Secrets and Lies
A sermon preached by the Revd Canon Dr Alison Joyce on Advent Sunday, 29th November 2009
In the name of the living God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
Some of you will, I’m sure, have seen Mike Leigh’s 1996 Oscar-nominated film, Secrets and Lies. If you haven’t yet seen it, if ever you do get the chance, don’t miss it. It is a quite astonishingly good movie. Like many of Mike Leigh’s films it is a wonderful combination of the comic and the tragic, observed with painful accuracy; and it is as heart-wrenching as it is heart-warming. But there is one particular moment in that film that I would like to talk to you about this morning, for reasons that shall become apparent.
In the film, a young woman called Hortense, who was adopted at birth, decides to trace her birth mother - a decision prompted by the death of her much-loved adoptive parents. Her birth mother, it turns out, is Cynthia – fragile; defeated; damaged; crippled by low self-esteem; but ultimately a very kind and sweet-hearted woman, who still lives in the squalid little terrace house in which she had herself grown up, with its leaking roof, and rooms stuffed full of her parents’ junk, left untouched since their own deaths.
Having concealed the existence of the daughter she gave up for adoption all those years before, Cynthia is initially horrified and panic-stricken when Hortense makes contact with her. But eventually, curiosity gets the better of her, and she agrees to meet Hortense outside a London tube station.
So, we are shown Hortense and Cynthia waiting patiently together outside Holborn tube station, each completely unaware that the person she is waiting for is in fact already standing there. Hortense’s life is darkened by bereavement; Cynthia’s life is darkened by despair. And their meeting is, in prospect, very risky for them both – not only because it is a step into the unknown for each of them – possibly leading to untold disappointment, rejection and hurt; but also because, for very different reasons, and in ways that they themselves can barely articulate, there is a great deal at stake; Hortense is seeking something that will help to take her away from the void of grief in which she finds herself; Cynthia is desperate for anything at all that will take her out of the desolate life in which she feels so utterly and irrevocably trapped.
So there they are, waiting anxiously for each other outside Holborn tube station. And why do they have such difficulty recognising each other? Because they are not seeing what they expect to see. Cynthia, who is white, had always assumed that her lost daughter was white too, she having been completely mistaken, as it turns out, about the true identity of the girl’s father.
Hortense is black, and so had been utterly baffled when she read on her adoption papers that her mother was in fact white, assuming at first that it must be a mistake in the paperwork.
And so her first tentative approach is met by Cynthia’s outright denials – ‘no - this can’t be right’; until slowly and painfully realisation dawns and Cynthia recognises that this delightful, intelligent, professional young black woman is indeed her long-lost daughter. And so the relationship between mother and daughter begins to unfold, and in time, brings the deepest and most profound healing, not only for the two of them, but also for the whole of Cynthia’s fragile and broken family, every member of which has been crippled by the secrets and lies that had previously bedevilled their lives and kept them distant from one another.
So, why am I recounting this story to you in such detail? Because what I have just described to you is Advent. Let me explain.
One of the hardest things that any human being ever has to deal with is darkness. Real darkness. The kind of spiritual or emotional darkness that descends the minute that you wake up in the morning, and envelopes every waking moment of the day that lies ahead. The kind of darkness that feels like a life-sentence, because you cannot see how or when it can possibly end. Anyone who has experienced deep bereavement, the loss of someone really close, will probably recognise what I am describing. The same is true of despair, whatever its specific cause: anyone who has ever known what it is to feel trapped and helpless within a situation, or a relationship that they feel is destroying them, but from which they see no way out, will know all about darkness. It descends over your life like a thick fog; obscuring everything else around you, sapping you of energy, draining the life from you.
And what does it mean to speak of hope when one is in the midst of such terrible darkness? Well, there is, of course, the kind of hope that is little more than fantasy and self-delusion; the sort of hope that amounts to a complete denial of the true reality of the situation, and which is actually of little help to anyone. Some years ago I saw an incredibly poignant television documentary about the prostitutes who work on the streets of Kings Cross in London. These girls are at the very bottom of the social heap: these are girls who conduct their business on filthy mattresses under dingy railway arches.
And one of them, a hollow-eyed little waif, who was probably aged in her early twenties, although she looked more than twice as old as that, explained to the interviewer that, of course, she wasn’t going to be doing this forever – because when eventually she had had enough of it, she was going to marry a rich man, and live in a lovely big house. And you had to weep for her. Because what that girl was articulating wasn’t hope: it was nothing but a ludicrous fantasy, born of utter and unremitting despair. One had to weep for that poor girl, lost, and unloved, and violated, and abused.
Because real hope is different altogether: real hope is far more than day dreams and wishful thinking; which is, of course, why it often comes to us in the form of a gift; unexpected, catching us unawares. Real hope is sometimes borne of the merest glimpse of a new possibility – which is why it tends not to have the bold over-confidence of fantasy; real hope can be a fragile thing, as vulnerable as a flickering candle flame. It is a hope that will often have to compete with the temptation to despair. And to embrace that hope may require risk on our part; it may ask of us that we take a first tentative step from where we are out into the unknown. It may require of us that we trust and believe, in spite of ourselves, and in spite of our doubts. But nevertheless that is the path that, ultimately, will lead us from darkness into light. And that is of a piece with how God works.
In Mike Leigh’s film, an illegitimate child, born into shame, and poverty and squalor, grows up into a young woman whose entry into a situation sets in motion a train of event that will eventually bring healing and hope into a fractured and despairing family. How very interesting that for us, too, the coming of hope, the coming of light into the world at Christmas, is linked with the birth of an illegitimate child, born two thousand years ago into shame and poverty and squalor; and that it is his entry into a fractured and despairing world that will eventually bring with it healing and hope and salvation. There in the filthy animal shed on that first Christmas night. It is there that the first glimmer of light dawns.
So, did Mike Leigh construct his film with such Christian themes in mind? No, of course, not – apart from anything else, he happens to be Jewish. The point is actually the opposite: namely, that Advent addresses some of the most powerful, most profound and most timeless of human realities, and it does so authentically, and with absolute authority. But importantly, as I observed last Sunday, when we as a worshipping community experience and explore the darkness of Advent, as we wait for light to dawn, we do not do so alone. This is a journey that we travel together; and because we are not alone, we need not be so afraid.
Advent is a time of waiting; and for those who sit in darkness, waiting can feel interminable; particularly when it is unclear how long the darkness will remain, or how on earth anything is ever going to change for long enough to let in the light.
But, of course, just as Cynthia and Hortense were to discover, those two desolate women waiting for one another outside Holborn tube station – sometimes the solution that we seek; the one thing we are waiting for, and yearning for, is in fact already there, in our very midst. The problem can be our inability to see what is there, waiting for us all along.
Amen