Resurrection & Reality

The Business of Eternal Life

Part I-Beginning with Reality

Clergy often take a break after Easter. And so my wife and I went to see our son Joshua who recently moved to Charlotte, to see my brother and his wife and their daughter, and to see friends at St Mark's Church, in Saint Albans WV. We covered quite a bit of territory. 

While we were at St Mark's we met up with Chris and his beloved and their daughter. What a joy that was. As a parish priest, I had been through some good times and bad times with Chris. But then one day I reminded him that his name "Christopher" means, literally, "Christ Carrier". I am so proud of what Chris is doing with his life. He has chosen the way that leads to life.

Chris had told me of two friends who OD's on heroin on Easter day, leaving three children motherless and fatherless. They were good people. They were friends but they made some bad choices. And then they died. Their bad choices led to the way that leads to death.

This is precisely what I had preached on Easter Day. The Early Church taught that there are only two ways; the way that leads to life and the way that leads to death.

This is reality.

When we speak of Eternal Life and Resurrection, which I plan to do in the weeks to come, let us always begin with Reality. This is the only place for spirituality to begin. In the REAL.

Reality. The present world clouds any hope we have of seeing eternal life or resurrection.  We live in a world filled with warfare and terror, inequality and injustice, religious fundamentalism and extremism which justifies violence in the name of God. We live in a world that is so secularized that we ourselves have our doubts of the Easter proclamation. We find ourselves often sympathizing with Thomas. “Not till I see it with my own eyes, not till I touch it with my own hands, will I believe it.”

We live between two realities; there is a way that leads to life and a way that leads to death. The Way that Leads to Life is the Easter Reality and the Way that Leads to Death is the given reality of the world we are born into. This is why the Church teaches that we must undergo a Baptism to a second birth so that we can die to sin and rise again to newness of life.

This is such an urgently vital teaching. It is a matter of life and death, and particularly of the many millions of us whose lives are so vulnerable.

How can we even begin to talk about eternal life and the resurrection of Jesus in such a world? 

Lets try Easter on as a Reality too! Peter claims to have been a witness to it as do the other disciples in today's first lesson. 

In today’s Gospel, we have an account of Jesus’ resurrection. He begins with these words; “Peace be with you”. A startling beginning! In the reality of the disciples’ experience there had been so much turmoil; from the jarring moments when Jesus entered the Temple precincts to overturn the tables of the money changers, to his trial and crucifixion; and then to the reports that the women brought to his rising again and then this: his first resurrection appearance! In the midst of all this overwhelming intensity of inner wonder and amazement, Jesus comes and stands in their very midst and says to them “Peace be with you!” Shhh, Peace, be still and know that I am God, as the Psalmist puts it. ~Psalm 46:10.

This is the second Reality. There is the Reality you and I live with every day. Then, there is the Easter Reality. I wondered how I would approach the Easter reality since the reality we live with every day is so much at dissonance with who Jesus is for us and for the sake of the world we live in. The Gospel’s mandate is that we proclaim forgiveness of sins to all nations beginning with Jerusalem. And I wondered, how well are we doing with that job?

Therefore I am preparing a series of reflections on the Reality of the world we live in as well as the Reality of the Resurrection of Jesus. I will be sharing these reflections with you in the coming weeks.

But let me begin with the simplicity of my own experience of resurrection and eternal of life.

What is Eternal Life?

For me, it is a life focused on the care and love of the I-Thou relationship within and among us all.

What I mean by that is precisely this; when I pray I become aware of the Other within me. The "Thou" within my heart. It is what the 12 Step programs call the “Higher Power”. It is what I call God. 

When I pray I become aware of a Peace that is within me, I become aware of the fact that I am not alone but that there are many with me who also pray near and far away.

But more immediately, I become aware of the I-Thou relationship within me. And then of course by extrapolation that I-Thou relationship is not only within me but also among us all. 

Eternal Life then for me is a focus on the care and love of the I-Thou within and the I-Thou among us all.

It is indeed the Way, the Truth, and the Life. It is an indicator of Eternal Life and Resurrection. 

The Love of God, the I-Thou within and the love of all our neighbors, and the love of the I-Thou among us all.

