At a time of
economic hardship unprecedented in recent years or decades even it is
inevitable that we find something of almost an over concern with material
things from energy costs upward or rather downward if you live at the Rectory!
Many of us are
feeling the pinch and we’ve a duty to be alongside the most vulnerable.
Sometimes
though, I get troubled as a priest by what I call the over concern for this
world’s goods and their security.
Why? Because
of the truth enshrined in this weekend’s liturgy of All Saints, namely this:
The most meaningful
thing in life is what conquers death.
Earthly life
is a prologue. The book of life proper starts beyond the grave with Christianity’s
Founder who is the life, the truth and the way.
Christians live
knowing their homeland is in heaven. We come to church to develop a taste for
that homeland through bread and wine that anticipates the heavenly banquet and
through the word of God which promises the same.
If people around
could really see this they’d fight to get a place at this celebration! It’s our
failure, my and my predecessors, your and your predecessors as worshippers
failure, to believe and to communicate this that is robbing them of this
privilege.
The most meaningful
thing in life is what conquers death.
I go to the
Chemists and see a rack of booklets on how to overcome various conditions - arthritis,
indigestion, osteoporosis, stress, varicose veins and so on.
One question
not addressed is how you deal with dying.
Perhaps you
wouldn’t expect doctors to have much to say about how we deal with death. Maybe they see death as the ultimate defeat
for health professionals.
Yet the whole
of life leads up to death. It's
something quite natural, in a sense. The
end of man - but in which sense - 'end' as 'finish' or 'end' as 'fulfillment'?
Dying is just
as much a daily medical condition as arthritis or indigestion. Yet how do people find a consultant who can
advise them on how to die?
Where do
people facing eternity go to for help?
Our Christian
Faith is built upon the risen Christ. He
is our Consultant.
Who else can
advise and prepare, console and strengthen in the face of death than Jesus?
Jesus, who in
dying bore the agony of death for us.
Jesus, who in
rising burst open the gates of paradise!
Our Consultant
writes these words for us in his manual - though
you walk through the valley of the shadow of death, fear no evil. I am with
you.
This church
points up to a world beyond this world because it is the church of Jesus Christ
We are one
today also with our beloved dead - our families, friends, benefactors - those
who have inspired us or enriched our lives, who now pray for us wrapped in the
mantle of God’s love for all eternity.
That oneness
with them at the eucharist is no better described than by a person who attended
the Divine Liturgy in the icon filled Cathedral of Kiev in the Ukraine:
‘There is
always a crowd’, he said, ‘ a promiscuity of rich and poor, of well dressed and
tattered, a kaleidoscope mingling of people and colours - people standing and
praying, people kneeling, people prostrated... There is no organ music, but an
unearthly and spontaneous outburst of praise from the choir and the clergy and
the people worshipping together...
‘And from the
back and from the sides - and from the pillars and from the columns, look the
pale faces of antiquity, the faces of the dead who are alive looking over the
shoulders of the alive who have not yet died...All praising God,
enfolding in a vast choric communion the few who in the Church have met on the
common impulse to acknowledge the wonder and the splendour of the mystery of
God.
‘You lose the
sense of Ego, the separated individual, you are aware only of being part of a
great unity praising God. You cease to be man and woman and become THE CHURCH
(the Bride of Christ)’
And that is
what we are this morning – the church, the community of Jesus -
stretching beyond these four walls into eternity - living with lives that gain
meaning from the conquest of death which brings and should bring our humanity
into its right mind.
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