We are God's children now says St John. We have a 'sameness' to God, no less.
Yet, the scriptures go on to state the other side of the paradox - God-like we may be but we are also 'different' from God - or rather God is different from us.
We are like God, adopted sons and daughters - and yet we are called to purify ourselves as he is pure (1 John 3:3). We are like God but we are also not like God.
Christianity is full of mystery! I love mystery and paradox and I feel sad to see its removal from life and even from the Church nowadays.
Christianity thrills with mystery and paradox.
Look at that Gospel reading. What sense is there in paying all your workers the same however long or short their hours? Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous? (Matthew 20:15)
When God comes among us into the world he wants to be the same as us - so he plumbs our human depths. He suffers.
Yet in coming to us as God, so very different to us, he is able to open up our humanity to generous, endless vistas in the revelation of resurrection glory!
Christianity is about the bursting out of resurrection glory from the Risen Christ as shafts of light so often diffract from the sun through dark clouds.
Have you seen that picture, often at sunset - those of us who have roots in the Caribbean know it better than us - the sun's glory bursting out through the clouds.
What a picture - darkness and light together showing each other off!
So God shows himself off to us in Christ crucified and risen! God shows himself off in full splendour and lifts our poor humanity in the process, making it a vehicle and instrument of divine glory.
I love paradox. The dictionary states that a paradox occurs when two statements that are contradictory in logic must be held together in experience.
30 years ago I worked in Guyana, South America which is where Anne and I were married. Besides Cricket and Anglicanism there is a third binder between England and its former colonies - did you know? Gilbert and Sullivan - yes it still goes on in Guyana and across the Commonwealth though a bit incorrect nowadays. As a youth I acted in the Pirates of Penzance where Frederick, apprenticed to the Pirates, prepares for freedom on his 21st birthday. Then Ruth, his fierce protectress breaks the news that he is not 21 but only 5 and 'a little bit over' since he was born on 29 February.
How quaint the ways of paradox, at common sense she gaily mocks…
Paradoxes are amusing mentally. They 'mock common sense' by provoking us to look at things two ways at once and get different answers.
Christianity is famous for its paradoxes - God in Three yet One, Jesus is God yet Man, Christ has died, Christ is risen…
Look at Paul in the second reading, to me, living is Christ and dying is gain. If I am to live in the flesh, that means fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which I prefer. I am hard pressed between the two: my desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. The apostle makes life and death into a paradox only Christian faith could entertain - living is Christ and dying is gain.
Some of us have been through some very dark periods in our lives not least over the months of this pandemic. Again and again sharing with Christian believers I catch vivid evidence of how the presence of faith allows dark clouds in life to diffract the glory of the Lord. We need to hear more about this in our own Christian community so as to build us up in heart and soul.
When I was a student a group of pilgrims from my parish in Oxford went in a minibus to Walsingham. Some of them made their first Confessions there. It was a wonderful weekend spiritually. On the way back the minibus crashed and some of them were killed. The next Sunday was the Feast of the Transfiguration and I will never forget the parish priest preaching on a couple of verses from that story in Luke 9:34-5 And as Jesus (brilliant in glory) spoke, a cloud came and overshadowed them; and they were afraid as they entered the cloud. And a voice came out the cloud, saying, "This is my Son, my Chosen; listen to him!"
Sometimes the Church grows best and sinks her roots deepest into Christ when the clouds come and we have to listen for God's call - see, this is my Son…
Joy and Sorrow are our inseparable bedfellows in this mysterious Christianity of ours.
When you struggle with your faith - and we do struggle at times - imagine a world without this mystery you struggle with.
It's not very hard to imagine it because such a world is all around us!
Misery or mystery is the choice, really.
Takes away one side of the paradox and where does it leave you - the mystery of life is reduced to a bare contradiction.
Make God the same as us. Eat, drink and be merry - this is where God is, right with us, the same as us. Where is hope in such materialism? As if there were nothing beyond death? Other religions like Buddhism also seem to make God the same as us - God is the self, he is the genie in our lamp, so to speak. God is so much the same as us he is built in our image more than we are built in his!
The paradox is lost - one side of the mystery of being is denied.
Or to look at the other extreme there are people who go about excessively making God different to everyone else. Zip him up in a Jehovah's Witness Bible, God so different and aloof. Sometimes the Church zips God up and makes him so special people feel they can never reach him.
You lose the sameness of God in all of this.
I always thing that Christmas and Lent teach us the sameness of God in his birth, life and sufferings whilst Easter and Pentecost teach us his difference. Christ is raised - there the difference between God and man shines out in the generosity beyond logic described in today’s Gospel.
So where does all of this talk of mystery and the sameness and difference of God leave us all this Sunday morning 20 September 2020?
We are gathered once again to make a heartfelt offering of our lives to God through Our Lord Jesus Christ!
In baptism you are made one with Jesus in his death. Jesus in turn wants you to be one with him in his new way of living. He wants you to be bold in offering yourself afresh to his praise and service!
He died in your place so that you might let him live in your place! That is the truth of our lives as Christians and we have to let it be in your lives waiting patiently to see it working out for us.
There's a saying we all know: a leopard doesn't change his spots.
This wonderful Christianity of ours goes against that saying. People do change in Christianity. They do see old habits losing their grip on them and new attitudes of compassion and forgiveness coming to birth.
Christ who is the same as us has the capacity to empathise and to draw out our sin and fear and doubt.
Christ who is ever new and so different to us also has the capacity to refresh us with his Spirit. Jesus Christ is able to plant new life in our spirits, new, imperishable life, opening us all up to the possibilities of God.
And is there an ending or conclusion or limitation upon the possibilities of God?
As the stone got rolled back on Easter Day so the same Lord is present in our lives to make a difference and roll back the stones that weigh us down - stones of grief and sorrow, of bitterness and unforgiveness, of confusion and doubt.
Our Lord brings mystery instead of misery - he fills out the picture of life for us - and he can fill out the picture of life for others as we share the good news.
Christ is risen! God has come to be the same as us and to make a difference to us and to the whole world!
Alleluia Christ is risen! He is risen indeed alleluia!
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