We are, in this way connected to the All in All and forever by reaching out our hands and hearts to one another in  every small and significant way we can find or discover. 

This is the All in All forever.

This is how I begin to think of Eternal Life. It is alive within us now as we dare to Love. Love God, Love our neighbors, and love ourselves as God loves us. 

But the problem is that I still find myself living in the first Reality, where warfare, terror, disease, inequality, and oppression still exist and exist with a vengeance. 

And I find myself quite vulnerable in this Reality. That vulnerability makes me doubt the Easter Reality to tell you the truth. I know what Jesus says of all the conflict, violence and vulnerability we experience as a matter of daily truth. How can I love my enemy? How can I turn the cheek when he or she so violently strikes me on the first. Even more urgently how can I stand by when we face Genocide among Armenians, the Holocaust of the Jews, starvation among the millions of our brothers and sisters near and far away, or a thousand other indignities inflicted upon humankind by the agency of Evil. 

How can I stand by and watch Greed go hog wild, or the planet we live on be put to death by our own self indulgent appetites? How can I stand by and watch those I love die to the inevitability of one disease after another. And how can I stand by and live with my own vulnerability knowing where that ultimately goes to?

So we begin with the first Reality. It is there. It will not go away.

But there is Easter. There is the way that leads to Life just as there is the way that leads to death. This is serious business. Easter is a matter of urgency. The survival of humanity depends on it as does the survival of the planet as does the survival of young people or older people caught up in the snare of violence, despair, drugs, disease and depression.

Reality is with us but there is not just the first reality.

We have Easter too. We have the Resurrection of Jesus and Eternal Life. We are known down through history as the Easter people because we know this; Alleluia, Christ is Risen. Christ is Risen indeed, Alleluia!

And now may the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God and the Fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with us all evermore. Amen.

Fr Paul

The Word of God Was Rare in Those Days

The Word of God Was Rare in Those Days

That sure sounds like current events to me. 

Open a newspaper, turn on the news. All the jarring headlines and brutal imagery we see is so deeply disturbing, because none of these things has anything to do with the God we know and love. There are vicious and violent words and deeds, that are heard done from various fundamentalist corners of the religious world. They make us shudder to think of them.

And yet as we read the holy words of Moses, Jesus and Mohammed we stop to think about the one who brings us out of slavery into freedom, the one who faces down sin and death and rises victorious up from both, and the one whose quiet soul listens to Allah the All Merciful and writes for us the words of the Holy Koran. 

Oh for the storytellers! 

The ones who can tell us of the little boy Samuel and how he had yet to hear of who God was and is. How can anyone “teach” God? Just yesterday, I prayed, how can I tell my own children? Or other people I love. How can I share this sense within my heart that God often comes to us in the night season as we rest?  God can call us by name as he did for the little boy in the Temple where he served faithfully the old man Eli; “Samuel, Samuel”

Did I hear somebody call my name, the little fella said? So he scampered off to Eli. “Yes, you called me.” 

And the old man Eli said “No, go back to bed. I did not call you.”

And then, he lay there surrounded by the darkness and the fulsome silence wakeful because he was certain that there was a voice that called his name. And then, perhaps as he was dozing off, there it was again; “Samuel, Samuel”

The little fella said, “Yes, I did hear somebody call my name”. So he scampered off again to Eli, and now insisted “You did call me”. 

“No, go lie down, I did not call you”

Then the Scripture makes it all clear. Samuel did not yet know the Lord. He did not yet know that God speaks to us in the very depths of our souls, in the dead silence, in the deepest corner of the heart, where the truth resides. It is here that God speaks to us all. I’m not talking about voices that you might hear in a psychotic episode. I am talking about the kind of voice that is always within you as your friend and companion reminding you to go deeper and face the truth; the truth about yourself with compassion and abiding love for yourself and those you love the most. 

This is the Truth that shall make you free. It is the Truth that shall bring you to God.

And then you see, he heard it again, that “voice” that something that speaks the truth within, and off again he scampers to the old man Eli; “Here I am, for you called me”. 

