All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too.
Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl,
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl.
Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower, (1968)

One autumn I found myself rewatching Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings in my lunch hour. Gradually I was drawn in, and half an hour (very occasionally!) became an hour when I could have profitably been visiting, filing, sermon writing, planning, form-filling. I finished the final film on 1 November, overwhelmed once more by the breadth of Tolkien’s vision and the skilfulness of Jackson’s film-making.

The next day was All Souls’, and with it a Requiem Eucharist. I realised that Lord of the Rings, book and films, is about, on one level, the cost of death and the waste of life. What sacrifices can we bear, and in what cause? What lasting effect does the slaughter of the previous age have upon our own? Can the unheroic hero Frodo, who has suffered so greatly, and seen so much destruction, ever find rest and redemption? I realised that this was a story written in middle- and late-age by a man who, as a callow lieutenant, had fought in the trenches of the Somme. And yet, Tolkien had been able to describe the healing of death in a memorable image: “the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.”¹ Jackson transposed this description into a speech by the wise and powerful Gandalf, made in the middle of a battle in which violent death was a certainty. The transposition was inspired, for Gandalf’s speech did not offer cheap comfort; the costliness of the experiences lived through and described by Tolkien prevents that. This is a truer, deeper resonating, understanding of life and death. My sermon on All Souls’ night used Tolkien’s experiences and Jackson’s creative depiction of Tolkien’s work to present my congregation with the Christian hope through and over death. A member of the congregation came up to me after and confided that she had never really understood such hope before it had been presented to her in the imagery of Tolkien and Jackson.

So, on one level, my lunchtime viewing was a waste of time. For the Time and Motion outsider it might have seemed to be a self-indulgent distraction from the core responsibilities of my job. Perhaps. But sometimes what is seen as ‘waste of time’ is actually fallow ground becoming fruitful.

The Archbishop of Canterbury in his lecture on ‘The Christian Priest today’ makes much of this apparent time-wasting. He calls it making sense of the landscape in which the priest conducts his ministry. There is an explicit precedent for this role in the scriptural tradition and the Archbishop draws the attention of his listeners to Habakkuk and Ezekiel: in this role, the priest is to act as Watchman.

In Habakkuk 2, the prophet tells how he has been set at the watch-post by the Lord, upon the rampart. Habakkuk makes clear that what he will see is what the Lord wants to tell him: “I will keep watch to see what he will say to me, and what he will answer concerning my complaint.” [Habakkuk 2:1b] The events seen by the prophet will be interpreted as the word of God to him, and an answer to his complaint. God will reveal his purpose to the prophet (and thus to the wider community of Israel) through the events the prophet will see.

In Ezekiel, the prophet is lifted up in the Spirit of the Lord to act as a sentinel. At first, it seems that this sentinel role is a traditional, verbal one:

Mortal, I have made you a sentinel for the house of Israel; whenever you hear a word from my mouth, you shall give them warning from me. [Ezekiel 3:17]

The prophet has the responsibility to pass on the verbal admonitions of the Lord. However, towards the end of the book, the role of the sentinel is explained. If the sentinel sees a sword coming upon the land of Israel, he is to warn the people. This is not just a practical, military, role: as the Lord warns: “if any who hear the sound of the trumpet do not take warning, and the sword comes and takes them away, their blood shall be upon their own heads.” [Ezekiel 33:4]. The people shall not just be killed, but judgement is upon them as well. The Lord then applies the role, in analogy, to the prophet: “if you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, and they do not turn from their ways, the wicked shall die in their iniquity, but you will have saved your life.” [Ezekiel 33:9]

We’ll press this image of the priest as Watchman a little further in the next post.

1. J. R. R. Tolkien, ‘The Grey Havens’, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, (London: HarperCollins, 1991 [1955]), pp.1068-1069. [↩]