‘Endism’ is very much with us, I am afraid, the idea that everything is falling apart and that things are in disarray. It is part of the fearfulness and uncertainty of a culture that is no longer sure of itself and its future; all the assumptions of the ideology of material progress, the idea that everything is getting better materially, physically, economically, socially and politically, begin to look like a cruel joke. And yet, globally speaking, it would be unwarranted and wrong to deny the many, many improvements to human life that have occurred in modern times. At the same time, it would also be unwarranted and irresponsible to deny the very real threats to peace and life. So where does this leave us?

With the task of acquiring a much more thoughtful and a more prayerful outlook. At issue is not whether things are improving and getting better but our assumption that things should always be progressing. This is to forget the nature of the finite and the grimmer realities of human sin and presumption. It is really a kind of anti-intellectualism. At issue, then, is our grasp of the spiritual and intellectual principles which shape and inform our understanding. In a way, “to be is to be understood” (Gadamer on Heidegger, in Slavoj Žižek’s Less Than Nothing), which in turn requires some understanding of ourselves in relation to God. It is exactly that idea that is missing in action, I fear, paradoxically, in our churches, as well as in our culture, the absence of which paralyzes us in the face of dark and difficult times, whether culturally or individually.

The Sunday after Ascension Day speaks profoundly to our uncertainties. I do not presume to suggest that it provides us with certainties; after all, it is our dogmatic certainties about material reality that is our problem. I do think that this day offers us a way of thinking about our world and about ourselves, and, more importantly, about how we are understood by God. It does so by recalling us to the dynamic of God’s redemption of our humanity and our world. Ironically, the Ascension is about the truest form of upward mobility, the raising of all things to their end in God, the “lift[ing] up our hearts”. It speaks to us about our home, the homeland of the spirit, our home with God, not just by-and-by but here and now in prayer and praise. In short, we find our place with God because God has placed us with him through his Son. “I go to prepare a place for you,” Jesus tells us.

Christ ascends to sit “on the right hand of the Father” as the Nicene Creed puts it. A lovely image, it captures the fuller meaning of Christ’s Incarnation and it brings out the deeper truth of Christ’s Resurrection. Christ’s ascension is his homecoming. “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world; again I leave the world and return to the Father.” That too is a marvelous picture of the dynamic of God, the living and active reality of the Divine which is the principle of all reality. In the Ascension, the Son returns to the Father having accomplished all that belongs to the redemption of the world and to the redemption of our humanity. Everything is gathered back to God from whom all things do come and in whom all things have their being. In a way, it is the strongest possible affirmation of the spiritual nature of reality that embraces the physical and the material without being collapsed into them. It is not quite the reverse: the physical and the material, the empirical and the experiential aspects of our world and day, are gathered into God, not collapsed into God. They retain the integrity of their truth and being which are found in God as the Creative and Redemptive Principle of each and every thing.

How much more so for you and me; in short, for our humanity? The Ascension affirms, in the fullest possible way, the radical and astounding idea that we are made in the image of God, an image that has been defaced and scarred by sin and folly, to be sure, and experientially so, but redeemed by Christ who overcomes sin and death and carries us into glory. We find our true home in God. We have an end in God.

But it means a far different way of thinking about ends and about endings than what usually prevails in our mundane and so-called practical pursuits. Peter speaks about “the end of all things [being] at hand”. He is absolutely right but end here means more than simply the conclusion of a sequence, the end of a series (will there ever be an end to the Stanley Cup Playoffs? To the student protests in Montreal? To … well you get the idea). End here means something much more profound. It means the sense of purpose and fulfillment. Such an idea speaks to our spiritual identity – to who we are and what we are called to be in the sight of God. To let that idea sink into our souls is already the greatest antidote to our fears and worries. It gives us a renewed sense of dignity about ourselves which is, in itself, a way of being able to face the dying of the light of culture and communities. Why? Because it reminds us of the greater light of God’s truth, the light that is not only greater than the darkness but has overcome the darkness of sin and death.

We are recalled to our communion with God. Christ’s Ascension is one of the great creedal teachings of the Christian Faith. Closely associated with it in the Creed and in the meaning of this day, is the doctrine of the Session of Christ. He sits “on the right hand of God the Father.” This sitting is not like our long weekend plans of sitting in the sun, pleasant as that may be. There is a kind of activity implicit in this image of ascending and sitting. It has to do with God’s greater delight in the world that he has made, his greater delight in the redemption of creation. The heaven of the Ascension is paradise plus, we might say, something greater and more than paradise, something greater and more than the golden ages of antiquity and the subsequent utopias that have been invented and attempted and, of course, have failed. The greater delight is found in the return of the Son to the Father who returns the world and our humanity as restored and forgiven to God. God rules. And that is a comforting thought.

“We ascend in the ascension of our hearts,” as Augustine says. He is reminding us, I think, about the radical nature of prayer. Prayer is the motion of the Ascension in us, the lifting up of hearts and minds, the lifting up of our lives to God. In the Session, too, we find the meaning of prayer; it is about our place with God. Prayer places our thoughts for our world, for one another, and for ourselves with God. It is about our homecoming and the reminder to us that we are embraced now in the love of the Father. This Sunday gives us this powerful sense of purpose and place. It is at once what we look forward to and that in which we participate now in Word and Sacrament, in prayer and praise, in service and sacrifice. Somehow all the everyday activities of our lives are made worth something by being gathered into the eternal life of God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. This Sunday reminds us of our end with God, meaning that our lives find their purpose and meaning in God.

Augustine wonderfully says that “we shall rest and we shall see; we shall see and we shall love; we shall love and we shall praise. Behold what shall be in the end and shall not end.” We already participate in that sense of end as purpose and fulfillment. We do so in our lives of prayer and praise. And so we can say with comfort and confidence what Peter here has said.

“The end of all things is at hand”

Fr. David Curry
Sunday after Ascension Day, 2012

The life of the resurrection is the life of the church. There is, however, the constant struggle to enter into its meaning; in short, to live it in our lives, especially in the face of hardships, sufferings and sorrows. At the very least, it means being called not only out of death as the defining reality of life, but also out of the ways of death which we know simply as sin, which is Paul’s point in this morning’s second lesson from Romans (6. 1-14).

