Month: April 2015

“Ye believe in God, believe also in me”

The readings for The Feast of St. Philip and St. James complement the themes of Eastertide. The fundamental orientation of the Son to the Father is ever so strongly and rather provocatively expressed in the gospel reading, “no man cometh unto the Father but by me,” Jesus says, pointing out to Philip, too, that “he that hath seen me, hath seen the Father.” And yet, Jesus says, “believe me, that I am in the Father, and the Father in me; or else believe me for the very work’s sake.”

The things which Jesus does are the works which manifest the truth and the life and the way of God. And how are we to participate in that? Through prayer. “If ye ask any thing in my name, I will do it.” All prayer is about nothing less and nothing more than asking the Father in the name of the Son by the power of the Spirit. All prayer gathers us into the fundamental orientation of the Son, “because I go unto my Father.” Here again, and providentially, we have the recurring Easter refrain, “because I go to the Father.” Everything is rooted and grounded in the life of God, the holy and blessed Trinity.

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“Peace be unto you”

Peace and forgiveness flow out from the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. They are the first-fruits of his resurrection in us. Jesus appears behind closed doors where the disciples are huddled in fear. He proclaims peace and forgiveness. He institutes the means by which his peace and his forgiveness continue with us – through the Holy Spirit breathed out upon the disciples who will be the apostles of his church. They are sent forth to bestow the peace and the forgiveness of God to a fearful and an uncertain world. “Whosoever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whosoever sins ye retain, they are retained”.

What an awesome charge! And, yet, how little understood. Sometimes known as “the power of the keys,” the proclamation of God’s forgiveness through the ordained ministry to his penitent people effects what it signifies. If we truly confess our sins and truly seek God’s forgiveness, then we receive the grace of forgiveness objectively proclaimed in the words of absolution pronounced by the priest and signified in the sign of the cross. We are forgiven. That is the grace which extends from the Upper Room “the same day at evening,” the day of the resurrection of Christ to us even today. It is as if we are there, in an arrested moment of time and space, the eternal now. Something happens in the liturgy. At every service, Christ appears, as it were, behind closed doors to speak peace and forgiveness to us all.

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“Because I go to the Father”

There is confusion before and after. “Because I go to the Father,” Jesus says, but what does he mean, the disciples wonder? And many, many have wondered and continue to wonder ever since. Yet, it is the recurring refrain of the Easter Season that appears time and time again, especially in the last three Sundays of Eastertide.

The refrain goes to the heart of the Christian mystery, to who Jesus is and who he is for us. “Because I go to the Father”, your sorrow – our sorrow – shall be turned into joy. “Because I go to the Father,” the Holy Spirit will come upon you “to guide you into all truth” and “to bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you”.

The phrase “because I go to the Father” speaks to the essential identity of the Son with the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit. This lies at the very heart of the Christian religion, to the mystery of our communion with God, to our life in Christ. The phrase “because I go to the Father” speaks to the divine intimacy into which Christ would bring us and place us. He would place us in his love for the Father in the Holy Spirit.

These are resurrection words. They speak to us of the hope of the Gospel. They are resurrection words into which all that belongs to sorrow and suffering have been taken and out of which all that belongs to joy and peace come forth. The resurrection, after all, is new birth, new life. Its radical meaning is life to God with God and in God, “because I go to the Father”. Where would we be without prepositions?

His words speak to us about the pilgrimage of salvation: the way he goes for us and that way in us. The psalmist puts it this way:

Blessed are they whose strength is in thee/ in whose heart are the pilgrim ways; Who going through the Vale of Misery use it for a well;/ yea, the early rain covereth it with blessings.

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“I am the good shepherd”

“I am the bread of life,” Jesus says, who also says “I am the Good Shepherd.” The two phrases go together and inform our understanding of what we do here today, an understanding of things spiritual and intellectual that were well known and understood by the very person who gathers us into that understanding.

