Sermon for Bellringers Service
Clapham, Christ the King, 24 November 2019
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
So sang Leonard Cohen, the Canadian poet and singer who died in 2016. The message, of hope in darkness, we may find striking in these troubled times.
But of course, as you know, bells don’t ring very well if there’s a crack in them. Which is why Clapham’s Bell no.6, last recast in 1930 was also probably recast in 1662, for at its waist is the inscription, ‘My Crack is Cured Now Aloude I Cry Come Pray Repent Heare Beleeve Learn to Dye’. [1]
Bells are signals, calling signs to people of a village, town or city, to come - people like us, cracked, bruised, imperfect folk - to come to a place where we may find that it’s possible to pray; come to a place where we might encounter the liberation in repenting; come to a place where we might hear words to help us through our unbelief, to learn to live better, learn to live well, learn what it might mean to die well.
“Ring the bells that still can ring,” said Cohen, explaining his song: “they’re few and far between but you can find them. This situation does not admit of solution of perfection. This is not the place where you make things perfect, neither in your marriage, nor in your work, nor anything, nor your love of God, nor your love of family or country. The thing is imperfect. And worse, there is a crack in everything that you can put together: Physical objects, mental objects, constructions of any kind. But that’s where the light gets in, and that’s where the resurrection is and that’s where the return, that’s where the repentance is. It is with the confrontation, with the brokenness of things.” [2]
Like Bell no.6, we come here somewhat cracked - seeking the light. Summoned by these six powerful, wonderful bells. On this Christ the King Sunday our instinct is that it’s this king, and his strange kingdom of the poor and the mourners, and the meek and the merciful and the pure in heart; the peacemakers and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; this king and this kingdom which shines light into the dark corners of our world.
For the gospels portray God in Jesus as a completely different kind of king than all the other human kings in history. If God exercised kingly powers in those sorts of ways then it would make little difference if God is our king on earth as in heaven. But Jesus’ power is a power of absolute self-giving love, given freely in forgiveness and grace, as demonstrated throughout his life and especially on the cross - as his fellow-sufferer, fellow-criminal saw and believed.
So it’s not through the ways of Trump the messiah or Johnson the messiah or Corbyn or Swinson or Farage the messiah; not through the ways of the Market or the Nation or other such messianic cults - but through the way of Jesus the Messiah God redefines kingship, leadership, and power, and in doing so fundamentally changes the shape of the world. Through people like us, astonishingly. [3]
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
Notes
[1] Ken Pearce, A Joyful Noise Unto The Lord - the story of Clapham’s bells. North Craven Heritage Trust Journal 2012.
[2] Cassie Werber, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in”: The story of Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem”. Quartz, November 11 2016.
[3] Closing section extracted from my 2019 Christ the King sermon, If we really believed that the living God was king, Austwick, Keasden.
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