The American spiritual writer, Annie Dillard, marvels at the complacency of Christians, especially in Church, and especially in the light of certain Scripture readings. Given the power of Biblical images, she advises that we should be wearing crash helmets and be given life-jackets and lashed to our pews! There is a kind of shock and awe quality to many a Scripture passage. We become anesthetized because of the calming beauty and order of the Liturgy and fail to be surprised by joy or shocked by fear. Some stories truly are amazing, even shocking, and yet they have so much to teach us. One such shocking and perplexing story, it seems to me, is there in our first lesson which is the story or, actually, the concluding part of a much longer story, known as the story of Balaam’s ass (Numbers 24).

Here is headline news: God makes dumb asses speak. In a way, that means me in the effort to speak God’s word clearly but also you, in terms of your lively participation in the service. The point is that God gives us words to say and think, words to live by and act upon in our lives. We need the shocking and difficult stories to awaken us to the grandeur of God’s engagement with our humanity without which we are dead in ourselves and therefore not alive to God. So what is the story?

Balak, the King of Moab, has seen what God has done through Israel to “Og the King of Bashan” and “Sihon, King of the Amorites”, those mighty kings whom he slew “because his mercy endureth for ever” as Psalm 136 so wonderfully yet disturbingly puts it. But in order to avoid a similar fate and be ousted from the land, Balak undertakes to hire the prophet Balaam to curse his enemies, namely Israel. In other words, Balak wants to employ God’s power for his own immediate political ends. And Balaam is to be his agent. Rent a prophet. Rent a priest. It is all the same. It runs completely counter to the fundamental insight that governs Judaism, Christianity and Islam; that is to say, it is a kind of idolatry which reflects a kind of atheism.

But the story of Balaam’s ass, confronts us with the principle of God as Absolute that defines the Judaic, Christian and Islam understanding in which both idolatry and atheism are strongly repudiated. The biblical story here is both complex and profound. It captures a certain moment, the problematic of making God subject to us rather than us subject to God.

In one way of reading the story, Balaam temporizes, at first, refusing to come to Balak and, then, agreeing to come, the implication being that he has succumbed to Balak’s repeated and forced demands. There are the strong temptations to conform to worldly expectations and demands; in short, to pervert the word of God to serve human ends and purposes, whether to curse what should not be cursed or to bless what should not be blessed; in short, to do what pleases people rather than what pleases God.

Balaam will indeed go to Balak but it will be after receiving a lesson from God about what he is to say, a lesson learned by way of his dumb ass who speaks to warn him about messing around with God’s word and way. “How can I curse whom God has not cursed,” says Balaam, “Must I not take heed to speak what the Lord puts in my mouth?”

Balaam has come out of the confusions and ambiguities of the prophetic ministry to learn the word and will of God which must condition his discourse. Our lesson is the oracle of Balaam, “the oracle of the man whose eye is opened, the oracle of him who hears the words of God, who sees the vision of the Almighty, falling down but having his eyes uncovered.” He has learned, we might say. He has become enlightened about the majesty and the truth and the power of God which cannot be manipulated, twisted and perverted to our imaginary goals and purposes. We deceive ourselves and we betray ourselves. God cannot be fooled. It is we who fool ourselves. The dumb ass is God’s agent that enlightens us about our folly. We are dumber than any dumb ass yet God can use the simplest things of creation to teach us about his grandeur, his wonder and his truth. He can even use me and you! But let us be clear. It is for our sake and for our good and for God’s glory.. In the long end of the day, only the truth can be known and loved; only truth and love triumph over human sin and presumption.

Today is known as Rogation Sunday. Rogation refers explicitly to prayer. Prayer is not about our groveling before God. Prayer is not about our whining. Prayer is not about our bargaining with God. Prayer is not about us simply. It is about our participation in the life of God revealed in Jesus Christ. Prayer, properly speaking, places us in the motion of the Son’s love for the Father in the Spirit. We take our part in prayer with the God who seeks our prayer. Prayer unites us to God.

It requires the constant purifying of our hearts and minds. In the rich Eucharistic gospel for this day (BCP, p. 197), Jesus lays out in the most wonderful and powerful way possible who he is and what he is for us and what it means for prayer. “In the world,” he says, “ye have tribulation. But be of good cheer, I have overcome the world.” In a way it simply means that we are not to be defined by the world, the place of passing fads and fantasies, the place of limitation and incompleteness, the place of machinations and agendas, such as Balak’s,  not to mention the place of folly and wickedness. What is that overcoming of the world? It is the triumph of God’s grace restoring not destroying nature. It provides the meaning of prayer. Everything is gathered into the primary relationship of God with God in God signaled so perfectly in Christ’s words: “I came forth from the Father and am come into the world: again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.” Amazing words. Everything is gathered into that relationship, the divine relationship.

Prayer is about the intentional placing of ourselves and one another and our world with God. Rogation Sunday brings these elements before us with great clarity and wonder. “You never love the world aright,” the poet, Thomas Traherne, notes, “until you learn to love it in God.” And so with everything else.  We never love aright until we love in prayer, placing ourselves, our friends and our world with God in prayer. But prayer here reaches out into every aspect of our lives. To pray is to live what we pray, or at least to attempt to do so, hence confession remains an ever present and necessary presence, itself a form of prayer and praise.

Balaam learned from a dumb ass whom God made to speak. Balaam learned that blessing (and cursing) can only arise from the heart that is with God in prayer. That means honouring God in his truth and majesty rather than taking God captive to our little schemes, whims and follies. Rogation Sunday is about the prayer that places everything with God in the love of the Son for the Father in the power of the Spirit. God is God and not simply what we want him to be for ourselves.

In the secular culture of North America, this is Mother’s Day. Quite apart from being the busiest day of the year for the floral industry and the phone companies, it reminds us of some home truths, or so it seems to me. Home truths like the fact that everyone is born of woman; home truths like the fact that mothers constitute the critical matrix through which children are born and nurtured in life. It is for more reasons than mere sentiment that we celebrate mothers. We honour them. And that is to place them with God in thanksgiving. Through their sacrifice and dedication, we have life, a life that is to be lived to God. Prayer is about our lives as lived for God with one another. Humanly speaking, in some real sense it starts with our mothers. We place them today with the God who has come to draw us back to himself. Such is the joy of redemption and the joy of God’s engagement with us in the work of salvation.

“I came forth from the Father and am come into the world:
again, I leave the world, and go to the Father.”

Fr. David Curry
Rogation Sunday, 2012

Today is the Fourth Sunday after Easter. It coincides with another important commemoration in Canadian Culture. Today is also the Sunday which recalls the Battle of the Atlantic.

