This is the first of four Lenten addresses on the theme Contemplation, Activity and Resurrection in the Passion of Christ. The second is posted here, the third here, and the fourth here.
Scenes of Bethany: “Behold we go up to Jerusalem”
Contemplation, Activity & Resurrection in the Passion of Christ
Address # 1
“Behold we go up to Jerusalem”. Lent is a time of purpose and direction. It presents a needful reminder of an essential characteristic of our Christian lives. Lent is more than a season. In a profound sense, it signifies the whole of our Christian life. At the very least, it reminds us that our lives have a purpose and a direction, and, more importantly, that our lives find their truth in the purpose of God towards us.
Nowhere else do we see that purpose more clearly and more powerfully than on the way of the cross. That way means more than just the steps to Calvary. It means the entire life of Jesus Christ. The whole life of Christ is the way of the cross. It is the way of sacrificial love, the way of the Son’s love for the Father eternally and that way in the very flesh of our humanity.
The cross may be veiled before us as, for instance, in Passiontide. It may be dimly seen. Yet it is ever present and its presence ever felt. It belongs to the purpose of Jerusalem: “He destined us in love to be his sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved” (Eph.1.5,6), as St. Paul writes to the Ephesians. He goes on to say:
In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace which he lavished upon us. for he has made known to us in all wisdom and insight the mystery of his will, according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth. (Eph.1.7-10).
“In him we have redemption through his blood”. “He has made known to us his purpose which he has purposed in Christ”. The Lenten season, like the Lent of our lives, is not something aimless and indefinite. It is full of purpose and direction. The going up to Jerusalem is a journey in which the end of the journey is somehow known and somehow present in the means of the journeying.
That should be our greatest consolation and our constant encouragement, if only we would remember that our salvation is accomplished. “Consummatum est” meaning “It is finished.” All is accomplished in the sacrifice of Christ for us. We have only to live it. We have only to live it by the same means by which it is accomplished – by the grace of God in the “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice” of Christ. What has been accomplished for us must be accomplished in us. How shall that be? By lives of holiness, by lives lived in the will of God “made known to us in all wisdom and understanding according to his purpose which he set forth in Christ”.
Lent takes us on the way of the cross to Jerusalem. The purpose of the journey is bound up in the meaning of Jerusalem. It is, of course, the city of peace. That peace, however, is God’s peace, “the peace that passeth understanding”, the peace that is beyond the world’s confusion and angry disarray, the peace that is beyond the church’s calamities and woes. That peace is to be known even in the midst of them all. That peace can only be known in and through the passion of Jesus Christ.
The meaning of that city and that peace is the mystery of God’s love revealed on the cross. All purpose is to be found in the passion of Christ.
The shadows of the cross fall backwards and reach forwards. They fall backwards through the whole of the Old Testament even to the beginning of creation. They reach forwards into the life of the church in history even to the end of time. They embrace us on every side. The shadows of the cross illuminate the darkness of our lives. Ultimately, they show us something of the light of God’s purpose. The cross stands before the whole life of Jesus. It stands continually before us in our life in Christ.
The poet/preacher John Donne reminds us wonderfully that:
The whole life of Christ was a continuall Passion, his birth and his death were but a continuall Act and his Christmas-day and his Good Friday are but the evening and the morning of one and the same day.
“A continuall Passion …a continuall Act.” The emphasis is on this notion of the continual. The consequence is that our Christian life must be a constant meditation upon that “continuall Passion” and that “continuall Act”.
We come to Bethany. It belongs to the way of the cross. The shadows fall upon us there. Bethany is the place of the preparation for the passion. It is the place where Christ prepares himself most purposefully, the place where Christ is prepared most poignantly, the place where Christ prepares us for what lies ahead in Jerusalem on the hill of Calvary. It is the place where we are constantly prepared to participate in that “continuall Passion” of Christ and to behold his “continuall Act” which underlies all that is done there; in short, the place where we learn to live more completely in the will of God. To spend some quiet time there is to learn something of God’s purpose accomplished in Christ Jesus and for that purpose to take shape more fully in you.
There is, as St. Bonaventure tells us, no path to God “except through that most burning love for the crucified”. Bethany belongs to the way of “that most burning love for the crucified” in us. There we may learn something of the principles of activity and contemplation that are present for us in the passion of Christ.
John tells us in his Gospel that Bethany is the village of Mary and Martha; that Bethany is where Christ raises their brother Lazarus from the dead; that Bethany is where Christ is anointed with the oil to be kept for the day of his burying. The death of Christ, the resurrection of Christ and our life in Christ are, in some sense, strongly signified in Bethany.
Bethany figures in all of the Gospels. Luke alone names it as the place of departure for Christ’s Palm Sunday procession into Jerusalem and as the place of Christ’s Ascension. The significance of that conjunction can hardly be overlooked in his “orderly account”. In other words, Bethany has its place in the creedal mysteries of our salvation. Yet, Luke does something more or, at the very least, the same thing in another more compelling and telling way.
In the village of Mary and Martha, a village which he does not actually name but we know otherwise as Bethany, Luke paints a picture of the character of our Christian life in pilgrimage. He provides a wonderful vignette of our Lenten pilgrimage, our Christian pilgrimage, our pilgrimage in love.
Now as they went on their way, he entered a village; and a woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching. But Martha was distracted with much serving; and she went to him and said, Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone? Tell her then to help me. But the Lord answered her, Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things; one thing is needful. Mary has chosen the good portion which shall not be taken away from her. (Luke 10.38-42)
“One thing is needful”. Our Christian life is a vita mixta, a mixed life. Not a mixed-up life, though I’m sure that at times our lives seem altogether mixed-up and confused. To bring some order to the mess and some clarity to the confusion means to understand our Christian lives in terms of contemplation and activity; between our thinking and our thinking expressed in action; between the inner life of the mind, love-in-contemplation, and the outer life of ourselves, love-in-activity; in short, between Mary and Martha.
These are not to be seen in opposition to one another or in tension with each other or simply as standing alongside one another. No. There is profounder inter-play between contemplation and activity. Our Christian life in pilgrimage means both contemplation and activity, not simply one or the other, rather both together, but one in a necessary service to the other; activity as serving contemplation, for “one thing is needful”.
“Behold we go up to Jerusalem” but we go by way of Bethany.
Fr. David Curry
Tuesday, Eve of Ember Wednesday, Feb. 16th, 2016