The Twelfth Sunday after Trinity, 8 September 2019
Deuteronomy 30.15-end, Luke 14.25-33
Keasden, Clapham, Austwick
As a child of Liverpool I’ve a soft spot for the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung who last century had a dream about being in the city - ‘a dirty, sooty city,’ he called it, on a dark, wet, winter’s night. He said, ‘I can still see the grayish-yellow raincoats, glistening with the wetness of the rain. Everything was extremely unpleasant, black and opaque – just as I felt then. But I had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the “pool of life.”’ [1]
Now, when I was growing up in that city I found Jung’s quote an inspiration. I drew on its power as I trod those streets and willingly allowed myself to be formed into a Liverpudlian through and through, a Liverpudlian son, brother, uncle; a home-grown Christian, swimming in the Pool of Life.
Since then many inevitable changes and chances of life have intervened; like everyone else I’ve faced some at times painful challenges causing me to reassess my life, my identity and direction. The Liverpool Lad is gone, if not forgotten. So now it is another quote of Carl Jung’s which engages me. He said,
One cannot live the afternoon of life according to the program of life’s morning; for what was great in the morning will be of little importance in the evening, and what in the morning was true will at evening become a lie. [2]
Jung’s idea of the “the two halves of life” - the two major tangents and tasks of any human life - does it make sense to you? He says,
The first half of life is spent building our sense of identity, importance, and security - an important and valuable activity. But inevitably you discover, often through failure or a significant loss, that your conscious self is not all of you, but only the acceptable you. You will find your real purpose and identity at a much deeper level than the positive image you present to the world. [3]
Jung grasped this truth after a period of illness. In the second half of life we discover that it is no longer sufficient to find meaning in being successful or healthy - or in belonging to a particular place or group of people. We need a deeper source of purpose. We need authentic religious experience. Jung influenced Bill Wilson, co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous, who also emphasised that a “vital spiritual experience” is the best therapy of all; it is the foundational healing of addiction, moving beyond “recovery” - or purgation - towards true illumination or divine union. [4]
The scriptures describe this as our moving between life and death. Hear Moses inviting the ancient Israelites to make a covenant with God by following his ways. ‘Choose life,’ he said, ‘so that you and your descendants may live, loving the Lord your God…’ And, flipping this upside down, hear Jesus inviting his followers to choose death - to take up a cross, to put an end to all thoughts of family security, wealth and possessions, being willing to start over, to make a new beginning with him.
We learn the value of this when life is hard. When we face difficulties, challenges, even death itself, we can discover ‘the huge surprise of the Christian revelation … that the place of the wound is the place of the greatest gift’. [5] Through the cross and resurrection, we can discover that our very wounds can become sacred wounds, if we let them. Letting go of the surface things of life, taking responsibility for the recovery of our spirits and our souls, holding our pain whilst embracing the grace of God gifted to us: in this we can find transformation, resurrection.
The writer Richard Rohr says,
If I were to name the Christian religion, I would probably call it “The Way of the Wound.” Surprise of surprises, Christianity is saying that we come to God not by doing it right (which teaches you very little), but invariably by doing it wrong and responding to our failures and suffering with openness and awareness.
Jesus’ wounded body is an icon for what we are all doing to one another and to the world.
Jesus’ resurrected body is an icon of God’s promise, response, and victory over these crucifixions.
The two images contain the whole transformative message of the Gospel. [6]
Now, we live in a time where we as a human race are beginning to grasp that we’re in the evening of our civilisation. We are now living through what some scientists are calling the Sixth Mass Extinction. Of the five previous mass extinctions, only the most recent was caused by an asteroid. The other four were caused by ‘Climate change produced by greenhouse gas.’ We are currently adding carbon to the atmosphere at a rate ‘at least ten times faster’ than at the end of the Permian period, 250 million years ago, when 96 per cent of life on earth was wiped out. [7]
We are beginning to accept that we have been ‘living the afternoon of life on Earth according to the program of life’s morning’; we have been consuming ever vaster quantities of the Earth’s precious resources, and filling the air and land and seas with poisonous waste, at a greater and greater rate since we began to be aware of the climate crisis forty or fifty years ago. [8]
We are now challenged to embrace the truth that ‘what was great in the morning of our modern human world is of little importance this evening, and what in the morning was true has now, in this evening, become a lie’ - that the ways we have dominated the Earth have insufficiently prepared us for our future; that our exploitation of the Earth has reached its limits after all.
Rather than dismissing this situation in denial, rather than sitting back and making others responsible for it, rather than hopelessly giving up on it altogether, can we instead take hold of the ancient wisdom offered by our faith, and learn how, in the face of death, we can still choose life?
May God help us see how a wounded body can be transformed into a resurrected body; may God guide us into knowing how, even if these are our last days, we can let the whole transformative message of the Gospel turn our hearts towards our broken but still-beautiful, still-wonderful world, and embrace it in love, no longer regarding the Earth as ours to exploit but instead seeing ourselves as members of ‘the Community of Creation’. [9]
If we can come to God accepting that we’re doing it wrong and responding to our failures and suffering with openness and awareness - therein is the key to the future of life on this, God’s wonderful created Earth.
Notes
Acknowledging the help of Paul Nuechterlein, Girardian Lectionary, Proper 18C in directing me towards Richard Rohr's Jungian-influenced reflections.
[1] C. G. Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, p.223. Quoted in Jungcurrents, Jung’s Liverpool Dream: “I found myself in a dirty, sooty city…”.
[2] C. G. Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, p.399. Quoted in Richard Rohr, The Two Halves of Life, Center for Action and Contemplation, 12 October, 2015.
[3] Rohr, The Two Halves of Life. Quoting Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, p.340.
[4] Rohr, The Two Halves of Life. Quoting Jung, Memories, Dreams and Reflections, p.340.
[5] Richard Rohr, The Sacred Wound. 16 October 2015.
[6] Richard Rohr, The Sacred Wound. 16 October 2015. Drawing from Richard Rohr, Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer, p.76-78
[7] Francis Gooding, All the News Is Bad: Our Alien Planet (Review of David Wallace-Wells, The Uninhabitable Earth: A Story of the Future). London Review of Books, 1 August 2019.
[8] See many reports, eg. Jillian Ambrose, Carbon emissions from energy industry rise at fastest rate since 2011. Guardian, 12 June 2019.
[9] Richard Bauckham, Bible & Ecology: Rediscovering the Community of Creation. Referenced by Bruce Stanley in Christine Miles, If you kneel down in the woods today, Church Times, 4 October 2013.
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