The Battle of the Atlantic was a tremendous war effort in which Canadians played a most significant role. It was one of our defining moments. Against the darkness of storm and sea, against the threat of the unseen enemy – the German U-boats in their wolfpacks – there was the determination and the will to provide for our war-torn and embattled allies in Europe. The task was undertaken at a time when the outcome of the war was by no means certain.

In those dark and uncertain early years of the Second World War, the dangers that the convoys and their escorts faced in setting out from Halifax Harbour were very real; the prospects truly fearful. It was not only to face the wild and elemental sea – the North Atlantic in all its majestic fury and power – but also the terror of torpedoes, the sudden destruction and explosive power that sank ships and sailors, soldiers and supplies in far shorter order than the iceberg which sank the Titanic.

The Battle of the Atlantic was an enterprise of real courage undertaken in the face of great fearfulness. We do well to remember it. What enables peoples to face such fearful prospects? Why embark upon such fearful and fateful voyages? Because of the conviction that there are things worth dying for, things without which we cannot live. They are our rational and political freedoms. They belong to the spiritual dignity of our humanity, to who we are in the sight of God, the very things that Christ is at pains to teach us in these Eastertide Sundays.

Christ himself is the great teacher of the Resurrection. The Resurrection is the great triumph of God’s grace over human sin and sorrow, the great triumph over death and destruction in all its forms, both in the wars of the world and the wars that rage within each of us. It is the grace that has to be taught by the Word proclaimed and celebrated, and continually taught. Having brought us to birth in this new life, the Risen Christ would also nurture us in this new life.

He teaches us about that radical new life of the Spirit which he has inaugurated and established through his death and resurrection. We can only be nurtured in what we have received; in what has been given to us. We can only give sacrificially and selflessly through what God has given us. “Receive with meekness the implanted word,” St. James says. For what we have received from God has to be nurtured in us by God. If we have learned anything from Holy Week, it is that all the forms of human love fall short of the completeness of God’s love for us. It takes a certain quality of humility, of meekness, really, which is simply about our openness and willingness to learn. There is a challenge for our age. Our loves find their perfection and their fullness only in the love of God revealed in Christ Jesus.

Christ nurtures us in this new life through the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the Father and the Son. He is God’s Spirit given to be the life of the Church, the soul of the body. Here we are nurtured and sustained through the all-sufficient sacrifice of the Word and Son of the Father. We can only enter into this love through the forms in which it has been made known to us; that is to say, through the Revelation of God in the witness of the Scriptures to the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. We can only act upon what we receive.

We need to understand again the truth and the power of these images that are being revealed to us in these Eastertide Sundays, both for what they teach about the mystery of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost and for what they teach us about ourselves. Christ places us in his love for the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. The Church is the mother where that divine life has its beginning in us and where we are nurtured in its understanding. God creates the womb out of which we are born anew and enter into this understanding.

It belongs to the magical, mystical quality of the Easter season to set our lives upon a new and ever-renewing foundation of grace. “Grace is the foundation”, says one of the great nursing fathers of the spiritual tradition, “which alone can rule our unruly wills and illuminate our darkened minds” (Bonaventure, freely translated). Sin is that spirit of unruliness in us, our lawlessness, and sin is that spirit of darkness, too, our blindness to the things which Christ would have us know. God “alone,” as the Collect so wonderfully puts it, meaning only God, can “order [our] unruly wills and affections.”

In the great Gospel which orders all our thoughts on this day, Jesus teaches us about the radical meaning of his death and resurrection in his going from us. He teaches us about the coming of the Holy Spirit to keep us in the love of God. “Now I go my way to him that sent me, and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou?” In his presence, we take his presence for granted. The question about where he is going really belongs to the question about who he is. He is going to the Father. That is the meaning of the life of the Son. His whole life is towards the Father. He places us in that motion of his love for the Father in the Holy Spirit. But it means the constant renewing of our understanding, the constant correcting or “reproving” of our minds.  It is the work of the Holy Spirit in the Church. It is dynamic. There is nothing static about God.

We are placed upon a whole new foundation of understanding. The Holy Spirit convicts us of the atheisms of our sinfulness. The Holy Spirit reproves our consciences by recalling us to who we are in the truth of God. The Holy Spirit corrects our understanding about righteousness; it is found in God through Jesus Christ “because I go to the Father.” Everything is drawn into that primary relationship. Our unruly wills are set aright in Christ, in our being where he is. He is always towards and with the Father. The Holy Spirit convicts, corrects and confirms us in the understanding of the victory of Christ’s resurrection; he has overcome all that stands between us and God and so between one another.

We have only to live it. We live it in the Church, our mother, who gives us birth into the life of God and nurtures us in the understanding of the divine love which creates the womb and which creates the Church. Here we are constantly renewed, reproved and restored into the divine fellowship of the blessed Trinity, God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. Here we learn to receive anew “the implanted word [of God] with meekness.”

“Receive with meekness the implanted word”

Fr. David Curry,
Easter 4, 2012

I.

“If music be the food of love, play on,” as Shakespeare puts it in Twelfth Night. There is “the sweet power of music,” he suggests, in The Merchant of Venice. Indeed, “the man that hath no music in himself/ Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds, is fit for treasons, strategems, and spoils … Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music.”

And it has been a year of music and dance, a dance that embraces the highs and the lows of every aspect of our year at King’s-Edgehill. It is, perhaps, in the music of the spheres and in the dance of the understanding that we have learned something more about ourselves, about one another and about our world. “Mark the music.” Enter the dance. Dance me to the end of love.

II.

Leonard Cohen’s lyrical masterpiece, “Dance Me to the End of Love,” is about the triumph of love even in the midst of the greatest horrors such as the holocaust.

Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin
Dance me through the panic till I’m gathered safely in
Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove
Dance Me To The End Of Love…

The song was inspired by the story of the death camps in the Holocaust when Jewish musicians were required to play classical music, the music of Mozart and Haydn, for instance, while their people were being led to their deaths and their bodies to the burning. It is a haunting image. A string quartet plays with passionate intensity for those whose fate is their own, playing with passionate intensity the music which belongs to human dignity and beauty in the face of unspeakable and utterly inhuman indignities and horror. The Jews of Europe were betrayed by the culture that betrayed itself. And yet, there is the haunting and compelling beauty of the refrain, Dance me to the end of love.

III.

