“Of his own will he brought us to birth by the word of truth”
Boko Haram, the Islamic fundamentalist group that has taken hundreds of Nigerian girls captive, thinks that western education is sin or forbidden, haram; that is, at least, a rough translation of their name. It strikes me as a remarkable betrayal of Islam’s important contributions to western culture and education of which Islam is an inescapable part.
Despair and fear go together. Anger and resentment are fellow-travelers. The despair and fear in our world reveals a profoundly spiritual malaise. It is the betrayal of the ideals and principles of western education and not just by Boko Haram. The global world is a western world and yet that world is unclear and confused about the fundamental principles that define it. The result is either passive nihilism, a retreat into the gated communities of our minds, eyes shut to what we refuse to see, or active nihilism which takes a variety of forms ranging from the violence of groups like Boko Haram or the deconstruction and dismantling of our institutional life under the guise of re-imaging everything from God to human life. Both are based upon a rejection of the reason of God which results in the tyranny of our wills. There is really only the will to power in the rejection of truth. Such is nihilism. Yet the truth of God is the strong message of this day in the season of the Resurrection, eloquently expressed in Epistle and Gospel alike.
The Gospel of the Resurrection is especially about the overcoming of our fearfulness and our despair. The message of the angel to the women, coming early to the tomb and finding it empty, was “be not afraid.” Jesus counters the despair of the disciples huddled behind closed doors in fear; Jesus runs out after us on the road to Emmaus where we are in flight from Jerusalem in fear.
His presence is the counter to our fears, the fear of death and the fear of the empty nothingness of life. He shows us his hands and his side. He makes visible his victory over our death and the ways of death that we have chosen in our will to nothingness. The meaning of death has been changed and we have only to will what we have been given to see in the witness of the Resurrection. We can only do that by the same means as it been accomplished – by grace.
The Resurrection sets us in motion to God and to one another. It makes life worth living to know that we have an end in God. His life in us is the measure and the truth of our own lives and our freedom here and now. We can only live for one another when we live to God, when we live for truth and commit ourselves to its power.
The Epistle of St. James reminds us that ”of his own will he brought us to birth by the word of truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits of all his creation.” The Resurrection is new birth, new birth in us, dying to ourselves and living for God and for one another. Without that we are dead in ourselves, buried in the tombs of our souls, paralyzed in our fears and unable to reach out in care and concern for one another. Not so much “bewitched, bothered and bewildered” as depressed, depressing and in despair. Such are the realities of a godless world.
Our morality becomes an empty morality, for “the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God” without this deeper and religious sense of identity. Throughout these Sundays in Eastertide, Jesus is at pains to counter our fearfulness and, by extension, our empty but destructive anger that is its consequence. He prepares the disciples for the fullness of the meaning of the Resurrection. His going from us is the condition of his being with us. He is preparing them for the radical truth of his Resurrection. It is simply this. He is going to the Father. It is all about the community of the spirit.
“Because I go to the Father” is the recurring refrain of the Easter season. Everything is gathered into the motions of the Son’s love for the Father in the Holy Spirit. The whole life of the Son, eternally and incarnate, we might say, is towards the Father. By virtue of his death and resurrection, we have been drawn into the motions of that perfect love. We are raised up out of the tombs and the prisons of our fears and angers. The Comforter is the Holy Spirit bestowed upon us by the promises of the Father and the Son. All the comings and goings of our lives find their place and their meaning in the comings and goings of the Son to the Father through the Holy Spirit.
This constitutes a challenge to our world and to us. The world, today’s Gospel tells us, is “reproved” or convicted of “sin,” that is to say, for acting as if there is no God, such is our worldliness, “because ye believe not on me”; of “righteousness”, meaning that what is right and true is only found in the spiritual relation and identity of the Father and the Son, and all “because I go to the Father”; and of “judgment”, because all that stands against God and his will is shown to be empty and futile “because the prince of this world is judged”. “The Spirit of truth,” Jesus says, “will guide you into all truth.” There is truth and we are to walk in its paths whether it is in the face of the active nihilisms of groups like Boko Haram or in other forms of service and care for one another in the communities where we are placed. We only live when we live for God and for one another. All because of the radical meaning of the Resurrection.
The Risen Christ is the counter to all our fears. He is in our midst. He would not leave us comfortless. He would not leave us empty but filled, filled with his love, the love that sets us in motion in lives of service and sacrifice. Christ has entered into the depths of our humanity in all its sorry array of suffering and death to bring us into the fullness of his joy and life. Such is his death and resurrection for us. It is the counter to all our fears. The comfort that strengthens us is the new life that he has given us. He would have our hearts fixed on him “where true joys are to be found” but that means loving what God commands and desiring what God promises.
“Of his own will he brought us to birth by the word of truth”
Fr. David Curry
Easter 4, 2014