KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 4 December
Be it unto me according to thy word
The readings in Chapel in this last week of classes help to prepare us for the pageant of Word and Song in the Advent/Christmas Services of Lessons and Carols on Sunday and as well for next week’s exams. The lesson from John’s Gospel (Jn. 4. 46-53) in particular highlights an important feature of education. It is the idea of resonance, the sounding forth within us of the words coming towards us whether in Chapel, in the classroom, in the venues of sports or in our social interactions. In the teaching environment, you are taught various things, but what have you learned? What have you taken into yourself and made a part of you? Exams provide some indication.
“The man that hath no music in himself, Nor is not moved with concord of sweet sounds,/ Is fit for treasons, stratagems, and spoils/…. Let no such man be trusted. Mark the music,” Lorenzo says in a famous passage about the power of music in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It is very much about what moves within us. In the play, the idea of musical harmony relates to the themes of justice and mercy, to what has resonance within us.
In John’s Gospel, an Official comes to Jesus in Capernaum seeking the healing of his son who is at the point of death. He beseeches Jesus to come down, to make a house call, as it were, to which Jesus replies in a kind of general criticism of human expectations which is really about our attempt to make God subject to us. “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe,” he says. The Official repeats his request to which Jesus then says, “Go thy way; thy son liveth.” The wonder of the story is captured in John’s simple phrase. “The man believed the word that Jesus spoke unto him and he went his way.” Christ’s word has resonance within him. In going down to his house, his servants meet him to tell him that his son lives. He learns that he was healed in the self-same hour that Jesus said, “Thy son liveth.” Truth has its resonance in us.
The Word of God of itself cannot be constrained to the ordinary limits of time and space as we saw last week both in the pageant of the Ten Commandments, as the universal ethical code of our humanity and as known by natural reason, and in the marvel of the Centurion’s “speak the word only.” At issue is the resonance of God’s Word in us. It is about what we have learned, about instruction alive and living in us. Catechism means instruction by means of question and answer. The word points to the echo effect that is the resonance of the teaching in us, a sounding forth of what has been received and grasped.