Choose Life

Just at the West End of the University Church lies St Mary’s Passage. It’s a major point of interest for many of the tour groups that visit the city. Just opposite the West Door of the church is a door into Brasenose College. On the wooden door is carved the face of a lion, either side holding up the lintel are the carvings of two satyrs, who look rather like fauns. And then just along the lane stands on old iron street lamp. On snowy days, the resonances with the Chronicles of Narnia are more evident for all to see. And tour guides tell a thousand different stories to suggest that this little corner of Oxford inspired the imagination of C S Lewis. I listen to these stories through the window of the Newman Room almost every week. The stories they tell - embroidered, embellished, often exaggerated – make the discrepancies between the gospels seem rather tame by comparison. 

Of course, Lewis’ reputation as a novelist and as a Christian apologist is well-known, and yet as I listen to the readings from scripture this morning, I find myself thinking about another novelist, who grew up in a very different world from that of central Oxford, and yet she writes with far more power and eloquence about the fragility and vulnerability of being human. A devout Catholic, who grew up in the American South in the mid-twentieth century, and whose frail health led to her death at the tender age of 39, Flannery O’Connor wrote a collection of short stories and novels, which are often shocking, provocative, even grotesque in the scenes they describe. No fantasies about talking lions for Flannery O’Connor – instead, she writes with brutal realism about fragile and flawed characters. As she says, ‘The serious writer has always taken the flaw in human nature for his starting point, usually the flaw in an otherwise admirable character. Drama usually bases itself on the bedrock of original sin, whether the writer thinks in theological terms or not. Then, too, any character in a serious novel is supposed to carry a burden of meaning larger than himself. The novelist doesn’t write about people in a vacuum; he writes about people in a world where something is obviously lacking, where there is the general mystery of incompleteness and the particular tragedy of our own times to be demonstrated…For this reason, the greatest dramas naturally involve the salvation or loss of the soul’. 

This is precisely the drama described in our readings from scripture. In the Book of Deuteronomy, the people of Israel are faced with a choice, between life and prosperity on the one hand, and death and adversity on the other. The way of life lies in following the commandments of God, and choosing the way of love. But the story of Israel, which unfolds in the scriptures, is one in which again and again it chooses the path of death and adversity. Moses and the prophets seek to remind the people of the covenant which they have made. ‘Choose life’ says the Deuteronomist, and yet we see the tragedy of Gaza unfold on our television screens day by day. No one can listen to the promise to Israel of the possession of the land in this Bible reading, and be oblivious at the same time to the scandalous genocide taking place in the Holy Land. This is an uncomfortable passage for anyone to be reading right now. ‘Choose life’ says the Deuteronomist – but the choices that people make are not always clear-cut or simple – life-giving to some, while dealing death to others. Thus the bedrock of original sin is laid bare. These words become not a promise but a judgement.

But then the gospel reading speaks bizarrely of hating ‘father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself’ in order to become a disciple of Jesus. Ancient writers struggled with these words, as do we. That ancient English writer, the Venerable Bede, sought to reconcile love and hate in this passage, by suggesting that, when Jesus says that you should hate yourself, there is a hate that draws on love rather than resentment. The hate with which we must hate ourselves is directed not at one’s own soul, but at the sins which thwart the salvation of our souls. Again, the bedrock of original sin is laid bare.

These are tough words. And they remind us that there is an extraordinary discrepancy between the two distinct portrayals of Jesus, which the church proclaims. On the one hand, there is the Jesus who went about briefly teaching love and doing good deeds: gentle Jesus, meek Jesus, passive Jesus, peaceful Jesus, the virtuous, celibate and innocuous Jesus. On the other hand, there is the Jesus caught up in the turbulent events marked by Holy Week: Why, if Jesus was so kindly, good and virtuous, should the state take any notice of him, much less crucify him? As another twentieth century American writer points out, this time, the Episcopalian William Stringfellow, the link between these two portrayals lies in the fact that Jesus embodies throughout his ministry, and through his own death and resurrection, an authority over the power of death. As William Stringfellow puts it: ‘Jesus preached… a freedom from the captivation of death which threatens the politics of this age.’ As a lawyer in Harlem, Stringfellow saw the concrete reality of death in the streets, the power of death over human existence, the deadliness of loneliness and isolation in our cities, the degradation of poverty and inadequate healthcare, the injustices meted out by the rich and powerful. These are the things which again lay bare the bedrock of original sin. And Jesus is reacting against these things in the gospels. And yet, he knows that death is not the last word. Death cannot overpower the life and the love which come from God. That is what it means ultimately to choose life.      

While her own writing is informed by the theological truths of the Fall, Redemption and Judgment, Flannery O’Connor recognises that ‘these are doctrines that the modern secular world does not believe in’. And that presents her with a particular challenge. And part of the reason why she resorts to telling stories that are hard, difficult, horrific, even grotesque, is that she is helping us to perceive what is most deeply true about human existence. She is enabling us to ‘penetrate the surface of reality’ and to take seriously that aspect of human experience that the doctrine of original sin was actually seeking to describe, the tragic dimension of our lives. 

Of course, tragedy is largely absent from the pews and book shops of the postmodern West. We study it in old books and plays. We use it casually to refer to plane crashes and disasters, but we are more hesitant about acknowledging its presence in our own lives, or acknowledging our brutal complicity with violence, oppression or injustice, when confronted with the ruins of Gaza or people sleeping rough on our streets. We struggle with our desperate inability to acknowledge the destructiveness of our own fears and desires. We feel powerless in the face of our helpless entanglement in the little dramas where we choose the easy consolation of identifying with the victim without recognising our own complicity in the horrors of the world, our own capacity to hurt and wound. Sometimes it takes the subtle literary means of the novelist, rather than the insistent moralism of the preacher, to see these things. 

And yet, one of the abiding characteristics of Flannery O’Connor’s writing is her profound sense that there is love, there is compassion, there is grace. She is neither satisfied with the half-truths of privileged middle-class Christians who have no time for suffering, not the stultifying nihilism of Western atheism. Neither are able to do justice to the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ, or the reality of God’s grace.

The truth is that Christian discipleship does not invite us to live in denial of death or despair. To follow Jesus means to live courageously and compassionately in the face of these realities. Indeed, by doing so, we may begin to rob them of their power. And that is why we rehearse and explore the story of Christ’s death and resurrection every time we celebrate the Eucharist together: ‘Do this in remembrance of me.’ At the heart of the Eucharist, even in the face of Jesus' own betrayal and death, we discover the power and the passion of self-giving love.

And in receiving these elements of bread and wine, the body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, we discover the presence of God himself. In the mystery of the Eucharist, we penetrate the surface of reality to discover the power of God’s overwhelming grace and love. We discover food for the soul. We discover again the overwhelming power of God’s self-giving love.