All I want, all I want, all I want, all I want..... is everything I've ever seen in the movies
Not much to ask really. Here are three phrases that will probably sound familiar to you:
I want it... I want it now – the sound of a toddler / a diva / a teenager / some ghastly self-oriented adult
I don't know what I want – the sound of weakness? / humility? / courageous open-mindedness?
What do you want? What do you really want? - the sound of a parent / partner / employer / counsellor / friend?
We are who we are by virtue of the desires that weigh most heavily upon us. We know each other in so far as we understand what each other want – what our hearts' desire is. If I know your preferences, then I know a little about what makes you tick. If I really know what your heart's desire is, then I am probably your confidant and know you very well.
If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire. Simone Weil
6:20 for Herod feared John, knowing that he was a righteous and holy man, and he protected him. When he heard him, he was greatly perplexed; and yet he liked to listen to him.
Herod Antipas didn't know what he wanted. He was under pressure from all sides. He is intrigued by John and defends him, despite John's insult to his wife. He likes to hear John speak even though (and perhaps because) he speaks the truth. At the same time Herod wants his guests to perceive him as all powerful – a man above convention and normal constraints. He is deeply grieved by the outcome of his outrageous offer to his wife's daughter, intended as a show of power but ending in horrible and dreadful consequences. We don't know much about Herod Antipas be we can tell that he wasn't all bad. Few people are. Anne's been teaching in a 'challenging behaviour unit' – where they send the 'bad kids' who can't be controlled anywhere else – from terrible backgrounds, with a string of convictions, who resort to fierce violence as problem solving.... and yet in whom she also sees fear, and tears, and the little children inside.
Which of us are anymore than a mixed bag of motives, with conflicting desires/ambitions, compromised idealists, believers whose spirits are willing but whose flesh is weak, strugglers with how time and experience changes us so that what once seemed anathema is now perfectly reasonable............. sounds like?.... New Labour? Institutionally this is indeed familiar – witness the lamentable hypocrasy and personal insecurity of those in the Anglican church who have been raising their prurient voices against the election to Bishop of a demonstrably spiritual and pastoral man, because has been honest enough to say that he is gay. What do you want? What do you really want?
How then does our Christian faith inform our desires, and our wants?
Fom our Old Testament reading:
7:8 And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel;
There's no arguing with a plumb line – either the wall is vertical or its not. In other words, says the prophet, either the kingdom of Israel is a just kingdom, conforming to God's standards of justice, or it is not. Like the natural law of gravity which governs the plumb line, God's justice is the governing force against which to measure ourselves and our institutions. The consequences of injustice, teaches the prophet Amos, are disasterous.
To return to the previous topical matter, there was tucked away in the letters columns of the Church Times last week an empassioned plea from Bishop Rawcliffe – former Bishop of Glasgow (an eccentric fellow who demonstrated his adventurous spirit by first confirming me and then sponsoring me to become an ordinand). After retirement, he very publicly came out as a gay man, and I was included among those who tended to imagine that he really had lost the plot, and really was a bit of a fruit-cake after all. I was touched by his letter and want to read it to you:
From
the Rt Revd Derek Rawcliffe
Sir,
— When Bishop Harries spoke on
Thought for the Day
about the appointment
of Dr Jeffrey John, he referred
to two elements in considering
the issue of homosexuality: the different
ways we can understand the Bible,
and the experience of homosexuals.
Critics from the conservative
end of the spectrum then said that
only what the Bible said counted, and that experience should
not
be brought into the argument. So what do they make of the experience
of John Wesley at that meeting
in Aldersgate Street when his heart
was strangely warmed? Should he
have discounted the experience, and
the change in his relationship with
God that it brought about?
In
an interview on Newsnight
in 1995,
I recounted the experience I had
had more than 20 years earlier in the
South Pacific. After 30 years of believing
it to be wrong to be gay, I accepted
who I was and that it was all
right to love someone. This changed
me from a hard and judgemental
person to one full of love for everybody.
I began to talk about the love
of God in a way I realised I had not
done before. Was I to discount all that,
and say it was evil? I believe that
would have been blasphemy. I am
sure that the love I received then was
the fruit of the Spirit. God
gives us the love that changes us.
What do you want? What do you really want?
In 1978 I wrote in the front cover of my bible a quote from the Christian writer Fred Buechner. Let me conclude by reading it to you:
The voice that we hear over our shoulders never say – 'First be sure that your motives are pure and selfless and then follow me.' If it did ten we could none of us follow. So when later the voice says 'Take up your cross and follow me' – at least part of what is meant by 'the cross' is our realisation that we are seldom any less than nine parts fake. Yet our feet insist on answering anyway – and on we go – step after step, mile after mile.
Amen
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