St Mary, Balcombe Trinity 18(27A) Suffering and the Supernatural 8 October 2023

There are two main ways God manifests himself. 

These are through the supernatural and through suffering.

These two ways are the trademark of Jesus Christ who both suffered and rose again.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord speaks of both, coupling his retelling of Isaiah’s parable of the vineyard we heard as the Old Testament reading to predict his sufferings, to a quote from Psalm 118:22 to predict the supernatural intervention of God which would effect his resurrection: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord's doing, and it is amazing in our eyes'?’

As Christians we have the same dual trademark so St Paul writes in our second lesson from Philippians in Chapter 3 verse 10: ‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’.

When we were baptised we gained that trademark with the cross on our forehead and the promise of resurrection - Holy Spirit - empowerment. For us, bearing suffering makes sense on account of Jesus as he again and again opens up a forward vision in our lives.  

Christianity is less a moral code than supernatural empowerment through faith in Jesus Christ, ‘the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’. Once our faith gets woken up - and that happens repeatedly - we find ourselves loosened from the pains of life into achieving wondrous things through the supernatural working within us of the God who raises the dead.

There’s a lot of pain involved for any family afflicted by Alzheimer’s. You are dealing with relentless frustrations as domestic routines falter through increasing forgetfulness. These hardships bring people down. I observe, though, that where there is faith in Christ the sufferings that bring you down bend you like grass in the wind which is capable of springing up again. The truth of Easter comes real in life through sufferings born in faith, through spiritual perseverance. Christians are Jesus-shaped, J shaped irrepressible folk – you know if you press an I down it becomes a J - and a springy, irrepressible J springs back again. To be J-shaped, to be Christian, is to be on the winning side of life through the inner spring of perseverance.

‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’.

In today’s Gospel Our Lord spoke of his suffering and resurrection in the parable of the wicked vineyard workers who killed the owner’s son. That great poet and priest, Fr. Raneiro Cantalamessa writes of the Cross in these words: ‘In the Alps in summer, when a mass of cold air from the North clashes with hot air from the South, frightful storms break out disturbing the atmosphere; dark clouds move around, the wind whistles, lightning rends the sky from one end to the other and the thunder makes the mountains tremble. Something similar took place in the Redeemer’s soul where the extreme evil of sin clashed with the supreme holiness of God disturbing it to the point that it caused Him to sweat blood and forced the cry from Him, ‘My soul is sorrowful to the point of death...nevertheless Father, not My will but Yours be done’

‘O generous love!’ wrote John Henry Newman, ‘That he who smote in man for man the foe, the double agony in man (that is of body and soul) for man should undergo, and that he should do this, ‘in the garden secretly, and on the Cross on high.  Praise to the holiest in the height!’

Suffering is close to the supernatural action of God - this is Christ’s experience and ours. 

I remember my parish priest when I was an Oxford student evoking the victory of the Redemption in these sorts of words. Imagine, he would say, the immense pressure on a point in space which had the whole force and weight of the universe upon it.  Then imagine the moral universe and the weight of sin from the creation of the world up to now and beyond to the completion of things.  Then imagine that moral weight pressed to one point upon the heart of Jesus in Gethsemane.  Then see the value of the sweated blood and the victory it attains through a disposition of one human heart totally transparent to the love and power of God. It attains the resurrection.

I was once a Missionary in Guyana, South America where I worked among the native Amerindians. These indigenous people believe in many evil spirits, above all what they call ‘kenaima’. A youth around 18 was fishing one day and felt kenaima attack him from behind. The evil spirit is said to go up the rectum. Whether it was a physical attack by the demon or psychological I do not know. What I can tell you is that when I came to his hammock the life was literally ebbing away from him and his family were planning where his grave should be. To be attacked by kenaima was a death sentence without respite in the old village religion.

Praise God for the new religion and for the Cross of Jesus and his Sacraments that take their force from him! 

We encouraged the youth as we prepared him for Anointing and Holy Communion in words from St. John’s first letter: ‘Jesus in you is greater than kenaima’. Most of the village gathered into Church  for a prayer vigil for the boy during which a priest took Holy Communion to him. A vigil of prayer and praise to God continued all night as the boy’s strength returned. The next Sunday he was with the Music group playing the guitar at Mass.

I am convinced his right understanding of Holy Communion as bringing the power and presence of Jesus right into him saved his life. We saw a remarkable testimony to the victory of Our Lord over evil powers. Those words from St. John’s first letter chapter 4 verse 4 have never lost their power over me: ‘He who is in us - Jesus - is greater than he who is in the world - the devil’.

‘I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings’.

