Day: September 26, 2021

“Friend, go up higher”

It is not about ambition or pretension. It is about the hope of transformation. It conveys the sense that we are called to something more, that we have a destiny beyond what we know is before us but will not face, namely, the grave and gate of death. We are more though not less than our bodies and the circumstances of our lives which does not mean that we are in flight from either. Somehow going up higher happens where we are in our souls and bodies.

The operative words are “friend” and “go up higher.” These words speak to the intimacy and nature of our identity in Christ, to the true form of our humanity in God, transhumanised, as Dante puts it, inventing a word in Italian (trashumanar) that has been transposed into English but now co-opted by contemporary identity politics in very different ways. But we are not what we might imagine in the vanity of our minds through the mechanics of re-imaging and refashioning our bodies as constituting our identities or in some sort of biological determinism which equally negates our freedom. Our identities as persons are not simply biological nor are they merely social constructs that shift and move like leaves on the wind. “Friend, go up higher” is about our vocation to Christ and in Christ. Through the sacraments of Baptism and Communion, we are identified with Jesus in his free-willing identity and sacrifice for us. It is about reclaiming the integrity of our being in Christ through the community of God and man realized in Christ.

Jesus calls us “friends” elsewhere in the Gospels, too. It is an especially potent statement that changes the nature of the relationship between God and man. He does so not just by way of a parable but more directly. He calls us friends at the height of his passion, on the night of our betrayal. The wondrous thing that passes human understanding is that God has made us his friends even when we are his enemies. This turns the ancient world on its head. Friendship with God rather than a cowering fearfulness of God? It turns our world on its head. To suppose that we can create ourselves?  Sheer illusion. Yet we live in a hopeless and fearful world precisely because of such illusions. Here is the antidote to our hopelessness, our fear, and our illusions.

We are called out of ourselves and we are called to God. We are called to the service of God in our life together with one another in the body of Christ. It is really the purpose of our being here today, a purpose which extends into every aspect of our lives.

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