“FOR WHOM
THE BELL TOLLS”
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A sermon preached Readings:
Dt 30:15-20, Lk 34:36-48 |
I have come that
they may have life and life in all its fullness (John 10:10)
In 1623 John Donne was on his sickbed.
There he lay listening to the tolling of the solitary funeral bell in the
nearby Church
as another body was laid to rest.
Famously, as he listened, he wrote –
No man is an island, entire of itself…
any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind
and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.
In the midst of life is
death.
And whether we are in 17th
Century London with John Donne,
In the Spanish civil war
with Hemingway
Or in Exeter 2003,
our lives and our deaths are intertwined in every generation and century.
For no man is an
island.
And in the midst of life the death bell tolls.
And you and I and the whole of humanity –
we all participate in the economy of death –
allowing it, precipitating it, suffering from it, experiencing
it.
The monk Thomas Merton wrote
a book significantly called
“No
man is an island”
This is from the preface to the Vietnamese edition:
“my
brother and I are one.
That if I love my brother, then my love benefits my own life as well,
and if I hate my brother and seek to destroy him, I destroy myself also.
The desire to kill is like the desire to attack another with an ingot of red
hot iron:
I have to pick up the incandescent metal and burn my own hand whilst burning
the other….”
So when American troops
shoot into a crowd at a school,
that death dealing event impacts
on civilian and upon soldier in different ways –
But not just the immediate participants –
The headline in yesterday’s Times was a quote from Tony Blair about Iraq
“I’m ready to meet my Maker and answer for those who have died as a result of
my decisions.”
No man is an island, not even the PM of this sceptred isle…
And when an earthquake comes
to a rural Turkish town,
the tremors reach not only
the children killed,
but also only their parents, their friends, relief workers,
and not least civil servants who sanctioned inadequate building controls
And the death bells in our
lives are not limited to the final funeral marches at the end of earthly life,
but many other lesser deaths along the way –
Ev’ry time we say goodbye,
I die a little
Every time we say goodbye,
I wonder why a little ...
There's no lovesong finer
but how strange the change
from major to minor
Every time we say goodbye….
That of course is Cole
Porter.
But those of you whose
musical taste is more contemporary may know
the Italian Gino Vannelli’s 1995 album “Yonder Tree” – full of theological
lyrics.
In the notes to the album he
describes his sorrow and outrage
at the ecological devastation, the rape of mother earth
from whence comes his nourishment.
And he says
“The hurt is doubly painful because the finger is pointed at myself
first."
Out of that comes a song he
calls “I die a little more each day”
…..For every field of wasted grain
The rockets standing 'neath
the western plains….
For every fist raised to the sky
The crimes of hate our young sons glorify
For every mouth that yearns for bread
The heart of stone proclaiming “God is dead”
For every soul that lost its way
I die a little more each day
Just a little more each day
A little more each day
For all the blessings I disown
The cruelties I condone…..
For every sin under the sun
For all the tears from here to kingdom come
For every child the streets will claim
The curse that rushes through her tiny veins
For every rose that wilts away
I die a little more each day
Just a little more each day
A little more each day
Each day
People die, love dies,
relationships die, the planet dies, our hopes die –
And sometimes we keep on
living (in the physiological sense of the phrase),
but inside we die –
the living dead are not just the preserve of Hammer movies –
those who have decided to risk nothing in love for others,
those who have locked away their heart and the soul safe from harm,
they find that they have locked themselves away from love and sustenance,
and are safe and dead. – those who would save their life have lost it.
And I am the victim of those who deal death –
and I too am also in 1001 ways a death dealer.
There has been much on the
net lately about AMNINA
LAWAL.
She has been convicted of the crime of adultery
and is appealing against a sentence of death by stoning.
We are appalled at the
potential brutality of such an act –
and we will do all we can to avert it.
But we know when we
come to the day of judgement
we shall all have innocent blood on our hands, and one will ask –
were you so innocent, that you might cast the first stone??
And so we recall again the
Easter story –
How after three days tearful
women, despondent travellers,
frightened cowering ex followers,
all suddenly share the experience –
“And Jesus himself stood
among them”
This is the Easter Gospel -
In the midst of all this death and dying is life!
And this new life which
Jesus offers his followers
is not just a promise of things to come beyond the grave –
it is that, but much more too.
The Risen Christ comes not
just to show us a travel brochure for heaven
and invite us to save up for the ticket
and put the travel arrangements in our diaries for some future time –
He comes saying
“I come to bring life in all its fullness –
here and now I offer you life instead of death – what will you do??”
It is Jesus saying bring me
broiled fish –
yes there will be a feast in
heaven which will seal my victory and to which you are invited –
but the foretaste of the feast
is here and now –
if you will be life my risen life
with me.
And he says – You are my
risen body now.
You are called to do my
risen work –
to confront all that is
death-dealing:
·
poverty and hunger,
·
violence and war,
·
the destruction of the planet and of human dignity
alike.
We can do this – because
Christ comes to work in and through us –
here and now – and if we will
allow him, we can become the instruments of his death-destroying love.
How do we do that? – in a million different ways.
As a nation we are called to
work for life in its fullness for all people –
and among many many other things that means taking a
stand against the BNP
and al who would deny the worth of every child of God.
As a
church communities and as individuals
we are called to embrace life –
In the words of Jurgen Moltmann,
“Anyone who makes a person laugh, opens heaven to him.
Anyone who
is patient with another gives him a future.
Anyone who accepts a person
as he himself is accepted by Christ,
Loosens
the tongue for life’s hymn of praise.
(Moltmann)
So Christ comes into our
midst and says –
the funeral bells are tolling, but if you will do my work, death will be
defeated.
A final
story from an old Victorian music hall ballad
(which may or may not have in it a kernel of historical truth).
It tells of a young man in
the days of Cromwell who is sentenced to death.
Each sunset the curfew bell tolls,
and tonight the bell is to be signal for his execution.
But his lover climbs the
bell tower and wraps herself around the clapper of the bell –
so as the bell rocks, she is battered and bruised within it,
but there is but a muffled sound.
The soldiers hear no curfew
bell.
Her beloved is not executed.
Cromwell pardons the young man –
and the music hall monologue ends:
“In his brave strong arms he clasped her,
kissed the face upturned and white.
Whispered darling, you have saved me,
curfew will not ring tonight.”
So the bell tolls for you
and me
We are at one in death.
But fear not -
For even as the bell tolls,
Christ himself is with us,
Giving his life that we
might live
Let us live with him.