The old man knows now that this is how God speaks to us; often in the night season, in a restless moment or two, in our youth, where there is hope. Eli knew that he and his sons had made a mess of things in the Temple and that God was not the least bit pleased. 

Maybe, God had a word for him. Be that as it may, Eli perceived, he “discerned” that what was really happening was that God wanted to have a word with the little fella. After all, as we all know from sacred history, “A little child shall lead them”, as in the case of Samuel, David, and Jesus. 

This time the old man said; “Go back to your bed and when you hear the Silence speak in your heart once more, you stay there still and say, Speak Lord for your servant is listening”.

What God has to say is not the least bit pleasant because it spells the end of Eli’s priesthood. He had betrayed the trust of God and had let his unruly kids run rampant throughout the holy place. It was time to clean up the place once more and make God’s holy place fit for the Glory of God.

I have always loved this story. When my grandmother first told us that story, I was fascinated by the idea that a child could be called by God to serve the church. So I asked her, “Ma, does that mean that God can call children to be ministers in his church?” This is back in the days when we spoke of the clergy as “ministers” and not as “priests”.

And her eyes twinkled with delight as she said, of course God can call children to serve the Church. I went off to see the priest at the time and made an appointment to see him in his office. I remember that my legs still hung over the side of the chair not quite reaching the floor, as he smiled at me with that kindly smile of the clergy of our church. 

“What can I do for you young man?”

“I want to know what it takes to become a parish priest.”

To his eternal credit he didn’t laugh, but told me. Graduate from Hight School, go to College, preferably a secular college where you faith can be tested, and then go to Seminary, there is one right here in Cambridge. You’ll need to pass a number of tests, you’ll need the sponsorship of a local congregation, and the approval of the Bishop and Standing Committee obviously…but that’s the essence of it.

And so that’s is what I did.

For as long as I’ve lived out my priesthood in the church, I have often wondered what it is that makes the Church endure. Though the rise and fall of empires, as nations come and nations go as fashions and fads shine and then fade away, there is the enduring quality of the human heart in contact with the enduring Presence of God.

And then I remember that we belong to a kingdom not of this world; in this world, to be sure but not of this world. God’s kingdom belongs to those whose heats belong to God. 

In today’s Gospel, Jesus is rounding up his disciples at the beginnings of his ministry. He said to Phillip; “Follow me”. He did. 

Then Phillip said to Nathaniel; “We have found him of whom Moses and the Prophets spoke, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“Nazareth!, can anything good come out of Nazareth?” 

But when Jesus meets Nathaniel, he says; “Nathaniel, I saw you under the fig tree.”

Now, I have no idea what it was that Nathaniel was doing under the fig tree, but whatever it was, the fact that Jesus knew about it, brought Nathaniel to his spiritual knees and he was able to proclaim “Rabbi, you are the Son of God!”

Imagine, God knows us that intimately. It is in this manner that God seeks to build a whole new kingdom, a new Empire, built not with armies, weapons of mass destruction, or acts of violence but with compassion, love, forgiveness, and reconciliation.

This is the kingdom to which we have been called.

In the collect for purity the very first prayer from the very first Prayer Book ever written in English, Thomas Cranmer made it clear what our relationship to God was to be like; 

"Almighty God, to you all hearts are open, all desires known and from you no secrets are hid, cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit that we may perfectly love you, and worthily magnify your holy name through Jesus Christ our Lord."

That’s God’s kingdom, God’s Empire. We are God’s citizens. God is our King and our Emperor. And to meet our King we need look no further than within our own hearts. 

As the old adage goes; “God is closer to you than the very next breath that you will take.” 

If the Word of God seems rarely heard in these days, it is only because we rarely listen. We need look no further than within your own hearts.

It is true, the body is the Temple of God’s Holy Spirit, as the Apostle Paul puts it.

And the Psalmists says it in soaring and magnificent language; 

My body was not hidden from you, *

while I was being made in secret

and woven in the depths of the earth.

Your eyes beheld my limbs, yet unfinished in the womb;

all of them were written in your book; *

they were fashioned day by day,

when as yet there was none of them.

How deep I find your thoughts, O God! *

how great is the sum of them!

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Fr Paul