It seems that I am running out of sermon titles, since with a little research I have discovered that it was only two years or so ago that I preached one with this same name. However, I haven't run out of things to say about it - particularly in relation to the New Year. We take some time, as the calendar changes, and we begin to have to erase the date that we have written on our checks, to look back at what we have accomplished and at how we have failed to accomplish what we had hoped, and make new resolutions for the future. Often the resolutions that we make can simply be a copy of the list from last year as we often make resolutions that are too difficult for us to achieve. We seem no more successful at finding our own version of the Holy Grail than were the knights of Arthur's round table. I don't really think that is a wholly bad thing. My mother used to quote the line, "If your reach does not exceed your grasp, then what's a heaven for?" It is the unachievable goal of perfection that enables us to grow and change for the good as long as the fact that it is truly unachievable does not either depress us or make us cynical - or, even worse, self-righteous, if we forgive our own failures too easily. We need, it seems, to seek the Grail with no expectation of finding it, though we can perhaps seek to get a little nearer if we know in what direction to travel. That may be the hardest part.
You know the story of the quest for the Grail. Actually, I'm never quite sure any more if people do know the same stories that we used to be brought up on, even the ones that have shaped our culture as much as this one has. However, Walt Disney made a cartoon of the beginning of the story of Arthur (The Sword in the Stone, based on T. H. White's book, The Once and Future King, which I think most of us have seen), the hit musical, Camelot, based on the same book, was made into a movie, and more recently Dan Brown made a travesty of the story of the Grail itself in The Da Vinci Code. I do hope that none of you really thought that anyone had ever believed that the Holy Grail was actually a symbol of Mary Magdalene. It was the cup from which Jesus is supposed to have drunk at the Last Supper. If there ever was a significant cult of Mary Magdalene, which I suppose there may have been, since someone at least wrote a gospel purporting to be hers, it had nothing to do with the Grail. However, nowadays that may be all most people know of the story, so a recap may be in order.
Various versions of the story of King Arthur and his knights have been told for fifteen hundred years. The oldest extant literary work in English is "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", one of several stories about one of the most famous of the knights whom Arthur gathered around himself in an effort of unite the kingdom and put down the violence and sorcery that were rife in England in his day, whenever that may have been. There is no evidence outside of the many ballads and stories that have been written that Arthur existed at all, but if he did, it may have been around 500 A. D. The stories, written much later - even "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" have the trappings of a later era with the armor and weapons of the late Middle Ages. Anyway, according to the story, after Arthur proved his right to the throne by pulling out a sword set magically into a stone, he came up with the idea of gathering the best knights together in the fellowship of the round table in which they would vow to defend the right and fight the wrong in England. The table was round so that they would all be equal with no vying for place or honor. That, of course, was a vain hope, since we all have our score cards ready to rank ourselves and others as to our standing in whatever game of life we play. It was wildly successful. All the anonymous knights in black armor waiting by streams to inflict violence on innocent passersby, all the giants and sorcerers and all the rebellious nobles were defeated and there was peace and wellbeing throughout the land of England.
The only problem was that they got bored. There was nothing left to do but keep their scorecards current with tournaments and bicker among themselves - along with other pastimes of an even more improper nature. They'd go out on a quest and not find a sorceress or a giant from one end of England to the other. It was time for a spiritual renewal. That seems to be an almost universal expectation. In adult developmental psychology, the last stage, after the work of the individual is done, is a stage of spiritual reflection and renewal. It is no accident that most congregations have more older than younger people in them. In the Hindu faith certain proper stages are set forth for people's lives, and again the last one is that of the spiritual life. After the childhood, the soldiering and the householding, it is time for a person to make his soul. (His soul. Just as in the west women's spiritual development was irrelevant as long as she did her duty of bearing and rearing children.) As with all such templates there are almost as many exceptions as those who follow the pattern, but I suppose it does make some sense. When you're younger you're so busy living you don't have much time to ask yourself why you're doing it which is what the spiritual quest is about. The reason, I believe, that the story of Arthur and his knights continues to be a living myth is that it deepens into questions of good and evil, sin and guilt, forgiveness and atonement. The quest for the Grail is the symbol of the renewal that we seek in the New Year, putting our failings behind us, beginning again in love.
