Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbon - 14 April 2013

Fr Robin Gibbons

It took me a long time to work out just what obedience might mean, as a child and a Catholic one at that I was used to hearing that we should obey the commandments and also those who were our superiors. Later as a monk I put up with the concept of obedience that suggested somebody else might often know better that I did what was necessary and right for me, the tradition of the Abbot in the Benedictine tradition hinges on obedience and the Abbot’s discernment for one’s journey. But it was no good for me, a rebellious spirit couldn’t quite fathom things like docility of spirit and unswerving obedience, no matter how good that might be. Sometimes I was left wondering how somebody else could actually know just what God wanted of me. The answer came gradually over a number of years but it started with recognition that there was not one way for me but several, it depended on me to find God in my choice.

In our first reading from Acts, Peter suggests that obedience to God comes before obedience to men (and women), what he doesn’t suggest is an image of God barking out orders and telling us what to do. It is a far more subtle approach and allows us to discover that the root meaning of the word is about listening to one another and discerning the best way in each situation. The key seems to me to always be the discernment of the Holy Spirit ‘whom God gives to those who obey him,’ in other words it is through the Spirit that we begin to hear God’s loving communication with us, that is the first obedience, to listen to God and to respond in terms of a mutual dialogue so that we begin to follow Jesus as best we can. In some way that image is picked up in the great liturgical vision of praise found in our second reading. All things come to us through him, it is the Christ who is given all praise, honour , glory and power, but this Christ of majesty, the Lamb who was slain, as the writer to the Apocalypse puts it, is still the loving Christ who reaches out to all living things, especially the little ones of life.

In his discourse with Peter the risen Christ teaches us one aspect of true obedience through Peter, no matter what he might have done the Lord calls him (and us) to trust and hope. Peter leaps into the sea, Peter tells Jesus he loves him, but in return, Christ who is also obedient to us, in other words attentive and concerned for our very selves tells us through Peter to simply follow him and feed his lambs and sheep!

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain.