KES Chapel Reflection, Week of 3 May
Comings and goings
This week in Chapel we had two sets of readings: one from Luke’s Gospel about the widow of Nain for the Junior School and Grade Ten services on Monday and Tuesday; and one from the sixteenth chapter of John’s Gospel read on Thursday and Friday. Each in their own way helps us to think about the radical teaching of the Resurrection that makes visible what is present in the Passion of Christ. It reveals what underlies and gives meaning to the comings and goings of our own lives. Ultimately, the comings and goings of our own lives find their purpose and meaning in the comings and goings of God in the motions of the divine life itself.
The story of Christ’s compassion towards the widow of Nain is quite powerful and moving. It follows immediately upon the story read last week about the healing of the Centurion’s servant by the word of Christ. “Say the word.” God’s word in Christ heals and restores; such is the power of the Word of God in creation and redemption which, unlike our words, creates and restores. In the story of the widow of Nain, we see the power of the Word and Son of the Father who when he “saw her, he had compassion on her.” It is an expression used several times by Luke.
Everything turns on how we see one another. Do we look at one another with hostility and fear? In hatred and envy? As enemies and opponents to be beaten and conquered? The conflict narratives of our world and day diminish the sense of our common humanity. It is the failure to respect one another and ourselves because we have lost sight of who we are in the eyes of God.
Respect is one of those big little words that mean so much more. We forget that respect has very much to do with how we look at things. Looking at things is contained in the word respect itself. In this story, it leads to compassion, another interesting word which refers to the inner being of a person understood in terms of the liver, or the womb or the heart. To have compassion is to take the other into the very being of oneself; in short, to see yourself in the other and the other in you. It means to grasp the essential nature of our humanity. In Christ, compassion means placing the experiences of sorrow and grief, of sin and suffering, in the very heart of God. For that is what the Passion and Resurrection ultimately make visible.