Sophie

A sermon by the Rev. Dr. Alan Gregory, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Associate Professor of Church History, given on April 28, 2004, in Christ Chapel

About three miles from the airport, he ran out of gas. With a quiver of panic, he swung the car off the road and rolled into a crumpled parking-lot. In front of him was a squat, windowless building, studded under the roof with yellow lights that made not the slightest impression on the night. The only brightness was above the door, a series of curling tubes that read "Bar," and, another, with a blue glow that said "Pleroma." The "a" fizzed and sputtered.

He left the car where it had bumped to a stop and went in, he squeezed himself through the tightly sprung door and almost fell into the bar. The barman looked up and said nothing. He steadied himself, "I need a phone." The barman slowly picked up a beer glass and stared down it intently, like he was reading his fortune, finally, he waved toward the end of the bar. The man called a friend for help, then walked back past the bar, where the whole place opened up to fit a thin shiny stage that ran down the middle of the room. It had a metal rim and was curved at the end like a tongue. A wheezy comic telling some sordid joke about steering wheels and his third wife was being ignored by half a dozen men round the stage, each at his own table, alone as planets.

He didn't like comics, so he leant against the wall and watched the men. They were a dispiriting bunch. The nearest was so inert he looked like a old armchair badly used by cats; while the young guy opposite, on the other side of the stage, was staring at the floor and, with no appreciable rhythm, stabbing the fingers of one hand on the table while the other hung at his side like a dead fish. He wondered whether they'd all run out of gas, and just never bothered to leave. The comic abandoned the stage with a last solitary laugh at his own joke. A loudspeaker crackled and the barman at the mike said, "Here guys, what you've been waiting for, welcome the divine Sophie."

She walked in a light of glory like a moon robed in cloud, clutching a white cloak that trailed along the stage behind her. She let it fall and her nakedness struck him like fire. A blue light in the ceiling turned slowly over her pale skin; stars flickered in her red hair. She smiled like the world had just begun. Very gently, she swayed to the music and, then, with rolling half-steps, danced toward the human armchair below the stage. He sat up sharply like he wanted orders, like he suddenly wanted to go out and find the holy grail. He straightened his lapels and looked hopeful. In turn, she danced to each of the washed up voyeurs, as gracious as a queen, swinging her body, crouching and stretching, circling and holding out her fingertips like blessing. The agitated youth was as calm as a monk now; and the others attentive, they looked, from where he was standing, strangely solemn, like they'd remembered how to do something very important. Not that he thought much about them, she was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

Then, just as he decided to rush the stage, wrap her in the white cloak, and carry her to whatever heaven he could make or find, the music stopped, she turned to the back of the stage and was gone. The loudspeaker fluffed and boomed and the barman roared, "Sophie, at the Pleroma, for you," he laughed and added, "all the way from God." He went on laughing, like the wheezy comic, while the man went on staring into the back of the stage. She was gone. He needed air and pushed back through the door into the car park, breathed and waited.

Around this time, the gulls are ecstatic, screaming about the black cliff and the layers of holes and ledges where the eggs have hatched again as in years of gulls since before the fishing boats, or the lime kilns, or the monks, or even the legion that retreated along the coast back to the Aelian bridge. And the chicks stretch for food like they'd split and swallow themselves. Over on the islands, the puffins are back from an Arctic winter, and the burrows are buzzing with hunger while the birds dive for sand-eels and run a gauntlet of terns, to bring the twitching silver food for their buried children. And I am on my balcony, listening to the mothers below pushing their kids to the shops and promising sweets and a walk on the beach. The railing is warm under my hands and a slight breeze broods over the coast and nudges the flowers in the pots at my feet. The sun strikes the purple sea, brightening the white cuffs of the waves, and I believe in the wisdom of God.

Not that it's hard, up here it just seems to work, and for a moment I wonder how anyone can have a mind so leaden, so sullenly mulish, as not to know how wise and manifestly wise is the world. Lean on a warm balcony in this joyous light and its easy to believe in wisdom, that everything is so obviously made for goodness, easy to spot the artistry of it all. The heart falls back on itself, like a man flopping into a deck chair, the mind is satisfied and I am content. But, you know how it is with weather. Three hours later, the cloud swells and the sky drops so fast you can almost hear the thud. The breeze grips my arm with chills and jostles me inside. The elemental police have caught me, taking my ease in a serious world. The obvious wisdom of things has run for cover. Birds are blown off the cliff and the mothers huddle in doorways from the deluge. The rain slaps the window and through it you can just see the closing horizon and feel the huge indifference of the sea.

