by CCW | 26 April 2015 14:58
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.
Here are the words of the pilgrim ways. They are words for our hearts, come what may in the events and experiences of our lives, but only if we will take these words to heart.
These resurrection words signal the very meaning of Christian prayer. “Because I go to the Father,” we have access to God. Christ is “the Way, the Truth and the Life,” but only “because I go to the Father”. Prayer is not offered “to whom it may concern,” to what is utterly unknown and unnamed and to which we then append the attachments of our hearts and the agendas of our world and day, the god of x, y, z and w. No name religion is no religion, which is not to say that we can take God captive to our thoughts. The point is that all prayer is to the Father through the Son and in the Spirit. All prayer to God has its fullest articulation in and through the Word and Son of the Father.
It is very much about who we are. Our identity is bound up in the identity of the God who has revealed himself to us, who having “gone through the Vale of Misery” has blessed us. We are baptized in the Name of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. At Communion, we have fellowship with the Blessed Trinity. We are drawn into the intimacy of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. All “because I go to the Father”.
The divine names of God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are not open for negotiation. They belong to what is revealed in the witness of the Scriptures to Christ understood creedally and reflectively; in short, to our thinking upon what Christ says and does. It belongs to our catholic heritage and identity. They are there for us to enter into the mystery of their meaning. They are about who we are in the mystery of who God is and who God is for us. “Because I go to the Father” is the recurring refrain which would draw us into such a deepening understanding of what is revealed.
There is confusion before and after. At the heart of the confusion is denial and despair. It is a despair of revelation and a denial of God. We are often too much with ourselves in the vanity of our minds and in the folly of our imaginations. It results in misery, not felicity.
But Jesus has gone through the vale of our miseries – even the miseries of sin and despair, the miseries of denial and desolation. “My God, My God why hast thou forsaken me?” is the ultimate statement of alienation and estrangement, the ultimate expression of “the valley of the shadow of death,” the ultimate misery far beyond our comprehension and knowing. Jesus says these words on the Cross. He says them and feels them in the purpose of his redeeming mission. His mission is to bring us into the place of blessings. He would place us in his love for the Father in the Holy Spirit. For there, Jesus tells the disciples, in that divine love, “your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you”. In the midst of the confusion, before and after, we receive these words and find joy and peace.
Fr. David Curry
Easter 3, 2015
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2015/04/26/sermon-for-the-third-sunday-after-easter-5/
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