There is the dance of the year athletically. It is about  poetry in motion: on the soccer fields; in cross-country running and cycling; on the volleyball court; in the sweat of the wrestling bouts;  in the great dramas of the basketball court with buzzer beaters and the thrill of come-back moments; in the pursuit and chase of Biathlon with steady hand and steely eye;  in the hockey arenas of courage and tenacity, of ‘never say die’; on the rugby pitch of honour and glory, bloody but unbowed; in Tae kwon do and badminton, in tennis and table tennis, and still yet to come, the heat and the challenge of Track and Field. A dance of athletic endeavour, a dance of agony and ecstasy. Dance me to the end of love.

IV.

We sang and we danced. It was “Grease”; we were slick and cool, real cool! It was “Into the Woods,” and whether we got lost or not, it was dance and music. And concerts of dance and music, too. Wicked good! There is the dance of the imagination in theatre and in Art. “This is a test,” as Janis showed us, and it always is and yet the dance goes on. Dance me to the end of love.

V.

It was the year of Esther; in Chapel, that is to say. The Book of Esther is the story of a strong woman whose courage and wisdom saves her people from the first explicit mention, historically and scripturally, of the idea of the systematic annihilation of the Jewish people. The name, Esther, is derived from Ishtar, the Sumerian goddess of love and war. In the only book of the Jewish Scriptures that does not mention the name of God, Esther is the dancing queen who saves her people from a programme of destruction. Love in a time of war.

This, too, though is the year of another Esther and in another way. This year marks the 35^th year of the teaching of Esther Mosher at King’s-Edgehill. Her love of history and her mastery of war makes her, indeed, our goddess of love and war. Her retirement this spring marks the end of a kind of dance, though one in which, because of her, we have learned to dance through the histories of human glory and misery. She has been our dancing queen. She shall be greatly, greatly missed. Dance me to the end of love.

VI.

We danced through the streets of Windsor, in the slow dance and rhythmic beat of the pipes and drums, in the ordered cadence of the Cadet Corps thanks to the marvelous accompaniment of the Black Watch Association Pipe and Drum Band from Montreal. Thank you for dancing with us. You rock! Dance me to the end of love.

VII.

There is the dance of the School in community projects and initiatives, from the Terry Fox Run to the Earth Day town clean-up and everything in between at Nursing Homes and Hospitals, in Food Bank drives and support for children in Africa. And at the Annual Pumpkin Parade and Race, in testimony to real perseverance and competitive zeal, our Headmaster, finally, and, at last, was wonderfully triumphant, the King of the Pumpkin Regatta! KES rules Lake Pisiquid!  Bragging rights without equal. Unlike the Titanic, he didn’t sink!

So we didn’t have to sing, “Nearer my God to thee”. But wait a minute, we just did!

And, then, there were the twins! No, not us, but the boys born to Mr. Darcy Walsh and Lisa. KES welcomes Finn and Sawyer! The dance goes on. Dance me to the end of love.

VIII.

There is, too, the dance of the understanding through debate and public speaking, through the Call to Remembrance Team and its victories and accomplishments, through the Science Fair and Mathletes in a multitude of math competitions. Dance me to the end of love.

IX.

There is the dance that never ends, the dance of the understanding in the pursuit of knowledge, life-long and never-ending. To be or not to be, IB is the question! A 14^th century tutor at Oxford advised his students to “live as if you are going to die tomorrow, study as if you are to live for ever.” It is the dance that never ends. Dance me to the end of love.

X.

“Arise up, my love, my fair one and come away.” The Song of Songs, from which Clara read, is the beautiful love poem of the Jewish Scriptures. It speaks wonderfully and poetically about rebirth and renewal, a rebirth and renewal through the power of love conveyed through music and dance. It speaks to our hopes and holy desires for renewal, for new beginnings. Dance me to the end of love.

XI.

The lesson which Fede read from St. Luke is part of the marvelous story of the Road to Emmaus. Jesus runs out after the disciples who are fleeing Jerusalem in fear and confusion to teach them the truth of his Resurrection. It changes them. Ideas have the power and the truth to change us but we have to feel them and to make them our own. It can only happen, as the story suggests, through a kind of dance of the understanding. Jesus opens the Scriptures and he opens their minds. It is by word and it is by action. He was known in the simple yet holy and profound action of the breaking of the bread. It changes them. They are, literally, turned around and return to Jerusalem, rejoicing with great joy. Dance me to the end of love.

XII.

Dance me to the end of love. Through the ups and downs, through the agony of defeat and loss, through the ecstasy of victory and triumph, the dance goes on, the dance of the understanding and the music of the soul. It is prayer, “a kind of tune which all things hear and fear.”  We are being changed through what we have given to see and learn. It is the dance of the school, the dance of the love of learning and service, of challenge and commitment. The dance goes on. Dance me to the end of love, to be sure, but love never ends.

(Read by Janis McCulloch, Raven Cameron-LeBlanc, Emily MacMillan, Gabrielle Wiley, Erin McMillan, Christian and Zachary Lakes, Neil McQuarrie, Emma Dufour and Tobias Kamps)

(Rev’d) David Curry
Chaplain

The Ten Commandments are given to us both in the Book of Exodus and in the Book of Deuteronomy. In Exodus, of course, they are given to us twice because of the idolatry of Israel in making the molten calf which resulted in the tablets of the Law being smashed; only in the mercy of God are they remade, and while they are not recounted in their fullness the second time in Exodus; nevertheless, we are given to understand that they are exactly and precisely the same words. But, really, what are we to make of this evening’s readings about the Law in its fundamental aspect as the Ten Commandments in Deuteronomy and the wonderful vision of the City of God in Revelation? What do they have to do with the joys and the delights of the Easter season of the Resurrection?

A whole lot. The Law is not eclipsed and passed over by the Resurrection. The Resurrection and our hope of the Resurrection is not a solitary affair. The holy city Jerusalem is the city of our redeemed humanity, the apostolic city symbolized in the twelve gates with “the names of the twelve tribes of the sons of Israel”, the city with twelve foundations and “on them the twelve names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb”. The heavenly city is the place of our union with Christ in his life with the Father in the Spirit. “Come, I will show you the Bride, the wife of the Lamb.”

The wonderful imagery of the passage from Revelation signals the nature of redemption and the fuller meaning of the Resurrection. It is about the redemption of our humanity. Thus, there is this wonderful affirmation of the Law rather than its overcoming and there is this wonderful sense of the unity of our humanity signaled in the double references to the twelve tribes of Israel and the twelve apostles of the Lamb. The Lamb, of course, is Christ.

