30th April 2006Third Sunday of Easter

Fr David Cherry, Matins  at the Queen's Chapel of the Savoy

Isaiah 63:7-15 & 1 Corinthians 10:1 – 13

Farmer Joe looks out the window one morning and sees that all the cows standing in the field are frozen.  He shocked as he sees his livelihood going down the drain.  Mabel says: “Don’t worry.  I know just the woman who can sort this out.”  A while later he looks out to see a woman wondering among the frozen cows.  As she passes they start to move again, the ice melting. ‘Who on earth is she?’ he asks.  “Thora Hurd.”

He alone is the interpretative Presence of our lives.

Two texts from our lessons this morning.
1.    From St Paul to the Corinthians: ‘Moreoever, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant’
2.    And from the prophet Isaiah: “I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us”  

The great season of Easter of 50days stretches before us until Pentecost.  Longer than Lent, it gives us time to revisit the Christian story, our own personal spiritual story in the Light of the Resurrection.  Lest this sound like an esoteric theological impossibility unless you’re on a super-spiritual plain, let me attempt an explanation.

Telling stories about ourselves is what we do naturally, using hindsight.  In the light of new insights we are always revising, re-editing, re-interpretingour personal stories in the light of new experience.  It is with hindsight that we see clearer the pattern of things, how we were and how we now are.  It is a work of revision in the light of new experiences.  It requires memory.  It also requires ‘new insight’ – in theological speak: ‘revelation’, a new discovery, something new coming home to one.   

It is utterly natural to humans.  My training incumbent 14 years on has verified recently that I have mellowed  - perhaps thawed.  The story I told of myself when I offered myself for training to the priesthood (to get through selection conference) is different from the story I tell of myself now.  And we can all be grateful for that.  

“I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us”  

This re-editing, revision, reinterpretation is how the story of the salvation came to be recorded, the various books of the Bible gathered together in an act of interpretative redactionism.  It was done in the Light of the Resurrection.  It is not is not strictly chronological, historical or scientific; and is not meant to be.  It is an utterly human and natural endeavour, done in the light of what has been made known to us; what has been revealed to us.  

So St Paul says : ‘Moreoever, brethren, I would not that ye should be ignorant’, of what this Light is that has been made known to us and which makes sense of the human story.

In his book Raising Abel James Alison imagines the scenario of Abel rising from the dead and returning to Cain, the brother who murdered him.   Instead of coming as a ghost of vengeance, Abel comes with forgiveness, without resentment, without any desire for reciprocation.  Cain finds himself in the position where he can revise his story.  He can see what he has done, why and how he acted in the way he did. Rather than finding himself on the defensive, having to justify what he did, he has time to begin to see who he really is, what sort of a person he was then.  And because he is forgiven, he can ask for forgiveness and begin to re-imagine what it might be like to live in another way.  

One might say that the light of his brother’s forgiving love, has enabled him to own what he has done and who he is; and enabled him to imagine and begin to live differently.

It is such love which meets frightened disciples in their shame and confusion in the locked upper room, after the Resurrection.  Jesus appears not with reprisals, not even with a lofty ‘I forgive you’, simply: Peace be unto you.  It is an invitation to recognition of the truth of ourselves in the light of his uninterrupted love for those who wounded and betrayed him; an invitation to see ‘the more’ that he sees in us; an invitation to be at peace with ourselves as we are, assured that what we have done has not changed the God who is for us and with us.

It was this ‘revelation light’ that enabled Isaiah to tell the story of God’s relationship with his people – a story of love and betrayal, a story of God’s enduring faithfulness and human waywardness, of finding forgiveness and healing, a story of ongoing dependence on God’s mercy.

Both Isaiah and St Paul talk of Moses.  The revelation was then not fully accessible and St Paul is re-interpreting in the Light of revelation and sees in the Rock from which water flowed to sustain God’s people, Christ himself.  This seeing with hindsight, this deepening sense of what was significant then is in the light of the present.  Then it was not yet fully made known.  Now, after the Resurrection, it is.

By what light do we see?  For us it is always the Light of the Dead and Risen Christ.  He is our Rabbi, our Teacher.  He alone is the interpretative Presence of our lives.

To have the truth revealed to us is to find our lives and to tell the story of our lives in a different light.  It is to see God as he is: in all things, behind and within our personal histories, through world history, reconciling the world to himself.  To see with the eyes of faith and to tell a different history; a history not governed by cynicism and predictability, but by faith; a history not tinted by positive thinking or any other form of willed self-duping.  

To see with the eyes of faith is not to ignore the weight of sin, the colossal carnage that we perpetrate on other nations and on Creation.  This would not have escaped Cain in the light of his risen brother.  It did not escape the disciples either.  To see with the eyes of faith is to be ‘let free’ – which is what forgiveness means – ‘let free’ from self-justification and defensiveness to engage in the work of God’s project of reconciliation and justice for the earth; let free to tell a different story, a story governed by hopeful engagement with God’s project of making of his Creation a Communion.  Afterall that is what Holy Communion is meant to produce in us.  

To see with the eyes of faith, by Resurrection Light, is to live no longer ignorant of what God has made known.  

With the disciples in Easter, we come blinking into Resurrection light, gasping at what has been done in us, seeing all things being made new (in continuity with the first moments of Creation), allowing new revelation to come home to us, finding ourselves telling a different kind of story:

“I will mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord hath bestowed on us” Amen.