“He Can’t Talk To Us Like That!”
Back in the 1980’s I was Priest-in-Charge of St Margaret’s Upper Norwood I worked with a very experienced Vicar who I admired a great deal. He offered me a piece of advice on one occasion which went something like this – “Mick don’t castigate your congregation too often, they will only think you are a moaning old so and so and they will take no notice of you”. On the whole I have followed this advice (or at least I think I have) over the years but there have been occasional outbursts. On one occasion when I was at St Mary’s Sanderstead I got rather frustrated with the low attendance at the Lent and Holy Week events as compared with the Easter Day Celebration. At the festival Eucharist I leaned out of the pulpit and asked the assembled congregation, “So where were most of you during last week then?” This drew a sharp reaction from one member of the choir who turned to her neighbour and said, “He can’t talk to us like that!” To which her neighbour replied, “I was brought up a Catholic, the priest used to talk to us like that all the time”. Well at least I didn’t go quite as far as the minister of my home church when I was a child who once wished the Christmas Congregation a happy Easter adding, “I’m saying that now because I won’t see most of you again until then”.
Of course it is easy for a minister or priest to get rather self righteous with his or her congregation and thus end up feeling, because of their apparent lack of interest, that they are not taking the faith quite as seriously as he or she does. My former vicar was right for that type of self righteousness does not command respect and those who go in for it only end up permanently disappointed with others and feeling themselves persecuted. That said I think I was justified in my question to the Easter Congregation all those years ago for the simple reason that you can’t have resurrection without first experiencing suffering and death. Thus liturgically speaking you cannot fully enter into the celebration of Easter without passing through the events of Holy Week and Good Friday. The events of Holy Week and Good Friday are tragic and difficult but they reflect the kind of thing we all have to face at some time or other in our lives: hypocrisy; unfair treatment; betrayal by friends; agonising self doubt; fear; and, finally, death itself. Personally I find Holy Week emotionally exhausting but highly rewarding because it engages with life as it actually is; in other words the liturgies reflect the reality I have to face if I am to live fully.
In Western Middle Class society we tend to want to render the world a safe and happy place or put another way we tend to want Easter without Good Friday. In tandem with this is the fact that the more we have materially the more we have to lose and thus the more defensive we tend to become about life. Life then tends to be seen not so much as a dangerous but exciting adventure but something to be confined behind security gates either actual or emotional. In contrast to this Jesus told his disciples that in order to gain true life they had to throw their lives away. Jesus saw himself as the Son of God, he worked out what that meant in terms of what he did and said in his life and pursued it no matter what it cost him. On the cross Jesus apparently feels forsaken by God and descends into despair as if all he has stood for has come to nothing. Carl Jung says of this: “The utter failure came at the Crucifixion in the tragic words, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?’ If you want to understand the full tragedy of those words you must realise what they meant: Christ saw that his whole life, devoted to the truth according to his best convictions, had been a terrible illusion. He had lived it to the full absolutely sincerely, he had made his honest experiment…..but because he had lived so fully and devotedly he won through to the resurrection of the body.” (C. G. Jung Speaking. Page 108) Jung goes on to challenge those listening to him to do exactly what Christ did and not to be afraid of making mistakes because it is often through error that truth and life become apparent.
The Holy Week celebrations expose us to the totally of our humanity and what we need to struggle with and thus leads through death to resurrection. It is not comfortable but if we are to truly live then facing these realities is essential, there are no shortcuts. Jung concludes his remarks about Christ with the following words: “We must all do what Christ did. We must make our experiment. We must make mistakes. Then like Christ, you will have accomplished your experiment…..Then we may recognise the Spirit alive in the unconscious of every individual. Then we become brothers of Christ.” (C. G. Jung Speaking. Page 109)
A thoughtful Holy Week and a happy Easter to you all.
