Gospel John 14.1-14in the course of the Last Supper, after the foot washing and Judas’s departure Jesus said to his disciples, ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.’ Thomas said to him, ‘Lord, we do not know where you are going. How can we know the way?’ Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you know me, you will know my Father also. From now on you do know him and have seen him.’ Philip said to him, ‘Lord, show us the Father, and we will be satisfied.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and do you still not know me? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; but if you do not, then believe me because of the works themselves. Very truly, I tell you, the one who believes in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father. I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If in my name you ask me for anything, I will do it.’ Homily Part of our experience of the world at a time of pandemic has been the distress of separation. Not necessarily separation from everyone, depending on where you live, or how you work; and not necessarily separation in terms of basic communication either. One way or another we can write to each other, call one another, and see one another, even Zoom together! Nonetheless there’s a high degree of separation: we can’t decide or plan to meet, or work, or travel together. It’s not only the result of isolation: to be separated is to stay safe and keep others safe. But it has also reduced our society and others down to a degree of paralysis, indecision and unproductiveness that we all want to end. Most painfully of course, it continues to be separation between those who must work on the front line, and those who must stay at home; those who have the wealth to provide for themselves, and those whose poverty deepens; those who are inaccessible in hospital or care homes, and those they most love; those who are dying and dead, and those they have left behind. Separation is also at the root of the passage the Church gives us from the Gospel this morning: Jesus talking to his disciples about the prospect of them being separated from one another by his passion and death. And with the kind of perfect timing that has come time and time again from the hand of God during this crisis, it is a word of consolation for those of the second world war generation who have felt their separation from loved ones whom they have mourned and remembered for three-quarters of a century.2 Faced with the prospect of separation by the events which were soon to unfold, there is pain on all sides for Jesus and his disciples. His imminent departure was a crisis for their little community. It would play out for the disciples not only in emotional turmoil, but also in fear and indecision. By trying to speak words of encouragement Jesus is making his departure, and the emptiness that it will leave in his disciples hearts, an opportunity for their rebirth. He encourages them to have faith, to place their trust in him, and not to be disturbed (Jn 14.1). If, thanks to the power of trust, those words come alive in the hearts of the disciples, then they will be able move away from loss to creativity, from turmoil to courage, from death to life. And he explained that he would not be separated from them. The departure that ‘he was to accomplish in Jerusalem’ (literally called his exodus in Lk 9.31), was not simply a going away, a goodbye, never to be seen again. He was going ahead of them so as to ensure that the Father’s place—his kingdom, his table, his mansion (Jn 14.2—3)—was prepared as a place where they also would be, and would be welcomed. These are words that reach us too through the gospel. Jesus is asking the disciples (and us) to invest their trust and dependence in him. By asking them (and us) to enter that special darkness that we call faith, that special submission to what God offers us but which we don’t already understand, Jesus urges his disciples to transform the terror of feeling abandoned into courage by giving themselves to the Lord. He is not in fact abandoning them; they are not being separated from him in any obvious sense. Jesus is preparing the future, and beginning a new and different—and deeper—phase of relations with them. 3 And so the discussion among the disciples inevitably starts: begun by Thomas the questioner and continued by the Philip the pragmatist, each picking up threads left off in the previous chapters of this gospel. Thomas who had pressed his fellow disciples in chapter 11, ‘Let us go with him, that we may also die with him’ (v.16) now wants to know from Jesus the path that has to be followed to where he is going. And Philip, whom some Greeks had approached to see Jesus in chapter 12 (vv.21-23), now lays out before the Lord his own longing: he wants to ‘see’ the Father (14.8), to see his face. Jesus’s replies are not only to Thomas and Philip: they usher us also right into the very heart of Christian faith. To Thomas, ‘Yes, you can follow: I am the way. Obey and imitate me.’ (v.6). To Philip, ‘Yes, you can see the Father. Anyone who has seen me has seen him’ (Jn 14.9; see also Jn 12.45: ‘He who sees me, sees him who sent me.’) These few words sum what is so new about the New Testament: God, who according to the Old Testament is so profoundly separate, so holy, whom no person could both see and live, has shown his face. He has made himself visible—and much more than simply visible—in Jesus Christ. ‘The New Testament puts an end to the Father’s invisibility’, says Pope Benedict xvi (Regina caeli, 22 May 2011). To see Jesus is to see the Father revealed. Jesus and his Father are one. By his own explanation, Jesus does and says only what he sees the Father doing and saying. They are inseparable. And it is this inseparability that makes the Father, for whom all human beings long, visible, and knowable and trustable. 4 But Jesus is not simply inseparable from God. He is inseparable from us also. Christ is not simply the one in whom we believe because he fully reveals to us what God is like; he is also the one with whom we believe because he fully reveals to us humanity’s high calling (cf Gaudium et spes, 22a). Far from divorcing Christians from reality, our faith in the Son of God who became man in Jesus of Nazareth enables us to see how much God loves this world and is constantly guiding it towards himself. This leads us Christians to live our daily lives in this world with ever greater commitment and intensity, praying for courage, sacrifice and charity. We are not looking for an already tired ‘new normal’ when human beings emerge bruised and suffering from this pandemic. We look to Christ, and to the spacious vision of the unity of God’s new creation, which the early Christians understood; and to the renewed society that could and must and should be built. For we are convinced that ‘neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord’ (Rom 8.38–9). Prayer Almighty Father, your Son Jesus Christ, wonderfully revealed to us the mystery of your love and mercy; and even more wonderfully revealed the light and truth of our own high calling as human beings: help us to know you and to love you in your Son; to do what he commands, to ingest his word, and to imbibe his wisdom, so that we, like him, may reflect in acts of courage, and sacrifice and charity your glory in this world; though the same Christ our Lord. Amen.
Reflection – Thursday 7th May 2020One of the great joys of the Easter season in which we are now in, is that we are reminded time and time again, through the Scriptures, that the Resurrection of Jesus does not merely concern an historical individual living some 2000 years ago in a far-flung province of the Roman Empire. Rather, it has an incredible impact on the lives of every human being who has come into this world since that time – and on all others, too.Jesus, by overcoming death and by rising to the Resurrection life, has enabled us also to be partakers of his Resurrection. No longer, since his self-sacrifice on the Cross, does the entire human race face the condemnation which is due to it because of sin and subsequent alienation from God. Rather, Jesus has opened wide the gates of Heaven for us! Yes, physical death remains still the consequence of the sinful nature of humanity, but the ‘second death’ of Hell and eternal separation from God need no longer to be feared – if only we repent of our sins and unite ourselves with Jesus through the ways he has appointed.First, we need to receive baptism. In this, we are mystically united with Jesus in a death like his (baptism is a sharing in the death, burial and rising again of Jesus), as Christ himself insists on. Then, we must endeavour to follow God’s commandments through our way of life. But, acknowledging that we are still prone to sin, we need to seek God’s gracious pardon through continuing repentance (which is why the Sacrament of Confession is so vital). We are given the immense privilege and joy of becoming like Christ through the eating and drinking of Christ’s own Body and Blood, which we receive in order that these gifts transform us into being participants in his life. John’s Gospel, Chapter 6, is a stupendous declaration and reflection of this great truth and is truly part of the very heart of the Gospel in its entirety. Giving ourselves to God in his service, we seek to live our lives in his shadow, knowing that we fail in so many and so serious ways, yet trusting in Christ’s sacrifice for us, until at last we enter into the Kingdom and receive the fulness of the vision of God.It is an amazing fact that we, frail creatures of flesh and blood though we are, are called to become, by adoption, sons and daughters of the living God! The Apostle