The best knight, the one whose scorecard was 100% was Sir Lancelot. He had never been defeated in battle, he was generous, kind, chivalrous, honorable, all the virtues but one. He was having a long-term affair with his best friend's wife, Queen Guinevere. Nevertheless, everyone expected that if any of them were to find the Grail Lancelot would be the one. Shortly before the quest began a new young knight had come to Camelot and was seated in the magical Siege Perilous that it was death for anyone else to sit in. This was Sir Galahad. He was Lancelot's son from a long-ago nearly forgotten liaison he had had with Galahad's mother Elaine, the Lily-Maid of Astolat. Tennyson's Idylls of the King went into this in great detail. There is one thing everyone thinks he or she knows about Galahad, and that is that he was a perfect gentlemen, treating ladies with chivalrous gentleness and courtesy. In fact, so far as I could gather, all he was interested in was saving his own soul. The first thing he did on the quest for the Grail was to defeat his own father in battle, and after that it was just a straight shot to the Grail. It was Lancelot's first defeat and presaged his failure to find the Grail. He was, because of his sincere penance and confession allowed to watch the three knights who did find it whose only qualification for their immediate translation into heaven along with the sacred object of their quest was that they were virgins. The near-virgin who was also there for that last earthly communion served in the sacred cup came home to tell the story.
Lancelot was thoroughly chastened. Not only had he been defeated in battle but he had been refused the goal of his quest. He made good resolutions for the future. And he broke them. Ultimately his breaking them gave Arthur's enemies the tool they needed to overcome him. According to the story he was not killed but translated to the Isle of Avalon where he lies sleeping until England has need of him again, but it is neither Arthur nor Sir Galahad who hold our interest, but Sir Lancelot in his sin and penitence, his repeated resolutions to do better and his repeated failure. It is his broken humanity that matters to us. We too quest for the Holy Grail and each December 31st we try again. Sometimes we succeed. Often, like Lancelot, we fail.
I may have told you before about my perfect mechanic, one I went to when I was in Louisiana. Actually, he was a pretty good mechanic, honest and conscientious. Anyway, he told me that he had become perfect. He used to be a sinner like everybody else but he had been redeemed and was now perfect. It would be impossible for him to be otherwise now that he had been saved. I had not realized that antinomianism still had its believers, but when I questioned him, he said that it no longer mattered what he did, now that he was perfect it had become impossible fort it to be a sin. I suppose there is a kind of logic in that, but on reflection I decided that I preferred people who were still aware that they were liable to error and might continue to need forgiveness.
There are a lot of parables in the New Testament of various sorts, but the parables of the Kingdom have always troubled me. They purport to indicate what it will be like when the Kingdom of God is finally here. One of them is the story of the wise and foolish virgins. They were carry lamps to a wedding. (I'm not sure what the point of that is, but I'm certain there was some sort of ritual reason for it.) The wise virgins had filled their lamps with oil and when the bridegroom came they were all ready to light them. The foolish virgins had come all unprepared, but they asked the wise virgins to share their oil with them. The wise virgins refused. They said no one knew when the bridegroom was coming and if the foolish virgins weren't ready, that was their problem. I'm not saying that the foolish virgins were anything but foolish and they certainly should have known better - and I trust that in future they will prepare themselves better (that might be one of their New Year's resolutions) - but they certainly can't compare in self-righteous priggishness with the wise virgins. I much prefer the stories of the careful shepherd who searched until he found his lost sheep and the prodigal son whose father welcomed him back with feasts and rejoicing although he had done everything he could to alienate him. Mind you, I sympathize with the elder son who complains that he never gets any feasts and rejoicing for being good, but forgiveness is, at one time or another, necessary to us all, both to give and to receive.
With Gerald Ford's death there has been a lot of discussion about whether he was right or wrong to grant Richard Nixon a pardon, whether it was cheap grace or the right thing to do. The easy answer is that of course he was right from a realistic point of view. Given the realities of trials I can not even bear to imagine the long agony it would have been, the media circus and even the possibility that Nixon would have been exonerated. Stranger things have happened. On the other hand it also seemed to me that he was forgiven much too easily. It was not long, or at least not long enough, that he was making pronouncements like an elder statesman, and his funeral sedulously avoided any hint that he might be somewhat under a cloud. I am not sure that Nixon himself ever thought that he had done anything wrong, though certainly he was aware that he had broken the law. In such a case forgiveness is not a good thing for the sinner, but it is still helpful for those against whom the sin is perpetrated. Not to forgive, to allow the harm done to you by others to fester, is to damage oneself more that any damage another could do.
It is only truly possible to forgive, however, when we ourselves are aware of our own need for forgiveness. An awareness of our own flaws and failings, our own errors of judgment or of will, is necessary for the empathy necessary to understand and to forgive the sins and failings of others. Here, though, is what may be the paradox. We should not accept our own sins as forgivingly as we do those of others. Ultimately we need to forgive ourselves as well as others, since wallowing in guilt is an impassable barrier in our quest to be better, if not to be perfect, to seek, if not to find, the Holy Grail. To accept our weaknesses and sins too easily, though is to abandon the quest voluntarily.
So let's make our resolutions again, to stop doing this destructive thing, or to do something creative or generous that's not easy to do, and should we fail to keep our resolutions again, well, "Your reach should exceed your grasp, or what's a heaven for?" And that's metaphorical, too.