by CCW | 6 November 2016 15:00
It is a most touching scene, if you will pardon the pun. But here is a story about someone who is suffering terribly and who has suffered “with an issue of blood twelve years” and who seeks healing not by the touch of Jesus but just by touching his garment. As touching as her faith is, it is a long ways from what Paul seeks for us in his letter to the Colossians, namely, our being “filled with the knowledge of [God’s] will in all wisdom and understanding” without which there cannot be that greater wholeness for our humanity, namely, our being made “meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light”. The wholeness that this woman seeks belongs to the vocation of our humanity realised in the communion of saints. It means a deeper understanding of human suffering and of human redemption, a deeper understanding of healing; ultimately it means an understanding of death and resurrection even in the face of scorn and mockery.
Our readings this morning can be seen in the light of the scripture readings that belong to the Festival of All Saints[1]. It extends to an octave, eight days of consideration about the vocation of our humanity. For that is what All Saints is all about. We are offered a vision of heaven but not at the expense of the realities of suffering and death. All Saints’ embraces the Solemnity of All Souls[2] which recalls our common mortality, for example. The Octave of All Saints’ prepares us, it seems to me, for a kind of secular All Souls’ Day in the commemorations that belong to Remembrance Day in our culture. There is something deeply spiritual about such things that speak directly and profoundly to an understanding of our humanity in its truth and dignity in and through the awful spectacles of death and destruction in the wars of the world.
In the greyness of nature’s year and in the remembrance of the horrors of the world’s wars, in the season of scattered leaves and in the culture of scattered souls, we celebrate the spiritual gathering that is our homeland, the homeland of the spirit. “My friends,” the Chorus says at the end of Sophocles’ play, The Women of Trachis, “you have seen many strange things: countless deaths, new kinds of torture, immeasurable pain, and all that you’ve seen here is God” (trans. Bryan Doerries). There is nothing here that is not Zeus, to be more precise. “Countless deaths, new kinds of torture, immeasurable pain”, this could be a description of the horrors of the last hundred years or so and into our present time. A powerful story, the play belongs to the long tradition of consolation literature, to a litany of works by poets and philosophers, by figures like Plato and Aristotle, Seneca and Cicero, Augustine and Boethius, Dante and Meister Eckhart. Eckhart’s Book of Divine Consolation captures something of the wonder of the whole tradition of consolation literature, literature which deals openly and frankly with suffering. That tradition, too, has its counterparts in the other religions of the world such as in the Bhagavad Gita of Hinduism or in the Sermons of the Buddha which reflect on different ways of thinking about suffering.
“My suffering is in God”, Eckhart says, even more, “My suffering is God.” It is a provocative insight and one which arrests our attention. It captures powerfully a Christian understanding of suffering. But how are we to make sense of such a statement? At the heart of the Christian understanding of this tradition of consolation literature are the Beatitudes. They are at the heart of All Saints. They are about our vocation, our homeward calling to the communion of saints. They are altogether about the qualities or virtues of Christ in us, the one in whom we find our wholeness. It is not to be found in our being solitary and alone; it is found in our being part of a spiritual community.
But wholeness embraces the whole of our lives including the experience of suffering which is about our being unwhole. That is what makes this Gospel reading so powerful and connects it to the Beatitudes. In a way, the woman who seeks to steal a healing unawares from Christ is one of “the poor in spirit”. The poor in spirit contrast completely with those who are puffed up with self-importance and overflowing with self-esteem and a sense of entitlement. To the contrary, she does not even presume to trouble Jesus. It is a kind of humility but incomplete and partial for just the reasons Jesus shows in “turning himself about and seeing her” and speaking directly to her. He looks at her face to face. That is the greater meaning of being healed, about being made whole. It is about our being known in God and about God knowing us. “For now we see in a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as I am known.” It is about the knowing love of God who seeks our perfection. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” He wants us to know his love. Christians really are simply those who know that they are loved by God, unworthy as we are of that love. It cannot be an ignorant love. You can’t love what in some sense you don’t know.
“Jesus turned”. That is the whole meaning of the Incarnation and of the Advent of God. God turns to us to turn us to himself. It requires our being known in his knowing love for us. His humility in turning to us awakens a truer form of humility in us. “Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of God”. “Daughter be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole”.
The second miracle in this marvellous Gospel story also relates to the Beatitudes for it is one of three scenes in the Gospels where Jesus meets us as mourners. In those encounters something happens in and through our mourning whether it is the sorrow of the widow of Nain, the scorn and mockery of the mourners of the ruler’s daughter, or the sorrows of the friends and family of Lazarus who has been dead and buried four days. Something else happens in these encounters which speaks directly to the idea that “blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted”.
It means that there is more than simply our griefs and sorrows. We shall often mourn but not always be mourning because of Christ’s engagement with human experience. There is death and resurrection. We are called to be more than mourners and to find our wholeness in the comfort of Christ. Ultimately, that is part of what it means to be in the company of the redeemed, the communion of saints defined, as Paul so beautifully puts it, by “faith in Christ”, by “the love which ye have to all the saints” – meaning all who in the fellowship of the Church are beloved in Christ – and by “the hope which is laid up for you in heaven”. Faith, hope and charity comprise the ultimate meaning of the Beatitudes for they are about the qualities or the virtues of Christ in us.
We are meant to be touched in our hearts and minds by these Gospel stories. They teach us about the vocation of our humanity, our being called to the communion of saints through the qualities of Christ alive in us. There is nothing here that is not God, the God who turns to us and makes us whole.
Fr. David Curry
Trinity XXIV in the Octave of All Saints
November 6th, 2016
Source URL: https://christchurchwindsor.ca/2016/11/06/sermon-for-the-twenty-fourth-sunday-after-trinity-in-the-octave-of-all-saints/
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