No cause, no cause
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: 1 Peter 3:18-22; Mark 1:9-15
Last Wednesday I stood in the chapel, and as students, staff and others came forward, I dipped my thumb into a bowl of ashes, and made the sign of the cross on their foreheads, saying: Turn away from sin and be faithful to the gospel. It was part of the Ash Wednesday service of Evensong, on the first day of Lent. It’s a solemn and beautiful action, a physical sign of confessing our sin, of repenting. And indeed, the whole season of Lent can be seen as an interior journey, looking within, exploring our motives, our thoughts and feelings, our essential natures, acknowledging the ways we go wrong.
Ash Wednesday is just one day in the year, and Lent is just forty days. But students and staff who come and see me or Sam or another chaplain come all year round. And, in many of these encounters, people explore their inner lives, their deepest thoughts and feelings. Often, in the confidentiality of that one-to-one encounter, they reveal that they have gone wrong, that they feel bad about their actions, their lack of actions, their words and their thoughts, that they have messed up others’ lives and their own future, that they feel pretty rubbish about themselves. They speak of feeling guilty – feelings made worse by feeling judged and rejected by others, by relationships ending, by what they see as a poor grade, by struggling to do enough, by struggling to like their body and their self, sometimes by feeling judged by the church. They find it hard to believe that anyone could accept them, least of all God.
What then do we find in prayers and music for this first Sunday of Lent? Does it all confirm our general guilt? Certainly there is evidence.
In the refrain to the introit, the choir sang over and over: we have sinn’d against thee. They’ll sing the same words, but in Latin, in the anthem by William Byrd. We prayed together in the collect: you know our weakness. And in Psalm 25, the choir sang of the sins and offences of my youth – note that when the choir sings a psalm, they sing on behalf of the whole congregation. It may seem then as if our faith simply confirms the feelings we often have – that we are messed up, we get things wrong, we let everybody down, and that we deserve to feel unworthy.
Are you hoping there’s a but? There is a but, and a hugely significant but, perhaps the but at the very heart of our faith. It’s not that the feelings, the thoughts, the music and the ash are wildly mistaken – they’re not. Any reflection on our lives, our community and the world has to recognise selfishness and greed are real, and have real-world consequences. But the heart of our faith is not wrongdoing but the remedy, not sin but salvation.
Let’s look, for example, at the gospel reading for today. In a few breathless verses, Mark gives thumbnail sketches of Jesus’ baptism by John, of his temptation in the wilderness, and his proclaiming the good news in Galilee. And this is what he proclaims: “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
Jesus recognises that he is among a people who do get things wrong – otherwise he would not need to invite them to repent. But his focus is on what repenting belongs with – good news. We’ve heard that phrase so often it’s lost its savour. But listen again – good news. News of God-with-us, news of compassion and acceptance, news of goodness, of love, of forgiveness, of reconciliation, of joy. And indeed the chapters which follow give multiple examples of good news – healings in body and mind, joining the community of love, stories which reveal the truth.
Or let’s turn to the reading from the First Letter of Peter. This also mentions sin and being unrighteous, but hear the whole context:
For Christ also suffered for sins once and for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God.
Peter, remember, was the disciple who denied Jesus three times before the cock crowed, who went out and wept bitterly, who was asked by the risen Jesus by the lakeside, three times, Do you love me? This same Peter, more aware than anyone perhaps of monumental messing up, could write, Christ suffered for sins once for all.
Lent, then, is a season for guilt and grace, for fault and forgiveness, for ash and absolution. So often we have the telescope turned the wrong way. We see our genuine imperfections magnified hugely, and any good news a tiny speck in the corner we hardly dare believe. Lent is the season to turn the telescope the right way round. We still see our misdeeds, but in proper focus, surrounded by grace. It’s not easy to see that grace. Sometimes it may even feel irrational to be accepted, unreasonable to be forgiven. But faith is not the same as a calculating reason. It is open to generosity, to giving, to love. Bad news sells newspapers, and spreads pretty much at the speed of light on social media. It is harder to get the good news somehow, and harder to believe it’s not fake.
This may all sound rather theoretical. I want to explore these issues in a story which has been told for centuries on the stage, the cinema and in bewildered student heads – King Lear by Shakespeare. It’s a tragedy, a story not only of a very foolish fond old man, as Lear describes himself, but of so many human impulses – greed, lust, pride, vanity, revenge, weariness, and, yes, loyalty, goodness and self-sacrifice.