Paul reminds us time and time again that we are called to be saints, that is, holy ones. Holy, that is, not through our own power and sanctity, but through the almighty power and gift of the Triune God. This is what it means to be a saint – a sharer in the divine nature, which is to be ours through the grace of God! What a tremendous calling! Even the angels themselves, great and powerful though they undoubtedly are, can never receive this gift!However, it is always possible to reject the call of God, to repudiate his love and forgiveness. God forces nobody. That is the great wonder – and terror – of Free Will. We remain entirely free to reject him. We can (and so often do!) reject him and put all our faith and hope in the things of this world, finally turning our backs completely on him – which leads to the ultimate loss of God, which we term ‘Hell’. Yet we cannot complain, for God owes us nothing and, should we choose to reject his love and free pardon, we reap only what we are due. In accepting God’s offer, though, we gain not a reward for good behaviour, but his free gift of eternal life with him. This is an offer which always remains open to all, whilst we are in this world and should provide us with the impetus not only to live the Christian life ourselves but also, especially, through mission seek to make it a reality for all others, too.Christianity is a missionary religion precisely because we want other people to know the joy of life in Christ, to know God’s loving forgiveness and to share in Christ’s Resurrection life both here and in heaven. It would be a really great thing if we would commit ourselves anew, as the Church, to spreading the Gospel story and to inviting others to enter our life and to, ultimately, become – yes saints in the Kingdom of God.Father David
Reflection – 4th May 2020In the Calendar of Saints which we use in our Benefice, today is the Feast of the English Martyrs, in which we commemorate those who died for the Faith over the centuries, particularly in the period following the so-called ‘Reformation’ in the 16th and 17th Centuries, It is, of course, right that we laud their memory and deeds, whilst not forgetting to pray for the souls of those who inflicted terrible suffering and torments on them, often for the sake of political or economic gain.A ‘martyr’ is, of course, properly speaking, a ‘witness’; someone who witnesses to the Truth through their voluntary suffering and death. It is very important to note that martyrdom is an act of witness to the Truth – not to any perceived ‘truth’ but to the Truth. What is this Truth? It is nothing other than Jesus Christ, who stated that he is ‘the Way, the Truth and the Life’ (John 14:6) and who has confirmed his words through his Resurrection.Yet in our own times it is often held that there is no such thing as the truth, but only a multiplicity of perceived truths. There is my truth, there is your truth and any number of other truths. Truth itself thus becomes something which is entirely subjective and it does not matter if these ‘truths’ contradict each other, so long as they are ‘true’ for the one who holds each!This, of course, is nonsense on stilts! The ‘principle of non-contradiction’ is a basic rule of thinking clearly: something cannot be both black and white at the same time. Two plus two does equal four. It does not equal five merely because you would like it to! So, with regard to martyrdom, it is to be seen as such only if it is a witness to the Truth, which is to be found only in Christ. One cannot, properly speaking, be a witness to something that is false, something that is opposed to Christ. Otherwise, one could properly talk of Nazi war criminals, for instance, as being ‘martyrs’ – for, after all, were they not prepared to die for their Nazi ‘faith’? If one holds that all ‘truths’ are valid, then one must hold that the ‘truth’ of the Nazis was valid and true for them!Martyrdom is to be praised and honoured only if it is true martyrdom only if it is martyrdom for Christ. To die for a falsehood is a tragic error. To be sure, we may respect the courage of one who is prepared to die for their belief, even though it is false (provided we respect the courage of all those who die for their beliefs, however evil they may be) but in doing so we are not honouring ‘martyrs’ but actually are honouring the concept and act of courage itself.True martyrdom is the self-offering of oneself, one’s very life, for the sake of Jesus Christ our true God, the one who is Truth itself. By taking up our cross and following him (Matt. 16:24) we become truly ‘witnesses’ for God. Today, therefore, we rightly honour those men and women of the past who have, in laying down their lives for Christ, received the crown of eternal life.Father David
To see Fr David's homily video please go to:https://www.facebook.com/MHandN/videos/1157872424549818/