Do you want that - to know Jesus? His resurrection power is here among us as the Lord’s people on the Lord’s day gathered around the Lord’s table - and - here’s the rub - in your individual life and mine, in our sufferings, not resented but born cheerfully with the Holy Spirit’s assistance. 

As you share the joys and griefs of your circle and carry their sufferings to Our Lord in prayer you will bear the irrepressible trademark of Jesus, J-shaped and on the winning side of life through him who ‘was sorrowful unto death’ and rose to make this day ‘the day of resurrection’. Alleluia!

 

St John, Burgess Hill Lent 5 Chalice Bearers 21 March 2021

Some Greeks…came to Philip…and said to him, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

That phrase, ‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ is written around many a pulpit. In some pulpits the crucifix faces the preacher as a reminder to present the Cross and not their own thinking.

Here in St John’s our central feature is the crucifix above the altar.

Carving a figure of Jesus to present to people is the preacher’s labour of love and not least in Passiontide. 

It is as if the literal veiling of the Cross calls urgent attention to the central mystery of the faith.

Today’s Old Testament reading from Jeremiah Chapter 31 speaks of a promised new covenant when instead of commandments written on stone God will write his law on human hearts by the gift of the Spirit. This covenant is founded on the blood of Christ, This is my blood of the new covenant which is shed for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins we hear daily at the altar.

The second reading from Hebrews Chapter 5 speaks of God’s choice of his Son to take high priesthood on behalf of humanity so as to be able to become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. That choice is proved, according to the author of Hebrews, by Christ’s own evident reluctance shown in the Garden of Gethsemane. In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to the one who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverent submission.  Our Lord did not want honour for himself but made submission to his Father, dedicating his whole life and humanity unreservedly to the will of God.

That renunciation of will in Gethsemane is summarised in the Gospel passage from St John Chapter 12 ‘Now my soul is troubled. And what should I say—“Father, save me from this hour”? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.’

Self-offering that wins glory is built into the life of God himself.

The great French priest scientist Teilhard de Chardin speaks of how that principle applies to our best development as the human race: To allow God, when it so pleases him, to grow within us, and, by death, to substitute himself for us: that is now our duty; that, if one may use the word, is our opportunity; and that is the only attitude that can finally bring salvation. 

Teilhard is struck by the liturgical repetition in Passiontide of the refrain from Philippians ‘Christus factus est’ – Christ was obedient unto death. Commenting on this refrain he writes: That is obviously the exact and profound significance of the cross: obedience, submission to the law of life – and to accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

Our Lord lived to die a death for the life of the world. We too are called as Christians to lose our lives, all that is governed by wrong self-interest and self-concern, so that his life may flow in us to bring glory to God.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’ 

Our best response to that request happens many a time unwittingly as people see us being carried along by the Lord as we carry something of a cup of sufferings, cheerfully and obediently, with faith in Jesus who is become the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him.

Passiontide reminds us in this pandemic that no sorrow on earth need be wasted. 

By being taken up into the mystery of Christ’s love, in his passion and in the eucharist, there is transformation. This comes as we gain grace to accept with serenity the things that can’t be changed or courage to change the things that should be changed in our lives. To accept everything, in a spirit of love, including death, there you have the essence of Christianity.

On account of the pandemic there are no Chalice bearers at the eucharist. In a profound sense we are they. In this harsh season we carry the cup of hardship with as good cheer as we can muster through the grace of God. This is a powerful witness. As another French writer, Charles Peguy, wrote: ‘A Christian is a sad man saved from despair by the Cross of Christ’. We are sad at what we are carrying, so many deaths, so much bereavement, frustration, depression, loneliness, anxiety and confusion. As Chalice bearers we intercede for others to be saved from despair and brought with us to the altar of God. That altar is a place of joy and a place of sadness just as surely as our risen Lord went through his passion. In the coming fortnight we have an opportunity to see ourselves on that journey with him as we prayerfully carry the hurts of Burgess Hill and its surrounds in the chalice of intercessory prayer.

‘Sir, we wish to see Jesus.’

I end with Teilhard’s great meditation on the hands of our Saviour:

Into your hands I commend my spirit. To the hands that broke and gave life to the bread, that blessed and caressed, and were pierced – to the hands that are as our hands, of which we can never say what they will do with the objects they hold, whether shatter them or care for them, but whose whims, we may be sure, are full of kindness and will never do more than hold us in a jealous grasp – to the kindly and mighty hands that reach down to the very marrow of the soul – that mould and create – to the hands through which so great a love is transmitted – it is to these that it is good to surrender our soul.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you because by your holy cross you have redeemed the world.