The 6th Sunday of Easter

Christ is alive! Let Christians sing.
The cross stands empty to the sky.
Let streets and homes with praises ring.
Love, drowned in death, shall never die.

Christ is alive! No longer bound
to distant years in Palestine,
but saving, healing, here and now,
and touching every place and time.

In every insult, rift and war,
where colour, scorn or wealth divide,
Christ suffers still, yet loves the more,
and lives, where even hope has died.

Women and men, in age and youth,
can feel the Spirit, hear the call,
and find the way, the life, the truth,
revealed in Jesus, freed for all.

Christ is alive, and comes to bring
good news to this and every age,
till earth and sky and ocean ring
with joy, with justice, love and praise.

Glory to God in the highest,
and peace to God's people on earth.
Lord God, heavenly King,
almighty God and Father,
we worship you, we give you thanks,
we praise you for your glory.

Lord Jesus Christ, only Son of the Father,
Lord God, Lamb of God,
you take away the sin of the world:
have mercy on us;
you are seated at the right hand of the Father,
receive our prayer.

For you alone are the Holy One,
you alone are the Lord,
you alone are the Most High,
Jesus Christ,
with the Holy Spirit,
in the glory of God the Father. Amen.

A reading from the Acts of the Apostles.

Then Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, ‘Athenians, I see how extremely religious you are in every way. For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, “To an unknown god.” What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all nations to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps grope for him and find him – though indeed he is not far from each one of us. For “In him we live and move and have our being”; as even some of your own poets have said, “For we too are his offspring.” Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’

For the word of the Lord,
thanks be to God.

Alleluia, alleluia!

Jesus said: ‘Those who love me will keep my word,
and my Father will love them, and we shall come to them.’

Alleluia!

I flew to Melbourne for a meeting in mid February.     The corona virus was flourishing in Wuhan China. I was a bit nervous, and took a small bottle of sanitiser with me for the flight. No one else seemed to be much bothered on the plane, and it was all ok.

When I got back, I had a phone call from my nephew who, in my opinion, spends far too much time surfing the net and getting over anxious about what he finds. He rang to warn me to be careful because of the corona virus.    It would be become a pandemic like the Spanish flu he said.    I tried to soothe his anxieties….not quite like that, I said.    Aunty, he said, It’s going to be like the Rapture.    At that time, I thought my erstwhile nephew needed to get a grip of himself.   I assured him I’d be fine,  and so would he.

Now the Rapture, for those of you unfamiliar with this term, refers to the End Times, when the peoples of the world will be gathered together in the air to meet Jesus Christ.   There are those who believe that this rapture will precede the coming of Christ and the Day of Judgment, and those who believe that the two events will be at the same time, in fact a single event. Anglicans hold with the latter  idea of the single event, though who knows when or where?

Well, a month down the track, in mid to late March, COVID19 was wreaking havoc through the wider world, not just China….very certainly threatening us in Australia.     In the stressful weeks since then, I wonder if there have been a few of us who have woken up in the morning, and felt a relief that we were still ok and alive.     And yet,   we may have had to deal with those feelings of  disease….as though the earth has moved under us.  What on earth will happen next?  It has not been quite the rapture my nephew alluded to…..but he was certainly closer to the truth in February than I was.   At times COVID19 seems to threaten our very existence.     And maybe we have wondered what God has been doing in all this.     Where is he?

Sitting on his hands as the world around us has crumbled?

In many ways, I think we may be sharing something of what the disciples experienced when Jesus told them, that he would leave them, to return to the Father….they would see him no more.    Their hopes and dreams would be shattered, the world as they had come to know it was being taken from them.   They felt bereft.

And Jesus says to them, “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you.  In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”

Apparently there is a whole new lingo that has sprung up around COVID19.    As I describe some of my feelings these last weeks, you might think that I am Coronalusional, ie I have a distorted reality, caused by anxiety or too much time spent in lockdown.

You too may wonder if we are living in the coronapocalypse…….ie. living a life which will never return to normal, or worse, the human species will be wiped out by a mutating virus.     Well who knows, but the rapture hasn’t come…… yet.    But we may well be sharing the feeling the disciples had at the imminent departure of Jesus……a feeling of being left alone, in a world left to cope as best it may.

The words of Jesus speak to us today.   “I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live.”   Jesus does come to us, today, either in the rapture, but more likely for the present, experienced as his Spirit.

Intellectually we know that Jesus’s spirit lives with us; we believe that in faith.   But for myself, I also have to live with the doubt of whether he is with us…..faith and doubt going together, as they so often do, for me at least.

But Jesus says more than that to us in this passage.  He says,

“On that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you.”   But what does Jesus mean when he says, “I am in my Father and you in me and I in you.”    We hear Jesus say this type of saying a few times, in John’s gospel.     For example John records Jesus saying in Chapter 17,  “The glory that you have given me I have given them, so that they may be one, as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may become completely one.”

These sayings can become mesmerising and we glide over the familiarity of them    But what does it mean to us….especially in these days we are living in?

