Sermon preached at the Sung Eucharist on the Fifth Sunday of Easter 2024

Anthony Gormley has been burying iron statues of himself in the lawn at Houghton Hall in Norfolk—some are submerged up to their knees, some to their waists, some with barely the tops of their heads showing. He says he wants us to think about our connection to the earth—the depth of our dependence on the whole natural order. We might see an analogy with Christ’s words in the gospel—I am the vine, you are the branches—that sense of an organic connection; a mutual dependency in Christ without which our lives would be fruitless. We are submerged into creation; we are caught up in Christ.

The statues at Houghton Hall, as with many of Gormley’s works, are each made from a cast of the artist’s own near-naked body. They are, shall we say, anatomically suggestive, rather than explicit. Those of us who remember the Action Man figures of the 1970s and 80s will recall the puzzlement of removing the camouflaged clothing to find everything smoothed-over. For those who weren’t there, Action Man was Barbie for the more belligerent—more soldier than super-model, with fewer styling options and accessories.

What Action Man and Barbie had in common, along with Ken and his ilk (Ryan Gosling notwithstanding), was this same smoothness. Anthony Gormley’s statues are not as ‘proud’ as Michelangelo’s David, but they still wouldn’t have passed the concept stage at Mattel Incorporated. As regards ‘smoothness’, they are more ambiguous.

Enter the Ethiopian eunuch, surprised to suddenly find Philip the evangelist running alongside his chariot. Here is a man who has been to some degree smoothed-over. We don’t know how happy or unhappy he would have been about that, or how much he might have suffered.

He is reading the prophet Isaiah, and is especially struck by the passage about the One, like a lamb who is silent before its shearer, who suffers injustice and humiliation; whose life is taken from him. Who is this person the prophet is speaking about? The identity is not explicit; it is ambiguous.

Our culture is rather impatient with ambiguity—constantly trying to smooth it over—but in Scripture, ambiguity works like a can-opener, to open up the mind of the committed reader to receive something new.

Philip spots the opportunity and speaks to the Eunuch about Jesus. We are not told the details, but we might imagine that the conversation focussed on Christ’s suffering. What this encounter reminds us is that it is not the resurrection alone that is the Easter mystery—it is the resurrection of the one who suffered.

The mystery, the Easter faith that Philip shared with the Ethiopian Eunuch, is indeed that Christ has risen victorious over suffering and death, and that this is a victory we can share in baptism. The eagerness of the Eunuch to be baptised is surely understandable. Baptism is, after all, about rising with Christ—claiming that victory. But baptism is also about immersion; being submerged, like those statues in the lawn—it includes dying with Christ.

The Paschal Mystery—the suffering, dying, and rising—is the second great pillar of our faith. The first, is, of course, the Mystery of the Incarnation; the Word made flesh; implanted, buried, in the body of a young woman.

At Christmas, this mystery is presented as all joy, tinsel, and fairy-lights, but in the days of Holy Week we perceive the full implication of this mystery. Becoming submerged in the natural order, as humans both experience and make it, is, as we know, not all joy, tinsel, and fairy-lights.

Full immersion in this creation will inevitably include things like social rejection, physical and mental suffering, and ultimately, death. These things cannot be completely smoothed over, and Jesus undergoes them just as we do—he is immersed, we are told, for our sake.

Christianity sometimes gets accused of being a bit over-excited about suffering. The idea that suffering might be redemptive is given doctrinal pride of place in our understanding of the Cross, and has, to this day, especial significance for Christians during times of hardship and persecution. The idea that our individual suffering might ‘make up for what is lacking in Christ’s sufferings’, as St Paul puts it, suggests that even the most hidden and private suffering, might also become part of God’s redemptive work. It suggests that our suffering is neither unnoticed nor, ultimately, pointless.

Nevertheless, suffering is not, of itself, good, and Christians always have been, and always should be ready to work with anyone who is committed to alleviate suffering of all kinds. Suffering demands a response from us, and that response is surely a measure of our humanity.

