Easter 6 May 9th 2021

Readings: Acts 10:44-end, 1 John 5:1-6, John 15:9-17

As we approach the end of the Easter season, we prepare to celebrate Ascension Day on Thursday of this week, and Pentecost two weeks today, images of the Resurrection are fresh in the mind. In the great Mosque of Isfahan in the Islamic Republic of Iran, there are two seventeenth century inscriptions on either side of the door into that building.  On the one side this one, “The ones who believe in the Resurrection are like fish in the sea,” and on the other side, “The ones who do not believe in the Resurrection are like birds in a cage” The ones who do not believe in the Resurrection are like birds in a cage.   I believe this to be true, and would like to illustrate this today, the sixth Sunday of Easter, by drawing two themes out of our texts, which I hope might be helpful as a reflection.  The words or themes I would like to draw out are these two – Chosen and Loved.

Firstly, Chosen.  Most of us remember a time standing in line at school, waiting to be chosen for some sports team.  As I was not particularly good at any of them except anything to do with horses, I often remember the sense of disappointment when I was not chosen.  Or perhaps the sense of having gone for an interview for a job, and not being chosen.  Conversely, when we are chosen it makes us feel welcomed and affirmed – and, in the best sense, proud.  This is the sense conveyed by the second reading today from the first letter of John. John uses these words of the people of God.  “everyone who loves the parent loves the child” This expresses the basic conviction we are chosen by God, the Father of us all. Baptism is the outward sign of being chosen by God – this is the theological driver which has placed the Font where it now is, and why we begin the Eucharist at the Font. On a deeper level, baptism into the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.  His destiny is our own.  Where Christ has gone, we believe we will follow- all of us.  This is deeply consoling when the normal trials and tribulations of life assault us.  This sense of being chosen gives an inner freedom, which is different from propping ourselves up with more and more layers of external protection. If our international politics had more sense of this inner security, this inner sense of freedom, it would be different – whether in Israel/Palestine which has walled itself into a cage of notional security, or India with its fence around Bangladesh, or the infamous Mexican wall, or any other place where security can only be relied on from the outside, and no longer from an inner sense of security.  An example can be seen right now, in our national British representations abroad. In most countries, the British Council had formerly been a place of meeting and encounter, whereas now most cower behind high walls and oppressive security.  The lack of a sense of inner security from being at peace with the world is palpable, damaging, and damaged.   Or on a personal level, some of the experiences of lockdown may have made us feel like caged birds. By contrast, the sense of being chosen leads onto the sense of being loved and will produce a less fearful view of the world.  We no longer feel like caged birds and feel set free. For Christians, this sense of freedom comes from our being chosen through our baptism into the death and Resurrection of Christ.   In this lies freedom, and we are like the bird set free from its cage.

Now being loved.  Here again, words from Scripture point the way.” As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you: remain in my love.”   Again and again, we are assured in the Gospels that it is the Christ how has gone before us, who is, even now, preparing our place, through loving us.  This is basic to our belief in the shared Resurrection of all the beloved.  It is the ultimate being set free, as we are liberated from the fear of death – our own death, and the death of those we love.  And it is exactly this love which is stronger than death, which the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead shows us.  One of the characteristics of this Church recently, which you will have observed, is the increasing number of adults being baptised, and the number of those who have come from other faiths, particularly Islam. At Easter, we had the Confirmation service here, where several such adults were confirmed.  I have often asked myself why this should be happening right now.  People more pious than I would say it is a manifestation of the Holy Spirit.  It may be.  It probably is, but there are also other things.   For those who have come from a Shia or Sufi background, with its mystical experiences of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, and its strong belief in the Resurrection, it is my estimation that it is a natural step to seek to enter into that resurrection through baptism.  In this country, we are also culturally free to make this move, which is not the case in officially Islamic societies.  We are also blessed in this church with the presence of skilled and mature guides in the faith for those who come from a Muslim background. All these factors contribute to what we are now experiencing, but there is, I believe, one stronger fact than all of these, and this affects us all if we allow it to.  This is the sense of being chosen, called by name, and loved, which Christian faith at its best will give. And a manifestation of this will be friendship on the human level.  A Church without friendship will therefore be a spiritually dead Church. In other words, love and friendship are at the heart of the Resurrection experience.  So why should we be surprised that more and more people want to access this?

I started with Iran, so I’ll end with it.  The great mystical poet Hafiz was writing in the fourteenth century at a similar time to many of the great mystical love poets and theologians of the west. He is contemporary, for example, with Julian of Norwich in this country.  Both of them use the image of intoxication, and the image of the lover – often in erotic and sexual imagery, to describe their experience of God.  Hafiz wrote, “The love-pain caused by Thee I ever store, and make it medicine for my heart so sore, e’en as thy harshness which afflicts my heart, so shall my constancy grow, more and more.”  We heard this at Easter. “Mohammad, God has called you by name and made you his own,” may we all remember that it is God who is also speaking to each one of us directly as chosen and loved. Being chosen and loved are uplifting images of the Resurrection, which come from the Bible and Christian tradition.  If you want one from creation, go to the Isabella Plantation in Richmond Park right now.  If those azaleas and rhododendrons don’t make your spirit soar and set you free, then something is dead inside, as I once heard at a wedding. When we are set free to respond, by knowing that we are chosen and loved, like Jesus at the Ascension, or like birds set fee from the cage, we fly.