We meet here at Christ Church for the Christian funeral of Helen Katharine Gibson. We meet in accord not simply with her wishes per se but her wishes in accord with the pattern and understanding of the Christian faith which she believed and to which she gave such eloquent testimony by her example and service, her commitment and generosity.

“O Jesus, I have promised.” They are the first words of one of the hymns which she wanted sung at her Requiem. Nothing captures more profoundly the character of Helen. Her whole life was about a promise to the Christ who promises salvation to all that seek his will. Helen knew this and knew something else. It is not a one-off moment of assertion but a life-long process of learning about “put[ting] on the Lord Jesus Christ,” about living with Christ in his body, the Church. For Helen it was essential, “the one thing necessary.” She combined in her approach to Parish and community life both the service qualities of a Martha, “busy with many things,” and the contemplative qualities of a Mary, “sitting at the feet of Jesus.” She knew that service and worship go together and belong to the nature of our life in Christ. It was not simply what she wanted; it was also what she thought was right and proper.

Though diminutive in stature, she was great-souled in character. There was a remarkable toughness to Helen. She was not one to give up and remained courteous and lively in heart and mind right to the end, undeterred by such minor things as broken bones! Those were only inconveniences. She was not one to complain. The major frustration for her was not being able to do all the things that she wanted to do. I am talking about her when she was in her nineties! For years upon years, she attended the 8:00am service here at Christ Church, nestled in the back Choir pew, often with Cecilia and Lynn Pascoe and rarely, if ever, did she miss a mid-week service at least until these last few years. Even then, she was always present either in her room or Aggie’s room at Kingsway Gardens, now Macleod House, with Bill and Wilfred and one of her Newfoundland Angels/caregivers for Holy Communion. She delighted in the worship of the Church. She had a strong sense of duty, duty towards God and duty towards neighbour. In both she was, I think, an inspiration to us all.

Helen had a strong sense of what was proper and right, not in a narrow and pedantic way but as alive to the things that matter. Shortly after coming to Christ Church some seventeen or eighteen years ago, I remember her speaking to me about two things. First, why had I omitted at the 8:00am Communion Service a part of the service commonly called The Comfortable Words? I assured her that I had no objection to The Comfortable Words but was only trying to keep the service reasonably short. Her reply was, “well, they surely don’t take that much time, do they?” She was right and needless to say I have never omitted them at the 8:00 Sunday service ever since and certainly not today!

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“Come and have breakfast”

An odd text for Evensong, I suppose, but then time and sense often seem no more when we are dealing with matters of eternity. It is one of the more delightful resurrection appearances of Jesus. It takes place on the seashore, “by the sea of Tiberias.” It is, I suppose, a fish story but one which goes to the heart of the proclamation of the Resurrection. St. John’s breakfast-with-Jesus-on-the-beach story is “the third time that Jesus was revealed to the disciples after he was raised from the dead.”

Two themes present themselves. First, that the Resurrection entails “the resurrection of the understanding” and secondly, that the Resurrection involves “the reconstitution of the human community” into fellowship with God after the disarray and disintegration of our humanity, individually and collectively, in the pageant of our betrayals of God made so heartrendingly visible in Holy Week.

In Luke’s Gospel, too, Jesus appears to the disciples and asks them whether they have any food before opening to them the Scriptures. “They give him a piece of broiled fish, and of an honey-comb.” Here Jesus-on-the-beach has a charcoal fire and bids them “bring some of the fish that you have caught”. “Come and have breakfast” means come and have bread and barbecued fish.

What’s with the fish, broiled or barbecued? Nothing, really, other than the remarkable ordinariness of the extraordinary thing. Nothing, really, except an aspect of the reality of the idea of the Resurrection. That, of course, is everything. The Gospel accounts of the Resurrection, themselves the fons et origo of the Gospels have a simplicity and unadorned directness about them. They compel, I think, by the quality of their quietly restrained narrative that remains remarkably understated.

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