Christ Church

Peace and forgiveness and love

Peace and forgiveness flow out of the Resurrection. Such is the love which reconstitutes us out of the chaos of sin and betrayal, out of the malaise of suffering and sorrow. Like all of us, the disciples were huddled in fear behind closed doors. “Then Jesus came and stood in the midst.” It is a wonderful phrase which goes to the heart of the Passion and the Resurrection. God is in the midst of our suffering world, a world broken and in disarray, in fear and uncertainty.

Christ appears behind closed doors twice in John’s Gospel; once on the evening of Easter Day, and then eight days later when Thomas, whom we have come to call “doubting Thomas” was also there. He had heard about the first appearance of the Risen Christ but said that he wouldn’t believe until he could not only see but touch the wounds of the Crucified. Seeing and believing, reaching out and touching, and so believing. The point is that those are important though not the only forms of knowing.

And three times Jesus says “peace be unto you.” He bestows the power of absolution, of forgiveness upon the disciples whom he sends in his name even as the Father has sent him. And he tells Thomas to reach out and touch, to be not faithless but believing. As another Thomas remarks some thirteen centuries later, Thomas’s doubting provides for us the greater certainty of faith (Aquinas).

But the greater marvel, perhaps, is that these scenes belong to the same chapter as the encounter between Christ and Mary Magdalene where he tells her not to touch him while also sending her on a mission, a mission to the other brethren that is grounded in the eternal mission of his going to “my Father and your Father, my God and your God,” wonderful words which complement Thomas’ exclamation upon encountering the Risen Christ, “My Lord, and my God.” To the one, do not touch; to the other touch and see. Both are gathered into the love which restores and redeems, the love which is resurrection.

One of the great literary and philosophical works of our humanity was written behind closed doors, in a prison, Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy (6th century). He was awaiting execution on trumped-up charges of treason. He was in grief and sorrow, in fear and dismay. Lady Philosophy appears to him and, like Christ the Good Shepherd, undertakes to return him to his true self, banishing like so many false comforters, all the appeals to emotion and self-pity in which he has buried himself. She recalls him to learning, to the things which abide and are eternal. A remarkable treatise, the work has shaped the imaginary of the intellectual culture of Europe and beyond. It was mirabile dictu translated by Alfred the Great in the ninth century, by Chaucer in the fourteenth, and by Queen Elizabeth the First in the sixteenth, to give some sense of its range and importance.

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Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the Shepherd
and Bishop of your souls

“All we like sheep have gone astray,” the sentence from Isaiah (53.6) for Morning Prayer on Good Friday reminds us (BCP, p. 1). “We have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,” the General Confession bids us pray (BCP, p. 4 & 19). Such are the ways of our being “returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of our souls.” God “governs us as masters of ourselves,” Aquinas notes, but that presupposes a deep awareness on our part about human sinfulness. We can only be masters of ourselves through divine governance, the one who rules us as the Shepherd of our souls, the one who returns us to the radical truth of ourselves and of our humanity precisely because we have erred and strayed and are lost to ourselves.

Such is the significance of the Gospel of Christ as the Good Shepherd. We have a far too sentimental and emotional attachment to this concept, I fear, and often fail to recognise its radical meaning. Yet it is there before our eyes and speaks to the darkness and the dangers of our current world whether it is Covid-19 or the rampage of mindless madness in the mass shooting in Nova Scotia which we are suffering through with broken hearts. It speaks to the darkness of our hearts and minds.

We can’t possibly grasp its significance without realising how deeply embedded it is in the Christian understanding of the Resurrection, on the one hand, and in the transformation of images in the Hebrew Scriptures, on the other hand. The Second Sunday in Easter is known as Good Shepherd Sunday. The image of Christ the Good Shepherd belongs inescapably to the doctrine of the Resurrection, to the fruit of the Passion of Christ, to the radical meaning of God’s love for our wounded and broken humanity, and so to our province of the broken-hearted.

Jesus identifies himself as the Good Shepherd. He tells us that the Good Shepherd gives his life for the sheep. Such is sacrifice, such is love, God’s love for us. “Herein is love,” for God’s love for us is the ground of our love towards one another. But the background images from the Hebrew Scriptures are needed for a fuller understanding. Principal among those is the 23rd Psalm, the Shepherd’s Psalm. “The Lord shepherds me” or “the Lord is my Shepherd” or “the Lord rules me,” Dominus regit me, as the name of one of the familiar hymn tunes puts it. As Aquinas notes, “he who shepherds, rules.” The real rule and governance in our lives is Christ the Good Shepherd. It is one of the dominant images of Resurrection love.

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The collect for today, The Second Sunday After Easter, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given thine only Son to be unto us both a sacrifice for sin, and also an example of godly life: Give us grace that we may always most thankfully receive that his inestimable benefit, and also daily endeavour ourselves to follow the blessed steps of his most holy life; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St .Peter 2:19-25
The Gospel: St. John 10:11-16

Artwork: Frederic James Shields, The Good Shepherd, late 19th century, Manchester Art Gallery.

