Easter: Can you hear the tide – always falling and rising?

Sermon by the Revd Dr Brutus Green
Readings: Acts 9:36-end; Psalm 23; Revelation 7:9-end; John 10:22-30

I am the daughter of the village chief
We are descended from voyagers
Who found their way across the world
They call me
I've delivered us to where we are
I have journeyed farther
I am everything I've learned and more
Still, it calls me
And the call isn't out there at all,
it's inside me
It's like the tide
Always falling and rising

I’ll stop there just in case someone is tempted to burst into song. Fortunately, Oberon isn’t here or he would because Moanna’s his favourite Disney film. He has in fact been on a forced diet of Disney films because I can’t bear any more Paw Patrol or Peppa Pig.

But what we have with these Disney films – And I could have started with Hercules singing, “I Will Go the Distance”, or Simba in The Lion King, “I Just can’t Wait to be King”, Rapunzel in Tangled with a motley crew singing “I’ve Got a Dream”; Disney gives us the classic representation of the Bildungsroman – The novel of education. Move Over Little Women, James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and To Kill a Mockingbird; John Hughes’ 80s High School movies are a close second, but the dominant storyteller of Coming of Age is Disney. “Let it Go” I hear you cry. And there – the strange confluence of a song on the lips of a magical princess, every child in the country, and an anthem of LGBTQI+ freedom.

Back to Moana: ‘And the call isn’t out there at all, it’s inside me.’ When we think of what a religious calling might be, what it is to be called by God we tend to think of it as an external call: We think of the prohet Samuel hearing the voice of the Lord: “Speak Lord, for your servant is listening”

St Augustine puts it differently – in his Confessions – (a classical and Christian proto-Bildungsroman) He famously writes: ‘late have I loved thee! For behold thou were within me, and I outside’ Augustine recognised that we don’t find God out there – out in the world. That is largely where we are enjoying or not – the world of sense and desire. God, we find within, and in finding God we also find our true self. Our calling is discovered – or ignored – in prayer. A feeling of rightness, an inexorable sense of it must be this way – The returning, niggling voice that demands some action of us; that is sorry – despite our cynicism or fear – for something we’ve done. And it may not be classic bedside prayer – just a 3am 40 yard stare into the middle distance past a television tentatively asking ‘do you want to keep watching’, which you haven’t noticed. Or – ‘when an underground train, in the tube, stops too long between stations’ A moment when you ‘come to yourself’.

Mostly it’s easier to spend time with things or other people – ‘I sought thee outside and in my unloveliness fell upon those lovely things that thou hast made. Thou were with me and I was not with thee.’ We don’t give ourselves very much time to hear this call.

But in Augustine’s words the call is insistent; We feel it always – even if unacknowledged – Like Moana hears the tide ‘always falling and rising’ ‘Thou didst call and cry to me and break open my deafness: and thou didst send forth thy beams and shine upon me and chase away my blindness: thou didst breathe fragrance upon me, and I drew in my breath and do pant for thee: I tasted thee, and now hunger and thirst for thee: thou didst touch me, and I have burned for thy peace.’ Vocation has the character of moral compunction.

There’s a great similarity I think between the call of God and a midlife crisis. I think that’s why in the 1999 film Fight Club, before Brad Pitt starts a middle-aged men’s boxing ring, he’s attending daily self-help and support groups. Looking for intimacy, something real, a way out of the crushing solitariness and meaninglessness that modern life creates. Having watched the end of the film, I recommend Church over punching people in the face. But it’s about breaking out – of all that kills the soul. Finding the bright field, the pearl of great price – the thing that puts everything else into perspective.

And what we find in these Disney stories is youths leaving parents to find a transcendent parent:
Moana has to leave home, breaking her father’s commandment, to find her way at the end of which she discovers the great Earth Mother; Hercules has to leave his adopted father to discover his true father Zeus and heavenly home; Rapunzel has to realise her mother is in fact an abductress abusive witch to find her real parents, the king and queen; Just like James Joyce speaks of ‘the spell of arms and voices: the white arms of roads, their promise of close embraces and the black arms of tall ships that stand against the moon, their tale of distant nations… [and the voices] they call to me, their kinsman, making ready to go, shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth.

The call is always to leave – somewhere, something. There is a restlessness to the Christian vocation because this life is an ‘exile’. Our home is with our heavenly Father. Leaving is something that comes naturally in exultant and terrible youth, but it should also belong to age. TS Eliot reminds us ‘Old men ought to be explorers… We must be still and still moving/ Into another intensity/For a further union, a deeper communion.’

The spiritual journey; finding, following your calling, is both within and without. Both a wild adventure and the intensity of meeting the stillness that is inside of you. I suggest that the godparents divide this task. Some may be more suited to wild adventure, others to intense stillness. At 3, wild adventure is perhaps more natural, but I have also encountered that intense stillness – screaming along to ACDC’s Back in Black on full volume to try and wake a 3 year-old who’s decided to really commit to an after-lunch nap.

People find it hard to articulate what it means to be a Christian today. The British are especially reticent – somewhere between being on an electoral roll, knowing the main hymns and when to stand up, and ticking off your key life events in an ecclesial setting. There is that voice though – ‘My sheep hear my voice’. It is often – I think, a still small voice, – and there are so many things in this world that will drown it out. It may also be easier in the days of our ‘exultant and terrible youth’, when we are less choked by the cares of this world; And free enough to change direction to hear that call and follow it;

But we heard last week how Saul turned from murdering Christians to leading them. This week Peter takes centre stage – (well done Peter for orchestrating at your family’s baptism one of the few passages in the New Testament where Peter comes off well) Here he raises Tabitha from the dead. Tabitha, which in Greek is Dorcas. (I bet she kept that quiet.)

These great Christians hear their calling, like Augustine, only after a number of failures: ‘Late have I loved thee’ So we don’t have to be a princess or an adolescent to hear our calling; We don’t need an animal side-kick. But we do need to find time to listen. We need to have an openness of mind to believe there is a purpose to all this and we might have a place within it. And we need the help of people around us to understand what that calling might lead us to, to give us the strength to pursue our vocation and our dream. It matters that Moana discovers her ancestors were voyagers; It’s St Augustine’s mother, whose example of faith returns him to church; We appoint godparents specifically to be people who will help us discover and nurture our calling.

So why not take time today, tonight, this week. To listen. My sheep hear my voice. What is the disquiet in your heart? What is the thing you have not done? What is the thing you have done? Where is the relationship that needs repairing? What is the next adventure you are being called to? Are you in your exultant youth making ready to go? Old men ought to be explorers. Can you hear the tide – always falling and rising?