A Word in Season. Choral Matins, Trinity18, 4 th October The Revd Canon Professor Graham Ward

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1 A Word in Season Choral Matins, Trinity18, 4 th October 2015 The Revd Canon Professor Graham Ward It s early afternoon, and I m driving down a red and dusty road in a remote part of the Blombos National Reserve, itself in a remote corner of the Western Cape, South Africa. I call it a road. The map defines it as a road no different from any other byway branching from a main trunk road. But there s no tarmac surface. There s no surface at all except for the sand and rock that other cars have compressed in passing along it. Other four-wheel drive cars. I m not in a four-wheel drive. I m in a cheap hired car that is more like a sewing machine on wheels, with a casing of tin foil. And there are more pits, gulleys, craters, clints and dykes than a moonscape. Driving is slow and careful. There s the axial and the undercarriage to consider, even if it is a hired car. Money is at stake here. My deposit on the car is in jeopardy with every meter. It s a road very close to the coast, and the roiling Indian Ocean has wrecked many a good ship in the currents and wind-tunnels where the Atlantic and the Indian oceans meet just off the Cape of Good Hope, which is not far down the coast. The grey cloud over the sea thickens, a mist rolls inland, and then it begins to rain. The first rain isn t heavy. But it get s heavier. The road literally 1

2 turns to a wash the colour of blood and somehow I loose concentration. Yes this is a scene straight out of the new Mad Max movie. And I am not, when I last looked, Tom Hardy. But even if I were it might not have helped. In the loss of concentration I step on the gas zipping forwards at 50k an hour, shearing off a projecting rock, skidding across the surface. Abruptly, I wrench myself out of the skid, sending the sewing machine into a panic in which I thought I was going to overturn. So I throw in a left to correct the possibility of overturning, and slam into a bank. Immediate recognition: I have two legs, the windscreen hasn t shattered, I can move. Further reflection: I am totally unhurt. Relief. Developed reflection on seeing a wooden post centimeters from the windscreen: what about the sewing machine? To cut a long story short here: I had driven the car into a steep bank of clay and fynbos gorsebushes: fragrant, knotty, spikey. Problem: I was still in the middle of nowhere on a dust track with a mobile phone insistent to the point of being vindictive that there was no signal. So I waited, looking up and down the road, in the rain, euphoric that I was unscathed and assessing how easy a night in the open, in Africa, with no food or water, might be. And then, through the mist, a car approached. Now, to say I went ecstatic might be overdoing things. 2

3 After all I frequently lie down in the road in front of oncoming vehicles waving my arms and legs like a centipede on amphetamines. But the car stopped, the window was wound down and I explained in what I admit was a gush of English only a commentator at a greyhound race might equal. what the situation was. The man listened, patiently, eyed the car half way up an embankment, looked at me, and when the gush had stopped said, in what was probably the only English word he knew, Money. From our first lesson his morning, a verse from the Book of Isaiah: The Lord God has given me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary. I m not sure I would call the man who asked me for money in a time when I required help without learning. But as sure as eggs I know he didn t speak a word in season to him who is weary. But then the situation is complex. The gap between the rich and the poor in South Africa is wide and worsening rather like a similar gap in this country. And the man wasn t exactly driving the latest model of a four wheel drive. Far from it! And I was standing white and English in front of a newish car (though it wasn t mine and didn t now look very newish), obviously a foreigner able to afford the airfare etc. to be in South Africa. No, it was not a situation without its complexity. But he 3

4 couldn t for various reasons speak the word in season because there was too much personal need that made him dull to an act of charity. For a word in season in an act of charity. The word in season which is any communication, verbal or non verbal is a prophetic act. It is an act that comes from beyond the person doing the act, bearing a divine signature. Through such acts, through speaking such a word, we work with the angels for salvation, for healing, for nurturing the good, for comforting, for showing forth the love of God to others. We are able to do this not because we are necessarily holy, but because we are attuned or, as Isiaah goes one to describe it: he awakes my ear to hear and I was not rebellious or turned my back. Attunement is a lovely metaphor, beloved by theologians like Augustine. It suggests that human beings are like perfectly constructed musical instruments that God wishes to play upon. There is a long theological tradition in which the world was created through and in music-making. The writer J.R. Tolkien, opens his myth of the Silmarillion, with Iluvatar, the Godhead, sending a tremulous note into the silences yet unmoved and composing the music of Ainur the music that the Earth sings. And when Melkor, a rebellious angel, attempts to disrupt the subtleties of such a music, Iluvatar smiles and tell him thou shalt see that no 4

5 theme may be played that hath not its uttermost source in me, nor can any alter the music in my despite. For he that attempeth this shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. To be attuned to the movements of the divine in and through creation, is that have, as it were, a fine string within us that can vibrate, hum, in accord with the greater music of divine goodness and providence. We are not the composer of such a music, we are not even the music itself, but we can allow the music to be played upon us such that we too become part of the music. The prophet knows this. His or her ears are awakened to hear. But we have to listen. We have to want to listen beyond the clamouring of circumstances as they ricochet and echo around and through us; to listen to the movement of the silences in which God speaks. Such an attunement is deeply and profoundly creative as both Isaiah and Tolkien are aware: it kindles a spark that in turn kindles a fire and illuminates the darkness. Then we can work with the angels. I know some people don t believe in angels. But I believe in angels. And when I think back to that incident on a remote track in the Western Cape, I recall how the man eventually got out of his car, came to my assistance and helped me clear the fynbos wedged under my wheels that enabled 5

6 me to reverse and put the car back on the road and to travel on. He overcame something in himself that I have no doubt assisted him in some way I cannot calculate. As Tolkien wrote of Melkor,and Iluvator told him: For he that attempeth [to disrupt] shall prove but mine instrument in the devising of things more wonderful, which he himself hath not imagined. As we look now in the church towards Advent, listen and the word in season comes. 6