May 22, 2011: Easter V

Easter V(a)
22 May 2011
Jn 14.1-10
Fr. Patrick Allen

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Here we are on this beautiful Eastertide Sunday – I guess, in view of certain widely publicized predictions, I should say "here we still are" – in these 40 days of life, to borrow a phrase, from Easter Day to Ascension Day, in which the Church ponders, sings, and celebrates in an intentional and intense way the promise of everlasting life given to us in the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. 

Christianity is about life:  it would not exist, we would not be here this morning, in fact no one would remember Jesus at all, 20, 200, or 2,000 years later, were it not for the fact – the historical, space-time fact – of his Easter victory over grave, and the share he gives us in that victory.  We are here because of, and for the sake of, life.

So last Sunday our Gospel lesson ended with the ringing words of Jesus the Good Shepherd, "I came that they might have life and have it abundantly."  The sheep are not for the slaughter.  The Good Shepherd loves them, preserves, protects, enriches, and bestows life upon them – his very own life, a life he lays down for them, and then gloriously takes back up again.  His life defeats death, and our lives, by faith and baptism are hid in his.

He has given us life, and with it hope that stands, and even dares to smile, to praise, to sing "Alleluia" even at the grave.  "In my Father's house are many rooms," Jesus tells us.  We have heard the promise read out at so many funerals, and again this Eastertide Sunday.  "In my Father's house are many rooms... when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself that where I am you may be also."

Jesus offers us the hope of perfect fellowship with the Father, of eternal Life. 

This life and this hope are, we know, often times received with offense or as a farce by those who are without it.  So, for instance, you may have heard this past week that the brilliant British physicist Stephen Hawking – and we're talking about a man so brilliant that he manages to write best-selling books about physics – that Stephen Hawking in the course of an interview had some disparaging remarks for religious believers of all stripes and specifically about the Christian hope of eternal life:

"I regard the brain as a computer which will stop working when its components fail," Hawking said.  "There is no heaven or afterlife for broken down computers; that is a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

There are several ways to respond to that kind of a statement.  I like scorn and derision.  But maybe a better and more profitable tack is gladly to concede that Stephen Hawking is a shockingly brilliant physicist whose intellectual and scientific triumphs achieved despite immense physical hardship deserves our greatest admiration, and that when one is in need of a deep insight into, or just curious about, theoretical physics and cosmology, his is an opinion to be sought, respected, and enlightened by.  But we must also say that being a brilliant physicist does not imply expertise in philosophical matters beyond the ken of science, nor in the Christian theology of Heaven and eternal life, and it certainly doesn't give license to make sweeping generalizations – at least not that deserve any particular respect – about the psychology of religious belief and hope:  "a fairy story for people afraid of the dark."

The problem, or one problem, with that kind of critique, of reducing the promise of heaven to a kind of childish exercise in wish fulfillment prophecy, is that it is a game that two can play.  After all, our Lord promises heaven; that is one aspect of the "afterlife," but so also is judgment.  Professor Hawking thinks that the hope of heaven is a "fairy story for people afraid of the dark."  Okay, fine.  But listen to Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize-winning Polish poet and devout Catholic Christian, in a fascinating essay of a few years ago called "The Discreet Charm of Nihilism": 

"A true opium of the people is a belief in nothingness after death—the huge solace of thinking that for our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders, we are not going to be judged."

Well, into some matters the faithful poet may see more deeply than the mere, if brilliant, scientist.

Because it is not science, by definition, that teaches Hawking that there is "no heaven or afterlife."  So, do all those who disbelieve disbelieve because they fear judgment?  I doubt it most seriously, people are complex and various and contingent, and I suspect the reasons for unbelief are likewise complex and various and contingent.  Does Professor Hawking in particular disbelieve because he fears judgment?  How should I know?  Which is the point.

Well, the Church believes in "the life of the world to come" because we have the promise of Jesus, who was raised from the dead, and thereby shown to be Lord and Christ, and that good news has been borne to us by faithful and trustworthy witnesses.  And if he is not raised, we will admit," we are of all men the men the most to be pitied," as St. Paul himself said.

So, when a loved one dies after a long and difficult illness, it is not, for the Christian, mere sentimentality or childish "fear of the dark" to take consolation in the promise of Christ, and to say that he or she is in "a better place."  That is not, or need not be, sentimentality, but is instead the language of faith:  confident reliance upon a trustworthy Word, a trustworthy Person – that same Word made flesh, that same risen and ascended Christ who has gone to prepare that better place, that where he is we may also be. 

That better place, which is the eternal life of perfect fellowship with the Father, we normally call Heaven.

Heaven.  "And you know the way," Jesus tell his Apostles and us.  Thomas, loyal and literal-minded Thomas, perhaps more scientist than poet, speaks up for us all:  "Lord, we do not know where you are going; how can we know the way?" 

How can we know the way?  That is simple – simple as in singular, not as in easily comprehended.  How can we know the way?  "I am the way," Jesus says, "and the truth, and the life." 

But what to make of that?  Had our Lord at that point offered a kind of moral-spiritual road map, a set of directions, that we could understand.  Do these things, don't do these things.  Say these prayers, undertake these disciplines.  And of course our actions, our thoughts do matter, and the Christian life is greatly aided by spiritual disciplines. 

But our problem lies deeper than the externals of religion, as the entire running conflict between Jesus in the Pharisees shows:  "you tithe mint and dill and cumin," he tells them, "and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faithfulness."  We see these this in ourselves all the time, don't we?  When we are exact in our religious duties, careful of our moral rectitude, consistent in our disciplines, even attentive to the beauty of our liturgies, lo and behold:  there is pride – not so much seeping in from the outside as welling up from within. 

I hope you know that I love the Church of the Holy Communion and I believe, fervently, in our witness to the Catholic faith lived in the beauty of holiness.  But how many times have I worshipped in another parish, with another community of Christians, only to realize with horror that I had made the Pharisee's prayer my own:  I thank thee God that I am not as other men... with their video screens and drum sets! 

The nature of sin in our hearts is such that turns even good things, even beautiful things, into the tools of derision and scorn and division.

If there is a way, it is not I or any set of rules for me to follow.  If I am to arrive at that "better place" of perfect fellowship with the Father, it will have to be through the good offices of Another.  It will have to be a gift received. 

But again, it can't be a moral, spiritual map, because the problem is at the deepest level of the person – it is personal.  It is I – and it is you, too.  And so the Answer must also be personal – not a set of rules to be engaged with willpower; not a set of philosophical propositions to be grasped by the intellect – but, indeed, a Person.  And a Person known in the only way a person can truly by known:  by love.

"I am the way, the truth, and the life," Jesus says, "no one comes to the Father but by me."  And so God in Christ gives himself to us, offering himself for us, taking on to himself, nailing to his cross, as Milosz said, "our betrayals, greed, cowardice, murders" and pouring out from his wounded side justice, mercy, and faithfulness, the full weight of his love.

He gives himself to us so that, united to him by faith and baptism, feeding on him in the sacrament of his Body and Blood, we are changed, his life of perfect love becomes the truth of our hearts.  And that really will one day happen, bit by bit, one great day our best and truest wish and longing will be fulfilled, and we will find that our fellowship is with the Father – finally, perfectly, eternally, in that "better place" Christ has prepared for us.

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