by CCW | 11 June 2015 21:00
The Saints’ Days commemorations provide us with wonderful ways to reflect upon the essential nature of our Christian identity. They concentrate for us at once our vocation to holiness of life and witness and to our communion with God. They are a poignant reminder of our life in Christ here and now. They encourage us and perhaps never more so than in the commemoration of St. Barnabas whose name means “son of consolation” or “encouragement.”
Can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than this commandment to love as Christ has loved us? Can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than to realise that we are the friends of God and not simply servants? In short, can there be any greater consolation or encouragement than to be recalled to our communion with God?
The Gospel reading for the Feast of St. Barnabas is from the 15th chapter of John’s Gospel. The passage follows immediately upon the last and perhaps greatest of the seven so-called “I am” sayings of Jesus, sayings where through metaphor and image, Christ indicates the forms of our incorporation in the life of God. The last and perhaps greatest of those images is that of the vine. “I am the vine,” Jesus says and goes on to talk about our abiding in him and he in us for “without me,” he says, “ye can do nothing.” Here the force of that image extends to the explicit idea of friendship; our friendship or communion with God in Jesus Christ which is the basis of our friendship or communion with one another. We live in the love of God.
This is the wonder which turns the world on its head. The idea of communion and fellowship with God and with one another. But why a commandment? Do friends command friends? Yes and no. The wonder here lies in the communion between God and our humanity that has been established – created – by God. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you,” Jesus says. The distance between God and Man is not denied even as a connection and an intimacy between God and Man has been created. The God who is love commands love because of the necessity of love itself – because of its essentially divine nature.
“The love of truth seeks a holy quiet; the necessity of love accepts a righteous busyness.” A saying attributed to St. Augustine, it captures the character of Christian life and witness which is also before us in the commemoration of St. Barnabas. The apostolic Saints whom we celebrate throughout the course of the year signal the nature of our spiritual fellowship with God in God without which we cannot be with one another. And all because of the commandment to love. In a way, it has to be a commandment. Why? Because we have to be taught and compelled to do what ultimately belongs to the real truth and dignity of our humanity. The point of the “I am” sayings is that we cannot achieve community with God ourselves. We live in the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. We live by virtue of his word and life in us. That is what changes everything and makes possible the impossible, namely, our being with one another in love, something we know we cannot do on our own because of sin and folly, because of the ways in which we unfriend one another and unfriend ourselves. But Jesus commands us to love because he has made us friends. “I have called you friends,” he says, “for all that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you.” This is the radical nature of revelation and redemption – we participate in the divine friendship of the Trinity.
How? Through the sacrifice of Christ whose sacrifice lives in us – laying down our lives for one another as Christ has laid down his life for us. The mystery of communion – of friendship – is found in sacrifice, in love. Christ’s commandment is our joy, our freedom and our life.
Fr. David Curry
Feast of St. Barnabas
June 11th, 2015
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2015/06/11/sermon-for-the-feast-of-st-barnabas-2/
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