Isaiah 51.1-6, Matthew 16.13-20
The Eleventh Sunday after Trinity, 23rd August 2020
Austwick, Keasden and online
“Look to the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug.”
I looked a sheep in the eye the other day. Climbing a stile, there it was beneath me, one of those stubborn ones which rather than fearfully turn and run away, decided to stay and face me off. In those moments when our eyes locked and I studied the structure of its bony face, I had the feeling that I was looking at something prehistoric, something so ancient and grafted to the earth that it might have been sculpted from the rocks beneath us, just as the stone wall was, on which I stood.
We share our lives with - no, more than that, our lives themselves are sculpted by - these rocks beneath our feet through our relationship with them. The thick flat cap of Millstone Grit which is the summit of Ingleborough, the preponderant pavements and pedestals of limestone, the grey Silurian boulders of Norber; the Pendle Grit which is the foundation of these moors: all these rocks, over 400 million years old, which underly us. [1]
Those who work the land are particularly hewn by it: its shape and form and character determines the shape and form and character of your days, whether rebuilding a wall or retrieving an errant lamb from a limestone gulley. The rocks determine the route of the paths we take and the roads we travel; and our homes, our places of sanctuary, are themselves formed from these quarried stones.
Those who may not be native to this area but who have settled here, are equally formed by this environment. Wendy Jennings last year published a book reflecting on what she called her ‘Search for God Away from the Church’, in which she wrote:
The natural world: learning from it - learning in it; that last is, I realise, an inestimable gift that Keasden has given me; a kind of gift so many people are deprived of by concrete-and-tarmac-heavy lives. All round me is my moorland - not 'my' in any possessive sense, but this place that I love so much with its openness and its quietness that help thought to clarify itself, challenge itself, contradict itself, re-order itself - whether I'm out striding in sun, wind or rain, or sitting here in my pool of light, with the moorland stretching away outside the windows. I'm not sure how much of this search I could have managed without its space. [2]
“Look to the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug.” Many people sense how, in our increasingly disconnected and digitised world, physical places are still vitally important to us: for as one writer puts it, ‘Place is space that has historical meanings, where some things have happened that are now remembered and that provide continuity and identity across generations. Place is space in which important words have been spoken that have established identity, defined vocation, and envisioned destiny. Place is space in which vows have been exchanged, promises have been made, and demands have been issued.’ [3]
Scripture helps us understand ourselves as people who are placed. Our relationship with places, with the rocks from which we were hewn, is a major theme in the Bible: which calls us to tend the land and attend to each other in love and grace, under the direction and guidance of a generous, giving creator God. But scripture also asserts that we are people on a journey, ultimately a journey between two very specific places - from Eden to the New Jerusalem. From Abraham and Sarah setting off to Canaan to start a nation, through Moses leading a captive people towards a Promised Land, to the early apostles of Jesus going out from Jerusalem into the world to share their Saviour’s story: our spiritual forebears lives were bound up with particular places, and with the journeys of faith which led them there. [4]
This journeying aspect of life is why “the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug” may refer not only to those physical places which form us, but also to the deep sources of our spiritual and emotional life - to our relationships with others, to those who we might regard as our ‘rocks’. To those who have helped form us, and who have supported us through life’s changes and challenges.
When I consider a ‘rock’ of my formative years, I’m not picturing a giant of a man, but the tiniest of women, my grandmother, the gentlest of characters, the simplest of Christians, and the one who was always present to us and for us, the still and steady point in our moving world. Each day involved some time in her old back kitchen with a cup of tea and conversation, down-to-earth care and affirmation. This is the Holy Ground on which I stand. Who was - or is - your rock?
Our ‘rock’ may be a person, or a place - or an institution. You may feel that source of strength and confidence which has resourced you for life has been a school, perhaps, or a place of work, or a social or charitable group to which you’ve belonged. Or your ‘rock’ may be that piece of music or work of art which, whenever you return to it, comforts or inspires you, gives you renewed joy for your life’s journey. Or similarly it may be that book or poem, or prayer, which you read and re-read often, for it is a source of strength and blessing to you.
Or our ‘rock’ may be less tangible than that, but no less present to us or powerful. For as Christians we stand on the rock of Christ, ‘the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation, for whom and in whom all things in heaven and on earth were created, in whom all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through whom God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, on earth and in heaven.’ [5] And we stand on the rock of the Church, which was built on the foundation of ordinary folk like Peter the fisherman in whom Jesus put his absolute confidence and faith, despite Peter’s shortcomings, just as he now puts his confidence and faith in us, to continue to speak out and live out the Christian Way, however unsteady about that we may feel ourselves to be.
In this destabilising time, let us return to the rock from which we were hewn. In these unsteady moments, let us find our feet, to stand firm in the quarry from which we were dug.
Notes
[1] Wikipedia: Norber erratics; Tom Barron, StoneCarve: Heritage: Landscape; F. Moseley, The Geology of the Keasden Area, West of Settle, Yorkshire: Proceedings of the Yorkshire Geological Society, 30, 331-352, 1 December 1956.
[2] Wendy Jennings, Coming, Not Going: A Search for God Away from the Church. p.124.
[3] Walter Brueggemann: The Land - Place as Gift, Promise, and Challenge in Biblical Faith.
[4] This paragraph draws on my 2013 sermon Where we are placed on the way to the city.
[5] Colossians 1.15-18.
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