Rev. Molly F. James, PhD
Chapel of our Lord, Episcopal Church Center
Feast of Julian of Norwich, May 8, 2019
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be always acceptable in your sight O Lord, our Strength and our Redeemer.
It was a gift of the Holy Spirit that I have the privilege of preaching today, the feast day for Julian of Norwich. She is one of my favorite theologians. She is one of the five thinkers with whom I engaged for my doctoral dissertation, so I literally have spent years of my life with Julian and her writings.
There are lots of reasons why Julian is remarkable. She was a 14th century woman who survived into old age. No small feat given the number of times the plague passed through Norwich in her lifetime. She was a 14th century woman who could read AND write. Amazing. She was blessed with visions and felt compelled to share those visions with everyday Christians. She devoted much of her adult life to reflection on the visions. And those reflections survived in two texts that were handed down through the centuries, through wars and persecution. Through the Reformation. There is no shortage of amazing, even miraculous things about the reality of Julian’s life and her writings. [For an excellent examination of the history of Julian and her manuscript see here.]
But for me, what makes her particularly notable and influential in my own life, is what is in her writings. In a word, there is hope. Julian is probably one of the better known spiritual writers of the Middle Ages. But often she is known just for a single sentence: “All shall be well.” This is, indeed, a good and accurate summary of her theology. If she is going to be known for one sentence that is the right sentence. And yet to often it is quoted all by itself, and if you don’t know the rest of Julian’s life story or much about her writings it can seem like a spiritual trope or some kind of Pollyanna statement that fails to account of the realities of sin and suffering in our lives and in the world. [For a great book on Julian that really unpacks this quote see here.]
Julian was no Pollyana. She took very seriously the reality of sin and suffering in the world. One of the things I value greatly about Julian, and why she was important in my own research, is that she is someone who writes theologically about the reality of suffering from profound personal experiences. When she was thirty years old she suffered a life-threatening illness (perhaps the plague) and everyone (including Julian herself) was sure she was going to die. In the midst of that illness she had a series of visions that taught her about Christ’s suffering and who God is. She spent the remaining decades of her life reflecting and expounding upon those visions. And what I would like to do today is to share three of those insights with you. I hope these insights will show you that Julian’s statement that all will be well is, in fact, a statement of deep faith and hope that can be a gift for our own faith journeys as well.
Julian’s first insight is one of perspective. She has a vision of the world as a hazelnut, a tiny nut held in the palm of a hand. Talk about a wide perspective. Long before anyone had been to outer space and realized that earth was our “fragile island home” (Eucharistic Prayer C), Julian could see that God’s perspective was so very different than our own. She was able to acknowledge that there is far more to the reality of life than the immediacy of our experience. Quite a vision for someone who spent the majority of her life living in a single room and likely never left the town in which she was born.
This perspective is not just about astrophysics or our place in time and space, Julian invites us to have a wider perspective on our own lives and the realities of the human experience as well. This is perspective in regards to sin. Julian says that sin is necessary. And by sin she really means all that is wrong with the world not just short list of cardinal sins. This is not to say that God causes evil. Julian is really just being matter of fact. She has witnessed the ravages of war and disease with her own eyes. She personally knows the fragility of human life. Sin is a just a part of life. Julian does not dwell on the why. She accepts the reality of it, and then tries to see it with a wide perspective.
When she looks at sin from a wider perspective it is not an all consuming reality. This is because one of Julian’s most profound insights is about the breadth of God’s mercy and love. At a time when the Church was so often focused on the wrath and judgment of God, Julian is notable for her message of hope and love. Over and over again in her visions, she sees God as loving and merciful. She likens Jesus to a mother hen who broods over her chicks. God is full of compassion and mercy. Even in the face of the evil humanity can do to each other and the terrible tragedies that can befall us, we are loved by God. God is ever seeking us, desiring to be with us, and desiring to bring us to bliss.
We can get frustrated with Julian. Just as we can get frustrated with God. We can rail and kick and scream and put all our energy and frustration into asking “why?” Why is there evil? Why is there suffering? Why do terrible things happen? But Julian would caution us that to do so will not serve us. She knows. She too asked “Why.” And she came to understand that is not something we will know or understand this side of heaven. She invites us instead to focus on what is true and sure in the here and now.
What can we be sure of? We can be sure of who God is. We can be sure that we are beloved of God. We can be sure that God desires to bring us to bliss. God desires for us, as Jesus said, to have life, abundant life. And what Julian’s life experience taught her was that we actually experience the reality of bliss, the true abundance, more fully because we also know the terrible pain of suffering. That does not mean suffering is in and of itself good or that it needs to be sought out. It just means that if we are paying attention, if we are open to God’s presence at work in the world and our own lives, we will find joy and comfort, even in the face of profound suffering, just as Julian did.
I do believe that with Julian we can proclaim that “All shall be well.” It may not be “well” yet, but as our reading from Hebrews reminds us, God is faithful and so we have hope. We have hope, because the truth at the heart of the Christian story is that God is always at work, bringing light into the darkness and bring new life out of death. So yes, indeed, there is a truth that we can hold on to no matter what comes our way: “All shall be well.” AMEN.
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