Sunday Reflection with Canon Robin Gibbons - 14 May 2022

Christ as Ancient of Days Icon Sinai - image Wiki Commons

Fifth Sunday of Easter

As always, praying through the Scriptures produces surprising results, what I would have fastened on often takes second place to something else, and so it is this Sunday. The first reading is about the end of the first Mission, Paul has been stoned and left for dead in Lystra but with Barnabas, recovers, they have met opposition and outright angry hostility, then confusion over the message proclaimed and the healing done, people getting ideas muddled it up with the cult of the gods! What then follows is the setting up of communities with organised ministry under the care of presybters. This would have been a good way to go, but no, it is this phrase that keeps returning:

'they strengthened the spirits of the disciples and exhorted them to persevere in the faith, saying, "It is necessary for us to undergo many hardships to enter the kingdom of God'. (Acts 14: 24)

In many ways this is more apt for us all at this time in our history. Pope Francis has called us to reflect on what a synodal model of Church could be. In his pastoral exhortations, though he does not change doctrine, he nevertheless opens doors to dialogue, his comments often point beyond structure to the Kingdom. I know that there is much opposition to him from some quarters, so in one sense as 'Chief Pastor' that phrase is very apt for his ministry, but it also indicates that we have never been promised what one often hears from 'Prosperity Gospel' preachers, following Christ and the Gospel will bring us wealth, health, and a fairy tale good-luck life. No, we must be grateful for small mercies as my Mother often said, take it as it comes and be joyful is something I am learning to be-much too late in life!

So this quote from Acts shakes us into reality, we must face hardships but perhaps more importantly we must accompany others through their hardship. This is the taking up of another's cross to help share the burden. Why do this? Well life is not static, nor is faith, it is linear with those eruptions of Kairos, God moments in it, moments that help us see as the vision of John in Revelation gives us, of something else, something to come, something wonderful;

'The One who sat on the throne said,
"Behold, I make all things new."(Rev 21:5b)

That hope of a time and place (although that is our limited imagination working for it surely wont be like we imagine but greater?) where pain, suffering, death are defeated, gone, and we are with the Most High in a vision of love and glory beyond the wildest imaginings of our hearts and souls.

This is not only for the future, we have to work to establish this 'new' kingdom here and now, John puts it in the present simple tense, 'I make' not 'I will make' or 'shall make' and that is where we must also be. Each time we pray that wonderful prayer we know as the Our Father do we not also say: 'Your Kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven?". The Kingdom is in and around you says Jesus and that is what we must hold fast to, and as prophets of that Kingdom, turn our world with its wickedness upside down! How? The Gospel tells us loud and clear the direction Jesus would have us take:" I give you a new commandment:

love one another. As I have loved you, so you also should love one another. This is how all will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another'. (Jn 13:34,35) That has to be the daily measuring rod of our lives, it has to be the examination of conscience I make, it has to be the one question I will have to answer when I in my turn face Christ on that last day!

Might I end with this? Today I was at my great friend Martyn Percy's farewell service, one that had to take place outside of his cathedral, it was a very gentle, good, Godly and love filled occasion, as all there were friends of Martyn and Emma, friends who had stood by him in his years of trial. As I looked about me I thought the one characteristic of everybody there was quite simply gentle goodness. He quoted James Dean's statement 'only the gentle are truly strong' and I thought suddenly, 'how very, very true!' But he ended with these words with which I want to end this reflection, as a tribute to the unspoken teachings I have learnt by osmosis from my friendship with him: 'Our calling does not seek after security or any other benefits. Our vocation is not to cling to church, but rather to step out in the love revealed in the person of Jesus'. (Dean Martyn Percy, Thanksgiving Sermon, Exeter College Oxford 14 March 2022)

Lectio

Charles de Foucauld

Let us have this faith which banishes all fear. We have besides us, facing us, in us, our Jesus, our God who loves us infinitely, is all-powerful, knows what is best for us, tells us to seek the kingdom and that the rest will be given to us.

H Richard Niebuhr

A God without wrath brought human beings without sin into a kingdom without judgment through ministrations of a Christ without a cross.

Fr Alexander Schmemann - For the Life of the World

Beauty is never "necessary," "functional" or "useful." And when, expecting someone whom we love, we put a beautiful tablecloth on the table and decorate it with candles and flowers, we do all this not out necessity, but out of love. And the Church is love, expectation and joy. It is heaven on earth, according to our Orthodox tradition; it is the joy of recovered childhood, that free, unconditioned and disinterested joy which alone is capable of transforming the world. In our adult, serious piety we ask for definitions and justifications, and they are rooted in fear - fear of corruption, deviation, "pagan influences," whatnot. But "he that feareth is not made perfect in love" (1 Jn. 4:18). As long as Christians will love the Kingdom of God, and not only discuss it, they will "represent" it and signify it, in art and beauty.