RCL Easter 7B
12 May 2024
Church of the Epiphany
Surrey BC
When I was in seminary, I made some extra money by babysitting the children of my faculty adviser once a week when he and his wife drove into Milwaukee for their symphony choir rehearsals. Despite my best efforts to cover my tracks, Professor Dunkley soon realized that I would explore his library after the children were in bed.
One day after morning chapel he presented me with a copy of Caught in the Web of Words, the story of Andrew Murray, the first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary. Professor Dunkley recognized in me something of himself: someone who loves words and values precision in language. While I would never consider myself a creative writer, I know that I am a pretty good editor and, in a pinch, I can pull together some decent prose or craft some appropriate liturgical texts.
Words are important to all of us. What we say has the power to heal or to hurt, the potential to clarify or to obscure, the possibility to be precise or to be unhelpfully ambiguous. We also know when we should keep silent or when we should say little because we know that we cannot say everything that needs to be said.
For example, how we talk with one another when there has been a misunderstanding or a difficulty or a conflict matters. We could say to the other person, ‘Why did you say that? Why did you do that?’ ‘Why’ questions often trigger anxiety or defensiveness, emotions guaranteed not to contribute to resolution. However, we could say to the other person, ‘Please help me understand how you came to say that? How you came to do that?’ ‘How’ questions tend to indicate to the other person that we are trying to understand what they are thinking or feeling.
Over the Easter season one word with several variations has been appearing again and again in the readings from the Gospel of John and the First Letter of John. In the Greek of the New Testament the word isaiōn ‘eternity’ or aiōnios ‘eternal’. Unfortunately sometimes these two words are translated into English as ‘everlasting’, a translation which does not capture the precision of the original Greek. The difference really does matter at any time, but in times such as those in which we live, the difference is about words being life-giving or life-sapping.
In English ‘everlasting’ means ‘time without end’. It’s a description of the duration of time, a matter of the quantity of time. In the ancient world the word used was chronos, measurable time. It’s worth mentioning that in Greek mythology the god Kronos attacked, mutilated and overthrew his father and, in poetic justice, was later overthrown by his son Zeus. Time will eat us up and eventually overthrow us in death.
‘Eternal’ is an entirely different word. It’s not a description of the duration of time but of the quality of time. Here’s an example I think we’ve all had. Have you ever spent an hour or more with a good friend or a loved one and, when you look at your watch, been surprised at how long you’ve been together? Have you ever said, ‘My goodness, where has the time gone?’ That’s an experience of ‘eternal’ time, moments when we are freed from the tyranny of the clock and can enjoy the freedom of love and friendship and meaningful activity.
When John the evangelist or the writer of 1 John speak of ‘eternal’ life, they are speaking about the quality of life that a relationship with God through Christ and in the communion of the Holy Spirit offers every human being. We sometimes talk and act as if ‘eternal’ life was something only to be experienced after our deaths, but to talk and to act so is to miss the point that is being made in these New Testament scriptures. ‘Eternal’ life is a quality of life that can be had in the here and now, even as we await its fullness in the promised reign of God. I think that the best description of this kind of life is found in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, when he writes:
What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
No, in all these things we are more than victorious through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. [1]
‘Eternal’ life is life lived in the confidence that, even at the worst moments, even in the midst of doubt, even at the door of disappointment and loss, we have not been abandoned. God walks with us into darkness as well as into light. God’s wisdom inspires our insights in moments of uncertainty as well as moments of clarity. The hope we have in a world where all God’s children shall be free cannot be extinguished by the powers that try to control us with fear.
Today the currents of chronos bring us into confluence of many waters. Today is Mother’s Day, a special day for many of us, yet this year, for some of us, it will the first year when we will not be able to celebrate with our mothers in the flesh. Today is the Sunday after the Ascension, a Sunday that reminds that God through Christ has entrusted us with continuing the mission of Christ in this world. Given the challenges that being a disciple of Christ, especially an Anglican disciple of Christ, must encounter these days, there are moments when I feel a bit abandoned. The disciples had just spent forty days with Jesus, no doubt bursting with enthusiasm to have him with them: “So when they had come together, (the disciples) asked Jesus, ‘Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?’ He replied, ‘It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority.’” [2] And off he goes, living them – and us – holding the bag. Today conflicts rage in many parts of our world with the deaths of thousands by violence, disease or hunger. We cannot avoid hearing the stories, seeing the pictures and witnessing the destruction.
The currents of chronos can overwhelm us if we do not hold firm to the hope that God’s promise of ‘eternal’ life offers to us in the present as well as the future. Some years ago as I was ministering to a family who had lost a young son to a toxic drug overdose, I struggled with the question of ‘why do bad things happen to good people?’ But I think that the Holy Spirit gave me a moment of insight when I realized that this was the wrong question. The right question is ‘what do good people do when bad things happen?’
Those who have ‘eternal’ life know how to answer that question. We love as God loves even as we mourn. We serve others as God serves us even when the world thinks us irrelevant or foolish or troublesome. We pray and advocate for those in any need or trouble as God seeks to soften the hearts of those whose hearts have been hardened by hatred or the love of power. For to have ‘eternal’ life is to know that nothing – nothing – can separate us from the love of God in Christ.
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