In today’s Gospel (St
Matthew 14.14-23), we have something slightly similar going on: not a grand
trick to show people’s folly, but declaring a massive, obvious fact that
everyone is missing. “Picture the scene”: A young man has epilepsy and his
frequent fits put him in danger whether he is at home, where he has collapsed
into the fire in the hearth more than once, or outside where his father is
frightened he will drown if he falls into the water (the local spring and surrounding
marshlands are the source of the river Jordan). The father is beside himself
with worry and turns to the disciples. They have been growing spiritually; they
have increased as ministers of Christ’s own power to heal and forgive and save.
But this affliction is beyond them and they fail. Why does Jesus become annoyed
and not simply step in when the disciples reach the end of their capacity? Why does
He not just happily heal the young man like in the other stories, where someone
has shown faith in Christ and humility before God? Think of the centurion and
his servant, of the friends of the paralytic, or the man born blind, or Jairus
and his daughter. In each of these stories, Jesus marvels at people’s honest, straightforward
belief in Him and encourages them in their onward search to be true to God. Yet
here, the Lord sets aside his even temper and confronts the disciples with a
good measure of open humiliation and exasperation. Why? They have just been told
about taking up the Cross to follow Him, and that for the Kingdom to come in
power it involves suffering and losing your life. They have not understood.
Then, Peter recognises Jesus as Son of the God and Jesus blesses him for
listening to what God has told him in his heart. But then He tells him off for saying,
“God forbid”, when Jesus explains that the Son of Man has to be killed before
Heaven comes: “You are setting your mind on human things, not on the things of
God.” Even Peter has not got it. So Jesus next takes Peter, James and John up
the mountain of Tabor to show them what humanity looks like in the within the Kingdom
of God – disfigured in the world, but transfigured by the presence of heaven; and
the disciples glimpse for the first time what the Resurrection will mean, for
before their very eyes they see the prophet Elijah who was assumed into Heaven
and Moses who went into the very presence of God. And they hear for themselves what
they had been told about when Jesus was baptised by John further downstream in
the Jordan. They hear the words of the Father reverberating in the mountain
clouds: “This is my Son … listen to Him.”
But still they do not hear and understand, despite
everything they have seen and been told. Hence Jesus the Lord’s own declaration
against those who have eyes to see and ears to hear yet do not credit the
obvious. Yes, they believe Christ. Yes, the follow Him. Yes, they have begun to
do spiritual deeds. Yes, they have grown in love and holiness. But, even when taken
into the Lord’s deepest confidence and highest mysteries, they have not begun
to grasp the purpose of it all. They do not have faith that the Reign of God, His
power, His glory, and His judgment are here and now. So back close to the waters
in which He was baptised, the waters beside which He called them to follow Him,
the waters beside which Peter noticed the Jesus is the Son of God, the waters
from which the Lord just rescued a father’s pride and joy from drowning, Christ
spells it out again; “Every single incident, every single word of my parables
and stories about the Kingdom of Heaven; every single miracle and healing;
every single glance and gesture in my bearing; every single tone and nuance in
my voice – this is all about My coming death on the Cross, and the power that
will be unleashed when I am killed and the Resurrection surges up on the third
day.” Everything comes from that point back to the point where the disciples
are now; and everything in the future will go forward from this massive event, at
which the logic of Heaven and salvation collides with a world of sin and wilful
incompleteness . “Surely,” the Lord rebukes the disciples as He pleads with
them to have faith in Him, “this must be plain to you from everything you have
seen and heard?”
St Paul understands this from within. From his own experience
he describes (II Corinthians 4.9-16) being
“struck down but not destroyed”, carrying in his body the fact that he is
declining deathwards at the same time as it shows the signs of Christ alive in
him. He speaks of the world and the flesh - the reality we know - wasting away.
But he also says that the inner nature of us is not something that is merely
invisible, a pious feeling, an intellectual conclusion, a hopeful ideal by
which to live, a projection beyond this world in search of a better one: far
from it. To St Paul, this ideal, this better world, this inner nature to what
we are and can become, this life in the midst of death, this coming Kingdom is
nothing if it is not now - and concrete, more real than anything we may touch or
sense in this world we think of as “realistic”. The “realism” we speak of is
nothing of the sort, for it is part of the outer side to nature that is passing
away: Here we have no enduring city (Hebrews
13.14). Instead, says St Paul, the inner nature is no different from the
outer appearance. “While we live, we are
always yielding to death, but that is how it was with Jesus and we follow suit:
thus the life of Jesus is visible, clear, real, obvious on our mortal flesh, our
human living here and now.” Or, as St Paul put it another way, “it is not I who
live, but Christ who lives within me.” (Galatians
2.20)
For us, the face of our Lord with His exasperated question
asks, “Do you believe this?” Do you believe that your old life died on the
Cross with Christ, and that the life you now lead is the same one as Elijah and
Moses on the mountain, the life that may be here on the surface, but is realistically
in Heaven? Do you live with absolute firm conviction that Jesus Christ is the
only ruler of the hearts and lives of men and women, that He is the only
rightful director of the course of the world’s affairs, the only thing that is
real and the same, yesterday, today and for ever (Hebrews 13.8) in the midst of a world that wastes away? Are you imagining that passing through life is
like waiting for the after-life; or do you see that the Resurrection and Heaven
is passing through YOU already, as you take up the Cross to follow Him,
wherever it all leads? For if we live on earth as in heaven, there are consequences.
We are not only blessed; we embody blessing. We are not only those who long to
be caught up in heaven as we struggle through in faith, hope and love; we, the
Church, are also the heaven that others can see and want to be caught up into.
This is why religion is never a private matter, or the mere, bare concern of
saving souls. It is always about the transformation of all humanity from what
it appears to be to reveal it as it truly is: for God in Christ.
Thus our nature sings, “You arose in glory from the tomb and
with Yourself You raised the world. All humanity acclaims You as God and death has
vanished. Adam exults, O Master, and Eve, redeemed from bondage now, cries out
for joy, 'You, Christ, are the One Who offer Resurrection to all.' ” (Kontakion of the Resurrection, Tone 1). Imagine
we say to ourselves, “Here we are in the world, slogging on till death, till something
better comes along”; and a boys voice carries from the crowd, “But you are
not dead at all. Look at yourselves. You are covered in the glory of heaven. You
are the Bride of Christ. I have never seen anything on earth more beautiful.”
