Month: November 2010

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man
lay down his life for his friends”

They are, perhaps, familiar words. They adorn many an empty tomb, a cenotaph, around which we gather on Remembrance Day just past. But what do we remember and how?

Remembrance Day is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day. The intention of All Souls’ is to remember our common mortality, to commemorate all who have died and to do so within the greater context of All Saints’, the celebration of our common vocation to holiness. The intention of Remembrance Day in the secular aspect of our culture is to remember those who died for the sake of our political and social freedoms .

To say that Remembrance Day is a kind of secular All Souls’ Day is not to say that our remembrance is not religious. It is, and profoundly so. It reminds us of the spiritual and, specifically, Christian principles which underlie the modern national states even in their contemporary confusion and disarray. To remember the fallen is to honour what they fought and died for in far away places and in scenes of absolute horror far beyond our imaging, despite the efforts of the film industry and even the purple prose of preachers.

We remind ourselves of the hell of war and of the destruction and evil which we inflict upon one another. The dust of our common humanity is soaked in blood. But if, and ‘if’ is the big, little word here, if we can remember in a spirit of forgiveness, so much the better. For then our remembering will be joined all the more surely to God’s forgiving remembrance of all our follies, all our sufferings and all our griefs. We will be remembering them in the greater sacrifice of Christ for the whole world, a remembering that enters in to all we do in our liturgy.

What we are remembering are the sacrifices for the rational freedoms of our political and social life, to be sure. But what underlies that remembrance is something profoundly spiritual. It is, perhaps, best captured in the scriptural phrase which adorns thousands of cenotaphs throughout the world. “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”

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“Rejoice with me”

Repentance leads to joy. There is something powerful in that idea. It is splendidly illustrated for us in the second lesson this morning in the parable of the lost sheep and the lost coin.

Repentance is redire ad principium, a kind of circling back to the truth from which we have turned. The idea of turning back to the truth in the awareness of the ways in which we so easily turn away from it, is one of the recurring lessons of the Scriptures. It is an important part of the good news, the good news that results in rejoicing actually.

Ecclesiasticus or the Wisdom of Jesu Ben Sirach, is one of the Books of the Apocrypha. It belongs to an ancient tradition of “wisdom literature” and, indeed, offers many a profound instruction on moral and spiritual ideas. In this morning’s first lesson, we are reminded about the destructive effects of anger and wrath. They are “abominations.” They are possessed by the sinful man and woman and they possess us. The desire for vengeance arises from anger and wrath and is set in explicit opposition to the idea and concept of forgiveness and healing. Ecclesiasticus would recall us to the commandments of God, to their positive force for the good that redeems us from our rage to lash out and destroy.

These are profound lessons and show something of the wisdom of the wisdom literature and how important a place they have in the reading and thinking life of the Church. In many ways, the Books of the Apocrypha, books written between the time of the writing down of the Old Testament and the emergence of the New Testament, anticipate some of the central themes of the Christian Gospel, especially in terms of moral instruction. In this case, the themes of forgiveness and joy are juxtaposed with the destructive forces of anger and wrath.

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“If I may but touch the hem of his garment, I shall be whole”

The year runs out in the themes of compassion and healing. This morning’s gospel provides us with a most poignant and touching scene of healing, a picture of human redemption in its fullness. What is it about? Simply, the radical meaning of Christ’s Incarnation. Next Sunday is the Sunday Next Before Advent. We stand at the end of the Christian year and contemplate the radical meaning of Christ’s turning to us but only so as to begin again. Such is his Advent. In his turning to us, we find healing and wholeness, but only, too, if we are turned to him.

It is a double healing story. The healing of the woman with a long-standing ailment of an issue of blood is a scene within a scene. It captures, in a way, the entire gospel. To steal a cure from him is to be unaware of who Jesus truly is. It shows an incomplete understanding of the divinity and the uniqueness of Christ. And yet what we most want, healing for a broken world and for our own broken selves, is found precisely in the one whom we ignore or deny.

There are, of course, the social implications of the gospel itself. Christ has come into our midst, into the heart of darkness, as it were, to bring light and grace and salvation and that puts real demands and responsibilities upon us who have heard his word. “Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me,” Jesus says, for that is crucial to the idea of Revelation and to the nature of the Redemption of our humanity. But he also says “or else believe me for the sake of the works themselves.” Good works are done in faith, implicitly or explicitly. Yet they have their fullest meaning in the name of the one in whose name they are done. Sometimes deeds and actions speak louder than words, to be sure, but they have their radical meaning in the Word made flesh.

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