12 th September: 16 th Sunday after Pentecost

The ‘Unstately’ Wisdom of Jesus

A couple of years ago I visited Calke Abbey in Derbyshire. It’s been owned by the National Trust since 1985, but it’s not a typical Trust property. This former Elizabethan house was re-built and converted into a stately home 300 years ago. But by the time its former owners handed it over to the National Trust, it was in serious decline. The house and gardens hadn’t been touched since the 1880s. Its new owners decided not to return it to its former glory, but to allow their ethos of ‘repair not restore’ to halt the decay without reversing it. And so Calke Abbey is being transformed once again, this time into what the Trust calls an ‘unstately home’, which makes no attempt to glorify the world that made it stately. Its treasure-trove of books and ceramics and pictures and furniture is now a striking monument to a long-gone world and a lost way of life.

My visit to Calke Abbey makes me wonder about the conversation recorded in today’s gospel, and how Jesus came across to those who saw and heard him. How ‘stately’ or ‘unstately’ a figure was he? For some he was a marginal person—like the prophets who were forever criticising powerful rulers and priests, or the wilderness-dwelling John the Baptist whose courage cost him his life. In the eyes of his disciples, Jesus is much more mainstream. ‘You are the Christ’, says Peter, speaking for them all, ‘God’s anointed’, a new David, the shepherd-turned-statesman who was eventually successful enough to have an army, an empire and a palace in his capital city.

But who is Jesus really closest to—stately kings or ‘unstately’ prophets? Peter hopes that Jesus will defeat God’s enemies, and restore God’s people with their promised land and temple to their rightful place in the world. Peter’s Christ could only do this by taking power from others. Jesus believes that the days of this kind of anointed stately leadership are long-gone, so Peter and the others mustn’t broadcast their hopes about him. In the face of the latest crisis brought on by imperial occupation, he redefines the vocation of God’s anointed by alluding to a vision from another crisis two centuries earlier.

It’s as if Jesus responds to Peter’s declaration by saying:

You say that I’m the Christ. But this messiah is more like the human figure brought before the Ancient of Days in Daniel’s heavenly vision. ¹ His ‘son of man’ represents those who were so loyal to God that they lost everything, even life itself. Yet they are the ones who are promised God’s kingdom. What you have to realise is that I don’t use God’s power like the stately David, who established his reign by taking power from others. The power of God flows from me. I give it away. This son of man didn’t come to be served like an earthly ruler, but to serve others by giving his life away. ² That’s how true freedom comes to God’s world.

Peter is not impressed by Jesus’ unconventional vision of an ‘unstately’ messiah. But Jesus goes on to extend what he says about losing and finding life to his followers. They too must be prepared to take up their cross and lose their life for his sake ³ —to let power flow from them and not simply to them, as the ‘unstately’ messiah’s agents of liberation.

Thinking about my visit to Calke Abbey, I wonder about its positive message for today. Without romanticising this ‘unstately home’—whatever else it is, it’s a tourist attraction with considerable drawing power—it may be that by repairing rather than restoring the buildings and grounds, the National Trust is redefining their message for our world. As if to say, ‘our future is not about glorifying the past by rebuilding a world that is long-gone. We’re now called to show what happens when we allow power to flow from us more than to us.’ If that’s what Calke Abbey is saying, it may be a place of insight and wisdom. Like many other former stately homes, Calke now offers a wide-ranging welcome and hospitality. It’s also the scene of environmental conservation and renewal, as it extends its woodland, creates a haven for rare butterflies and offers itself as a resource for wellbeing through contact with nature.

Calke Abbey’s ‘unstately’ wisdom sheds light on Jesus’ words about finding life by losing it. Suppose we see them as guidance for those who want to live wisely and well in a fast-changing world. Today’s readings are drawn from wisdom writings across the Bible. The first part of Psalm 19 is an invitation to learn from the rhythms of creation. The daily journey of the sun followed by the appearance of the night sky point beyond themselves to their creator. Wisdom lies in acknowledging that humankind cannot be the crown of creation. We have to abandon these delusions and all that fuels them. The passage from James 3 warns teachers to speak wisely. The tongue can both bless and curse, and at its worst is as devastating as a forest fire, as we see when our words are communicated carelessly through social media. Living wisely and well requires the humility that means losing our desire to put ourselves and our rapid-fire thoughts at the centre of the world.

We don’t readily see wisdom in words about living by losing after a year in which so many people across the world have lost lives, loved ones, livelihoods and more. Is Jesus really saying that loss is the secret of life? The call to martyrdom is an extreme manifesto. Perhaps this is why Luke’s account is slightly but significantly different: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.’ ⁴ Living by losing runs the risk of losing everything in the face of extreme threats. Luke adapts Jesus’ wisdom to a world that has a future. In the extreme circumstances of a pandemic, how might Jesus’ wisdom shape our lives as we to hope to return to some kind of normal?

The poet Elizabeth Bishop wrote about ‘the art of losing’ in her poem One Art ⁵ . She reckons that loss is so much built into daily life that ‘the art of losing isn’t hard to master’, and this even applies to losing those we love. When this happens, ‘the art of losing’s not too hard to master / though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster’. I first came across this poem in the film Still Alice (2014). The central character, played by the award-winning Julianne Moore, is a linguistics professor diagnosed with early onset dementia soon after her 50^th birthday. The narrative follows the impact of losing her memory on her family and work. Elizabeth Bishop’s poem is read to Alice by one of her daughters. The film was well-received by dementia sufferers, one of whom wrote: ‘There is an art to losing and you need to master it. I’m losing my memories, my abilities, my happiness—and one day I will lose being me’. Pastoral theologian John Swinton sees dementia as a condition we are asked to view from the perspective of the person experiencing it, rather than allowing its psychological and spiritual dimensions to be buried under the weight of diagnosis and medication. ⁶ He seems to be advocating an ‘art of losing’ that allows expertise to flow from sufferers and their carers, and not just professionals. This ‘unstately’ wisdom will help to redefine those diagnosed with dementia as persons, and reconnect them to their spiritual communities, families, and God.

As we look towards 2050, we naturally wonder about the wisdom we can trust to guide us. Our common future cannot be about rebuilding past glories, but renewing our relationships with ourselves, our history, our planet. The ’art of losing’ may be harder to master than Elizabeth Bishop suggests. It will require wisdom learnt in testing times and hard places, like that of an ‘unstately’ messiah who believes that we will only ever find life by losing it. So we pray for grace, insight and courage, to practise the wisdom of Jesus and commend his way to others.