Reminds me of RS Thomas wonderful little poem, The Kingdom:

It’s a long way off but inside it

There are quite different things going on:

Festivals at which the poor man

Is king and the consumptive is

Healed; mirrors in which the blind look

At themselves and love looks at them

Back; and industry is for mending

The bent bones and the minds fractured

By life. It’s a long way off, but to get

There takes no time and admission

Is free, if you will purge yourself

Of desire, and present yourself with

Your need only and the simple offering

Of your faith, green as a leaf.

Jesus certainly doesn't opt for the quiet life or avoid confrontation. No 'softly, softly' here. He won't let conformity or 'tradition' stand in the way of the coming of the Kingdom of God. "This daughter of Abraham". Jesus heart-wrenching compassion, and anger, are palpable. Who wouldn't want to follow him? Come, let the mustard seed in you grow.

The only reason Cuthbert bows to the pressure of everyone requesting him to take the episcopal yoke is because of Boisil's prophesy on his death bed, and the fact that Cuthbert so respected him as a man of God. Although we might read Bede's account of Cuthbert's life as a bishop as a somewhat formulaic recapitulation of Jesus' commands, yet, knowing what we do about his character prior to his appointment, it just doesn't seem out of keeping. We can see him clothing the poor and feeding the hungry, healing the sick and comforting the downcast. And I don't recall the same every being said of his contemporary, Wilfrid, in his hagiography.