Suffering is not good, it isn’t to be sought-out in order to prove our mettle, but neither, I would carefully suggest, can it to be avoided at all costs.

Like wheat and tares, suffering is tangled up with much that is good—much that makes us human. It is part of our immersion in this creation, and in community with others.

We, among other wealthy nations, live with the best healthcare provision that humankind has ever known. It is important to acknowledge that the access to that healthcare is uneven, at best, but our ability to alleviate symptoms and control suffering has never been greater, and yet our fear, our despair at suffering seems greater still.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the discussions around the legalising of assisted dying, or suicide. I realise I am straying into difficult territory, and I have to say I am conflicted in the debates, but I worry if we decide to take a significant step in law motivated by the fear of intractable suffering which is, in fact, rare, and should in all cases be treatable, even if that treatment should hasten a patient’s demise.

Arguments that our dying should be ‘left to God’, are just as unconvincing as those that say it should be entirely a matter of our choice and control. Both extremes want to smooth over something that needs some ambiguity—that needs to happen within a complex nexus of relationships and dependencies: with medical professionals, with those who love us, with God.

It needs a subtlety that I doubt law will help us negotiate. We are deeply submerged in a complex creation, and in communion with one another. My death cannot be only, or even ultimately, just about me and my choice.

For five years, I was Chaplain to Helen and Douglas House—hospices for children and young adults in Oxford. I saw what a fantastic team of nurses, carers, medics, and families could achieve; to make something terrible as good as it could be, and sometimes surprisingly good.

What it showed me was proper dependency at work—people immersed together in this creation, in its joy and wonder, and equally in its sorrow and fragility. I was shown moments of connection, reconciliation, memories made, that would have been impossible, wouldn’t have happened, if a decision to eliminate all suffering, to ‘end it’, had been made at the point at which the law might allow.

I would argue that ‘assisted dying’ was precisely what we were doing—providing assistance and support to help people to die as well as they could; meeting fear and despair with active compassion, professional skill, within a whole community of care.

The desire to legalise the assistance of suicide in extremis, is understandable, but seems to be driven by despair—despair at our dependency—as if the only guarantee for my dignity and comfort is to be in complete control—to refuse, however politely, my dependence on others; on their kindness, their wisdom, their mercy. And it is, of course, also a refusal of my ultimate dependency on the One who holds us, constantly, in existence.

Faithful Christians will and do come to different conclusions on this issue. It seems likely to me that the law will eventually change, and we have to hope that the promise will be kept; that palliative care will not be quietly defunded, and that the safeguards against all the subtle and not-so-subtle forms of coercion will be strong enough.

In the meantime, we, who I’m guessing find suffering just as scary as anyone else, might be encouraged to dig deeper into our spiritual resources: to embrace our dependency on one another, on the whole creation, and on our Creator; to lean into it; even sink into it. To find God alongside us, with us, in that dependency; in the One who suffered and died for our sake; the vine in which we are always vitally connected, in this life and the next; so that when suffering and death approach us, we might, perhaps, find comfort for our fear; that we are not expected to be stoical or alone.

Suffering demands a response from us—it is not something we can either be indifferent to, nor exalt as some sort of heroic ideal. We owe one another nothing but kindness, mercy, reassurance when suffering drags us towards despair. The choice of whether or not to suddenly extract ourselves—plucking ourselves out of the lawn, out of the vine—it may increase the choice available to us, but it will become a duty and a burden of choice on those who are already heavily burdened and at their weakest.

The impulse to make everything clean and tidy—smoothing over the difficulties and ambiguities at the end of life—is tempting (especially in a cash-strapped healthcare system), but it is a counsel of despair, a collusion with despair, and despair is something which the Easter gospel encourages us to resist with all our collective and God-given might.

Alleluia, Christ is risen.