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'We are not alone.' This phrase was part of the advertising for the 1977
Spielberg film Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind – so unfortunately
became applied to alien beings from outer space. But the message is one
that we and our world all need to hear. We are not alone.
The Czech author Milan Kundera wrote a novel made into a film with Daniel
Day-Lewis and Juliet Binoche, called ‘The Unbearable Lightness of
Being’. The title refers to the consequence of having choice and
personal freedom. And it exposes the emptiness of our current modern idolatry
that personal choice is what matters and is the key to a good society.
If you can choose what you want, if it’s up to you to make your life
what you want it to be, if you have to make your own meaning in an otherwise
hostile world, then your life has no real significance. The title of Kundera’s
novel echoes the words of the psalmist (62.9):
Those of low estate are but a breath,
those of high estate are a delusion;
in the balances they go up;
they are together lighter than a breath.
The unbearable lightness of being. Being an individual, being on your
own, is fearful rather than liberating - who cares about you or me? Who
wants to read your diary or your blog or your Facebook entry? Who will
notice whether you live or die? What difference do I make to the world
or to anyone if I’m on my own?
Today we remember the apostles Simon and Jude. They’re not exactly
the most famous of the twelve followers of Jesus. Simon was called the
Zealot, the jealous one, and was probably linked with the nationalist
Jews who wanted to get rid of the Romans – nowadays he might well
be called a terrorist suspect. Jude also called Thaddaeus (to distinguish
him from Judas Iscariot) is indeed Jude the obscure, the patron saint
of lost causes and last resorts; a letter at the end of the New Testament
is ascribed to him, but it tells us nothing about him even if it was genuinely
written by him, which is disputed. They were shaded characters in the
supporting cast, rather than leading lights among the apostles.
But Simon and Jude are remembered, not because of what they did, but because
of who their friends were and are. They were part of a small group that
changed the world. They didn’t choose their own individual way: they
devoted their lives to following Jesus, and so their lives will always
be remembered. Their story reminds us that being a Christian isn’t
a matter of just me and God – what Greek philosophy called ‘the
flight of the alone to the Alone’. A Christian is never alone. Being
a Christian is a corporate act: you can’t make it on your own. In
the Bible it’s clear that you can’t be saved as an individual
– you have to belong to God’s people, you have to be part of
the body of Christ, in order to be saved. We don’t get to know God
alone: we come to know God together.
In our gospel reading from John, Jesus speaks to the twelve apostles including
Simon and Jude after his Last Supper. He’s already told his disciples
that they must love one another as he loves them; as the gave themselves
to Jesus so they must give themselves to one another; and they must stick
together, because the world outside will hate them as it hated Jesus himself.
That’s what we’re called to do as disciples of Jesus. To love
one another and stick together: to be together with all other Christian
people; to be friends of the friends of Jesus.
When you get to know someone and become friends with them, or even marry
them, your friends' friends (or spouse's friends) become part of your
life. ‘Any friend of yours is a friend of mine’. Even if those
friends are rather strange ones that you wouldn’t personally have
chosen! Judging by the gospels, the 12 apostles thought each other really
rather strange and didn’t get on too well: but they learned to become
a community of love in Jesus Christ.
There’s a very good visual image of all this which Paul gives us
in today’s epistle reading from Ephesians ch.2. It’s the picture
of us as God’s building. Jesus Christ is the cornerstone, the first
key stone which is laid and which is the point of reference for the rest
of the building. There’s a lovely phrase about the cornerstone in
Isaiah 28.16, from which this image comes:
I am laying in Zion a foundation stone, a tested stone,
a precious cornerstone, a sure foundation:
‘One who trusts will not panic.’
Or as our collect for the day says, ‘God builds the Church upon the
foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Jesus Christ himself as
the chief cornerstone.’ We are part of God’s building, of which
this Cathedral is an image; Simon and Jude are two of the foundations
of the nave out of sight down there, and we’re a bit of coping stone
up there somewhere – and our lives are joined to theirs. When we
feel alone or isolated or meaningless or weightless – as Isaiah tells
us, Don’t panic! We belong in Jesus.
I want to conclude with a few words about what’s going on in the
wider Anglican Communion at the moment, because it relates to what Paul
says about the Church. The Communion is thrashing around and apparently
splitting apart over the issue of sexuality – although it seems actually
to be about questions of power and authority, driven by deep splits in
the American Church, and by those who are clear that they know what the
will of God is because they can justify their views from the Bible, even
when other Christians disagree.
I don’t know what the outcome will be. In the mercy of God, I trust
that God in Christ may redeem human pride and lack of love, on all sides
of this question. I know and believe what the Church has traditionally
taught, and I also know that it has changed in various ways over the centuries
around the edges, including on matters of sexual morality. I don’t
know how Christians ought to regard homosexuality in theory, and neither
does the Church – it admits in its better moments that this is work
in progress, and that we need to be open to the Spirit at work in one
another to show us the way ahead.
What I do know is that all of us are broken people in one way or another,
that Jesus calls us to come to him, and that although we might not always
choose one another, God has chosen us. And God asks us, not to judge and
exclude each other, but to love and serve others and find Christ in one
another, even in those with whom we profoundly disagree. And God will
convict us of our own sins; we don’t need to convict others.
We may in the future be hard-pressed to decide one way or the other, who
we’re with and who we’re against. But I want to nail the colours
of this Cathedral firmly to the fence – that we are for all God’s
people, of every kind and condition; that we belong together in love,
whatever ultimatums and actions may go on elsewhere.
As Isaiah says: One who trusts will not panic. Don’t panic –
for all of us who follow Jesus, whether conservative or liberal, gay or
straight, black or white, famous or powerless, have a place in God’s
household, the community of Jesus, who is the cornerstone of God’s
Temple which will last for ever. For we are not alone.
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