Some people will know that I will be doing a Masters in Creative Writing from September, continuing part-time as Chaplain. I might as well start by learning from the best… though I confess I did not read the whole play to prepare for today. But I did watch a two-hour film version on the BBC iPlayer with Anthony Hopkins as Lear and a wonderful Florence Pugh as Cordelia, which I recommend.
Let me offer a brief summary of the plot for my purpose – and apologies for the spoiler for anyone doing the module EN3141 Tragedy in the Age of Shakespeare. Lear, the king of Britain in some ancient era, is an old man, and wishes to abdicate his realms to his three daughters – Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. But he tests them first, asking,
Tell me, my daughters…
Which of us shall we say doth love us most?
Goneril is fulsome in the expression of her love:
Sir, I love you more than word can wield the matter:
Dearer than eye-sight, space and liberty…
Regan goes further:
I am alone felicitate
In your dear highness’ love.
In other words, only your love makes me happy.
But Cordelia, the youngest, Lear’s favourite, is asked the same question, What can you say? asks her father.
Nothing, my Lord.
Nothing?
– Nothing will come of nothing: speak again?
– Unhappy that I am, I cannot heaveMy heart into my mouth: I love your Majesty
According to my bond; no more, nor less.
Cordelia goes on to say that, unlike her sisters, when she marries she will love her husband just as much as her father. Cordelia loves her father, but she will not gild the lily.
Lear objects – she has wounded his vanity. He calls her untender. And he punishes her – he disclaims his paternal care – she is to be a stranger to him. Her third of his kingdom he divides between her sisters, so that they have half each. She is banished to become the bride of the French king without a penny.
And she is indeed offstage for much of the rest of the play. Lear’s folly, his pride and vanity are met by the greed, lust and jealousy of others, including Goneril and Regan. Indeed, Lear’s foolishness becomes madness for a time, which he acknowledges ruefully:
I fear I am not in my perfect mind.
Eventually he finds himself in the French camp, and is brought in, unconscious, to Cordelia. She, who had every cause to revile him for her rejection, disinheritance, banishment and exile, sees him and says:
O my dear father…
… let this kiss
Repair those violent harms that my two sisters
Have in thy reverence made.
She kisses him, and he awakes. Cordelia continues to speak to him:
O! look upon me, Sir,
and hold your hand in benediction o’er me.
Lear begins to realise whom he is talking to:
Methinks I should know you…
For, as I am a man, I think this lady
To be my child Cordelia.
Cordelia replies: And so I am, I am.
This is already a repentance – he has called her his child, which leads to Lear’s heartfelt acknowledgment of his cruel wrongdoing towards Cordelia:
Be your tears wet? Yes, faith. I pray, weep not:
If you have poison for me, I will drink it.
I know you do not love me; for your sisters
Have, as I do remember, done me wrong:
You have some cause, they have not.
But Cordelia responds with these profound words of forgiveness:
No cause, no cause.
In a way, of course, Lear is right and she is wrong – she does have cause to hate him, to reject him, even to kill him. But in those words – No cause, no cause – she shows her love for Lear as a man, her father and her king is stronger than the cause of his foolish and cruel rejection of her. She lets her cause go, for the sake of love, and in its place comes reconciliation. It is Lear who expresses this to Cordelia, when they are brought to Dover, and given into the hands of their enemies:
Come, let’s away to prison;
We two alone will sing like birds i’th’cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down,
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales…
Returning to the Christan faith, could these words in a play set in pre-Christian pagan Britain, be a simple yet profound summary of the gospel, of the good news, of the Kingdom come near, of Christ suffering for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous – No cause, no cause. God has some cause against hostile humanity, but in the giving of his Son, he lets that cause go for the sake of love of all that he has made. No cause, no cause.
And returning to our apparent Lenten theme of fault, of guilt, of ash, could I suggest that it is all too easy to find cause in our lives – to be self-critical, to judge and to find ourselves wanting. I wonder – indeed this whole sermon wonders – if Cordelia’s words could be spoken not only to Lear, but to all who are conscious of their sin. No cause, no cause. Of course there is cause – none of us are perfect – but if we see ourselves with the loving eyes of God, could we too let that cause go for the sake of loving the self whom God has made, and allow God to forgive us, and to come to forgive ourself? No cause, no cause. Florence Pugh as Cordelia brought me to tears with her forgiveness of her father. Forgiveness matters: it is the journey of Lent, and the heart of our faith.