“We give thanks to God … for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.”
At the heart of Paul’s lovely flow of words of prayer and praise to God for the people of Colossae is the hope of heaven which they have heard and received in what he calls “the word of truth in the Gospel; which is come unto you” and which “bringeth forth fruit and increaseth” in them “since the day ye heard of it, and knew the grace of God in truth.” His prayer is that they “might be filled with the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding,” and that they “might walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing.”
The passage in its intensity of warmth and expression belongs to the grace of God at work in our lives which has been a dominant feature of the Trinity season in terms of the idea of sanctification. Yet at the same time, the readings in the late Trinity season also point us to the coming of that grace towards us that belongs to Advent. Thus these Sundays are transitional; at once an ending and a beginning.
T.S. Eliot’s poem East Coker, the second of the Four Quartets, begins with the phrase “in my beginning is my end” and ends with “in my end is my beginning,’ capturing the nature of the transition that belongs to the interplay between justification and sanctification. It is really all a kind of redire ad principia, a kind of circling around and into the mystery of Christ, what Eliot terms the “still point of the turning world” … for “there the dance is” (Burnt Norton).
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
That end which is always present is God and the hope of heaven in us that “makes us meet to be partakers of the saints in light,” as Paul puts it. What that hope looks like is illustrated in the Gospel story. It is the yearning or desire for wholeness, for the integrity of our lives as found in Christ. That yearning is captured in the unspoken prayer of the woman who was diseased with an issue of blood for twelve years who came behind Jesus and “touched the hem of his garment.” As Matthew tells us, “she said within herself, If I may but touch his garment, I shall be whole.” Such is her insight into the grace of God in Christ and such is her desire for healing, for wholeness. Yet it is as if she thinks she can steal a cure from Jesus without his awareness. As such her desire is incomplete.
All prayer is really our desire for what is absolute and good and true; in short, for God, but our desires are always incomplete and partial. We seek this and that, to be sure, but our seeking can only be found in God. Thus our desires in themselves are not enough. They signal a kind of turning in us but they depend upon the radical turning of God to us. We hear about this woman’s unspoken desire, her prayer, “but”, as Matthew tells us, “Jesus turned him about, and when he saw her, he said, Daughter, be of good comfort, thy faith hath made thee whole.” The little word “but” is everything. Our wholeness can only be found in God’s knowing and loving embrace of our humanity. It is not just our desiring but its ultimate fulfillment in God’s turning to us.
This healing is set within the larger context of the healing of another daughter, the daughter of “a certain ruler.” He sees in Jesus the hope of the resurrection. “My daughter” he says, “is even now dead; but come and lay thy hand upon her and she shall live.” Another but! The hope of heaven in us is about death and resurrection, the grace of God alive and at work in us, even in the face of skepticism and mockery of those in the ruler’s house. Jesus says to them “Give place; for the maid is not dead, but sleepeth. And they laughed him to scorn.” But instead of a word spoken, Jesus went in, and took her by the hand, and the maid arose.” A word spoken to the woman whom Jesus calls “daughter”; and a word in action that raises the daughter of the ruler. The Word audible and the Word visible; Word and Sacrament.
This Gospel story of the double healing of two ‘daughters of Israel,’ as we might call them, reveals the truth of God in Jesus Christ and its meaning for us in our lives. It means paying attention to the motions of God’s word at once always with us and yet always coming towards us. Such is the grace which seeks the perfection of our desires as found only in God and in God’s turning to us. This is the hope of heaven that makes us “partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light,” the hope that belongs to our joy and our good in the communion of saints. In our end is our beginning and in our beginning is our end; both in Christ who is the Alpha and Omega of all things.
Look up and behold the beams which hold up the building of Christ Church. They form the Greek letters, Alpha and Omega. We are embraced in the grace of Christ, our beginning and our ending. This is the wisdom of God which “reaches mightily from one end of the earth to the other, and orders all things well,” as the Matins reading from Wisdom reminds us. And so with Paul in his words to the Colossians, we, too, give thanks to God for one another for the hope which is laid up for us all in heaven.
“We give thanks to God … for the hope which is laid up for you in heaven.”
Fr. David Curry
Trinity 24, 2023