Diocese news
We live in an age of confusion. There is talk of a
recession and of the Church splitting apart. We
read about public figures having to resign in
disgrace, and according to the Pew Forum on Religion
and Public Life “the fastest growing religious group [in
America] is people without any religious affiliation”
(TIME, 3/10/08). The article goes on to say, “Most in
this group aren't atheist; they just describe their religion
as 'nothing in particular.'” It seems as if nothing is nailed
down any more.
However, the world has never been nailed down. One
of the many gifts of scripture is to remind us that God's
covenant with God's people is not to eliminate confusion,
but to assure us that God is with us in the midst of a
world where nothing seems nailed down.
Certainly Abraham and Joseph and Moses
and David lived in confusing times; as did
Jeremiah and Isaiah and all the faithful in
the Holy Book. To be alive is to live in confusing times. The question is whether our
response is faithful or fearful.
On that first Easter the disciples had locked themselves in a room in Jerusalem in
fear that their fate would be the same as their Lord's. Mary Magdalene and the other
women go to the tomb to anoint Jesus' body. They go because their love for him is
stronger than their fear. They go because wherever he is, that is where they want to
be. In confusing times, the only force that can move us out of the house of fear is
divine love because it helps us focus on what matters and what does not. Our faith is
finally not about making this world rational or logical or explainable. Our faith is
being connected to the living Christ who loves us beyond our wildest dreams. Our
faith is that Christ is always dying and always being resurrected in our world and
inside us. The world is indeed confusing but the last word is not confusion but resurrection.
Just when the disciples think the world is over, it's not over. Instead, it's the beginning
of a new age. Jesus breathes new life into them and commissions them to spread
the Good News. “Go and tell,” he says to Mary Magdalene, “tell my brothers to go to
Galilee, there they will see me” (Matthew: 28:10). New life is ahead of us. The
Risen Christ is calling for us to leave our fearful rooms and walk into the new world in
hope and faith and love, because he has promised us he is just ahead of us. He didn't say “they might see him,” or they possibly could see him,” but “they will see” him. It's
a primary basis for our faith.
I have been thinking more and more about how hungry our world is for the Good
News. In an age of confusion when the fastest growing belief is in “nothing in particular,”
now is the time when we as faithful Christians are to embrace our hope and faith
that Christ is always raising us and this confusing world to new life. It's so easy to
focus on what is wrong with this world, and it's so easy to lock ourselves in our rooms
in fear of everything that could happen. Cynicism is the refuge for those who lack
imagination or are just too fatigued to see the world afresh.
However, God is calling for us to listen to a different word; it's the word of love
that moves our feet into the world to see resurrection all around us. That word enables
us to experience the Risen Christ among us and in us. That word gives us hope to
believe that “things which were cast down are being raised up, and things which had
grown old are being made new, and that all things are being brought to their perfection
by him through whom all things were made, your Son Jesus Christ our Lord” (BCP,
515).
In an age of confusion, let us look once more for the divine order of death and resurrection.
Let us be heralds of the Good News that Christ is alive, making all things
new. In one of his Journals, Thomas Merton writes this: “The grace of Easter is a
great silence, an immense tranquility, and a clean taste in your soul. It is the taste of
heaven, but not the heaven of some wild exaltation. The Easter vision is… a discovery
of order above all order - a discovery of God and of all things in Him… Tasting it
for a moment, we are briefly able to see and love all things” (Journals. April 9, 1950,
II, 429-430).
May we taste that taste of heaven, and may it move us to spread the Good News.
+ G. PORTER TAYLOR
Bishop, Diocese of Western N.C.
-Courtesey of the Highland Episcopalian