The conjunction of Law and the glory of the heavenly community here is suggestive and significant. Christians are not freed from the Law by virtue of Christ’s victory over sin and death. And salvation is not a private affair. It would be truer to say that we are freed to the Law as fulfilled in Christ and as constituting the true nature of the spiritual community where the Law is both within us as well as around us; it is no longer simply external to us. It has been fulfilled and realized in Jesus Christ and in the spiritual community to which we belong and are joined. The strong nature of our spiritual freedom is set before us in these readings, a freedom that is not about a kind of antinomianism, that is to say, a spirit of lawless freedom. No. There is a sense of completion and fulfillment. The Law is embraced as belonging to our love of God and to his love at work in us.

Marilyn reminded me of a little joke. Moses comes down from the mountain and addresses the people of Israel. “First, the good news, and then the bad news. They are down to ten but adultery is still in.” It speaks pretty directly to the concerns of our world and age, I am afraid.

“Love God and do what you will”, Augustine famously said, but he didn’t mean what the joke suggests. Far from being a kind of libertarian free-for-all, what Augustine means is simply that if you love God, you can only want what God wants and wills for you. Which is exactly where the Law, especially in the form of the Ten Commandments, comes in with all its fullness. In the light of the Cross, there is forgiveness and new life. We are not called to judgmentalism but to the forgiveness of sins, for us and for one another, I might add.

There is something quite wonderful about reading Deuteronomy in the season of Easter. For the Resurrection is about a renewing of our hearts and minds in the life-giving and life-restoring truth and love of God. The Law of Moses is not abrogated and tossed aside but affirmed and celebrated with an even greater sense of joy and delight because in Christ we can say with Paul that “love is the fulfilling of the law”. It places us in the true meaning of a spiritual community which lives by the Law of the Spirit and the Word seen in perfect harmony with one another. In our prayers and praises we are again a people of the Law, a people of the Word, who live in the grace of that spiritual fellowship and communion which is “the holy city Jerusalem coming down out of heaven from God.” It is what we have been shown by Word and Spirit.

“He showed me the holy city Jerusalem
coming down out of heaven from God.”

Fr. David Curry
Choral Evensong
April 29^th, 2012

What on earth does it mean? Peek-a-boo with Jesus? What kind of game is this? Well, it is a profound and important part of our thinking about the meaning of the Resurrection. It relates as well to the various forms of human knowing and the way those are challenged by the God who creates and redeems; in short, by the Risen Christ.

Seeing is believing, it is commonly said, and surely that point-of-view has ample confirmation, it might seem, in the story of doubting Thomas. And yet, the whole point is that the truths of religion go far beyond the physical and the material yet without denying them; the whole point is that human experience, too, cannot be reduced to the empirical, to the sensuous and experiential. Perhaps, no thought is harder for our church and world, and, yet, perhaps, no thought is more necessary.

The stories of the Resurrection are full of the questions of wonderment and awe. There is confusion and uncertainty, to be sure, like the disciples huddled in fear behind closed doors or fleeing in dismay and terror from the Jerusalem of their crushed hopes. There is sorrow and grief, like Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb in the early morning. There are the stories of strange things, like the suspicion that the disciples might “come by night and steal” the body of Christ away, like the empty tomb with the stone rolled away, like the rumours of angels, like the report of the women; all the strange, strange dawnings of an awareness of things seen and unseen.

The Gospel readings for the remaining Sundays of Easter are full of a different sort of questioning. They are taken from the so-called Farewell Discourse of Jesus in John’s Gospel. In a way, Jesus is preparing for his going from them in two senses: his crucifixion and his ascension, itself the culmination of the meaning of his Resurrection. The meaning of these gospel readings is captured for us in the memorable mantra, “because I go to the Father.” Through the images and the reality of the physical and material world, Jesus opens us out to the greater reality of God, of things spiritual that embrace but cannot be reduced to the physical and the material. This is the great teaching and central idea of the Christian faith: the Incarnation gathers us into the mystery of the Trinity.

It can only happen through the inescapable realities of suffering and death, through what I can only call the necessary dialectic of sorrow and joy. This is Christ’s lesson to the disciples and us this morning. “Ye now therefore have sorrow: but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you.” It is the strong answer to the genuine puzzlement of the disciples, the strong answer to the human dilemma about knowing, about seeing and believing. There are things seen and unseen, to be sure. But the greater meaning is found in what is understood and grasped in the mind through what is seen and unseen.

The Gospel readings for these three Sundays provide, it seems to me, a telling counter to the popular forms of atheism in our world and day. They challenge the simplistic assumption of the atheisms of our culture which dogmatically assume that there is only a material reality randomly assembled and that mind is merely matter. I am not unaware, too, of course, that what drives the popular atheisms of our day is a reaction against all and any forms of authority. What greater authority than the author of all reality, God himself?  The late Christopher Hitchens’ book, entitled “God is not Great,” is an obvious slam against Islam. It reminds me of the not untypical outburst of many a child to many a parent or teacher, “you’re not the boss of me!” It is, in short, part and parcel of a kind of arrested adolescence.

The counter to this is found, I think, in Jesus’ farewell discourse. Far from being, as atheists would insist, mindless dogmatism about God and what you must and must not think and do, there is an encounter and an exchange. There is the whole business of an idea coming to birth in our souls. It can’t be forced or coerced but neither can its power be denied. Such is the power of the Gospel which so greatly disturbs the atheists of our day. Once an idea is out there, once the Word is spoken, as the Archbishop of Canterbury has said, it can’t be taken back. It remains active in its sovereign freedom and in the power of its truth and in the unfolding of its logical development through our minds. I repeat, through our minds. It can’t be any other way.

Later in John’s Gospel, in the twentieth chapter, there is juxtaposed, side by side, two contrasting encounters with the Risen Christ which illustrate this morning’s text. Jesus appears to Mary Magdalene in her early morning grief and bids her, “touch me not.” Jesus appears to Thomas with the disciples who are again behind closed doors, and says, “put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side; do not be faithless, but believing.” To the one, don’t touch; to the other, touch. Each according to the capacity of the beholder to behold, to believe or know, we might say. The Risen Christ is more, though not less, than the body and likewise we are more, though not less, than our bodies, too. And in that encounter, there is an awakening to a new and deeper understanding of ourselves and God. “My Lord and my God,” Thomas exclaims. It has to be said, that we don’t know whether he did reach out and touch the Risen Christ. “Go to my brethren,” Jesus says to Mary Magdalene, “and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father, and your Father; and to my God and your God,” words which echo Ruth’s words to her mother Naomi in the Book of Ruth; words, too, which enfold the old into the new.

