Readings: Exodus 17:1-7; Philippians 2:5-11
On Friday night, I tuned into the auditions for the TV programme X-Factor – this time, the American version. Thousands upon thousands of people lined up, waiting for hours in the sweltering heat – seeking something special beyond their ordinary lives; hoping for a chance; longing to be chosen – to be discovered as the next hot favourite in the pop music world.
There’s no word to describe some of the auditions, other than plain awful. Along with the audience and the judges, I found myself wincing as some excruciatingly dreadful attempts to sing were offered by obviously deluded people, who thought they had the X-factor! Occasionally we were all spell-bound by some extraordinary talent.
But the one person, who stayed with me long after the credits rolled, was 49 year old Dexter. He swaggered on to the stage (a predictable “Mick Jagger and James Brown all rolled into one”[1], with his vintage disco dude heels and his sparkly Memphis jacket) and delivered a copycat rendition of a 1970s James Brown song. The judges were quick to criticise his lack of originality, hinting at his phony attempts to be what he was not; and yet somehow, they could see the potential that lay behind the mimicry, the sparkles and the crazy behaviour. “You know,” judge Simon Cowell addressed Dexter, “Forget the craziness, I’d like to hear you sing something else. 15 seconds a capella – just you.” After some poignant moments of silence, and then with tears sparkling in his eyes, Dexter “offered up a soulful, passionate minute”, drawing delighted screams from the audience and warm affirmations from the judges. Stripped to his soul, we caught a glimpse of the genuine, truly human Dexter, whose song will continue to be heard.
How often are we stripped to our souls? How often, do people see the genuine you? So often, this only happens at times of challenge and difficulty; like Dexter, who had reached the point where he had nothing to lose. Sometimes it’s at those points of deepest despair that our true selves are revealed.
I think that’s part of what is being described in what we know as the Philippian hymn that is our reading tonight – here Jesus is described as stripped to his soul. Here, the one who could have acted god-like, strutting across the stage of life in power and glory, demanding that people bow to him, instead emptied himself of all greatness, becoming genuinely human – like us – providing us with a role model so that we too might discover our X-Factor.
John O’Donahue’s poem “The unknown self” might help us recognise our genuine human self, which lies within:
So much of what delights and troubles you
Happens on a surface
You take for ground.
Your mind thinks your life alone,
Your eyes consider air your nearest neighbor,
Yet it seems that a little below your heart
There houses in you an unknown self
Who prefers the patterns of the dark
And is not persuaded by the eye’s affection
Or caught by the flash of thought.
It is a self that enjoys contemplative patience
With all your unfolding expression,
Is never drawn to break into light
Though you entangle yourself in unworthiness
And misjudge what you do and who you are.
It presides within like an evening freedom
That will often see you enchanted by twilight
Without ever recognizing the falling night,
It resembles the under-earth of your visible life:
All you do, and say and think is fostered
Deep in its opaque and prevenient clay,
It dwells in a strange, yet rhythmic ease
That is not ruffled by disappointment;
It presides in a deeper current of time
Free from the force of cause and sequence
That otherwise shapes your life.
Were it to break forth into day,
Its dark light might quench your mind
For it knows how your primeval heart
Sisters every cell of your life
To all your known mind would avoid.
Thus it knows to dwell in you gently,
Offering you only discreet glimpses
Of how you construct your life.
At times, it will lead you strangely,
Magnetized by some resonance
That ambushes your vigilance.
It works most resolutely at night
As the poet who draws your dreams,
Creating for you many secret doors,
Decorated with pictures of your hunger.
It has the dignity of the angelic
That knows you to your roots,
Always awaiting your deeper befriending
To take you beyond the threshold of want,
Where all your diverse strainings
Can come to wholesome ease.[2]
Here at the Table, where we remember our calling to be the Body of Christ, here we can find our true souls revealed. “Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus”, the Philippian hymn urges. Here at the Table, we can be taken beyond the threshold of our wanting, to that place of wholesome ease, where we sing the authentic song of our soul, becoming one with the Horizon of our Longing.
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