For the past two months I have been reading Ruth Burrows, that Carmelite nun, spiritual writer, some of whose work I shared with you earlier this year.

Ruth Burrows writes, that some of us think that we can come to the Father directly, that we no longer need Jesus. But, she says, “We are failing to see the import of Jesus’ words, that “to see him is to see the Father, that to know him is to know the Father, that to be in him is to be in the Father.”       But Jesus also says, “No one can come to the Father but by me,”.   Now this is not in the sense that you use me to get to him and when you have got to him,  you don't need me anymore….that you have simply no contact with the Father except through me in time and in eternity. Not at all.   In fact this is direct contact……Jesus’ communication is “pure God” and only his communication is “pure God.”      What we call the mystical, a direct, unmediated contact with God, is Jesus. He is his living touch. We have this direct contact only in him…in fact, we are becoming Jesus…we are becoming Jesus.

And further, Ruth Burrows says,

“The mystical life is beyond our power, nothing we can do can bring us to it, but God is longing to give it to us, to all of us, not to a select few. He has made us for this, to share his divinity, to become his sons and daughters in very truth, with all that this implies. The prerequisite on our part is an acceptance of poverty, of need, of helplessness; the deep awareness that we need Jesus our saviour who alone brings God and man together, who is our holiness…. We are eager to stress that the mystical is of the essence of Christianity, not the privileged way of the few. To be more precise: it means being wholly possessed by God.”

As I read these quotes to you from Ruth Burrows, I  am very aware how dense Ruth Burrow’s text is……how far she pushes the envelope in our understanding of what Jesus is saying in our gospel reading today.   Therefore, I do suggest that you take the time to read the text of her quotes and think about them..to get to a deeper understanding  of what she is saying…..a greater perception of what Jesus is offering each of us in our pandemic world, so we may not feel alone…..we may instead know that we are being offered the life of being at one with Father, in Jesus Christ.

At the end of the text of this homily I have put Ruth Burrow’s quotes in full so you may further ponder them at your leisure.

I hope they will help to explain what Jesus is saying to us about how he is with us always.    I hope they may be of some strength to us all as we experience such existential disruptions to our very selves.

Ruth Burrow’s quotes in full to ponder.

“Many  of us have the secret notion that we are working to get to a “pure” prayer where “God” is experienced directly, where we no longer need Jesus. We are failing to see the import of Jesus’ words that to see him is to see the Father, that to know him is to know the Father, that to be in him is to be in the Father and that we have no direct link with the Father, if by “direct” we mean other than through Jesus. We want to think we have but we have not. “No one can come to the Father but by me,” and this, not in the sense that you use me to get to him and when you have got to him you don't need me anymore, but you have simply no contact with the Father except through me in time and in eternity. But of course, this is direct contact. Jesus’ communication is “pure God” and only his communication is “pure God.” What we call the mystical, a direct, unmediated contact with God, is Jesus. He is his living touch. We have this direct contact only in him…. [H]is life is secretly, escaping our consciousness, substituting itself for ours. We are becoming Jesus…. …

And further, Ruth Burrows says,

“The mystical life is beyond our power, nothing we can do can bring us to it, but God is longing to give it to us, to all of us, not to a select few. He made us for this, to share his divinity, to become his sons and daughters in very truth, with all that this implies. The prerequisite on our part is an acceptance of poverty, of need, of helplessness; the deep awareness that we need Jesus our savior who alone brings God and man together, who is our holiness…. We are eager to stress that the mystical is of the essence of Christianity, not the privileged way of the few. To be more precise: it means being wholly possessed by God.

Ruth Burrows: Essential Writings (Modern Spiritual Masters)" by Ruth Burrows, Michelle Jones)

Let us profess the faith of the church:

I believe in God, the Father almighty,
creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, died, and was buried;
he descended to the dead.
On the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and is seated at the right hand of the Father;
from there he will come to judge
the living and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Spirit,
the holy catholic Church,
the communion of saints,
the forgiveness of sins,
the resurrection of the body,
and the life everlasting. Amen.

Pray, brothers and sisters, that my sacrifice and yours
may be acceptable to God, the Father almighty.

May the Lord accept our sacrifice
for the praise and glory of God’s name,
for our good, and the good of all God’s holy Church.

Let us pray with confidence to the Father
in the words our Saviour against us:

Our Father in heaven,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done, on earth as in heaven.
Give us today our daily bread.
Forgive us our sins,
as we forgive those who sin against us.
Save us from the time of trial
and deliver us from evil.

Deliver us, Lord, we pray, from every evil,
graciously grant peace in our days,
that, by the help of your mercy,
we may be always free from sin and safe from all distress,
as we await the blessed hope
and the coming of our Saviour, Jesus Christ.

For the kingdom, the power, and the glory are yours,
now and for ever. Amen.

If ye love me, keep my commandments, says the Lord,
and I will ask the Father and He will send you another Paraclete,
to abide with you forever. Alleluia.