The
Abyss of Love
Thoughts
on John 17.1-11
RCL
Easter 7A
28
May 2017
Saint
Faith's Anglican Church
Vancouver
BC
17.1 When Jesus
finished saying these things, he looked up to heaven and said, “Father, the
time has come. Glorify your Son, so that
the Son can glorify you. 2
You gave him authority over everyone so that he could give eternal life to
everyone you gave him. 3 This
is eternal life: to know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you
sent. 4 I have glorified you
on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. 5 Now, Father, glorify me in your
presence with the glory I shared with you before the world was created.
6 “I have revealed
your name to the people you gave me from this world. They were yours and you
gave them to me, and they have kept your word.
7 Now they know that everything you have given me comes from
you. 8 This is because I gave
them the words that you gave me, and they received them. They truly understood
that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me.
9 “[I am] praying
for them. [I am] not praying for the
world but for those you gave me, because they are yours. 10 Everything that is mine is
yours and everything that is yours is mine; I have been glorified in them. 11 [I am] no longer in the world, but
they are in the world, even as [I am] coming to you. Holy Father, watch over them in your name,
the name you gave me, that they will be one just as we are one." (John 17.1-11 in Common English Bible)
In
the mid-nineteenth century a rising theologian at King's College London
published a collection of essays that led to his dismissal from the
College. What drew the ire of some
influential members of the Church of England was the careful distinction he
made between the words 'everlasting' and 'eternal'.
This
theologian's name was Frederick Denison Maurice and he was a thorough disciple
of John the evangelist. Maurice pointed
out that 'everlasting' is a quantitative adjective meaning 'without end' or
'unending duration'. 'Eternal', on the
other hand, is a qualitative adjective meaning 'beyond time' or 'timeless'.
'Everlasting'
is the adjective you and I use when we are involved in an unpleasant experience
of some sort or another. We cannot see
any end and we may even fall into a degree of despair. 'Eternal', on the other hand, is the
adjective we use when we find ourselves experiencing something joyful,
something that speaks to our very soul.
We may even say, 'Time just flew by.'
In
Maurice's mind too many of his contemporaries were threatening people
'everlasting punishment' if they failed to live up to various moral standards
of behaviour, such as deference to one's social superiors. Maurice believed that they should be
encouraging people with the promises of God's 'eternal love', so that they
could become who they really as God intended them to be. He wrote
"I
ask no one to pronounce, for I dare not pronounce myself, what are the real
possibilities of resistance in a human being to the loving will of God. There are times when they seem to me ---
thinking of myself more than others --- almost infinite. But I know that there is something which must
be infinite. I am obliged to believe in
an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death: I dare not lose faith in that love. I sink into death, eternal death, if I
do. I must feel that this love is
encompassing the universe. More about it
I cannot know. But God knows. I leave myself and all to Him." Theological Essays, 4th ed. (1881),
405-406
This
past week a young man walked into a public space and detonated a bomb which
killed more than twenty people, most of whom were as young as the bomber
himself. At the end of the week ten
armed men stopped a bus in the Egyptian desert, boarded it and gunned down a
number of Christians who were on their way to a monastery in the desert. While we await the conclusion of the
investigation in Manchester and the actions of the Egyptian government, there
is one thing that can be said. This
young man in Manchester and the attackers in Egypt had fallen into an abyss of
eternal death created by a false and cruel imitation of genuine Islam, a faith
that teaches submission to God, Allah, who is compassionate, who is merciful
and who is forgiving.
The
abyss of love in which Maurice trusted and the abyss of death into which those
I have mentioned fell are not future states of being. These are abysses that are before us in our
everyday lives. They are choices we face
at many points in our workplaces, our homes and our neighbourhoods. The eternal life that Jesus speaks of in
today's gospel is " . . . a life shaped by the knowledge of God as
revealed in Jesus" (The New Interpreter's Study Bible). It is a quality of life revealed in how the
disciples of Jesus live their lives in a world often obsessed with paths that
lead only to the abyss of eternal death:
racism, religious persecution, terrorism and the de-humanization of
those considered to be 'different' or 'heretical' or 'infidels'.
We
know that we live in a society where there are voices that advocate paths other
than the one we now walk with Jesus of Nazareth. But these voices are out of tune with the
song of love God has put into our hearts as followers of Christ. These are times when the disciples of Christ
need to raise our voices and sing our song in harmony with our sisters and
brothers of every nation and race, of every time and place.
We
need to sing confidently to draw our neighbours and others from the edges of
the abyss of death to which some folk seem drawn as a moth is drawn to an open
flame. We sing our song each time we do
justice in an unjust world, each time we show kindness in an unkind world, each
time we walk humbly with God in an often arrogant and selfish consumer-oriented
world.
There
is an abyss of love which is deeper than the abyss of death. This love is encompassing the universe
despite the resistance of some souls to its embrace. To that love let us pledge our faith and in
that love let us live --- not just in the future but right now, right here.
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