Christ Church

“ Lo, I am with you.”

You might recall when I was here last, I mentioned a recent meeting with Elizabeth Keam and Margaret Brown, the co-presenters of what I think will be a very important ELC forum on May 5th, around the theme of “Bringing Life to Death”.

Elizabeth is Beatrice Crisp’s daughter and lacks nothing of her Mum’s straight speech. (For those who wouldn’t know, Beatrice left you in no doubt as to what she thought.)

No sooner had Elizabeth arrived, when she said to me in the kitchen, “We really can’t begin to live until we have reconciled ourselves to loss.” Not the usual small talk around the coffee maker, I’d have to say, but arresting and memorable to say the least.

Well, coincidentally, the gospel narratives of this and last week, are a part of what is known as Jesus’ farewell discourses. His leaving, his exit - his last words of instruction. But from the disciples’ point of view, the finality of his life among them – however we might want to define that - amounts to an enormous sense of loss; love and friendship, a cause, hopes and aspirations, seemingly gone forever. And perhaps all the emotions are heightened by the words, “unless I go, or go I must.” Cold comfort, but for the promise of the Paraclete, that is the Spirit, which in anyone’s language is highly ambiguous and hidden from normal sight.

“We really can’t begin to live until we’ve reconciled ourselves to loss.”

There is something so true in this statement and yet it remains almost too confronting. The pain barriers or the naïve hopes readily drive a wedge between reality and how we simply want things to be.

Two books I’ve read in the past week have certainly invited the reader on the more difficult path of facing life head-on, yet all in order to move on in life with spirit and hope. Les Carlyon’s masterpiece, “The Great War”, and then a much lesser known little masterpiece, entitled “From the Other Side”, the journal of a 27 year old Melbourne woman, Amber Tuck, dying from cancer. A book that Margaret Brown hss edited up and we have on sale here at the moment.

In both books, we are simply faced with life’s deep and unresolvable complexities – human despair and nobility, stupidity, egocentricity and yet great sacrifice, love, and gratitude for the living. All of those seemingly conflicting things rolled up into one. And of course, if we keep reading, one’s own finitude, mortality, vulnerability, whatever word we might use for our essential state of humanity – comes clearly into focus. I mean, what is this life, that it can be so fickle, so cruel, so cheap, so expendable and yet so precious, so tender and worthwhile?

“We really can’t begin to live until we’ve reconciled ourselves to loss.”

Allow me to read to you from Amber’s journal, emphasizing that this extract is well into her battle with death and dying. In other words, her conclusions are reached only after facing her impending death with much pain, resentment and anger.

“I am feeling very emotionally calm today. Physically I feel very average but I’ll go into that later.

I feel that I am truly ready to die. I am quite excited to be seeing Dad. I have missed him so much and I am really happy that I will get to see him soon. I feel that he is around and I have glimpsed him twice. This is over the last few weeks. So you should all know when the time comes, he is the one that’s caring for me. Not that there was ever any doubt that it would be him and Nonna.

I have had a fantastic life and have been so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life that I have had the privilege of loving and who have loved me back.

So I want you all to celebrate all the good times and remember me when I was gorgeous. Because that is who I truly am. Not this sick, icky person who can’t do anything. Remember me through warts and all. I wasn’t perfect, but I know now I didn’t have to be. I f… up all sorts of things but that is the whole reason for being. I have certainly learnt from my mistakes and this has been a valuable life for me.

I believe I have learnt so much. I have learnt strength and forgiveness (forgiving myself is even more important than forgiving others because ultimately I am the one doing the judging) and that I do already have compassion. At first I wasn’t exactly sure what compassion was and whether or not I had it. Anyway I learnt how to love and I learnt acceptance and that I am good enough for people to love.

I had so many issues with never really feeling that I was good enough for anyone, but I know that I am; that noone is perfect and we are not meant to be. We are meant to be human and that means making mistakes and spending our lives figuring things out.”

“We really can’t begin to live until we’ve reconciled ourselves to loss.”

I honestly believe that the spiritual life begins with facing loss. For faith is not a commodity, Christianity is not a consumable; just another product to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate.

Unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, said Jesus, there is simply no hope for heads of wheat for the harvest. And in a similar vein, Unless I leave you (sending the Spiritual Presence or making room for the Spiritual Presence), you will never know what it means to take full responsibility for your own lives, to find the Christ within yourselves instead of looking to the heavens and always seeking some magical solution rather than dealing well with reality itself.

For me, this season, this time in the Church’s calendar, is the high point of the year. Not that I’m against the bodily or historical presence of Jesus – far from it - but I’m all for a spirited, responsible, compassionate and wise Christianity, one that is weaned off our many dependencies and insecurities, our props and frameworks of church, our fear of failure and that lingering concern, that tyranny that we’ll never do it well enough for God.

For in the farewell discourse of Jesus there is the clear invitation to go and be like him in the knowledge of God’s continued presence, and to go and be as him in the indwelling of the Spirit, that is also ours if we so allow it to rise and to flourish.

And in that fullness, that strength and courage, life in its totality can be faced and processed. That which needs to be let go of, can be gradually be let go of, and that which is clung to for dear life (our life included), can be slowly, yet surely released.

“We really can’t begin to live unless we’ve reconciled ourselves to loss.”

May it be so… for the sake of an enduring and vital Christianity; yeast in the dough of life itself.

Amen