The Fourth Sunday after Easter

Job 19: 21-27a * James 1: 17-21 * John 16: 5-14

 

"Have pity upon me, have pity upon me, O ye my friends, for the hand of God hath touched me! Why do ye persecute me as God, and are not satisfied with my flesh?" (Job 19:21-22) These words of Job clearly show us a man who is less than impressed with the advice of his three friends who have gathered around him in the season of his calamities. Thus while he is no doubt comforted by their presence, their words can only serve as a cautionary counterexample to Job's lived antecedence of the passion of Christ Jesus. And just as Jesus "humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross" so that "God also hath highly exalted him" (Phil. 2:8,9), so Job knows "that my redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth...whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another." (Job 19: 25, 27)

 

And we, like Job, know these things to be true, even if we cannot (like Job's friends) yet perceive their end and final consummation with our senses. And that, faith in its essence, requires patience. Of this virtue, St. Cyprian (the third century bishop of Carthage and martyr) says: "It is patience which both commends, and preserves us to God. It is this that restrains anger, bridles the tongue, governs the mind, guards peace...binds down the violence of pride, quenches the flame of hatred...makes men humble in prosperity, brave in adversity, mild toward injuries and contempts....It is this that firmly fortifies the foundations of our faith. (from "On the Benefit of Patience")

 

Beautiful! But even that is not generous enough for our loving Father. For He is also glad to send us the Holy Spirit. As we hear in the Gospel today: "It is expedient for you that I go away: for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart I will send him unto you. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment." (John 16: 7,8)

 

The Greek word rendered here as reprove really has a dual meaning: both ‘to convict’ and ‘to convince’. Just as at trial it is the prosecutor’s role to convict the defendant by convincing the jury, so is it the Spirit’s role to convict us of our need for repentance before God by convincing us of the truth of revelation shown forth in the person and ministry of Christ.

Of these two ideas, I'd like to spend some time thinking about convincing. Separating it into its component Latin roots, we arrive at “con” and “vincere”. Literally these mean "to conquer with". Indeed, Webster’s gives as one definition of convince: “to overpower or to overcome.”

Aside from providing gifts and graces from the life of the Trinity to us, the Holy Spirit also has a decidedly forensic role to play. I was a big fan of the show "Crime Scene Investigation", known as "C.S.I." Every Thursday at 9:00 pm, the team would come across varying circumstances that pointed to a violent crime having been committed. Just a quick glance around the scene is enough to tell you that somebody died in rather unfortunate circumstances.  In the same way, a bit of honest self reflexion and examination is enough to tell us that we ourselves are far from perfect; and, in fact, are victims in our own right of the violence done to our souls and our relationships on account of our sins, our selfish tendencies and our egos. It doesn’t take any special theological knowledge or a gigantic mental leap to see this. Whether or not we acknowledge it, we are aware of our own faults.

The tricky part comes in trying to uncover and prove the events surrounding the scene. The C.S.I. team examines evidence, interviews witnesses and relies on past experience to reconstruct a timeline of events, track down potential suspects and determine the extent of innocence or guilt. The Spirit does much the same for us. He is our moral forensic team. He inspires us to learn and know the teaching of Christ (the “evidence”), the moral law and the deposit of holy tradition entrusted to the Church and the lives of the saints (the “witnesses”) and the extent of the injury we cause ourselves and others when we sin (an objective standard of guilt). All of these things fall under the category of ‘convincing.’

 

But I think as well that when we are told that the world will receive the reproof of the Spirit with regard to our sins, it is not to be understood as a catalogue of faults that He uncovers with the aim of inflicting some sort of judicial punishment or retribution. In fact, I think that is a terribly false construction that is highly detrimental both theologically and spiritually. Rather is it a means of exposing our wounds and brokenness so that they might be accessible to treatment and uncovering to bring about healing. Indeed, the Spirit of God is the very means by which our healing, our regeneration and the process of our redemption is brought about.

 

We are ‘convinced,’ we are ‘overpowered,’ we are ‘overcome’ by God’s Spirit not by any great show of force but by the gentle prodding of our conscience and our intellect. He is that inner fire that refines and purifies, but does not consume. Though they seem to be ever in high demand, now is not the time for great signs and wonders for we have already received the greatest sign of all in the death and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ which we continue to celebrate especially during these fifty days.

One of the most universally acclaimed verses of Scripture illustrating this is John 3:16: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” How true that is. What can be forgotten is that it is a conditional statement, not an absolute guarantee regardless of the circumstances. To believe involves active and living faith, not passive receptivity via osmosis. Further on in the Epistle of St. James than we hear today, we read: "But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves." (James 1:22) The Spirit Who enlightens our faith is Himself active and not passive.

