Trinity: Nothing Compares to You

It’s been 7 hours and 15 days, Since you took your love away…

I don’t know if children watch music videos anymore. Sixth form common rooms at the end of the twentieth-century were awash with music videos and occasionally one was striking enough to be remembered for, well, at least three decades. So the video of Sinead O’Connor singing Prince’s song: ‘Nothing Compares to You’ is one you don’t forget. The whole video is a close up of her face – filling the whole screen – A beautiful, elfin face exaggerated by a buzz-cut lack of hair And, throughout, singing with all the raw emotion of hurt and anger and grief; tears gently falling down her cheeks; It is achingly vulnerable – Uncomfortable to watch, hard to look away.

The song is simple – melodramatic – but the beginning is effective – Grief turns you backwards – it’s been 7 hours and 15 days – I go out every night and sleep all day. With all those synth strings and synth vocals who wouldn’t be moved? It’s a vision of poor, bare, forked humanity, And when that doesn’t move us, Doesn’t make us turn aside, Well then something’s gone wrong.

Once you know the poem, it’s impossible not to hear it immediately when you come to today’s Gospel readings. R.S. Thomas is a better writer than Prince, but his music videos were an embarrassment.

I have seen the sun break through
to illuminate a small field
for a while, and gone my way
and forgotten it.  But that was the
pearl of great price, the one field that had
treasure in it.  I realise now
that I must give all that I have
to possess it.  Life is not hurrying 

on to a receding future, nor hankering after
an imagined past.  It is the turning
aside like Moses to the miracle
of the lit bush, to a brightness
that seemed as transitory as your youth
once, but is the eternity that awaits you.

Thomas does pretty well at maintaining the sense of the parable. The image is one we know well – When we suddenly catch sight of a field of bright rapeseed, or the sun breaks through the clouds over the sea – Or any of a million natural moments of wonder, which strike the eye like a revelation and then pass on; Sometimes accompanied by the solid reassurance of David Attenborough’s voice – at least if you don’t get out much. Sometimes observed with joy as a child grows and every change is an unexpected miracle.

These natural wonders are the visual image – to which Thomas suggests the theological counterpart is the moment of epiphany, a glimpse behind the veil; A second’s breath of eternity. Humankind cannot bear very much reality.

Now people get that sense of the divine in nature. But that’s not what Jesus or Thomas is getting at here. Jesus uses agricultural parables because he’s talking to peasants. Thomas uses these images because Welsh people used to know their Bibles, and his readers like to go for nice walks. But nature is not the point.

Jesus’ examples are of how one small, hidden thing is more important that everything. If we discover what is truly valuable, then we’ll be prepared to sacrifice everything else for it. Just as when a child has an accident you would even drive into the ULEZ, braving Putney bridge, to get to hospital; especially if it was so urgent that driving round St George’s for forty minutes looking for a parking space didn’t seem like an option.

But in Thomas’ poem we have a slightly surprising adaptation. Because Thomas suggests that in this transitory bloom – in the moment of the bright field – a moment as transitory as your youth – that is where we discover eternity. Eternity juxta-posed with the passing moment.

So what is this bright field? What is the brief encounter that we might turn aside for? Discovering something like eternity, Something like the kingdom of God?

It can be beauty, The beauty of a lofted drive or an elegant forehand, Things that bring us together – that create shared solidarity – or whatever in art, music or nature thrills us. That which enables our concentration, our wonder, above all establishes a sense of unity; meaning and coherence amid the chaos of life.

But the word which best captures how I think Jesus understands these parables is ‘incarnation’. The Word made flesh. All those parables could be Jesus speaking about himself. Jesus is the least of all seeds – counted as nothing in life – Jesus sown in death becomes something greater after death – large enough to lodge all the birds in its branches. Jesus the leaven who rises – and gives to all the resurrection of the dead – Jesus the treasure that his disciples must give everything to purchase, The pearl of great price – The net that brings in all humanity.

These parables are images of incarnation, Of how Jesus brings to the world the kingdom of God. But they also concern the preciousness of human life. How just as in that other parable Jesus will seek out the one lost sheep – conveying the absolute value of every person – So the smallest seed here may become the greatest of shrubs; The hidden kingdom of God within you, will raise you like leaven; You are the pearl of great price for which God himself will sell everything. You have the kingdom of God hidden within you, that like the children of Narnia, gives you an unexpected royal inheritance. And the more you are in this world lowly and vulnerable, grieving and injured, the more capacity you have to be transformed by the riches of God.

We may not see it. We may be hurrying to a future where all the problems and difficulties we are facing will have been dealt with; We may be hankering after a past, when we imagine life was so much easier. It’s a step of faith to find God in the present moment – In all its complications.

There’s a famous atheist play, from which the punchline comes that hell is other people. It provides a good contrast with Christianity, because Christ argued the opposite: That other people are heaven.

When we encounter a face – filling our screen – With all the emotion of a broken down lovesong – The anger, frustration, tears, grief, affection and confusion that life brings – It might feel like a distraction, an inconvenience, an imposition; But that is the kingdom of God. That is the field in which treasure is buried, the pearl of great price. Jesus is saying that is what he would give his life for. Because where suffering meets compassion is the place of redemption. And it’s there that the kingdom of God becomes a tree in which the birds of the air will come and make their nests.

Let us be awake enough to notice the bright field. Let us be generous enough to afford the pearl of great price. Let us find God through our tears and the tears of others. Amen.