On comforting hearts and strengthening work
Ordinary Sunday 32: 11th November, 2001
Fr John Davis, Vicar of St Peter's Eastern Hill
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ himself and God our Father...comfort
your hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
(2 Thess 2:16)
We meet in a world where wars are often waged and battles fought. We meet
on the morning of Remembrance Day when the suffering and sacrifice of war in
battles long ago is again brought back to us – and also when we remember
and pray for those in present danger. And we meet at the end of a national
election. I imagine just about all of us spent last night close to the TV
screen or a radio, listening to the election results as they came in. Our
nation has again been called to exercise the choice that is available to us
for a Federal Parliament and government. We will have differing views and hopes
for the result., but at least in this country we do not come to blows over it
and generally will accept the figures as honest and true. But we recognise
that there are important things at stake here. Politics can and does raise
the temperature, more often than not. So of course does religion.
Our text from the epistle is part of the concluding words from one of St
Paul's smaller letters that are also used in our current daily office prayers.
The presence of God in the hearts of the faithful will be experienced and
evidenced in both words and deeds. Assuredly St Paul's words of prayer and
encouragement are to people who have had their share of disruption and
difficulty. There are troubles from outside in the form of persecutions and
there are troubles within because of divisions and disagreements. These
letters relate to teachings about the central truths of Christ crucified and
risen and coming again and then, most importantly relate to how the followers
of Christ should live out their lives, before that second coming. That was
the issue for them.
Our gospel this morning sees the Lord moving directly in on a religious
battlefield of great contention: whether there was a resurrection after death.
The Sadducees, a significant group of the religious establishment at that
time, thought this was a teaching based simply on human invention and hope.
So to trap the Lord, to make him appear a fool, an excruciatingly difficult
scenario was devised involving multiple partners, just to make the issue more
complex. A very ornate question! What if a woman successively married seven
brothers who all die, to whom would she belong in the resurrected life?
Certainly the Lord's response was not calculated to give comfort to those
who can only conceive of the life of the world to come as a giant family
reunion. For it is, as he says, more complex than that and the assertion should
really be put around the other way: the children of God are children of the
resurrection. The God of the patriarchs is the God of the living: To God "all
of them are alive". [:38] That much-married woman has gone to a new realm of
life for she belongs to the resurrection!
And in that light we can see the problems with the Sadducees; they were
asking the wrong question in the wrong manner. Too clever by half and missing
the central point. Now we might find the line or manner of the argument strange
to us. For the post Easter community of faith to which we are joined has much
firmer ground to stand on. But battles there were and doubts and misgivings
there are. They need to be addressed. A 'people of the resurrection' will be
trying to live it. But how do we prepare for the resurrection?
Some possible tacks we might take emerge here.
Fr Colin preached an excellent sermon last week on Zacchaeus climbing a
sycamore tree in order to see Christ. I commend it to you and would direct
you to our web page. At the centre of that sermon was the change that happened
to Zacchaeus. The conversion that happens when presence of God as the source
of deliverance is combined with self-awareness. Fr Colin said:
And he changes. Because he has been prepared for change by some
degree of honest self-examination. A moment of self acceptance of what he is
and how he has been.... As he responds to God in Jesus, the change becomes
possible.
But how is it with us? How do we change and prepare for larger life? We
know that personal spiritual growth and personal struggle go hand in hand.
Is it possible that we all need that trigger, that stimulus that we heard
described last week? That wake up call or that direct confrontation by someone
who seems to know us well or an unsettling answer to prayer, or the light
that comes when we see a new possibility of being in the world?
I believe the answer is yes, and I believe that we certainly need it more
than once in any lifetime. Be it spirit, person, or event that moves us, we
need that experience of conversion challenge, response, wake up call and
change of direction that can and does turn things around. Or at least where
it can begin.
And here is where we might very well need the company of the faithful
gathered over space and time, where we might need the church, For here it is
that we find patterns of reflection, repentance, amendment of life,
forgiveness, new beginnings. And the church needs us. For we are here to be
made into the very words of God in time and place as well, a word fittingly
prepared for the resurrection. But this process is not always easy. It can
lead to battle of various kinds. But there is a special imperative for those
who would want to claim to be part of the people of God. Requiring the hard
work of belonging and changing in community. Requiring healing in community
is difficult work. And it has always been so.
The epistle we heard this morning was written with words of comfort and
admonition to a Christian community that had divided within itself.
St Paul's correspondence, as a whole would indicate that things can and do
go badly wrong for communities or individuals. Personal failings and
limitations can often get in the way. When expectations are not for whatever
reason being met, there can be disappointment and bitterness. But it is not
to be left there.
For a Christian community is made up of people who try to recognise this
difficult truth and who continually try to work at its implications, even
though that is hard and often frustrating. But truthfully, spiritual and
personal growth can only really begin when that reflection and wrestling and
confronting actually have been engaged. For this struggle is a struggle for
life. New Life. And that in turn of course enriches and enlivens the community,
assists in its witness and service and keeps it from going astray. So when and
if things go bad there is always the opportunity and indeed the necessity to
reconsider and reaffirm what is central and to try again. That is the constant
pattern of letters of Paul to the various communities with which he had
contact. So this is nothing new.
We have a gospel that reveals the divisions amongst those who were hearing
the Lord in his own time and in this case on something as central as the life
of the world to come. We have been reminded of that moment of conversion that
came to Zacchaeus, improbably up a tree. We have been reminded of the personal
struggles perhaps divided and battling within that an individual Christian can
and probably must go through in the process of growth in faith and growth in
awareness. We have been reminded that this can include experiences of pain and
personal hurt. But then our lives are indeed made up of different approaches
with a lot at stake. We owe it to our God and to ourselves and our community,
the community of the resurrection, to enter on this journey and this search
with care and integrity. For God is with us in this journey and, that being
so, the fruits will be seen in words and deeds.
Now may our Lord Jesus Christ and God our Father...comfort your
hearts and strengthen them in every good work and word.
| 