Month: May 2012

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

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?

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“Receive with meekness the implanted word”

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.

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