Teilhard de Chardin's Remarkable Story
This is not the usual sort of sermon. It is meant to disturb your thoughts, especially if your thoughts about faith haven't changed much in recent years.
Truth is, we all change
over time including our ideas and thinking. But some things
don’t necessarily change over time. The passage of years doesn’t
mean that your enthusiasm for the gospel has to fade. Nor does time
lessen our friendships or interest in other people and their welfare.
As a church we used to proclaim, live more simply in order that
others may simply live. That’s a truth that doesn’t change.
Something
extraordinary happens as life goes on and we mature within it: rather
than merely changing the unchanging aspects of Christian life develop
and strengthen in our mind. It works like this.
Its been the
experience of Christians from the earliest that where friends and
strangers meet to break bread together and open up the Bible for
study that something more than fellowship happens. Occasionally there
is an obvious change, a road to Damascus type experience. Far more
often the change is very slow, but the long term result is the same.
As the gospel story puts it so very well, “Once I was blind, but
now I see.” You see its not the how it happened but the result of
it happening.
Transformation
has begun. The world looks different, because it is being seen
through the lens of faith. All the problems are still there. All the
pain. All the suffering and heart-break. But the God who was there in
the beginning, who is the creative purpose, the transforming love, is
showing the great human and cosmic drama to you in a new light.
You have a part
to play, a meaning to meaning to fulfil, a divine love to embody.
And all this
springs from that ordinary fellowship where the presbyter gathers the
people, tells the story, breaks the bread and pours the wine and
blesses the congregation, giving thanks in all circumstances. When
you think about it, it is astonishing what God achieves through such
a simple act.
Transformation of
the heart and mind by the symbolic act of bread and wine. This I
think is what the great Catholic priest-scientist Tielhard de Chardin
meant by his phrase the spiritual power of matter. He was a
palaeontologist, who studied rocks and fossils, and old, bleached
bones of long extinct species. He was often away on expeditions. It
is on one such trek out in central steppes of Asia he is suddenly
aware of the spiritual power of matter. It is the dawn and he is far
from creature comforts and Christian company. In that instant he
realises that he has no bread, no wine, no altar but that the whole
earth is the altar, and on it he will place the world’s life, its
labours, its travails, its pain, its suffering, its joy, its wonder.
He says, “Over
there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the
outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving
sheet of fore, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles ...
I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this
renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour the sap which is to
be pressed out this day from the earth’s fruits. My chalice and
paten are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces of
the earth which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the
earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the
mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the
new day.”
The spiritual
power of matter – why that is what the creativity of the Word is
about, it is what incarnation is about, it is what prayer is about.
This is the heart of Christian ministry, to unlock the spiritual
power of matter.
But often we
wonder how we, as ordinary people, we can do that? Congregations are
sometimes frozen by fear or anxiety and wonder what the future holds
for their fellowship. How can groups such as ours unlock the
spiritual power of matter?
Here is just one
example.
There is a famous
drawing that has been reproduced countless times in churches. It is
the image of two hands joined together in prayer. It was drawn by
Albrecht Durer 1471-1528. In the history of art he is one of the most
important figures. Now he was born into a large family, and an older
brother had an even better natural talent for drawing. But he went to
work in the mines and it was the young Albrecht who was apprenticed
to learn the crafts of drawing, painting and engraving. His own
talent blossomed and soon he was sought after by wealthy patrons. He
is the central figure in what the art historians call the northern
renaissance. He returned home after some years to visit his family,
and legend has it that the two brothers were overjoyed to see each.
Albrecht said to his older brother “Look, I have grown famous as a
painter, and it is because you helped send me to art school. But you
taught me the basics. You always had more talent than me. I can pay
for your apprenticeship.” But the older brother, “Thank you but
no. You look – look at my hands, they can no longer do any fine
work, hold a pen or a brush. They are broken and creaky and painful.
They are the hands of a miner.”
In honour of his
brother Albrecht drew those hands. The hands of love in prayer that
had enabled another to flourish. This is the spiritual power of
matter. It is the meaning of the creative Word which has been there
since the beginning. It is the blessing of an eternal covenant called
the love of God
