On the last page of the last chapter of his last book for children, C. S. Lewis wrote:
“The dream is ended: this is the morning…” the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures…had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on for ever: in which every chapter is better than the one before.
***
This is not the end of the story. It is only the end of the beginning.
The story began, in this earthly realm, 93 years ago. Allison Morrison lived a long and full life, a memorable one, with memories left behind that we can begin to share today, as you meet each other and hear each other’s stories – of Allison getting together with folks on Friday mornings at Pancake Haus, of Rob and Allison anchoring their pew at the 8 o’clock services, of their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren. This is the part of the story that we know: but the story continues beyond our knowing, as Allison is received where she is known best of all, in the presence of God.
For each of us this life is only the beginning: death is not the end: life, in Christ, goes on into eternity.
We can share in the presence of Christ in this community together, in Eucharist: Allison and all those who have gone before us, share in that communion, too: in the presence of the Lord.
“Our journey,” Archbishop Sentamu has preached, “is towards oneness with God. As we journey, our calling is to make manifest to everyone the compassionate face of God made visible in Jesus Christ.”
We follow Jesus. We follow him to life in the presence of God. Someday like Allison each one of us will see him face to face. When that day comes, may we be like Peter, who, hearing on Easter morning that Jesus was alive, ran to the tomb to greet his risen Lord. In the meantime, may we run or walk, may we journey, as if Jesus were walking beside us – his presence a forgone conclusion.
“Jesus is in fact the presence of God’s truth and God’s life in the world,” Lesslie Newbigin writes, “and to know the Father means to follow the way which Jesus is, and which he has opened” for us, through the veil between this life and the next, “by his living, his dying, and his rising from the dead.”
The presence of God, the forgiveness of God, the grace of God, are all around us and present to us. It is a matter of us becoming present to Him.
Quite often we may feel his absence, as if he were gone. But even at those times he is right beside us, grieving with us in our sorrow and despair.
Sometimes we may forget how he sees us: the Lord sees the person he made and that he loves. He sees each of us in aspiration – in the Spirit – and sees the child of God within us. However distorted that image may seem to be, from time to time, it is there, shining behind the clouds of sin and desire, of folly and disease, and on the day that the Lord greets us, as he now greets Allison, we will shine with the reflected light of God’s glory and his loving greeting to us.
“Come my child, my beloved. Come home to the place I have made for you. Come to the table – and sit at the banquet – and rejoice in the presence and the plenty of God.”
May God in his grace abundantly enfold you, bringing you into his peace. Amen.
St. Alban’s Episcopal Church, Edmonds, WA
March 15, 2008
Memorial Service for
Allison Morrison (October 11, 1915 – February 15, 2008)
Lamentations 3:22-26, 31-33
Psalm 121
Revelation 21:2-7
Psalm 106:1-5
John 14:1-6
(C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle, the last chapter, the last page.)
(Lesslie Newbigin, The Light Has Come, Eerdmans, 1982, p. 182)
John Sentamu, Archbishop of York, “We journey towards oneness with God“, Monday 12 February 2007
Service of commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the martyrdom of Janani Luwum at Westminster Abbey, London
(http://www.archbishopofyork.org/261)
May I speak in the Name of the Son, in the Power of the Holy Spirit, to the Glory of God the Father. AMEN.
Showing posts with label Psalm 121. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Psalm 121. Show all posts
Saturday, March 15, 2008
Thursday, September 20, 2007
those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it
John Coleridge Patteson
Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs, 1871
September 20, 2007
Eight time zones east of here is the birthplace of John Coleridge Patteson; he was born in London on the 1st of April, 1827. Four time zones west of here is Nakapu, an island in the Santa Cruz group north of Vanuatu, where John Coleridge Patteson and his companions were killed on 20 September 1871.
And yet far away as these places are, and as far away as the 19th century is from us, we are bound to them by ties not only of affection but also of our common humanity.
Melanesia has an Anglican church now; Patteson went there to found it. Instead he went to his death – by mistake.
He worked to stamp out the flourishing slave trade in the Solomon Islands. The people of Nakapu mistook his party for slave raiders, returning after a recent raid, and took their revenge on his body – one stroke of the hatchet for each native who had been killed in the earlier raid.
The reaction of the government in England was to work even harder to stamp out slavery, and the slave trade, in the south Pacific territories under their flag.
The church redoubled its missionary efforts; Bishop Selwyn, who had sent Patteson to Melanesia from New Zealand, worked to reconcile the people of Melanesia “to the memory of one who came to help and not to hurt.”
The Most Revd Sir Ellison Leslie Pogo KBE, primate of The Church of the Province of Melanesia, is Patteson’s successor: we are all his heirs.
Stuff happens. The joke goes on: Why does this stuff keep happening to us? Or, less popularly: Why do we keep on doing this stuff?
As Tony Campolo recently pointed out, God created humanity to act in freedom, and thus to be capable of going against his will. Out of love, God gave us the freedom to choose to love God in return. Out of love.
