Day: May 25, 2014

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

It is one of the profoundest statements in the Gospel. It captures in a phrase the whole of religion. It suggests something about God in himself and something about God for us. The mission of the Son – his going out and his returning to the Father – belongs to his essential identity. Everything finds its place within the relation of the Son to the Father in the bond of the Holy Ghost. Everything finds its place in the life of God. That life is opened to view in the mission of the Son. We have only to enter it so as to live it. Such is the grace of God.

Here is the blessing. The blessing is to know that you are a child of God. The children of God know that there are hardships and sufferings, for they are not to be ignored, but even more they know the victory of Christ – “I have overcome the world,” the world within our hearts and the world around us.

The challenge of this “overcoming” is that we have to live it. We find the truth of ourselves in Christ. But we have to be incorporated into him so as to grow up into that life. We have to continue in the way of grace through prayer and praise, through the ordered life of worship and discipleship in the Church, through the growing up into a spiritual understanding of what the Gospel of the Resurrection proclaims.

The good news is that the realities of sin and death are overcome by the greater and truer reality of God’s saving grace in Jesus Christ. We have only to live it.

And there is the rub. Will we? Do we? And how and in what way? By the only way that there is. The way that Christ has given us in his body, the Church, the way of grace and glory in prayer and praise, in service and sacrifice. This is the way that belongs to the overcoming of the world – the overcoming of all the things in us and outside of us that threaten our souls, our very being, the very truth of ourselves as spiritual creatures who have an end and purpose with God.

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“[He] slew mighty kings … Sihon king of the Amorites … and Og the king of Bashan: / for his mercy endureth for ever”

Psalm 136 has the wonderful recurring refrain for each of its twenty-six verses: “for his mercy endureth for ever.” We “give thanks unto the Lord, for he is gracious:/ for his mercy endureth for ever.” He is “God of all gods”, “Lord of all lords” “who only doeth great wonders”, “who by his excellent wisdom made the heavens” and “laid out the earth above the waters” and all that is in them. The whole of creation arises from the enduring mercy of God, a theme which is especially important on Rogation Sunday in Eastertide. But the psalm then turns to the theme of redemption, to the story of salvation.

We are bidden to give thanks to the God “who smote Egypt in their first-born” who “overthrew Pharoah and his host in the Red Sea” and all because “his mercy endureth for ever.” And while we may easily rejoice in Israel’s deliverance from Egyptian tyranny, it might just give us a moment’s pause that it comes at such a price. We may easily rejoice, too, in the God “who led his people through the wilderness” and provided for them but, then, what exactly are we to make of the God “who smote great kings” even “mighty kings” like “Sihon, king of the Amorites” “and Og the king of Bashan” and all because “his mercy endureth for ever.” This is mercy?

Mercy here seems rather selective and rather vengeful and violent. Yet the psalm recalls the deep and profound and difficult lessons by which Israel learns about the truth and the majesty of God and, ultimately, about the divine mercy which underlies the whole of creation and redemption. The Scriptures challenge our presuppositions and sentimentalism. These are stories about tough love!

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