He leaned against his car, thinking of Sophie and flicking the lid of a lighter, backwards and forwards. He stared at the flame as it shuddered in his hand. A door rattled shut somewhere round the side of the Pleroma Bar. He looked up and saw Sophie, walking like she barely touched the ground. He waited for her to go past, staring with his lost cow eyes. She didn't pass, she stopped and smiled all the way to his soul. "How're you doing?" she said. "I was wondering if you'd come out." "Why's that?" she asked. "Are you going home," he replied, "or could we go somewhere, anywhere, I'll take you anywhere?" "Not without gas you won't." She came closer, like she wanted to reassure him, "As male fantasies go, isn't this rather obvious? You know, the stripper with a heart of gold and a degree in astrophysics?"

She watched his embarrassment and touched his arm. "Don't worry, it's never just that is it? What did you think of the show?" "You were wonderful," he said. She frowned, "I didn't quite mean that. The audience, what about them?" He shrugged, "I hadn't... ." "You," Sophie interrupted, "had the word 'deadbeats' floating around your head. Deadbeats, creeps, and losers. My little ones, I call them. When they come to the bar, they're like ghosts, drifting in on puffs of dusty air. They're forgotten, you see, nobody remembers them; every day, five minutes after they leave home, then five minutes after they've left work, they might as well have gone for good." "That's bad," he said. "They come here," she said, "because they know who I am, because I wake them up. Remember the feeling, when you're way inside your head, and the mind's eating itself, till there's hardly a thought left, and no whole ones. My little ones sit by the stage just like that, and I come out and make their hearts beat.

Hope and desire, hope and desire: I came a long way to get attention like that. My eyes and theirs, theirs beginning to open. Away with the bar, and the poles, and the stage -- it all slips aside and what we see in each other is a whole universe. I lift up my little ghosts and tell them to come alive." "Do they?" he asked. "You were there. And if they could only hold on to what they see they'd always have life." "I'd hold onto you," he said. "That's not what I meant. You'd hold me down, you'd have me like a diploma on your wall. And you'd rob those little 'deadbeats' of mine." "I'd give everything for you," He grabbed her hands. She didn't resist, just said, "you'd need to." "Oh, you're a high-maintenance woman, then?" he tried to laugh. "You've no idea," she gently pressed his hands back on his chest and he let go, "I must leave now. Come back; I'll be dancing."

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, reclined on the deep green sward of heaven. Over them, they stretched the vast canopy of their glory and around their glory was the blue, celestial sky in which, despite its brilliance, stars shone as clearly as in dead night. Even by the exacting standards of heaven, it was a nice day. The Father swept a package out of an infinitely capacious and radiant sleeve. "Here it is," he said. He handed it to the Son who unwrapped a roll of what looked like black cloth covered in silver specks. Then he spread it out between them like a blanket. All three looked down, obviously pleased. "It's the universe," said the Son. "Woven by wisdom," the Father clenched his hands in excitement. "Ah!" said the Son, "my Sophia." "Our Sophia, surely?" said the Father." Thee Son winked at the Spirit who said, "Well, you should know."

They sat down again and watched the silver ripples over the black surface, the bright flecks parting and joining, clustering in patterns, settling in bright configurations. "Clever," said the Son, "so very clever, Sophia. Look how she's stitched herself into the weave." The Holy Spirit put her hands together and waved them over the young creation. They cast a shadow like a bird, hovering. "You can see her better now," she said. And that was true; the whole buzzing, black space seemed to stretch downwards almost forever, and everything was sharpening and settling into rhythms. The music was amazing and the Son started to swing and rock gently backwards and forwards, "you know," he said, "we ought to call that 'jazz'." Eventually, in a rather modest little corner of the cosmos, they saw the creature they were looking for. "Here we are," said the Father.

