Messengers of God bringing hope into our troubled world
Dear Friends, for the whole of Lent we have been preparing ourselves for the next three days. In these days we shall reflect upon the meaning of the death and resurrection of our saviour Jesus Christ. We begin by reflecting on the death of Jesus: why was it necessary? What does it mean for us? How are we to make sense of the crucifixion and death of the Son of God? This mystery is complex. The Church has not prescribed one interpretation which all of us must follow; rather she encourages us to explore this mystery and guides our exploration by what she says in the liturgy. The liturgy tonight, the first liturgy of the Triduum, the Vigil Mass of Good Friday, provides us therefore with a lens through which we can explore the events of Good Friday.
Many of us, I daresay, begin our exploration by reflecting on the reality of our own sin. As we become older we become painfully aware of our failures, of our individual and collective sin. As we develop a wider understanding of the events in past human lives, in history, we become more and more aware of just how human sin has distorted our world. At the same time we reflect on the attributes of God. We see that he is infinitely good and infinitely just. We can imagine how God’s goodness and justice had been offended by our sin: our individual sins and our collective sins. It is then very easy to make a jump and imagine an angry God, a person created in our image and likeness, who demands satisfaction from us as the price of renewing his relationship with us. You will find some accounts of the atonement which seem to accept this image of God and so portray Jesus the man as some kind of extraordinary human sacrifice which expiates our guilt, our sin. In this account his death bridges the chasm which we have created, which separates us from God. This conception does not represent the Biblical vision of the Cross.
Let us go back to the readings we have just heard, dear friends. In the first reading we listened to the account of how the Passover is to be celebrated. This Jewish feast recalls God’s action in rescuing his Chosen People, Israel, and leading them out of the land of slavery, Egypt, through the desert into their own land, the land which he had promised to Abraham so long ago. It is sometimes said that the God of the Old Testament is a jealous and vengeful God – and there may be elements in the Old Testament story which support this idea – but we must not blind ourselves to the reality that in the account of the Passover and in the Exodus which followed God is portrayed as loving his Chosen People. He constantly sought to lead them into a deeper knowledge and understanding of what that love implied.
The Gospel recounts a moment in the last evening of Jesus’ life. It emphasises not the institution of the Eucharist but rather Jesus’ love as he washed the feet of his chosen apostles. They could be few signs more powerful than this of the kind of Lord that he was: a Lord who reached out to his followers; a Lord who constantly exceeded their expectations; a Lord who washed the feet of all those whom he had chosen and loved – including the one who would betray him.
These two readings illustrate the radical nature of God’s love. It is a superabundant love which gives itself completely for others. God became man in order to give himself to us. God restores goodness and justice by the exercise of his own power: he makes us, unjust men and women, just again and he does this through his creative mercy. St Paul put it this way: ‘God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, not holding men’s faults against them, and he has entrusted to us the news that they are reconciled’ (2 Cor 5.19). It is God’s love for us that has triumphed over the consequences of our sin and hence the Church places the culminating act of Christ’s life in the context of other accounts of God’s love for his chosen people.
How are we to respond to this gracious act of God? We should begin by thankful acceptance of God’s action: it is not for nothing that the supreme act of worship which Christ gave to his Church is named the Eucharist, ‘Thanksgiving’. In our worship of God we do not give things to God, rather we allow God to bestow gifts upon us and we recognise him as our only Lord. This means that we must abandon the fantasy that we are somehow God’s equal and accept that we are in fact his creation, entirely dependent upon him for all the good we might do. Our sacrifice consists in becoming totally receptive to God’s love, and allowing him to act upon us and transform us.
How can we become totally receptive to God’s love? It is a good question. We can at least prepare ourselves for the working of God’s grace by setting aside time for prayer, for listening to the Word of God in Scripture, and by making use of the sacraments which Christ gave to his Church. If we respond to the invitation of Christ in this way we may be confident that he will work upon us in his own time, at his own speed: for God loves each and every one of us.
We might wonder what form this transformation will take. We will find ourselves being conformed to the image of Christ. This means that not only do we grow in a relationship with God through his Son Jesus Christ by the working of the Holy Spirit, but we also grow in our relationships with other men and women. Our religion will not be simply a vertical relationship with God, nor merely a horizontal relationship with men and women – a rather superficial fellowship with those who share our planet. We will become messengers of God, brothers and sisters of Christ, living as Christ lived, bringing the hope given by God’s love into our troubled world.
Fr Abbot