An Advent Proverb

by Chris Chivers

[Ed. Note: This sermon was originally preached at Westminster Abbey on December 21, 2003.]

A stripped-down stage at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden. Two single beds -- the only visible props -- placed on the extreme right hand side. Two dancers -- male and female. Minimalist music by the American composer Steve Reich. Three sopranos and two tenors exploring a single phrase from the writings of Wittgenstein. Accompaniment provided by an electric organ and a vibraphone.

It doesn't seem to make, perhaps, for the most inviting of combinations. But from this modest material, the choreographer William Tuckett created, just a few days ago, arguably the most moving and telling ballet of the past year. Moving, because in the intensity of but fourteen minutes he narrated the story of a relationship with which all his audience could identify. And telling because, in an evening of new work -- all interesting, beautiful and evocative -- only Tuckett's piece had, in fact, set out to tell a story.

The liberating impulsiveness, the freedom of intimacy expressed -- affection returned -- proving itself such a dangerous bed-fellow with the misunderstandings and anger, the feelings of rejection and pain, the hurt of sustained conflict traversing the borders of violence and hatred. Could this be the reality of how our relationships unfold?

A couple fall passionately in love but then face the challenge of life beyond passion. What is it that will hold them together, and enable them to preserve a sense of individuality? The set's two single beds focussed the implicit uneasiness behind such a question. And in the dance that unfolded inches from the beds there was consequently that paradoxical sense of struggle and riskiness, costliness and elation, which all lovers would recognise. The longing for fulfilment and closeness, coupled with moments of harrowing isolation. The liberating impulsiveness, the freedom of intimacy expressed -- affection returned -- proving itself such a dangerous bed-fellow with the misunderstandings and anger, the feelings of rejection and pain, the hurt of sustained conflict traversing the borders of violence and hatred.

Could this be the reality of how our relationships unfold? The sheer emotional intensity of the narrative suggested so. A phrase of Kafka's came to mind about a story being an axe for the frozen sea within us. For Tuckett's narrative -- with its apt title, Proverb -- both held up an uncomfortably icy mirror to our nature -- challenging us to see things as they really are -- and it gave us the axe with which to chip away at the iciness itself.

Amid all this tension and struggle, the subtle suggestion of a pregnancy prompted thoughts of a shift of focus. There was now at least someone else to think about. A someone from whose advent possible resolution might emerge. Would the presence of a baby tear them apart or would it finally bring them together?

Tuckett's careful, even-handed approach largely subverted any sense of resolution. His story leant itself to questions more than answers. And the music's use of a teasing phrase of Wittgenstein's supported this. 'How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life,' the vocalists repeated throughout the piece. Small, indeed, that thought, that word, that seed of love to fill our lives. But immensely complex. A point that Tuckett's narrative drove home at every turn. A point, about human relationships with which -- if we're honest -- we'd all concur. But the complexity of the story -- the echoes it gave of our own complex attempts at loving -- didn't overwhelm the possibility that all this could somehow be transcended. For as the ballet ended -- the couple standing at the front, stage right, and passing the beds as they moved left, arm in arm across the stage, towards the darkness of the horizon -- one somehow felt a mysterious surge of hope. The tautness of the frozen sea did indeed seem to be giving way. The couple appeared to have discovered some new truth about their humanity. Passion was reforming itself as friendship at a deeper level. And there was a sense of mutual recognition and respect, of that reticence beyond physicality that allows for a drawing together, a unity of purpose. The couple had a future. And it somehow lay in their embrace of the struggle itself. From the realisation of love's costliness, hope was dawning.

Today, at the hands of Luke, the most careful choreographer in the Bible, we have a similar drawing together. Like Tuckett's Proverb, we haven't of course got to the ultimate moment of resolution. This is still some way off. But we reach a profound moment nonetheless, when we also realise that we have a future, a future similarly filled with hope, but a hope that emerges precisely as we wrestle with our own humanity.

Luke, who has been so keen, thus far, to preserve the individuality of the characters in his dyptych, now brings them together.

