Year: 2010

“We love him because he first loved us”

St. John’s First Epistle is a treatise on love which complements and underscores the love which his Gospel proclaims. It cannot be emphasised enough, it seems to me, that we enter into the mystery of the life of God through the eyes of John. This epistle intends, as do so many of the epistles and lessons, the application of the Gospel message, particularly the Gospel proclamation that “God is love.” Love is of God and so we ought also to love one another. But what is that love?

That love is the communion of God with God in God – the communion of the Trinity. This is the love by which we have communion with God and so with one another. Our loves find their place and meaning in God’s love. “He that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.”

This is, as it were, the recurring refrain of the Trinity season: “God is love and he that abideth in love abideth in God and God in him.” This is the love which the Church is empowered and compelled to proclaim. But more than that, the Church is to be the place of the indwelling love of God, the place where God’s love is called to mind, and the place where that love takes shape in us. The Church is to be the place where we seek the perfection of our love in the grace of Jesus Christ.

The Church refers to more than merely a building, just as the building points beyond itself. These holy places signify a greater purpose and one which extends into the stuff of our daily lives with the intent that they should be holy lives. We are called to love out of the love which has been shown to us.

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“Behold, a door was opened in heaven”

It was behind closed doors, literally and figuratively, that Jesus made known to us his resurrection. But it is not only behind closed doors that the things of God are made known to us. Through the incarnation and manifestation of Jesus Christ, through his passion and death, through his resurrection and ascension, through the sending of the Holy Spirit, “a door was opened in heaven” and we behold the glory of God in the fullness of his revelation. God makes himself known to us.

Trinity Sunday sets before us the vision of God which is the end of man. “The end of man is endless Godhead endlessly possessed” (Austin Farrer). Trinity Sunday, we might say, is the great Te Deum Laudamus of the Church. We proclaim God as the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We proclaim what we have been given to behold through the fullness of the scriptural witness to God’s revelation. It is what we have been given to proclaim. It is also what we are privileged to participate in. And nowhere is that more fully captured than in the Athanasian Creed which we have been privileged to proclaim.

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“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind”

Sometimes the things that come upon us suddenly are the things that unsettle us most. Is it so with the Descent of the Holy Ghost? He came down “suddenly” upon the disciples, but was his coming suddenly a coming unexpectedly? That he came suddenly we read; his coming unexpectedly, we do not read. In fact, Jesus tells us to expect the coming of the Holy Ghost, “commanding them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait for the promise of the Father,” even the descent of the Holy Ghost.

Yet we may wait expectantly and still be caught unawares, for the realisation of what we await may far exceed our expectations and so catch us by surprise. We await for what we do not fully understand. The grace of God is always something more; the mystery of God something more yet again. The promise of the Ascension was the coming down of the Holy Ghost for which Jesus prepares us and bids us wait, yet “suddenly there came a sound from heaven, as of a rushing mighty wind.”

Certainly, the effects of this coming down would appear to be most unsettling, the manner of their appearing no less so – “a rushing mighty wind” and “cloven tongues like as of fire” lighting upon the disciples gathered in Jerusalem, filling them with the Holy Spirit and moving them “to speak with other tongues.” To all appearances an event most unsettling and more than a little bit disconcerting.

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“God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet”

It is the psalms, as often as not, that strike the right tone of approach to our worship. In this case, the high note of rejoicing and delight that belongs to the Feast of the Ascension is nicely captured by the words of the psalmist. “God has gone up with a merry noise/ the Lord with the sound of the trumpet” (Psalm 47.5). Another psalm, Psalm 93, too, captures the royal theme of divine kingship over the whole of creation that the Ascension also signifies.

The Ascension of Christ marks the fortieth day of Easter. It marks the end, in the sense of the completion, of the Easter season. One of the creedal mysteries of the Christian Faith, the Ascension is often overlooked, perhaps because it doesn’t fall on a Sunday, but on a Thursday. And yet, it provides some very important and powerful teaching.

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