In the biblical and theological understanding it will not do to reduce God to some sort of vague spiritualism, the God of whatever adjectives we might choose to use, the God of x and y, as it were, which is really only about ourselves. Our prayers are not addressed “to whom it may concern.” As the philosopher, Roger Scruton, observes, the line between theism and atheism is actually very, very thin. No name religion is no religion, at least not one worth considering. In the Christian understanding God is named as Father, Son and Holy Ghost and it is Jesus who teaches us the most about this new and deeper understanding of the meaning of God’s engagement with our world and our humanity. He is Creator, Redeemer and Sanctifier only because of what he is in himself which has been revealed to us in Jesus as Father, Son and Holy Ghost. The divine communion is the one in which we are privileged to participate, especially through our Liturgy.

The Resurrection does not ignore the realities of the finite and physical world. It does not ignore the realities of suffering and sorrow. But they have become the means of a greater joy, a joy known in and through and not in spite of suffering and sorrow. It is a joy that no one can take from you. It is about our life with God through his Son, the risen Christ, who says to us:

“A little while and ye shall not see me;
and again a little while and ye shall see me.”

Fr. David Curry
Easter III, 2012

The Resurrection changes everything. But only if we will be changed, only if we are open to its truth and meaning. But what kind of change? The Christian religion is the religion of the hope of transformation, the hope that we can be something more than our dead and deadly selves. And all because of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. It changes how we look upon our selves, how we look upon our humanity and how we look upon our world, and, certainly, it changes how we look upon death.

But the change that is the Resurrection requires death. Only so can death be changed. The death that is required is not only our physical death – none of us get out of this alive, after all – but more importantly, it requires our dying to our selves. The Christian religion is, in so many ways, the counter to the culture of self-fulfillment and entitlement. It is the religion of love and sacrifice, the love that is sacrifice without which there can be no resurrection, no life. The paradox of change, here, is that we can only live if we are dead, dead to the illusions about ourselves, dead to the deceits and mistakes which are the sad and sorry tale about ourselves, dead to what the Church simply calls sin.

To be dead to ourselves is to be alive to God. The accounts of the Resurrection show us the transformation of the understanding, the transformation of the understanding that changes lives, that sets lives in motion. In a way, it is very simple. Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb in the early morning. What she seeks is not there. She tells Peter and “that other disciple” and they both run to the sepulchre. “That other disciple” runs faster and looks in but does not enter. Simon Peter comes and enters in and is followed by “that other disciple”, who then sees and believes. What do they behold? Simply the empty tomb and the discarded burying clothes, described in terms of exactly where they were found.

What is this all about? It is about the dawning awareness of the truth of the Resurrection. It is about a radical change in outlook and understanding. Does this mean that the Resurrection is all metaphor? That nothing really happened?

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the unlooked-for thing, the unthinkable now become thinkable, and yet the accounts of the Resurrection have this remarkably measured, restrained and even understated form to them. As if they want to suggest the dawning awareness of a profound and profoundly life-changing idea. The power of these stories lies in the way they are captive to the idea with which they are trying to come to terms. A sensational event, one which quite literally puts the world on a whole new footing, on the foundation of grace, the story is not told in a sensational manner. It is as if the truth itself is enough. It is as if the truth of the idea of the reality of the Resurrection speaks for itself.

There is a change in us that comes about through the encounter with the various witnesses to the Resurrection: the empty tomb, the angel’s testimony, the report of Mary Magdalene, the report of Simon Peter and John, and, then, the risen Christ himself who runs out to tell us about his Resurrection, inserting himself into our conversations and into our viewpoint, and above all, opening the Scriptures to teach us about the necessity of his Resurrection. These lead to wonderful transformations as Mary and then the other disciples come to a realization of the understanding, as they die to their own preconceptions and enter into the idea of the Resurrection revealed to them by the risen Christ.

What changes? Simply how we see our humanity. Simply how we see the natural world. The Resurrection is the strongest possible affirmation of our human individuality, and the strongest possible affirmation of the material and physical world. It proclaims the redemption of the material and the physical by virtue of the Resurrection of the body. The body is not left out of the equation. We are more but not less than our bodily selves. It may not be possible to say a whole lot more than that but that should be enough. There is the transformation not only of our minds but also of our bodies, “a sea-change into something rich and strange”.

Christ’s Resurrection signals a new creation. God makes something out of nothing, this time out of the greater nothingness of sin and folly, creating out of the mess of our destructive tendencies and actions something wonderful, the hope of our redeemed humanity. Christ’s Resurrection, to be sure, is a mystery, a mystery which we can never exhaust and never reduce to our preconceptions. Its power challenges our preconceptions.

The Resurrection is about the grace of Christ that makes it possible for us to live for God and so for one another, about the grace that makes it possible for us to be in the world but not of the world, about the grace that liberates us from the fatalistic doctrines of determinism, about the grace that frees us from the tyranny of despair and hopelessness. The Resurrection signals our highest freedom. We are never more truly ourselves than when we live for God and for one another. Such is the power of the Resurrection.

But it requires a change in heart, a change in outlook, a change in mind. The Gospels show us exactly what was showed to them. They show us, too, the dawning awareness of the truth of the Resurrection. And all because “Christ is risen from the dead.”

“Christ is risen from the dead”

Fr. David Curry
AMD Easter II, 2012

This Sunday is known as Good Shepherd Sunday because of the traditional Gospel reading at Holy Communion on this day about Christ the Good Shepherd. It is a familiar and a comforting image but I fear we overlook its radical meaning. It is one of the great images of God’s providential care for his wayward and wandering sheep, meaning you and me. It is an image, too, which belongs to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ bears us in his arms. The same arms that are stretched out upon the cross are the arms that have embraced our humanity, the arms which gather us into the love of the son for the father. He carries us into the hands of the Father.

The great image of God’s care, its greatness lies in the cure it provides. The cure is the triumph of God over human sin and death. Christ the Good Shepherd, after all, is the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world” as we pray constantly in the Liturgy. The Good Shepherd is the one who has laid down his life for the sheep, for you and for me. The image is rich in meaning and quite powerful in its symbolism.  We live in the care of the Good Shepherd who has triumphed over human sin to carry us home to the Father.

But the image is even stronger because we live in that care now in the power of the Risen Christ. God’s providential care is the active principle which sustains and maintains creation redeemed and restored, the active principle which sustains and maintains our redeemed humanity. In a way, so many of the biblical images of God’s providential care meet in the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. As I Peter 2 puts it, we “are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls.”