"There's the difficulty," he went on, "considered as a whole, from up here, as it were, the whole thing is quite extraordinary, the design, the beauty of it, one could enjoy it forever." "That's Sophia for you" said the Son. "But how do you think it looks from down there?" The Spirit leaned over the dark wonder, "You mean it might be difficult to grasp?" She leaned a little further, "You know, you're right. I think we have a problem. Wisdom, as one might put it, is hidden from the eyes of the living, and concealed even from the birds of the air." "A nice turn of phrase, that," said the Father, "but, of course, with this lot," the Father pointed at two naked figures talking amiably to a pair of giraffes, "there's going to be sin as well." "Oh! yes, sin," muttered the Spirit.

At that moment it almost seemed as if a cloud had passed across the blue sky of heaven and around the canopy of their glory. They must have sensed it too because there was a long pause and a sadness on their faces. "It's difficult to do isn't it," the Son broke the silence, "only to see the part but to trust the whole?" "They won't even see the part," said the Spirit, "or, at least, they'll look at the wrong part or else see the right part in the wrong way." "We could show them," said the Son. God the Father sat up, he looked like he was waiting for something, "carry on," he said. "Well, we might show them what it's like to create, you know, a microcosm, a small world of wisdom, one their size." He stopped, "Of course, they can't make something from nothing but then, we might show them how to make something from about as nothing as they know." "Well, if we can do that," said the Spirit, "we can show them how the dead are raised." "Aren't you forgetting something," asked the Father, "one of us is going to have to go?" "And show them how to die?" "I'm afraid so." "Who's gets the job, then?" said the Son. The Father looked to the Spirit and the Spirit looked to the Son; and the Son looked to the Father and the Father and the Spirit stared back at him." "Well, I guess that settles it," he said.

The rain goes on slapping against my window; my view shivers and drowns. Now the sea has swallowed its white crests and the waves fall, twist, and run into ruin like the possessed. Gulls, eiders, and shags are blown away, fighting for their nests. Where is Wisdom? Off somewhere, I suppose, playing about in the unknown wood where the sun glows on an unseen clearing and unheard birds sing. Sometimes, in occasional illuminations, I catch God, ruling like a night-time cat on a fence top, there and then gone, off prowling. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot my life in the wisdom of God's work. Just in snatches, enough time to pull up my collar before another cloud breaks. "Where is Wisdom?" asks Job, as his life bursts and disaster sweeps it away. You can dig for it, he notes, and come up with jewels and dust, unwise as ever; you may pursue it through microscopes, run after the configurations of birds or climb trees to where the butterflies breed on the forest roof, you might drift in space and slide about the satellite's silver panels, and be none the wiser for any of it.

So, where is Wisdom? Round the door where the crowd twists and pushes and heaves, and Jesus sends the demons packing and clothes his little ones in the right mind of heaven. Wisdom rejoicing at the plain and naked beauty of what is hidden to the knowing and revealed to the needy. Where is Wisdom? Staring up a tree at that trembling voyeur, clinging Zacchaeus, inviting him to a world new made under his own roof. There is Wisdom, swaying on a boat, the crowd quiet, lepers, sick, and blind made whole, Jesus revealing the eternal contemplations in a nutshell. Heaven in paraphrase. There is Wisdom, pinned upon the confines of a cross: the perfect summation of the love that moves stars and seeks out sinners. Love condensed into a cry: "Father, forgive." And here is Wisdom. Risen on a hill top, the light for all nations, the maker of the world, within the world; comprehending vastness and the long stretch of time, within a miniature.

Now you know what to expect. Now, when your whole life is a moment understood, when everything is warranted by God's plain signature, and when you see a divine and lovely Wisdom in the forming of your days, be grateful because you are near the tip of heaven. But be clear, you are near the tip of heaven, too, when the cloud bursts and the day is obscure because then the heart is called out of itself to work, to follow the Son of Man, to share in his suffering, to forgive, make peace, and love. It is then that Wisdom, who cries at crossroads, where thieves are hung, makes worlds from nothing, as at the beginning, and then again, and out of our nothing now. All so that we may fear the Lord, depart from evil, and hear in love's ordinary ways, the music of eternal spheres.

Amen.