Something Rich and Strange

“Be still and know that I am God,” the psalmist says (Ps. 46. 11). It speaks to the life of the School in the recognition of the need to be still and quiet within ourselves in order to begin to think reflectively. Such is Chapel. Quiet moments that are not about this and that in the busyness of our daily lives, not about the competing concerns that stir up emotions and excite distress and discord, but a time of contemplation and quiet about the universal aspects of our humanity.

 

We have been considering, in the context of ‘epiphany,’ the idea of ‘complementary universalities’ as opposed to conflicting or ‘competing universalities’. One example is the universality of suffering common to the human condition in one way or another but differently addressed by the various world religions and in the competing social and therapeutic ideologies of contemporary culture. We have tried to connect “the gift of myrrh,” in the classic Epiphany story of the Magi-Kings, with Jesus in the Temple making known to us that he “must be about [his] Father’s business,” and with the first miracle, “the beginning of signs” which turns upon his “hour,” an explicit reference to his passion and death out of which comes resurrection and life. All three speak to the radical meaning of ‘epiphany’ as the making known of the essential divinity of Christ and the idea of God’s will and purpose for our humanity. God seeks the ultimate good for our humanity which is not found simply in the circumstances and actions of our lives but in our being found in God’s all embracing will manifest as love. This way of looking at things has parallels with other religions and philosophical traditions.

 

Diotima, the fictional female philosopher in Plato’s Symposium, argues that “the object of [our] love,” meaning our desires, “is that [we] should have the good” and to “have it forever.” “Love,” she says, “is the desire to have the good forever.” Good here is not simply something subjective and personal. It concerns the good of all within which we find the good of ourselves. But how to attain that ideal? That is another question and one which the Epiphany stories undertake to show by way of the motion of God towards us that complements our desires for something universal. Epiphany is miracle, the miracle of life itself in God who is the source and end of all life. In the Christian view, this focuses on Christ. “In him was life; and the life was the light of everyone.”

 

In Chapel this week we had another miracle story. Not about Christ’s healing the various broken and incomplete forms of the human condition which signal the divine will for our wholeness but Christ as the Lord of all Creation, stilling the sea-storms and winds of the natural world and, by extension, the sea-storms of our hearts. In that story, Jesus is with us in the storm. Is he there just as another sufferer, another victim of events? No. He rises to “rebuke the wind,” and to calm the sea, saying, “Peace, be still.” Yet he also challenges us in our fears and uncertainties. “Why are ye so fearful? How is it that ye have no faith?”

 

What does he mean? It is again an epiphany that awakens us to the purpose of God in creation including the storms and tempests of the world and our hearts. They are not outside of God’s will and purpose; nothing is! The reminder here is that there is something more and something greater than what we experience and even what we think and do.

 

We are reminded of this in every Chapel service. It begins with confession, the recognition of our sins and shortcomings in “thought, word, and deed,” in what we have done and “in what we have left undone.” If we are simply what we think, say, and do or don’t do, then there is no hope; we condemn ourselves. The prayer of confession is itself an acknowledgement that we are not simply defined by what we do but by something greater, namely our being found in God, knowing even as we are known. Known by something more than just our thoughts, words, and deeds which, sad but true to say, are always incomplete and in disarray.

 

To be quiet and still is to be awakened to what our desires and our lives ultimately depend upon, the God who seeks the restoration and perfection of our broken humanity. The miracle story of Christ in the sea-storm ends with those on the ship in a kind of amazement, of fear as wonder, saying to one another, “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?

 

They are caught up in a kind of wonder, awakened to the radical miracle of life that is God himself and in what God seeks for us. In Shakespeare’s play, The Tempest, a sea-storm is conjured up by the magic of Prospero to bring his ‘enemies’ into his presence. For what purpose? Not revenge but forgiveness. Yet they have to confront their evil in having exiled Prospero and his daughter, Miranda - her name signifies a wonder, a miracle. Ariel, the airy sprite and agent of Prospero’s bidding, points out that something greater and wonderful comes out of the storm and tempest. What is it? It is a transformation in which we find ourselves, even “when no man was his own.” The storms and tempests of life can effect “a sea-change into something rich and strange,” something which is an everlasting good. Education, too, should be an epiphany of teaching and learning that is transformative, if we can be still and quiet within ourselves.