Saturday, May 17, 2014
II Easter April 15, 2012
II Easter
April 15, 2012
Holy Trinity & St. Anskar
Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy… No one claimed private ownership of any
possessions
+In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity
The
Collect teaches that “the Paschal Mystery established the New Covenant of reconciliation.”
The first two lessons tell us what that means — our reconciliation with God is
our reconciliation with one another:
the whole group of those who believed were of one heart and soul
God’s
forgiveness of our sin means our forgiveness of one another.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy
We actually experience mercy when we show
it to others by forgiving them. To have mercy upon one another is not confined
to forgiving some imaginary debt of justice that our fallen nature thinks we
are owed, but it is also the fulfillment of the New Commandment: to love one
another as He has loved us, the Commandment given at the Last Supper along with
His Body and Blood, the Commandment that is our part of the New Covenant of reconciliation. And THAT means
letting go of any notion of possession: the merciless illusion that “this is
MINE, not YOURS.” St. Ambrose identified that delusion as the essence of the
Fall. It is the exact opposite of mercy.
So, in the New Covenant of reconciliation,
No one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything
they owned was held in common
The immediate result of Apostolic communism
— the New Covenant in action — was spiritual power.
With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the Resurrection
of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
"Oh, but it's not practical", we
complain. "It's just an ideal — Utopia".
But the historical fact is that Christians have been doing it ever since, from
those first apostles to the monastic movement to innumerable communities, which
we call "utopian" in order to excuse ourselves from doing it
ourselves. And when we do that we express our doubt that for which we constantly
pray that the Kingdom can really "come on earth as in heaven". Our
doubt about the feasibility of the kingdom is really a doubt about the Resurrection
itself: the Paschal Mystery, which the collect says has established the New Covenant
of reconciliation. But we doubt that the Resurrection is really feasible.
Which brings us to Thomas. Didymus, the twin. A twin is a double, and it is interesting to note
that the word, in our language, is closely related to doubt, as it is in Greek.
We are all Thomas the Doubter, when we are content to say that apostolic
communism is not feasible on earth. To be sure, it is not feasible in the world — the fallen world of sin — but we
say we believe that Christ has overcome the
world, and created a new heaven and a new earth. Like Thomas, we are of double
mind.
But let us not be too hard on Thomas. He
was, after all, the most faithful of the Apostles, in the sense of loyalty and
constancy. When Jesus announced His intention to go up to Jerusalem, where they
all knew He was likely to be killed, it was Thomas who said "let us go up
and die with Him." Death was feasible; Thomas could imagine that. He could
not yet imagine life — Eternal Life — the life in the New Covenant of reconciliation.
But even though he could not imagine this truly incredible Good News, there is no
reason to equate his doubt with any lack
of faith — at least in the sense of loyalty or fidelity. Could it be that the
doubt of Thomas was his vocation? A call to faithful love even when there is no
sign of God at all? As Dietrich Bonhoeffer observed, it may be that some of us
are called by God to live without God. Maybe Thomas was faithful to that kind
of vocation when he said that he would not believe unless he saw the risen Jesus
and touched Him with his own hands.
And maybe that is what John remembered when
he wrote the words of today's second reading:
… what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched
with our hands, concerning the word of life — this life was revealed, and we
have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was
with the Father and was revealed to us…
Now this "eternal life that was with
the Father" is nothing other than the perfect society of the Holy and
Life-giving Trinity. In that life, there is perfect equality and perfect personhood
and all notion of possession is absent. There is only mutual love. John goes on
to say
… we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may
have fellowship with us…
Fellowship
means not only conviviality, but equality. A fellow is another person who is like you, equal to you, a peer and a comrade — no distinction of rank or
possession. So, the Fellowship that constitutes the New Covenant of reconciliation
is a society that mirrors the Divine Society of the Most Holy Trinity, which is
what John goes on to say, explicitly:
… and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus
Christ.
We are called not only to a society of
perfect equality with one another, but we are invited into the Divine Society itself,
though one trembles to say it, as equals. As Jesus said to the apostles, “I no
longer call you ‘disciples’, but ‘friends’ " — comrades, fellows, equals.
We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
John goes on to talk about sin, which can
be understood as a turning away from this complete joy in the new Fellowship of
reconciliation, turning back to the world of "mine" and
"yours", which is also a turning away from Paschal joy. But even then
there is hope, because we can always turn back again.
The feasibility and reality of the Resurrection
means that the world as it is does not have to be that way. Because Thomas, it
is faithful doubt, has seen and believed, those of us who have not seen may
also, nevertheless believe. That is what all the saints do for us: they bear witness
to the reality and feasibility of the unseen and him and him Kingdom of God. The
society of equality and mercy — mercy that is both forgiveness and non-possession
— is not only feasible, it is our calling, our mission, now, on this earth. The
eternal life practiced by those early apostles is not some unattainable utopia. That is why William Temple, the
late Archbishop of Canterbury, once said "Socialism is the economic
realization of the Kingdom of God".
To Him be Glory and Power
forever and ever. Amen!