In summary, then. To believe is to die and rise in Christ. It is a whole new mode of life. To do this is impossible without receiving the ‘convincing’ of the Spirit of God. Once more, in the words of St. James: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth that we should be a kind of first fruits of his creatures….Therefore put away all filthiness and rank growth of wickedness and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls.” (James 1: 18, 21). Who is it that has done this planting? It is the Spirit of God Himself. By this means He inspires, He convinces,  and in the midst of the temporalities of suffering, death and false assurances He gives us the hopeful vision of Job. And finally, in the words of Garrison Keillor, He gives us “the strength to get up and do what needs to be done.”



Depression

I've always had a hard time finding an adequate expression of how it feels to be depressed. A month or so ago I was re-reading Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities and I came across the following. I thought to myself: "Yes! This! This is how it makes me feel."

Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose
upon no sadder sight than the man of
good abilities and good emotions,
incapable of their directed exercise,
incapable of his own help and his own
happiness, sensible of the blight on him,
and resigning himself to let it eat him away.

 

 

Thank God for medication. 

Low Sunday

Isaiah 43: 1-12 *  I John 5: 4-12  * John 20: 19-23

 

In the Book of Common Prayer (1928 American edition) there are four selections from the Gospels given for the Octave of Easter. On Sunday, we hear about the empty tomb from St. John. On Monday, St. Luke tells of the disciples walking to Emmaus and speaking about Jesus. Only after they have shared a meal with the stranger they meet on the road do they realize it is the risen Christ in their presence. Tuesdays’ Gospel and this mornings’ are accounts of Jesus appearing to the Apostles as they are gathered in the upper room, where I am sure the very air is filled with an admixture of fear, confusion and hope. It is interesting to me that one of His first acts is to show them His wounds from the Crucifixion as proof that He lives. I’ll just bet that our first reaction upon meeting someone unexpectedly would not be to hoist a pant leg and show off that knee replacement. In fact, we spend considerable time and effort trying to conceal our wounds and imperfections from each other and ourselves. Just look at all the ads for Botox, effortless weight loss and prescriptions for various dysfunctions mental and physical that surround us in print and electronic media.  Just so, there are many these days, consciously or not, who wish to conceal the wounds of Christ as well; who think that, in light of the Resurrection, His suffering and death and the torments that He received as predicted especially by Isaiah are nothing but temporary inconveniences now thankfully passed into the dustbin of history and non-being. Why? They make us uncomfortable, for they are icons of our sinfulness. The problem with trying to eliminate them is that we are not just baptized into Jesus' Resurrection, but also into His death. As soon as we have spiritually probed His hands and feet and accepted this as reality, then we inherit the obligation to follow Him all the way through the tomb. It is not always a pleasant journey: it's dark, cramped and it stinks. It is a journey that will cause us to encounter all kinds of things about ourselves that we would just as soon forget.

From a homily of St. Gregory the Great: “For whatever can be touched, must needs be subject to corruption; and whatever is not subject to corruption cannot be touched. But, in a way altogether wonderful and incomprehensible, our Redeemer after his Resurrection revealed himself in a body at once palpable and incorruptible. Yea, he revealed himself in an incorruptible body, that we might learn to seek a like glorification; and in a palpable body, for the strengthening of our faith.”

One of the fundamental principles of Christian spirituality, summed up in the Collect for today, takes up this theme of duality, of life in death, of palpability and incorruptibility, by recalling that we cannot have joy without suffering any more than we can know suffering apart from joy. Our Lord’s passion and death tell us as much. Easter is as impossible without Good Friday as Good Friday is impossible without Easter. Why, then, try to deny the undeniable? Jesus shows the Apostles His hands and feet, saying: ‘Yes, I am alive and here’s the proof of what I did for you.’ Those marks are the marks of our sins; past, present and future. Even after Easter they are apparent. And that’s okay. They show us how desperately we were in need of redemption. If we try to conceal them, we are not being true to ourselves. They are our last refuge against the forthrightness of God’s justice, but also the greatest proof of His mercy. In them, He says to us: 'a perfectly effectual sacrifice was required of you, I have offered that sacrifice for you.'

The Epistle this morning contains some rather evocative imagery: water, blood and the Spirit. In a literary sense, the entirety of the history of our salvation is presented here: from the flood waters of Genesis, to the passage through the Red Sea, down to the ministry of John the Baptist; from the blood shed at the institution of the Covenant with Abraham by means of circumcision to the blood offerings in the Temple to the perfect Lamb Who was slain once for all on the Cross; from the motive power of the Holy Ghost over the formless wasteland to the inspiration of the words of the Prophets, to Jesus breathing on the Apostles and giving them the gift of the Holy Ghost.

