Audio: What sort of Christ?

for Bramhall Parish News

WHEN I WAS A BOY, 13 years old, my then parish priest, much loved and highly respected, placed these words in my hand as a rather straggly group of choristers walked to a nearby elderly person’s home, on a cold, rainy and very unromantic night, for a Christmas Carol Service. “This is for you”, he said, “for tonight. And forever.” And I encountered God that night as never before. And I’ve been encountering him ever since. And now I don’t need to carry the bit of paper around with me to remember these words of Ivan Sergeyevitch Turgenev (1818-1883)

I saw myself in a dream, a youth, almost a boy, in a low pitched wooden church. The slim wax candles gleamed, spots of red, before the old pictures of the saints. A ring of coloured light encircled each tiny flame. Dark and dim it was in the church, which was full of people. All fair-haired, peasant heads. From time to time they began swaying, falling, rising again, like the ripe ears of wheat, when the wind of summer passes in slow undulation over them.

All at once some man came up from behind and stood beside me. I did not turn towards him, but at once I felt that this man was Christ. Emotion, curiosity, awe overmastered me suddenly. I made an effort, and looked at my neighbour. A face like everyone’s, a face like all men’s faces. The eyes looked a little upwards, quietly and intently. The lips closed but not compressed; the upper lip, as it were, resting on the lower; a small beard parted in two. The hands folded and still. And the clothes on him like everyone’s.

‘What sort of Christ is this?’ I thought. ‘Such an ordinary, ordinary man! It can’t be! …’ And I turned away. But I had hardly turned my eyes away from this ordinary man than I felt again overwhelmingly that this was none other than Christ standing beside me. Again I made an effort over myself, and again the same face like all the other faces, the same every-day features, and suddenly my heart sank. Only then did I realize that just such a face, a face like other faces is the face of Christ.

Happy Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy Centenary Year St Michael and All Angels  Bramhall. These words are for you, too. For tonight and forever.