We live in the care of the Good Shepherd. Yes, but how do we relate to that care? Are we grateful and alive in the joy of redemption as the community of the redeemed? Or are we a pack of complainers? Do we rejoice or do we murmur? Do we give praise or do we mock? These are the questions which are also set before us, the questions which speak directly to human freedom and dignity. I fear that the therapeutic culture which, on the one hand, calls us to take care of one another and wonderfully and rightly so, yet, on the other hand, creates a culture of dependency, a culture of the depressed and the walking dead. Which will we be?

In the providence of God, we are reminded of some of the stories of God’s providential care for his people; ultimately, God’s providential care for our humanity, we might add. And yet here is the challenge. God provides for us but we are our own worst enemies about that care. We end up as often as not denying the nature of that care precisely because we want it to be something else and other than what it is and miss the joy and the truth of what it really is.

One of the wonderful stories of God’s providential care and our confusions about that care is found, I think, in the Old Testament story of the spies sent into the land of Canaan who are bidden to return with some of the fruit of the land. “They came to the Valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them.” It is a marvelous image and one which has caught the imagination of generations of Christians. Sadly, I think, it is almost totally unknown to modern Christians. And yet, the story is frequently captured in the art of the Church, particularly in the stained glass windows of the medieval world.

In some cases, the depiction of this story celebrates the guild of wine-dressers and wine-makers who would have contributed to the building and decoration of the great cathedrals. How wonderful that their actual labour is seen in biblical terms and that their labour is, as it were, brought directly into the fabric of the Church and is seen as belonging to the liturgy of redemption. The image of the spies carrying the cluster of grapes signals both the labours of the workers in the vineyards but also the sacramental life of the Church which is part and parcel of God’s providential care.

At Canterbury Cathedral, the window that depicts the Crucifixion is surrounded by a series of Old Testament stories that are understood to foreshadow the Crucifixion. Above the image of Christ Crucified is the image of Abram’s intended sacrifice of Isaac, the promised son, a most intriguing and yet disturbing story, to be sure, but one which is seen to foreshadow God’s sacrifice of his own son, the story of Good Friday.  Underneath the image of Christ Crucified is the image of the spies carrying the cluster of grapes from the Valley of Eshcol. At once a sacramental image, it is also part of the Christian understanding of the Old Testament stories. Here the cross is signified as well as the life which flows from the cross sacramentally; the grapes signify the wine of the Eucharist.

To drive the point home even more intensely, the Latin inscription that accompanies the image states “the one refuses to look back at the cluster and the other thirsts to see it; Israel knows not Christ, the Gentiles adore him.“ This of course reflects on the sense of difference between Jew and Christian, and, no doubt, in ways that trouble our sentiments and feelings. Yet it is a profound point.

This story, however, is about more than the fruit of the land being brought back to wandering Israel. No. The spies who are sent into the land do, to be sure, return with the fruit of the land, the fruit which promises so much that seems good and holy. The spies describe the land as being “the land of milk and honey,” but they also signal their fear and anxiety about the inhabitants of that land in relation to whom “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers.” What is this? Fear. The very thing which in the providence of Christ, crucified and risen, has been overcome; the very thing which is the meaning of Christ the Good Shepherd. The Resurrection frees us from the tyranny of bullies, be they bishops, dictators, self-serving politicians, or the very forms of tyranny in our own souls, the tyranny of mediocrity and victimhood which diminishes us all and compromises our charity.

Easter is the season of the Resurrection and the one thing which it does not let us forget is the reality of suffering and death. The God who cares for us bears the marks of his care in the body of his son. Suffering is not ignored nor denied nor simply done away. In this vale of tears, suffering r’us. The wonder and miracle is that we are given something more. What is it? A way to face such things with joy and confidence in God’s deep love for our humanity. We only live when we live in the providential care of God’s love. It is at once our challenge and our comfort.

“And they came to the Valley of Eshcol,
and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes,
and they carried it on a pole between two of them”

Fr. David Curry
Easter II, 2012
Morning Prayer

It is a familiar and a comforting image but I fear we overlook its radical meaning. It is one of the great images of God’s providential care for his wayward and wandering sheep, meaning us. It is an image, too, which belongs at once to the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Christ bears us in his arms. The same arms that are stretched out upon the cross are the arms that have embraced our humanity, the arms that gather us into the love of the son for the father. He carries us into the hands of the Father.

The great image of God’s care, its greatness lies in the cure it provides. The cure is the triumph of God over human sin and death. Christ the Good Shepherd, after all, is the “Lamb of God that takest away the sin of the world,” as we pray so often in our Liturgy. The Good Shepherd is the one who has laid down his life for the sheep, for you and for me. The image is rich in meaning. We live in the care of the Good Shepherd who has triumphed over human sin to carry us home to the Father.

But the image is even stronger because we live in that care now in the power of the Risen Christ. God’s providential care is the active principle which sustains and maintains creation redeemed and restored, the active principle which sustains and maintains our redeemed humanity. In a way, so many of the biblical images of God’s providential care meet in the image of Christ the Good Shepherd. As I Peter 2 puts it, we “are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of [our] souls.”

We live in the care of the Good Shepherd. Yes, but how do we relate to that care? Are we grateful and alive in the joy of redemption as the community of the redeemed? Or are we a pack of complainers? Do we rejoice or do we murmur? Do we praise or do we mock? These are the questions which are also set before us, the questions which speak directly to human freedom and dignity. I fear that the therapeutic culture which, on the one hand, calls us to take care of one another and wonderfully and rightly so, yet, on the other hand, creates a culture of dependency, a culture of the depressed and the walking dead. Which will we be?

In the providence of God, we are reminded of some of the stories of God’s providential care for his people; ultimately, God’s providential care for our humanity, we might add. And yet here is the challenge. God provides for us but we, you and I, are our own worst enemies about that care. We end up as often as not denying the nature of that care precisely because we want it to be something else than what it is and miss the joy and the truth of what it is.

One of the wonderful stories of God’s providential care and our confusions about that care is found in the Old Testament story of the spies sent into the land of Canaan and returning with some of the fruit of the land. “They came to the Valley of Eshcol, and cut down from there a branch with a single cluster of grapes, and they carried it on a pole between two of them.” It is a marvelous image and one which has caught the imagination of generations of Christians. Sadly, I think, it is almost totally unknown to modern Christians. And yet, the story is frequently captured in the art of the Church, particularly in the stained glass windows of the medieval world.