An angel has encountered an aged man Zechariah in the temple, at the centre of national and religious life, and has then met with the youngest of teenagers on the margins of society. Disturbingly, he has announced to both that there will be births. And there has been that mixture of responses which is always occasioned by such news. The old man cannot believe that his equally aged wife will conceive a child. The divine reaction to his resistance to the thought is harsh. He is struck dumb. The young woman feels herself utterly unworthy and fearful. She is encouraged in her task and on her way. The old, outworn, comfortably respectable and religious world cannot accept that new things are possible. The new religious order that is to be -- whose roots are located amid the poverty and severity of life on the outside -- hardly knows how to begin to embrace such possibilities. But from the complex tensions of the narrative -- acceptance and disbelief, rejection and encouragement, old and new -- and the equally complex characters of the story -- well to do and destitute, articulate and speechless, priest and peasant  -- Luke choreographs a drawing together of the strands, and the people, in the meeting of Elizabeth and Mary.

In human terms it relates a young, anxious, small-town girl -- fearful, no doubt, of the pain of childbirth and much else besides and beyond -- with her older, perhaps wiser, certainly more worldly, city-dwelling cousin. And in dramatic terms, it's of course a master-stroke. It models the very sort of interaction and drawing together -- incarnation -- that is the point of Christ's advent, and the concern of the whole gospel that follows.

Things have come together for me, Mary sings. They have come together for you, she says to her cousin. And they will come together for others as well. But as they do so, worlds will collide. And your world, Elizabeth, the world of the temple, the prosperous, and the pious, will actually be brought to its knees in the process. Since the marginal will now take centre stage. . .

But as the song that the younger woman sings to her older relative makes clear, this coming together is full of joy yet fraught with tension. My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord, Mary sings. And she rightly lists why this is so. But her joy -- at once immediate and poetic -- is tempered by the bold, prophetic task that has been entrusted to her. Since in any scene that brings two relatives or friends together -- and where heart really speaks to heart -- inevitably, at some point, difficult realities will have to be confronted. Things have come together for me, Mary sings. They have come together for you, she says to her cousin. And they will come together for others as well. But as they do so, worlds will collide. And your world, Elizabeth, the world of the temple, the prosperous, and the pious, will actually be brought to its knees in the process. Since the marginal will now take centre stage, as the new reality -- the coming kingdom -- ushers in revolutionary change -- the hungry fed, the rich sent empty away, and the proud passed over.

If the struggle and tension of Will Tuckett's Proverb subverted the romanticised, 'and they all lived happily ever after' version of love and life -- the one we all know in our hearts to be a nonsense -- so Luke similarly subverts any illusion to which his hearers and readers might still be clinging. Yes we all have a future, rich and poor, insider and outsider, and it's a future together. But it's not a future to be enjoyed on any terms. It's a future that depends on us choosing to unfreeze the icy seas of this world -- both within and without -- by discovering our truest humanity precisely in the costly struggle for justice about which Mary so eloquently but challengingly sings.

Is there a future for us and for our complex world? Indeed there is. And the birth of a baby will bring it about. But it won't, as our two choreographers this morning make clear, see us marching unthinkingly, hand in hand, towards some mythical happy horizon, or escapist dream world. Like the couple in Tuckett's Proverb it will demand of us that we learn to accept and work through the conflicting emotions -- the struggle and complexity -- of genuine love. And like the two women in Luke's diptych it will mean embracing a radical presence that will -- as does any baby -- turn our whole world upside down.

Hope is indeed dawning -- ultimate resolution will one day be experienced -- but it comes at a cost of sacrifice and pain, since all true human living is cross-shaped. The hope is in the struggle itself.

How small a thought it takes to fill a whole life, says Wittgenstein. How great a love it takes, says the evangelist John, for God to give his only begotten Son to us, that we might choose life -- real life in all its exacting abundance. Amen.

 

The Rev. Chris Chivers is Minor Canon and Precentor at Westminster Abbey. His regular column on "A Globe of Witnesses" is Tell It Slant. Chris may be reached by email at Chris.Chivers@westminster-abbey.org