Sermon for 25 March

What day, what date is it? It is Sunday, 25 March. I am not above stating the obvious, you see. Here is another obvious statement to make: today, being the 25 March, either is the Feast of the Annunciation, or it is not. Why do I say this? There is a funny thing here. For us, today is most assuredly not the Feast of the Annunciation. I do know that. Please do not call the liturgical police. (I say that as if there were not already here!) Today is the Fifth Sunday of Lent, and Passiontide begins. For us in the West, the Annunciation can in fact never come on a Sunday. This is because all Sundays in Lent and Eastertide have to be Sundays in Lent and Eastertide; no other festival can intrude. Lent and Easter are as important as that.

But (liturgical police please note) it is not the same in the East. Indeed, it seems altogether the other way round. For Orthodox Christians, 25 March is always the Annunciation. Even if it coincides with a Sunday? Yes. Even if it falls in Holy Week? Yes. Or Good Friday, Holy Saturday or Easter Day? Yes, always but always. For Orthodox Christians (or at least for those for whom today actually is 25 March – that’s a whole other story), today must be the Feast of Annunciation.

So what day is it? Are we entering into Passiontide, and are we reflecting on our Lord’s passion and death? Or is it Annunciation, and are we reflecting on Mary’s Yes to God, which brought our Lord into the world? Bluntly, is it death or birth?

Or... does it matter? Some would say that that the right liturgical ordering of things is too trivial a subject for a sermon. I don’t think that’s St Olave’s. As I say, my sense is that I am more likely to meet the liturgical police than the anti-liturgical anarchists (though I might be out of date). In any event, I am suggesting it matters in this sense. It gives us a chance to see what can we learn from this most intriguing of differences between Western and Eastern Christianities.

The Ecumenical Patriarch and Pope John Paul II both said that Christianity breathes through two lungs, the East and the West. If that’s right, if we in the West are not learning from the East, our breathing may be shallow, and, at times, endangered. So let’s go with it. Let’s go with the idea that nothing is more important than the Annunciation. Let’s indeed, go with what follows from this for the Orthodox. That is: throughout Lent, the Annunciation is a major secondary theme, lying just below the surface, and requiring special prayers throughout the season. In other words, Lent is shot through with Mary’s Yes to God. And  Lent is in some sense as much about the right celebration and thanksgiving for that cosmos-changing human Yes, as it is about human sin.

Please don’t hear me as saying ‘East good; West bad’. I am very far from that position. I do think in the West as in the East, Lent is overwhelmingly a hopeful, positive, encouraging and grace-drenched season. All the way back to the words at the Imposition of Ashes. ‘Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ.’ This may sound like some finger-wagging inducement to misery. But I think that would be wrong. I believe that the opening, ‘remember that you are dust’ means something more like: ‘remember that you are mortal, that you will die, that indeed you will never experience this life, this day, this moment, this encounter, again, and no one will ever experience quite this moment with you again. Remember then, that you are a mortal, which is to say irreplaceable human being.’ And so treat this question as an invitation: ‘Are you doing all you can with your one unrepeatable, precious life?’

Again, ‘turn away from sin and be faithful to Christ’ means: ‘It is necessary to turn to Christ. God will not zap you into holiness against your will. But all you need to do is turn. You do not have to engage in any complex interaction of penance and proving yourself. You don’t even need to prove yourself by some emotional or intellectual intensity called ‘faith’, rather than doubt. All you have to do is turn. Turn to Christ, and see Christ is turned to you. And, in saying this, we are also insisting that you can do it. You have the capacity to change. It may be a hard, unstraightforward, and a complicated journey, with many detours. But it can be done. You can hope for all the change you need..

So, for all of us, East and West, Lent is a graced, hopeful time, which offers us a very high doctrine of our own humanity. True, with that, it is also a season for simplicity, austerity even, and a stripping bare. Again, the Orthodox have something to say about this. We in the West may – may! – give up chocolates or sherry or tv on most days of Lent (except for Sundays and saints’ days and when our friends come round). The Orthodox are called to fast (I am not saying they all do it), which basically means live on a vegan diet throughout the season. So it is not the case that for the Orthodox, this is a season of fun and games.

But! But that austerity does not follow them into church, into liturgy, into worship, in the way it can seem to in the West, as we abandon flowers and Glorias and Alleluias. In Orthodoxy, Alleluias are still sung. Alleluias, and references to the resurrection, even on Good Friday, brothers and sisters. The austerity of the season is always folded into glory and joy. And the image that I have is indeed of a soufflé. You have some nutritious but not always tasty self-reflection. Into that you fold the whisked egg white, the raising agent of light and rejoicing.

Of course, in Orthodoxy this glorious mix works so well, because all liturgies tend to make the most of the paradoxes of Christian faith. In some contexts in the West, talk of ‘paradox’ can function as an easy way out of difficult philosophical conversations. It’s the 'joker' preachers can always play – along of course, with ‘it’s all about love’. But Eastern theologians don’t fall back on paradox when reasoned argument risks failing. They relish it, at each opportunity.

Why not have both remorse and glory, both penitence and joy? After all, we believe – don’t we? – that Jesus was never more articulate than when he gurgled as an infant. We believe – don’t we? – that Jesus never showed God’s love and power more transparently than when he was tortured and mutilated on the cross? We believe – don’t we? – in transcendence localized in bread and wine, in life-giving wounds... and in the pregnant virgin?

You deserve a flavour of the joy of the Annunciation from the Akathist prayer to the Mother of God,  the special – and of course long – prayer to Mary, which permeates not only the Feast Day of the Annunciation, but the whole season of Lent.

An Archangel was sent from Heaven to say to the Mother of God: Rejoice! And seeing You, O Lord, taking bodily form, he was amazed and with his bodiless voice he stood crying to her such things as these:

·   Rejoice, you through whom joy will flash forth!

·   Rejoice, you through whom the curse will cease!

·   Rejoice, revival of fallen Adam!

·   Rejoice, redemption of the tears of Eve!

·   Rejoice, height hard to climb for human thoughts!

·   Rejoice, depth hard to contemplate even for the eyes of Angels!

·   Rejoice, you who are the King's throne!

·   Rejoice, you who bears Him Who bears all!

·   Rejoice, star that causes the Sun to appear!

·   Rejoice, womb of the divine incarnation!

·   Rejoice, you through whom creation becomes new!

·   Rejoice, you through whom the Creator becomes a babe!

·   Rejoice, unwedded bride!

Rejoice, I might add, O Lenten Christian!

Rejoice, you who are entering Passiontide!

Rejoice!

Perhaps the Orthodox saint who saw this line of thought through to its logical conclusion – although recognized as a goldy eccentric in his own place and time - was St Seraphim of Sarov. For St Seraphim, all is Easter, always. So he greeted everyone he met with the words: ‘My joy, Christ is risen’. Radost moya, Christos voskrese!  I hear he’d even stand on the steps of the Church on Good Friday, boldly eating sausages and recklessly declaring that Christ is risen – Christ is risen ‘even’ on Good Friday!

Don’t worry, liturgical police. There’ll be no such acclamation in the liturgy today. But I am hoping that our Passiontide will be as much about right rejoicing as it is about right repentance. And may you – tomorrow, as is proper – have a blessed Feast of the Annunciation. Amen.