Day: April 15, 2017

“Turn unto the Lord your God”

We turn to God in watching and waiting upon the great mystery of God’s turning to us in the Resurrection to new life. We turn expectantly to look upon the second great act of God. There is the going forth of the Word of God in Creation and now the going forth of the Word of God in Redemption. We turn to God in joy for we behold the transition from darkness to light, from death to life. For his are the times and the seasons. We are turned to Christ, the Alpha and Omega of our very lives.

We turn through the witness of the Scriptures to the story of Creation and to the saving acts of God in the Exodus, to the images of redemption and restoration that shape our understanding of the great mystery of the Resurrection. It is all about our being gathered into the eternal motions of God’s love. We turn to him who turns to us in love.

The renewal of our baptismal vows is an important feature of our Easter vigil. It is about our intentional turning to God in the great circling acts of creation and redemption, in incarnation and passion, in death and resurrection. We turn to face the altar and profess our Christian identity in God as Trinity precisely through the great acts of his Passion and Resurrection, themselves like great circles within the greater circles of Creation and Redemption and all within the greatest circle of divine love in the going forth and return of the Son to the Father in the bond of the Holy Spirit.

On this most holy night, we rejoice in the great redire ad principia that is God’s turning us to himself in his turning to us and all in his great circling. We rejoice in the love which gives itself to us and in so doing gives us life. We only live in him who turns to live in us.

“Turn unto the Lord your God”

Fr. David Curry
Easter Vigil, 2017

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“Turn unto the Lord your God”

In the quiet stillness of Holy Saturday, we turn to the grave and death of Christ. “It is finished”, it seems. All that remains are the quiet sorrows and griefs of our broken hearts in a broken world. And yet we turn to his grave. Such a turning is itself the beginnings of another motion, a seeking for something more in the honouring of what matters and is true about our loves and about our relationships with one another. We gather at the graves of our loved ones. How shall we not gather at the grave of Christ?

It is a borrowed grave given by another, by Joseph of Arimathea. That is fitting for Christ borrowed a death by borrowing a body, as Athanasius puts it, but he has made grave, death, and body his own precisely in his turning to us. And in giving us himself he gives us ourselves. Such is the turning.

The turning on Holy Saturday morning is about the fullest possible extent of reconciliation. It marks the further extension of the Passion. We turn to the grave in the disquiet of our souls but Christ hidden in the grave turns to the greater work of reconciliation. That greater work has to do with his Descent into Hell; his going down before his return in Resurrection and Ascension. It is all part of the circling. Such is reconciliation – our being returned to him from whom we have turned away.

He goes as Peter, drawing upon Zechariah, says to “preach unto the spirits in prison,” the prison of Sheol or Hades, the ‘place’ of departed spirits, the hell of our separation from God and Life. What does it mean? Simply that God seeks reconciliation with the whole of his sinful creation. Such is the radical nature of God’s turning to us in Jesus Christ. Literally nothing shall be lost but all shall be gathered up. The Epistle reading from 1 Peter points to this turning and circling, at once Christ’s Descent and then his Resurrection and Ascension. In those motions of going forth and return to “the right hand of God” the Father lies the redemption of the whole of sinful creation, past, present and yet to come. All is gathered into the eternity of God through the going forth and return of the Son.

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