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Sermon
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FEASTING IN PARADISE
Certain films are classics; they stay determinedly in the mind. Babette’s Feast, from the novel by Karen Blixen who also wrote Out of Africa, was a classic. The verses quoted above from Psalm 85 feature throughout. A little house fellowship sings them as a hymn. The Psalm is at first blush a prayer in the face of drought. As we know, there can be many kinds of drought, including a drought of the human spirit. The action in this movie takes place in a tiny Danish hamlet beside the North Sea. The landscape is treeless and the sky a grim grey. This is the mid-nineteenth century. Times are lean. The main characters are members of that house fellowship. They constantly look back to better times when “the pastor” was with them. His two daughters, Martina and Philippa, had long ago sacrificed a future in the wider world to care for their father. In flashbacks we discover that Martina could have married a young army officer, while Philippa, possessed of an angelic voice, could have studied in Paris. Now they face a joyless old age. One evening a distressed stranger, Babette, arrives from the sea. Having fled from revolutionary uproar in Paris she seeks asylum. The sisters agree to take her in. Babette, although bemused by the bland fish soup the sisters teach her to prepare, is content to become their cook. The film depicts the narrowness of the little group of Christians, the mean-spiritedness that has developed among some of the members, and the terrible, joyless poverty. Every year a friend in Paris sends Babette a lottery ticket. One year she wins, and out of gratitude to those who have rescued her she plans a banquet, ordering supplies from far away. It turns out to be a kind of Eucharist, a prefiguring of the promised feast in paradise. One of the guests is the officer I mentioned earlier, now a retired general. He has seen the world. Babette serves turtle soup. The general sips appreciatively and wonderingly. At the next course he murmurs in French, eyebrows raised, “Cailles aux sarcophage,” quails, each in a “sarcophagus” of pastry. Those at table gradually loosen up. Their stiffness and guardedness fall away. Forgiveness for past wrongs happens. Love that has not been told is told. The general tastes the food with mounting amazement. He sips at the wine, knits his eyebrows, and murmurs, “Veuve Clicquot ’43.” He turns to Babette, who has entered the room like a servant with one more dish, “The last time I enjoyed food like this was at the Café Anglais in Paris.” She replies quietly, “I was once head chef at the Café Anglais.” At the end of the film Babette is asked, “What will you do with your lottery winnings?” “Nothing,” she says, “I have spent them all.” Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; Babette’s generosity is a parable of God’s generosity to God’s faithful but struggling people. She is a kind of Christ figure who empties herself and takes the form of a servant. Psalm 85 begins with the community of faith looking back to better times: The fortunes of ancient Israel ebbed and flowed. Periods of drought and periods of plenty followed one another unpredictably. A period of national greatness was succeeded by long periods of subjugation. It isn’t difficult to see the history of the Church like that—cyclical times of growth and decline. An astute observer of congregations in the Eastern suburbs said in my hearing, “They are grieving for 1960.” We remember packed churches, thriving Sunday Schools and vigorous youth groups. We had assumed good times would go on forever.Lord, you were favourable to your land; “Where have all the young folk gone?” we ask. “They come in,” we lament, “a sea of grey hair confronts them, and they don’t stay. Only like can beget like.” Is that an iron law? Of course it isn’t. John Calvin long ago noted that the history of the Christian Church is a long chain of resurrections from the dead. So we look back to 1960, and wonder what we could do more to end the drought of young faces. We know in our hearts that 1960 won’t return. Yet God always has something new and startlingly different waiting in the wings, like Babette’s feast. Because St Aidan’s has not declined to the extent that older congregations have, now is the time to be open to the new. The time passes, and it becomes too late. The psalm moves into impassioned prayer: I have often attended Korean services, both here and in their homeland. They pray with passion. I can’t understand the words, but certainly feel the passion. The most thriving congregation in our presbytery is Hanbit, associated with St Andrew’s in Box Hill. Children and youth run around everywhere.Restore us again, O God of our salvation, In 1960 St Andrew’s had a membership of over a thousand. Now some fifty, scattered sporadically around the old bluestone building, attend the Anglo services, with five or six times that number at the Korean. God fulfils the divine promise in mysterious ways. Meanwhile the congregation at South Hawthorn, nearly all Koreans now, is outgrowing the building in Tooronga Road and considering a move to the big church in Oxley Road. Passionate prayer, and not just Korean prayer, is receiving its answer. As Psalm 85 progresses, the tone of mourning and lamentation changes. The united voice of the congregation gives way to a lone prophetic voice. As if inspired by God’s Holy Spirit at that very moment, the singer, perhaps a soprano with heart in heaven, declares what has come in a moment of ecstatic meditation: This same theme from Babette’s Feast is replete with words that the beginning student of biblical Hebrew must learn. Steadfast love, faithfulness, righteousness and peace are the attributes of God that pour down in divine blessing like the rays of a warming sun on a cold landscape.Let me hear what God the Lord will speak, Steadfast love, (Hesed), is impossible to capture in one word of English, It means God’s mercy, loving-kindness, loyalty. It is the quality of God by which we become ourselves merciful, kindly, and loyal. Faithfulness (‘emeth) is also firmness, truth and integrity. It is related to Amen, “so let it be.” ‘emeth is the quality of God by virtue of which God enables us to stand firm in faithfulness, truth and integrity. Righteousness (tsedeq, tsedaqa) means what is right and just. Martine Luther’s great insight was that the righteousness of God, far from being a fearful thing, was rather that quality of God by which we are ourselves made righteous and thus inspired to work for justice. Finally peace, (shalom) means completeness, soundness, welfare. These four words reverberate through the Hebrew Bible, and on into the Christian Bible in Greek translation. Angels announce the birth of Christ as “peace on earth.” Christ, risen from death, greets his friends, “Peace be unto you.” It is the same greeting used in Israel today, “Shalom aleichem.” Note that these qualities belong not so much to us as individuals, but to us in community. Babette’s Feast ends with the old people dancing gracefully in the street, with sins forgiven and love renewed. I don’t know when the drought of youth will end. I do know that God’s steadfast love, God’s faithfulness, God’s righteousness and God’s peace are infinite and everlasting. I do know that resurrection may happen when we least expect it, and that God has prepared a table for us in the presence of our enemies, and that our cup will overflow, if not with Veuve Clicquot, with an even choicer drop. ___________________________________________________
A sermon presented by the
Rev Dr Stuart Murray at St Aidan's
Uniting Church North Balwyn, on 29th July, 2007 IT MAY BE
REPRODUCED WITH ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF AUTHORSHIP. |
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Page updated 30/07/07