Remembrance Sunday
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.’
As I said last week, I hope we’re feeling and seeing in our readings through the latter part of this church year, there is a kind of urgency in the readings each Sunday, a kind of preparation – like a parent or a coach gearing us up for a big trip or a move, some big shift in our lives. It feels like we’re wrapping something up and trying to tie the loose ends before something happens.
St. Paul this week, for example, in his letter to the Ephesians – the final words of the entire letter - urges us to put on armour, to take up sword and shield, “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his power. Put on the whole armour of God, so that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil.” Finally, he says, as if this is the point we are truly meant to hear and take to heart before this change; and we are to do the kind of thing one does right before going into battle – donning our armour. And in the Gospel today we hear another story of urgency – a man desperately seeking Jesus to heal his dying son.
Next week we will hear about the urgency of forgiveness, lots of forgiveness, but also of what we might expect should we neither be willing nor ready to forgive time and time again. And then, the week after, we will ask God that hebe ready to hear our prayers, and then yet another person seeking urgent help for healing.
The coming season of Advent is a season of preparation, but even now we are being prepared for that focused time of expectation and preparation, and these weeks before that time tell us – really remind us with urgency - the kind of practical and spiritual guidance that Trinitytide, the season we are nearing the end of, has been teaching us for months. Some last few and important examples before we begin the cycle anew.
But why the rush?
Why the urgency?
This may be your 8th, or even your 80th time ending one church year and beginning another, surely you need no reminder of its urgency, surely we’ve ‘gotten’ it by this point.
I think the answer owes much to the fact that we are often forgetful creatures ourselves and there are certain truths and certain lessons of which we need constant or regular reminder in our lives, but also because we are changeable creatures and the way you encounter these words the 60th time you’ve encountered them are not going to be the same as when you encountered them for the 59th or 19th time. These words are alive, a living word, and never land upon us the same twice, and perhaps Advent, a season of hopeful waiting, might be experienced differently for you this year than last because of what has happened since last Advent. I recall very early in my time here a beloved parishioner who had just lost her daughter remarking to me that until that moment she had never really understood the Blessed Virgin Mary, at least could never fully empathize with what the passion was like for Mary.
But there’s more, I think. The Gospel today might remind us a bit of a story we heard earlier this season, of Lazarus and the rich man: the beggar at the gate and the rich man who gives nothing to him. They both die and Lazarus is in the embrace of Abraham and the rich man suffers torment, yet he begs Abraham to send Lazarus from the dead to the rich man’s brothers to warn them of their ways, lest they suffer the same torment. The response he receives is that if they didn’t listen to Moses and the prophets then someone rising from the dead won’t convince them either; which is to say, his brothers should not need a miracle, their faith should not depend upon receiving miracles.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus does heal the nobleman’s son, but that healing does not come without a reproach, but it is good to note here that Jesus’ reproach of “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe,” is not directed at the nobleman himself. The you in the sentence is the ‘royal you’, Jesus is addressing the crowds, not necessarily the man alone. For it was often the habit of the crowds, as it can be our own habit, to demand a certain quid pro quo for faith; even unknowingly we can often be the ones making our faith contingent on the answering of our prayers or of certain signs and wonders from God. But what Jesus is asking the crowd with his reproach, and indeed what he asks us today is, ‘Would you still have faith if your son wasn’t healed?’ or ‘would you still have faith if your prayers went unanswered?’ or even more crassly, perhaps, ‘Am I still the Christ, in your eyes, if I’m not giving you what you want?’
We can all recall those times in our life when God seemed nearer to us, when our faith is confirmed, usually times – if we’re being honest - when we’re getting what want. But it’s a different story in the leaner seasons of our relationship with God, those times after not having our desires or hopes fulfilled in the way we want, when the practice of our faith, prayer falls to the wayside.
In the Epistle today – in response to this problem – Paul points us to the difficult truth that while we can often be overcome by things that plague us physically, even by not being healed like we wanted, we must see that under all of these things lie spiritual problems, “our struggle is not against enemies of blood and flesh, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers of this present darkness… spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” The enemy, Paul is saying, isn’t our bodies or our frailty, it’s something more insidious and powerful that wants to rob us from the living hope that is what we most need. It wants us distracted, it wants us to forget God in the lean times, because it’s then that we tend to lean on ourselves.
But of course the inverse must be true – if the true source of our problem isn’t our physical ailments, aches or pains, then neither is the answer to what we need a physical one, but a spiritual one.
This is what the crowds were always guilty of – greedy for those rich moments of getting from God, but never putting together what it is that those gifts are meant to point us towards: which is not a faith that responds only when given something, but an unshakeable faith in God’s care and presence, especially when things don’t go our way. A faith that trusts that there is a goodness and a providence and a plan at work beyond our immediate desires; the difference between them is like the difference between the house built on stone and on shifting sand. This is a mature faith, this is what we are being prepared once again, through the coming year, to mature in.
And the fruits of this kind of faith are evident; that faith cannot be held inside; that lively and enduring faith is the faith that causes those outside to be drawn to this place and its people. The nobleman’s son was healed through his faith, and that faith – especially after the miracle - could not be contained but burst out and he in turn brought his whole household, his family, to salvation. A great writer and monastic, long ago, wrote about this miracle, “So we see that faith, like the other virtues, is formed gradually, and has its beginning, growth, and maturity. His faith had its beginning, when he asked for his son’s recovery; its growth, when he believed our Lord’s words, Thy son liveth; its maturity, after the announcement of the fact by his servants.”
Our hope and our prayer for it is that such a faith will continue to grow in each of us, and that if it has not begun, it might; if it has begun, that it might develop and blossom, and that for all of us it will reach its ripeness and maturity, so that we can have confidence in God’s providence and goodness at all times, trust in his promises for that life to come, and comfort in all of our afflictions.
