Philip and I went to see the film “Suffragette” earlier this
week. It was a powerful film which followed the lives of some of those who fought
for equal rights for women in the early part of the 20th
century. They endured imprisonment and
force-feeding, but perhaps worse than that many of them found themselves cut
off by family and friends. The central
character in the film faces losing her marriage and her child because of her
involvement in the struggle for the vote – her story was fictional, but based
on fact. As the story unfolds we watch
her wrestling with herself. Is it right to pay this price?
We might like to think that those who struggle heroically for
what is right never have doubts about what they are doing, but that isn’t the
case. Physical pain is bad enough, but
perhaps it is worse to lie awake in the dark hours of a sleepless night,
wondering whether it is worth it, whether it will make any difference.
That dilemma isn’t a new one. The writer of our first
reading, from the book of Wisdom, knew it very well. He was writing sometime in
the century before Jesus was born. Israel was under foreign occupation for much
of this time, and there were civil wars and rebellions. Many Jewish people had
been executed for fighting for freedom. Yet nothing seemed to change. They
would have recognised the words of the torturer in George Orwell’s novel, 1984 who
said, “ If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a
human face — forever.” That was how
it felt to them too. There seemed to be no hope.
What made it even worse was that many people at the time
assumed that suffering was a sign God had rejected you. What did that say about
those who had died in the struggle for freedom? Were they cursed by God? Had
they sinned in some way?
The writer of the book of Wisdom was having none of it. “In
the eyes of the foolish,” he says, “they seemed to have died, and their
departure from us was thought to be a disaster” but it wasn’t so. He didn’t know why bad
things happened to good people, any more than we do, but he believed that these
painful deaths were not the end of the story.
He believed in God, a God who was bigger than the forces of evil, who
would not reject those who were faithful to him. “The souls of the righteous
are in the hands of God,” he said, “and no torment will ever touch them.”
Eventually that would be obvious to everyone. “In the time of their
visitation” – on the day of judgement, he means – “they will run like
sparks through the stubble,” . They would light up the world one day.
As Martin Luther King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but
it bends towards justice.” He didn’t
live to see that justice, but his work was part of that arc, and it changed the
world.
The message of the book of Wisdom is that what we see is not necessarily all there is to see.
We are stuck in the middle of our stories – it can’t be any other way. We may
not be able to imagine how the problems that beset the world can be resolved,
but that doesn’t mean they can’t be. Our
calling is to do the right thing anyway, to work for justice anyway, and leave
the rest to God.
The book of Wisdom was very popular in the early Church, and
it’s easy to see why. Many of the first Christians also suffered and died for
their faith. Was that a sign that they’d got it wrong? No, they said. Jesus himself
had been crucified. He’d died a shameful death – but God had raised him up, and
he would do the same for those who followed him. God was in the business of
bringing life out of death.
The Gospel reading today gives us the same message. Lazarus
has died, Lazarus whom Jesus loved. Couldn’t Jesus have saved him? If so, why didn’t he? Why did he wait to turn up until it
was too late? Why let Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, go through
the experience of losing him? Why didn’t God stop him dying in the first place?
But the raising of Lazarus is a foretaste of Jesus’ own resurrection, a
reminder that resurrection is in God’s nature. It’s the way he works. When all
we can see are barriers, stones rolled across tombs, God sees a gateway to new
life. God’s voice rings out in the silence of death to call us out of our graves.
Life-giving is his stock in trade.
We may not face the kind of persecution and martyrdom that the
first followers of Jesus faced, though plenty
of Christians around the world do, but this message is still just as
vital for us to hear. We are all called
to work to set right what is wrong in the world. However great or small the
challenges there are things that we need to do, tasks that are ours alone.
Perhaps we know we should blow the whistle on some injustice at work. Perhaps
we need to stand alongside someone who is being victimised or bullied. Perhaps
we need to stand up and be counted in some campaign for justice. Perhaps we
need to tackle some family problem. We know what we should do, we know what’s
right; we are just scared to do it. It’s going to cost us. It will make us
unpopular. It will bring trouble down on our heads. We fear for our job
prospects or our friendships or the image people have of us.
At that point , the deciding factor – to act or not – will be
whether we believe in resurrection. If what we most fear happens – as it might
– do we believe that will that be the end of the road for us, or can we trust that God will still be holding us
in his hands when the world crashes down around us, ready to lead us into new
life?
Jesus speaks often in the Gospels about seeds, tiny,
apparently dead things which are buried in the ground. When you look at them it
seems impossible that anything can come of them, but they sprout and grow and
bear a rich harvest. The Brazilian liberation theologian Rubem Alves said “We
must live by the love of what we will never see… Such disciplined love is what
has given prophets, revolutionaries and saints the courage to die for the
future they envisaged. They make their own bodies the seed of their highest
hope.” (Rubem Alves quoted in There Is A Season by
Joan Chittister).
His words reminded me of a poem by the early 20th
century poet, Muriel Stuart. It’s called The Seed Shop, and to
understand it you need to imagine yourself holding in your hand a handful of
seeds – all different. There are tree seeds and flower seeds. They look dead,
like dust and rubbish, but the reality is quite different. This is what she
wrote.
Here in a quiet and dusty room they
lie,
Faded as crumbled stone and shifting
sand,
Forlorn as ashes, shrivelled,
scentless, dry—
Meadows and gardens running through
my hand.
Dead that shall quicken at the voice
of spring,
Sleepers to wake beneath June’s
tempest kiss;
Though birds pass over,
unremembering,
And no bee find here roses that were
his.
In this brown husk a dale of
hawthorn dreams;
A cedar in this narrow cell is
thrust
That shall drink deeply at a
century’s streams;
These lilies shall make summer on my
dust.
Here in their safe and simple house
of death,
Sealed in their shells, a million
roses leap;
Here I can stir a garden with my
breath,
And in
my hand a forest lies asleep.
Today we celebrate All Saints. We thank God for all those
who held in their hands the seeds of a future world and had the courage to
believe that God could bring life out of what looked like death to them and
those around them. We thank God for the fruits of justice that were born through
their courage and faith.
But we also pray for ourselves that we would learn to trust
in resurrection too, in the life that comes out of death. Because today each of
us holds seeds in our hands just as they did, the things that might happen if
we have the courage to do what we are called to. There might be things that
feel like death along the way, challenges we don’t want to meet, things we have
to let go of, sacrifices we have to make. But beneath our hands are the hands
of God, and those hands will never let us go, no matter what happens. They will hold us through life and through
death, and on into resurrection too.
Amen
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