In some cases, the depiction of this story celebrates the guild of wine-dressers and wine-makers who would have contributed to the building and decoration of the great cathedrals. How wonderful that their actual labour is seen in biblical terms and that their labour is, as it were, brought directly into the fabric of the Church and is seen as belonging to the liturgy of redemption. The image of the spies carrying the cluster of grapes signals both the labours of the workers in the vineyards but also the sacramental life of the Church which is part and parcel of God’s providential care.

At Canterbury Cathedral, the window that depicts the Crucifixion is surrounded by a series of Old Testament stories that are understood to foreshadow the Crucifixion. Above the image of Christ Crucified is the image of Abram’s intended sacrifice of Isaac, the promised son, a most intriguing and yet disturbing story, to be sure , but one which is seen to foreshadow God’s sacrifice of his own son.  Underneath the image of Christ Crucified is the image of the spies carrying the cluster of grapes from the Valley of Eshcol. At once a sacramental image, it is also part of the Christian understanding of the Old Testament stories. Here the cross is signified as well as the life which flows from the cross sacramentally; the grapes signify the wine of the Eucharist.

To drive the point home even more intensely, the Latin inscription that accompanies the image states “the one refuses to look back at the cluster and the other thirsts to see it; Israel knows not Christ, the Gentiles adore him.“ This of course reflects on the sense of difference between Jew and Christian, and, no doubt, in ways that trouble our sentiments and feelings. Yet it is a profound point.

This story, however, is about more than the fruit of the land being brought back to wandering Israel. No. The spies who are sent into the land do, to be sure, return with the fruit of the land, the fruit which promises so much that seems good and holy. The spies describe the land as being “the land of milk and honey,” the proverbial promised land, we might say, but they also signal their fear and anxiety about the inhabitants of that land in relation to whom they say, “we seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers.” What is this? Fear. The very thing which in the providence of Christ, crucified and risen, has been overcome; the very thing which is the meaning of Christ the Good Shepherd. The Resurrection frees us from the tyranny of bullies, be they bishops, dictators, self-serving politicians, or the very forms of tyranny in our own souls, the tyranny of mediocrity and victimhood which diminishes us all and compromises our charity.

Easter is the season of the Resurrection yet it does not let us forget the reality of suffering and death. The God who cares for us bears the marks of his care in the body of his son. Suffering is not ignored nor denied nor simply done away. Suffering r’us. The wonder and miracle is that we are given something more. What is it? A way to face such things with joy and confidence in God’s deep love for our humanity. We only live when we live in the providential care of God’s love. It is at once our challenge and our comfort. And it is wonderfully before us in the words of Jesus who says,

“I am the good shepherd.”

Fr. David Curry
Easter II, 2012
8:00am

Mary’s word opens us out, quite literally, to the words of the Incarnate Christ, “the word made flesh,” but most especially and, perhaps, most tellingly to the words of the Risen Christ. It is not too much to say that the words of the Risen Christ inaugurate the most dramatic change in human outlook and understanding that there has ever been. The effect of the presence and words of the Risen Christ on the disciples leads to the intense recollection of all the details of the Passion of Christ and, by extension, to the accounts as well of all the other words and deeds of Christ including his nativity that comprise the Gospels and, then, the other writings that make up the New Testament.

In other words, there is something dramatic and compelling about the Resurrection. Death and Resurrection are two of the foundational themes and principles of Christianity, though not entirely unique to Christianity. There is, in late Judaism, the idea of the resurrection and resurrection, too, is a feature of the Islamic religion. But for Christians the focus is on Christ, on his death and resurrection. And Christ is the primary teacher of the Resurrection.

What is that teaching? That we are more though not less than our bodies, which is probably good news for some of us. That we are not the “slave[s] to fate, chance, kings and desperate men,” as John Donne puts it, the mere pathetic victims of the fatalistic determinisms of our social, economic, political and therapeutic culture. No. We are freed to God in whom we find the very truth of our being and life, the God in whom we become who we are truly called to be and in whom we are more and not less than ourselves.

This is, I think, pretty amazing and quite profound. It is the case historically and theologically that the Resurrection effected the greatest sea-change in human culture imaginable. It quite literally changed the world. And it changed the world because it changes our outlook. It changes our minds and it changes our thinking.

The Resurrection accounts are fascinating. They show us how an idea comes to birth and life in our minds and lives. There is a change, a life-altering change, and the change is in us in how we look at ourselves and one another. And all because something has changed between God and man.

Today’s Gospel shows us something of the dynamic of that change. It reminds us of the absolute centrality of Christ on the Cross, and, more specifically, of the distinctive Christian teaching about the forgiveness of sins. What was transacted on the Cross for us and for our salvation is the forgiveness of sins, the reconciliation between God and man in the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. In the Resurrection, that forgiveness now becomes the living reality of our life in Christ, in his body, the Church.

Christ appears to the disciples on the evening of Easter day. They are huddled behind closed doors. They are there in utter fear and confusion. All their hopes and expectations have been crushed, literally, crucified. Christ appears mysteriously, magically, mystically, and yet, in every way, really and he speaks. His word is the word of peace. Peace is proclaimed in the place of fear and doubt and despair. This is the peace that “passeth understanding,” as our liturgy reminds us. It is beyond human knowing, that is to say, it is not a human invention. This is the divine peace which belongs to the heavenly triumph over human sin and enmity. The divine peace arises from the reconciling love of God for our humanity accomplished through Christ’s death and resurrection. It is proclaimed in the midst of our fears and anxieties, our darkness and despair wherever we are.

That is not all. No. There is another word. It is the word of forgiveness which is absolutely crucial to Christian faith and life. Christ’s forgiveness is now our life. The forgiveness of sins is delegated by the Risen Christ to the disciples. It becomes the living reality of the Church.

It is here in our liturgy. We take it for granted, I fear, and miss the astounding truth that it conveys. In every service, there is death and resurrection through confession and absolution. It means the hope of change, of transformation in my heart and your heart, and in our lives with one another. Forgiveness is about the possibilities of change, of reconciliation, of being more and becoming more truly ourselves in the love of Christ. It opens us out to the words which can change us, if we will let them, from selfishness to helpfulness, from meanness to kindness, from vice to virtue, and so on and so on. All changes for the better. That is the hope and the reality of the Resurrection. It happens through the encounter with the words of Christ, the words of the Risen Christ who proclaims peace and forgiveness. May it be unto us according to his word!

“Be it unto me according to thy word”

Fr. David Curry
Octave Day of Easter, 2012