In
our part of the world nature defies the long dry season with a blaze of colour
before the new rains arrive. Blue Jacarandas, red Flamboyants and white mauve
Frangipanis appear round the corner of the road. They lift the heart and hint
at the bright future that draws us on.
The
cries of children kicking a ball in a refugee camp, or even a besieged city,
defy the expected.
You
might expect a person so physically handicapped they cannot bend enough to sit
on a chair but have to lie on a mat on the floor to feel sorry. And when her
physical disability is joined to an intellectual disability you might say what
point is there in such a life? Many ask that question and think, “It would be
better she had never been born.” But if you spent time with Innocente and
looked into her eyes you would have seen her amazing smile - a smile like a
window into another world – and you would see the point of her short life.
God
gives us countless hints of what is to come – what we call, ‘The Resurrection.’
The poet William Wordsworth wrote an ode on, “Intimations of Immortality from
Recollections of Early Childhood.” He gives a long and detailed description of
the countryside in a corner of NW England, evoking thoughts “too deep for
tears.”
We can
all recall such intimations even if they were fleeting. I remember a huge skid
on a main street in Harare when I was going a little too fast after the first
rains and the road was coated with seven months of oil drops. I visited all
four lanes and ended up facing the way I had come. If there had been any other
car near me that would have been my last day. But it flashed across my mind and
heart that my late mother had something to do with my escape.
I
find it hard to believe that everything could have ended for me had I died that
day. Yet there are many Sadducees today who deny there is any such thing as a
resurrection or life after death. When you die, that’s it. It’s over. You no
longer exist.
As
we move to the close of the Church’s “dry season” – the long period “after
Pentecost” – we have a sudden blooming of witness to the Resurrection. God is
the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob. “He is God, not of the dead, but of the
living; for to him all people are in fact alive.” (Luke 20:38) Jesus speaks of
two ages or two worlds; the one we know so well and see and touch each day, and
the one we do not see but all our being resonates with our faith and tells us
there is something unimaginable to come.
6 November 2016 Sunday
32 C
2 Maccabees
7:1-14 2
Thessalonians 2:16-3:5 Luke
20:27-38
