Sermon for the third Sunday after Easter
A little while
and we shall not see Him.
And a little while
and we shall see Him.
We know that Our Lord
is talking to His disciples
hours before His arrest
and crucifixion,
and then His resurrection.
We get that.
Unlike the disciples
standing her
with Jesus,
not quite understanding
what He means,
we have the privilege of knowing
that they will not see the Lord
while He rests in the tomb
but they will see Him
in the locked room
in which He will show Himself
to be alive.
We're lucky to have
that hindsight.
But it's been more than
a little while
since we see Him
walking on the shore
of Lake Galilee.
With the disciples,
we see Him again
for a little while -
for forty joy-filled days -
and then He is gone,
ascending in glory
and promising that He will return
in the same manner that He ascends.
And it's been more than
a little while.
Two thousand years
and mankind waits,
waits for the return of the Resurrected.
[PAUSE]
At this present time,
the World feels weary.
It has seen wars
of titanic proportion.
It has seen almost
unimaginable cruelty.
It has seen things speed up,
so that life and death decisions
are made and executed
in the twinkling of an eye
and the click of a mouse.
The world is getting tired
and, although it denies it,
it longs for its Creator.
And we Christians
feel that longing
but we have hindsight.
We know where our rest,
our energy, our motivation
and our joy is coming from.
But we don't know when.
[PAUSE]
No-one knows.
No-one can know.
Sure, there are those
who claim to know
when Our Lord returns,
but the day passes
and embarrasses them.
We don't know when.
We shall never know when.
But then, perhaps "when"
is the wrong word.
[PAUSE]
"When" makes no real sense
to the One Who walks in Eternity,
for Whom each and every
moment in Time is equally accessible.
For Him, the rise and fall of mankind
is both millennia and microsecond.
Our eighty-or-so years
are just a little while for Him
but they can also be an age for Him
as He inhabits every beat of our heart
every breath of our being,
every growth and death of
our every cell.
And we wait for Him.
[PAUSE]
But our lives have not been
put on hold
while He is away from us.
We have to live our lives,
knowing that they mean something
to Him.
Not sit there waiting,
for then we get bored
and listless.
[PAUSE]
True. We see the world
do its best to go to Hell
in a handcart.
We can't stop that.
We see people
lose so much:
their money,
their homes,
their justices,
their families,
their lives,
and we call out,
"How much longer?"
What reply do we get?
[PAUSE]
Like the saints under the altar
in Heaven,
we must wait a while longer.
It will hurt to encounter
pain and evil,
hurts done to us,
and hurts done to others.
But St Paul tells us to redeem the time
for the days are evil.
We redeem the time
by consecrating every moment
of our lives to God.
Not seeing this period
in our history as
Time's waiting room,
but as a time to be alive
and make the difference.
Yes, the world is tired,
and we are tired,
and things always seem
to be dark,
but we need to take time
to look into every second of our lives
every breath we draw,
every beat of our heart
and know that,
whether we feel His presence or not,
He IS here.
We might not see Him
but, as we still ourselves
and sit in His presence
we can still know
that He has not truly left us.
And in just a little while,
we shall see Him as He is.
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