Month: April 2017

“Turn unto the Lord your God”

The words of the Prophet Joel provided the critical matrix through which to ponder the mystery of the Passion in Holy Week. They equally carry us into the mystery of the Resurrection at Easter. Why? Because neither the Passion nor the Resurrection can be thought about without each other. The accounts of the Passion can only be written and can only be considered because of the Resurrection. Easter, in a way, signals the great turning of God to us. Only so can there be our turning to him.

The Resurrection is radical new life. The turning is about the hope of transformation, a change in outlook and understanding, a change from death to life. Easter signals the triumph of life over death, of light over darkness, of good over evil. And that is all God in his eternal turning and all God in his turning to us. Christ goes into darkness of death and death is changed for evermore. “For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.” And this changes everything for us. “If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things which are above”.

We are no longer to be defined by the dust of death and by our turning to the ground and to the emptiness of ourselves. We are turned to the Risen Christ and find in him the new and radical truth of our humanity. We are turned to God and only then are we alive. Death is swallowed up in life, the Life that has overcome death, which is to say that everything is not nothingness. Nihilism is the philosophy of nothingness, the sense of meaninglessness and the absence of purpose, the philosophy of despair and disappointment. The Resurrection of Christ counters the nihilisms of our world and day. It is all about the turning, the circling around and around of God to God in our humanity and our humanity in God.

We turn to the grave, like Mary Magdalene, seeking a corpse, a dead body, only to find “the stone taken away from the sepulchre”. The empty tomb marks the beginning of a change. She turns and runs to Peter and John with the report that “they have taken away the Lord out of the sepulchre, and we know not where they have laid him.” She assumes however that he is dead. It is merely a question of where the body is. Yet she has been set in motion to the other disciples who in turn run to the sepulchre and find it empty. It marks the beginning of a resurrection of the understanding, a new understanding about our humanity.

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“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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“Turn unto the Lord your God”

The idea of turning reaches a certain completeness on Good Friday. Circles within circles, we might say, a richness of turning and circling back and towards and upon the very principle of everything, God. Good Friday. It is the day of the profoundest reflection upon the most profoundest of themes, the death of God. For that is the radical meaning of Christ’s crucifixion.

God wills to embrace the disorders of our lives to the fullest and most impossible extent. It is literally beyond our imagining and utterly beyond our doing. We have the hardest time even thinking this mystery. And yet, year after year there is the marvel and wonder, the marvel and wonder of our turning and contemplating Christ crucified. And yet that turning is altogether about God’s turning to us.

That is the real strength and virtue of the liturgies of Good Friday. The good of this day lies entirely in the turning of Christ to us in the seven last words of the Cross. And yet, it seems we do not have the stamina to stop and pause, to think and ponder the great mystery of the crucifixion. The paradox is great if not obvious. It is all about the turning and about our turning away. Christ’s words capture the real meaning of the idea of God’s turning to us and our turning to God in repentance. The paradox is heightened even more because there is our turning in violence and abuse, in short our turning against God in the very events of the crucifixion. The point cannot be stressed enough. We are those who cry out “crucify, crucify.” We confront the hideous horror of our sins. It will not do to try and sanitize our evil, the very thing our culture in its delusions constantly does, outsourcing evil, as it were, conveniently excusing ourselves.

The point of Holy Week and especially Good Friday, without which the idea of Good Friday is meaningless, is for us to confront the radical evil of our own hearts. The evil is not out there; it is in here, in us, in you and me. So there is a turning to ourselves through our turning to Christ. In the crucified Christ we confront the hideous spectacle of our own betrayals of truth, our betrayals of God. But even more, we confront the radical meaning of Christ’s crucifixion. It is the fullest expression of his turning to us to save and redeem. The radical meaning of the turning is love, a love that is a constant circling around the principle which defines our being, the being of all reality.

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“Turn unto the Lord your God”

“Rend your hearts,” the prophet Joel bids us, “and not your garments and turn unto the Lord your God.” Nowhere is that turning more concentrated for us than in the three great holy days of Holy Week, the Triduum Sacrum of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Holy Saturday. Yet our turning to God is really only the effect of God turning to us.

“Turn thou us, O good Lord, and so shall we be turned” as the prayer in the Penitential Service in the Prayer Book puts it, a prayer shaped by Joel’s words. Redire ad principia, as Lancelot Andrewes remarks, a kind of circling, repentance is really about our turning back to him from whom we have turned away. How we have turned away is seen and made visible in the hideous spectacle of the Passion where we confront all of the various forms of the disorder and disarray of human hearts and our human world. But that turning is because there is a principle to which we can return, an active principle. Such is the will of God made visible in the events of these days especially.

“A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another even as I have loved you.” This conveys the meaning of this day called Maundy Thursday. Mandatum is the Latin for commandment englished as Maundy. The events of this night concentrate for us the paradox of the double turning, God’s turning to us and our turning to God.

“He carried himself in his own hands”. In such a phrase, St. Augustine captures the paradox and the poignancy of the passion of Christ on this night, this very night.

“He carried himself in his own hands” who is delivered into the hands of his betrayers on this night, this very night.

“He carried himself in his own hands” who is delivered into the hands of his enemies on this night, this very night.

“He carried himself in his own hands” who is delivered into our hands on this night, this very night.

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