Welcome
We shall see the glory of the lord… but only for a moment. Only a glimpse.
This is a service about the future… about how we imagine the future…
It is about those moments of possibility which we glimpse, and what we do about them.
The deepest thoughts of the heart are revealed
There is a simplicity beyond words
There is a life within each of us which we cannot hold onto, which we can only receive.
Music: Taizé – “I am sure I shall see the glory of the Lord”
Call to worship responsive reading – moments of knowing and not knowing.
It is the Lord! in the crowd, in the church, in the conversation, in the crisis.
It is the Lord! in our joys, in our sorrows, in our sickness, in our health.
It is the Lord! in the garden, in the stranger, in the poor, in the forgotten.
It is the Lord! in the dawning, in the renewal, in the arrival, in the new day.
Prayer
That our worship may free us to recognise the risen Christ in the moments of our days.
Reading: Luke 24: 13-35
Ineffable moments
In a moment, some images, and something like music, creating something of a moment for us to contemplate this – and in particular, that ineffable moment when they recognised him, and he disappeared. “Were not our hearts burning within us?”
Ineffable – inexpressible because of the emotion involved. Latin fari, to speak. Infant – one who cannot speak.
Moment – not the same as an instant. According to the Venerable Bede, a moment, in medieval times, was about 90 seconds. There were 40 moments in an hour, but the hour was marked on the sundial, fixed by the length of the day, which changed with the seasons. But a moment was roughly a minute and a half. So: take a moment.
Douglas Adams: “Let’s think the unthinkable, let’s do the undoable. Let us prepare to grapple with the ineffable itself, and see if we may not eff it after all.” The ineffable = too great or extreme to be expressed or described in words.
But let’s have a go at effing the ineffable.
The conductor Daniel Barenboim: “Sound has a permanent, constant and unavoidable relationship with silence”. He is very beguiling, speaking about the start of a piece of music as silence gives way.. and then returns. [10mins25 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p03jrn5y ]
The dawn chorus does the same, though in the recording I will play in a minute, it is already well underway. But we can imagine the start, a single lone voice.
Moving around less in these weeks, there is more time for thinking. And without thinking, I have found myself reading, recalling over moments in time, moments in life – being with close people in the last stages of their life, conversations with new partners and new children about hard times, emotional moments in which joy and pain are present together. Struggling to eff the ineffable.
The tapestry by Graham Sutherland in Coventry Cathedral weighs over a tonne and was made on a 500-year old loom in central France. A team of 12 worked on it for two years.
These representations of the Risen Christ demand a response. But what happens if you couple that with this: then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
What does this recall for you, which you could speak about?
Reading:
This is part 2 of what happened on the feast of Pentecost – 50 days after Passover. Peter was speaking to the crowd and continued:
As Peter’s words fade away, I imagine a hush. The crowd is moved. There is a moment here… Peter has brought his speech to a particular place; after the crescendo, a moment of quiet. They were cut to the heart. And that is when he speaks of repentance.
On the road to Emmaus, Luke captures the flat futility. It is recognisable to us from our own experience, of a loved one slipping away from us, or afterwards, as we try to get going again, and every gesture seems futile. Downcast, their faces.
Walking this familiar road helped, perhaps. Then this stranger stirs it all up. We had hoped that he was the one who was going to…
But then, in the breaking of bread, in one moment, their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight.
The Gospels are full of the ineffable. That is their burden. To express in words what Jesus did at so many moments, which created so much emotion in those women and men who knew him.
Wilfred Owen captures another such moment, at the start of his poem “Futility”. A short poem, of soldiers caring for one of their dying comrades. The poem launches us in, as it were out of silence:
Move him into the sun – Gently its touch awoke him once, at home, whispering of fields unsown.
We know that this moment is being repeated again and again, around us. These could be words from a nurse in intensive care, or a care worker in the nursing home next to us here in Stretford. There may be nothing to be done, it may be futile – but that is not the whole of it. There is the sun. Futility and hope are bound together in compassion.
Prayers
If you were busier Lord, you would not bother with us. But you have time to listen and to notice.
We remember all those who are busy, under pressure.
If you were wiser Lord, you would not bother with us. But you are foolish, and you make us your choice.
We remember all those who are struggling to make sense of things, who cannot find words; especially those who are anxious, and those whose pain seems too great for them to bear.
If you were content, Lord, you would not bother with us. But you are restless, and through anger, and excitement, and through love, you will all things to change and be made new.
We commit ourselves to join you in listening, noticing, and joining with you in anger, and excitement, and love.
Andy