The collect for today, The Feast of Saint Mark the Evangelist, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

O ALMIGHTY God, who hast instructed thy holy Church with the heavenly doctrine of thy Evangelist Saint Mark: Give us grace, that, being not like children carried away with every blast of vain doctrine, we may be established in the truth of thy holy Gospel; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: Ephesians 4:11-16
The Gospel: St. Mark 13:1-10

The author of the second gospel, Saint Mark is generally identified with John Mark, the son of Mary, whose house in Jerusalem was a meeting place for the disciples (Acts 12:12,25). John Mark accompanied his cousin Barnabas and Paul on their missionary journey to Cyprus, but Mark’s early departure to Jerusalem caused a rift between Paul and Barnabas, following which Barnabas took Mark on the next mission to Cyprus while Paul and Silas traveled through Syria and Cilicia (Acts 15:37-41).

Paul later changed his mind about Mark, who helped him during his imprisonment in Rome (Col. 4:10). Just before his martyrdom, Paul urged Timothy: “Get Mark and bring him with you, for he is very useful to me for ministry” (2 Tim. 4:11).

Also, Peter affectionately calls Mark “my son” and says that Mark is with him at “Babylon”—almost certainly Rome—as he writes his first epistle (1 Pet. 5:13). This accords with church tradition that Mark’s Gospel represents the teaching of Peter.

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“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil”

“April is the cruellest month,” T.S. Eliot says at the beginning of his poem, The Waste Land. He is playing on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales which invokes April as a time of pilgrimage, of rebirth and renewal.

We find ourselves, I am afraid, in a wasteland here in Nova Scotia after the rampage of madness in the mass shooting that has killed so many people in one of the rural parts of our province. It is heart-breaking and shocking, a reminder of the radical nature of evil. We confront dark and difficult things. How do we face them?

By being recalled to who we are in the sight of God. “The deepest longing of the soul is for that which is greater than itself,” the great Neoplatonic philosopher Plotinus teaches (3rd. cent. AD). Such an idea has its roots in the teachings of Plato and Aristotle and carries over into the spiritual imaginary of the Jewish, Christian and Islamic traditions of the Mediterranean cultures and from there into Europe and beyond. God “governs us as masters of ourselves,” Aquinas observes a thousand years later. It is when we forget or deny such ideas that we become empty. Such is nihilism out of which comes such mindless madness, desolation, death and destruction that has turned Nova Scotia into a wasteland.

Yet providentially, it seems, the lessons in Chapel this week speak to these dark and difficult times. Psalm 23, the so-called Shepherd’s Psalm, begins with the idea of God as Shepherd. “The Lord is my shepherd.” Jerome who translated the Hebrew Scriptures and the Greek New Testament into Latin (4th/5th cent. AD), actually provided two translations of the Psalms into Latin, one based on the Hebrew, the other on the Greek Septuagint resulting in “The Lord rules me” or “the Lord shepherds me.” Aquinas wisely notes that “He who shepherds, rules,” a profound image about the true exercise of power that is not about domination and destruction but about building up and caring for those whom you “rule” or better “shepherd.” A lesson for leaders everywhere.

The two Latin versions vary in another respect. One speaks about walking in the midst of the shadow of death, the other in the valley of death. Miles Coverdale’s 1535 translation of the Psalms became an English classic and has remained embedded in the classical Books of Common Prayer. With a wonderful poetic sensibility, Coverdale joined together valley and shadow to produce the memorable phrase, “the valley of the shadow of death.” We all walk through “the valley of the shadow of death,” to be sure. But the psalmist says “I will fear no evil.” Why? Because “thou art with me.” Who? God. The Lord. And that makes all the difference.

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The collect for today, the Feast of Saint George (d. c. 304), Soldier, Martyr, Patron of England (source):

O God of hosts,
who didst so kindle the flame of love
in the heart of thy servant George
that he bore witness to the risen Lord
by his life and by his death:
grant us the same faith and power of love
that we, who rejoice in his triumphs,
may come to share with him the fullness of the resurrection;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: 2 St. Timothy 2:8-10, 3:10-12
The Gospel: St. John 15:1-7

Artwork: Andrea Mantegna, Saint George, c. 1460. Tempera on panel, Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice.

The collect for today, the Feast of Saint Anselm (1033-1109), Abbott, Archbishop of Canterbury, Theologian (source):

O everlasting God,
who gavest to thy servant Anselm
singular gifts as a pastor and teacher:
grant that we, like him,
may desire thee with our whole heart
and, so desiring, may seek thee
and, seeking, may find thee;
through Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord,
who liveth and reigneth with thee,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Epistle: Romans 1:16-20
The Gospel: St John 7:16-18; 8:12

Artwork: Harry J. Stammers, Saint Anselm, 1959. Stained glass, St. Anselm’s Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral. Photograph taken by admin, 6 October 2014.