Christine Sine of St. Alban’s, Edmonds, Washington, recently wrote: “All of us, no matter how strong our faith, will at some point in our life journey suffer pain and death.” Through Christ, God is able to use the suffering we endure to further God’s purpose in our lives and in the world. God’s grace works through human weakness.
Out of love, he gave us freedom. Out of freedom, we may choose, in the words of the apostle, to “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way [to] fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2) Out of love.
And somehow, out of death, comes life: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
To really live involves, eventually and inevitably, dying. But death is not the end of the story.
The life that is saved is not the life of this body as it is – but ongoing life in God, that begins when we choose to live in Christ.
Out of love. Out of freedom. Out of death. Into life.
****
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, 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 Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors 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. (Romans 8:31-39)
****
Sources
Lesser Feasts and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2006)
1 Peter 4:12-19, Psalm 121, Psalm 116:1-8, Mark 8:34-38, Genesis 22:1-14, Romans 8:31-39, Galatians 6:2
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/tour/province.cfm?ID=M1
http://orders.anglican.org/mbh/history.htm
http://www.bcponline.org/
http://bible.oremus.org/
Context, September 2007, Part A, page 3-4 & Part B, page 6.
Tony Campolo, “God as Suffering Servant”, Tikkun, May/June 2007
www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0706/frontpage/sufferingservant
Christine Sine, “The Challenge of Suffering”, Prism, March-April 2007
http://www.network935.org/Images/mmDocument/PRISM%20Archive/Sines%20Times/MarApr07SinesOfTimes.pdf
Bishop of Melanesia, and his Companions, Martyrs, 1871
September 20, 2007
Eight time zones east of here is the birthplace of John Coleridge Patteson; he was born in London on the 1st of April, 1827. Four time zones west of here is Nakapu, an island in the Santa Cruz group north of Vanuatu, where John Coleridge Patteson and his companions were killed on 20 September 1871.
And yet far away as these places are, and as far away as the 19th century is from us, we are bound to them by ties not only of affection but also of our common humanity.
Melanesia has an Anglican church now; Patteson went there to found it. Instead he went to his death – by mistake.
He worked to stamp out the flourishing slave trade in the Solomon Islands. The people of Nakapu mistook his party for slave raiders, returning after a recent raid, and took their revenge on his body – one stroke of the hatchet for each native who had been killed in the earlier raid.
The reaction of the government in England was to work even harder to stamp out slavery, and the slave trade, in the south Pacific territories under their flag.
The church redoubled its missionary efforts; Bishop Selwyn, who had sent Patteson to Melanesia from New Zealand, worked to reconcile the people of Melanesia “to the memory of one who came to help and not to hurt.”
The Most Revd Sir Ellison Leslie Pogo KBE, primate of The Church of the Province of Melanesia, is Patteson’s successor: we are all his heirs.
Stuff happens. The joke goes on: Why does this stuff keep happening to us? Or, less popularly: Why do we keep on doing this stuff?
As Tony Campolo recently pointed out, God created humanity to act in freedom, and thus to be capable of going against his will. Out of love, God gave us the freedom to choose to love God in return. Out of love.
Christine Sine of St. Alban’s, Edmonds, Washington, recently wrote: “All of us, no matter how strong our faith, will at some point in our life journey suffer pain and death.” Through Christ, God is able to use the suffering we endure to further God’s purpose in our lives and in the world. God’s grace works through human weakness.
Out of love, he gave us freedom. Out of freedom, we may choose, in the words of the apostle, to “Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way [to] fulfill the law of Christ." (Galatians 6:2) Out of love.
And somehow, out of death, comes life: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35)
To really live involves, eventually and inevitably, dying. But death is not the end of the story.
The life that is saved is not the life of this body as it is – but ongoing life in God, that begins when we choose to live in Christ.
Out of love. Out of freedom. Out of death. Into life.
****
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, 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 Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who indeed intercedes for us.
Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, “For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.” No, in all these things we are more than conquerors 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. (Romans 8:31-39)
****
Sources
Lesser Feasts and Fasts (Church Publishing, 2006)
1 Peter 4:12-19, Psalm 121, Psalm 116:1-8, Mark 8:34-38, Genesis 22:1-14, Romans 8:31-39, Galatians 6:2
http://www.anglicancommunion.org/tour/province.cfm?ID=M1
http://orders.anglican.org/mbh/history.htm
http://www.bcponline.org/
http://bible.oremus.org/
Context, September 2007, Part A, page 3-4 & Part B, page 6.
Tony Campolo, “God as Suffering Servant”, Tikkun, May/June 2007
www.tikkun.org/magazine/tik0706/frontpage/sufferingservant
Christine Sine, “The Challenge of Suffering”, Prism, March-April 2007
http://www.network935.org/Images/mmDocument/PRISM%20Archive/Sines%20Times/MarApr07SinesOfTimes.pdf
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