These three elements mentioned in St. John also make an appearance sacramentally in each of our lives as well. Water flows at our baptism, the Holy Spirit is invoked at our confirmation by the bishop, and the blood of Christ is made present in the elements on the altar each time we celebrate the Holy Eucharist. In a sense, during the course of these sacramental acts all of those things I just mentioned (from the Flood waters to the breathing forth of the Holy Ghost) are recalled and in that remembering are made present in order that we as believers might perpetually bear in heart, mind and body all that has come to pass. In Greek, this is known as anamnésis, and also forms one of the key elements in our Prayer of Consecration over the Eucharistic elements, to wit: "having in remembrance his blessed passion and precious death, his mighty resurrection and glorious ascension; rendering unto thee most hearty thanks for the innumerable benefits procured unto us by the same." In both the life of Jesus and our lives in Him, these three things point to the truth of God, as St. John tells us in the Epistle as well. That truth is intrinsically connected to both Calvary and the empty tomb.

Water, blood and the Spirit. These are not somehow mystical talismans any more than are the physical pages of the Bible or the words themselves printed thereon - able to be summoned on demand to confirm our self-assumed righteousness or to confound our perceived enemies. These things have no power to conceal our sins or to hide our true character. Neither do they have any power to erase the wounds Christ received on the Cross. And thank God for that! That is why He appears as He does to the Apostles. What they are able to do, however, is far more significant. They bring us into the fellowship that is the Church. It is at that point that our personal contribution to living the Christian life begins, where we "fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in [our] flesh, for his body, which is the church" (Col. 1:24). Then we must learn, in the words of the Collect, to: “put away the leaven of malice and wickedness, that we may always serve [God] in pureness of living and truth; through the merits of…Jesus Christ our Lord.” That is how we deal with our woundedness.

I would also like to spend some time considering the idea of leavening as mentioned in the collect, for it is an oft-invoked image of both the Old and New Testaments. One of the definitions of the verb to leaven given in Webster’s is: “to mingle, or permeate with a transforming element.” And I thought, how like the Cross and Resurrection that is. The triple aspect of Spirit, water and blood that we hear about this morning does indeed permeate our lives as Christians, allowing our entire being to be transformed into an image of Jesus Christ himself. Indeed, we have no other purpose than this: to continuously engage and be engaged by this process until it becomes indistinguishable from our very selves.

But then I thought, how like sin is this leavening also. For every sin begins on the surface, as an impulse of the intellect, having its cause from either internal or external stimuli. If it is allowed room to develop in the mind, then it finds its way to the will where it works to gain control of our motive power. After that, it is just a matter of time before we are doing or saying today what we only gave ashamed thought to yesterday. The further this process is allowed to develop, the more difficult it becomes to extricate it from our lives. Thoughts become desires, become actions, become habits, become a part of the “just who we are” that is so incorrectly affirmed by some contemporary thinking. Is it any wonder that so many people simply have no ‘moral compass’ at all these days? They are not asking for blame, but for help, in the manner proved by the Good Samaritan.

But the converse is also true. The more virtue is allowed to expand in the mind, the more it will affect our motive powers as well. Think of it this way. We live in a physical universe where everything takes up a finite amount of space. If I have a jar full of water and I drop some stones into it, what happens? Some of the water is pushed out to make room for the stones. It is the same way in the spiritual life. Virtue and vice both compete for the same amount of "space" that is our soul. Adding more of one will necessarily force out some of the other. What we struggle with then, is not just to remove as much of the bad as possible but also fill its place with the good. And in this process, just as some water from the jar is bound to spill over onto the floor, surely some of our own woundedness will be exposed to view, our own or that of others, just as the wounds of Christ were visible in His post-Resurrection appearances. And that is a good thing. It puts us in touch with reality (God is not deceived, no matter how hard we try). And...it is an opportunity for greater humility in our dealings with each other and ourselves. There is an oft-quoted adage that the road to recovery begins with admitting we have a problem. In the same way, our road to eternal life begins in the pierced hands, feet and side of Jesus Christ, from which flow water and blood and the Spirit of God is outpoured.

In conclusion, consider this, from the Old Testament Lesson at Morning Prayer today: "But now thus saith the Lord that created thee, O Jacob, and he that formed thee, O Israel, Fear not: for I have redeemed thee, I have called thee by thy name, thou art mine. When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee" (Is. 43:1-2).

We who are baptised have indeed passed safely through the waters. Though their depths are dark, we have great confidence in the One Who passed this way before us. He has taken up and perfected the journey of the Israelites through the Red Sea, thus making sign and symbol come to fruition in reality. On account of this, we can now boldly accept the injuction given to the Romans: "Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized into Jesus Christ were baptized into his death?" (6:3). And, in the words of the Psalmist: "Therefore will not we fear...Though the waters thereof roar and be troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof." (Ps. 46: 2-3a)

We who have received the fire of the Holy Ghost have received the gift of Him Who burns within but does not consume, the Divine reality of the type presented in Exodus. Rather do these fires serve the purpose described by the Prophet Malachi: "But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner's fire, and like fuller's soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the Lord an offering in righteousness" (Mal. 3:2-3).

And so, whenever our Lord comes to you, in whatever guise or circumstance of life it may be, He greets you with His peace and shows you His wounds. Do not be afraid to do likewise. In light of the events that have come to pass liturgically these past two weeks, we have been given everything we need to come to terms with them.