Jesus came and stood in the midst

It was, we are told, “the same day at evening,” meaning Easter. It is as if time stopped and yet even that doesn’t quite capture the wonder and the mystery of the Passion and the Resurrection. It is more like being in the eternal now of God, in the moment which gives time its meaning and without which time and our lives have no meaning. That is the power of the readings for the Octave Day of Easter. They speak profoundly to our current crisis. The world, it seems, has stopped. There is not the same hustle and bustle of frantic and busy lives. Every day has a certain quiet but anxious sameness to it. And like the disciples in John’s Gospel we, too, are behind closed doors. Like the disciples, we, too, are perhaps in fear and worry about our suffering world and about ourselves.

Yet the Epistle reading from 1 John (5. 4-12) makes the extraordinary statement that “whatsoever is born of God, overcometh the world.” What is born of God is faith, he says. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” As he explains, it has altogether to do with Christ’s sacrifice by which “God has given us eternal life; and this life is in his Son.”

The Resurrection changes everything because it changes how we think and feel about ourselves and our world. When we are in fear and anger about the world and about being cut off and isolated from one another, then those things define us. We grant them a total power over us. That is to be defined by the world of suffering and death. What is our faith? It is simply that Christ is in the midst with us. “Jesus came and stood in the midst.” That changes everything, if we will let it. At least that is what the Gospel shows.

It is a powerful image that signals the radical truth and nature of God. God’s love is present in the midst of the sufferings of the world. That has been the stark meaning of the Passion of Christ that now carries over into the Resurrection. We have seen over and over again how Christ is in the midst of everything: in the midst of the crowd shouting “hosannas” in joy and then crying, “let him be crucified,” in hostility. Such are the contradictions of our hearts and our world. He is crucified between two thieves. Such are the cruelties and enmities in our hearts and our world. The whole of the Passion has been about his being in the midst of the chaos and confusion of our wounded and fallen world. He suffers for us and with us. Why? One word. Love. The one thing that doesn’t die. Love is forever. That is faith, a deep insight and trust in God as love. Such is the Resurrection, too.

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The collect for today, The Octave Day of Easter, being The Sunday After Easter Day, from The Book of Common Prayer (Canadian, 1962):

Almighty Father, who hast given thine only Son to die for our sins, and to rise again for our justification; Grant us so to put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may alway serve thee in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Epistle: 1 St. John 5:4-12
The Gospel: St. John 20:19-23

Artwork: Imre Mórocz, Jesus Appears to the Disciples After the Resurrection, 2009. Oil on canvas on plywood, Private collection.

They ran both together

Just as we buried ourselves in the Passion of Christ during Holy Week, so now we run in the Resurrection of Christ. The classic Easter Gospel is all about running. Mary Magdalene coming to the tomb in the early morning finds the stone taken away from the sepulchre and runs to Simon Peter and John. “They ran both together,” John tells us in his Gospel, to the tomb. The Resurrections sets us in motion.

The Resurrection is the fruit of the Passion, we might say, but there is the paradox that, in a way, the Passion comes out of the Resurrection. How? It is only in the light of the Resurrection that the Passion accounts come to be written. “Herein is love,” we must say about both the Passion and the Resurrection. “Never that which is shall die,” as Euripides says. Such is the love of God which now moves in us. Such is the radical nature of the Resurrection. It changes our perspectives. It changes our thinking about death and suffering; just, perhaps, it can speak to us in our current fears and worries.

I cannot think this Easter Gospel except in its juxtaposition with Mark’s account of the Marys coming to the empty tomb and encountering “a young man,” an angel, whose words to them and to us belong to the joy of the Easter Proclamation. “Be not afraid,” they are told. “Ye seek Jesus of Nazareth which was crucified: he is risen.” Christ is Risen. Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord is Risen indeed. Alleluia! Alleluia! This is the ancient Christian greeting. Something has changed. Death is no longer the end of the road, the terminus ad quem of human life; it has become a means to an end, a transitus. Death itself is changed. Such is the great dynamic of the Resurrection. But in what is known as the shorter end of Mark’s Gospel, he says that “they fled from the tomb… for they were afraid.” Are we running away in fear or are we running in the path of learning and joy?

The stories of the Resurrection show the dawning awareness on the part of the disciples about the Resurrection. It is a process of learning, of seeing things in a new way, a way that does not deny the past of suffering, sorrow, sin, and death but instead shows us a way of thinking through those realities. We are learning the lessons of love. Love sets us in motion towards one another because it is the motion of God’s love in us. God’s love runs in us. That connects us even when we seem separate and isolated from one another. There is the greater connection of prayer and thought. It happens when we are running in the path of learning. Such is the real purpose and meaning of a school as a place of learning, of care and compassion, of love and service.

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