On dying .... and rising

Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies,

it remains just a grain of wheat;

but if it dies, it produces much fruit.

John 12:24

Young Maple, a toy poodle, joined our household on the weekend. Hailing from St Marys, Maple endured the journey to our home, smitten with her new ‘mother’ – our daughter. Maple was brought into life in a large human family, fellow siblings and a new family of rag doll kittens. Well-handled, compliant and genuinely cute, Maple will never return, will never see her family again. As a human, her story would be tragic; as a dog, however, she will soon forget and know only the family that now loves and treasures her. One part of her life dies, and another is born again.

We are all quite familiar with the manner in which nature renews itself. A process of dying and rising, a language of growth that is both secular and religious, singular and communal, personal and social. The pattern is reproduced in every sphere of our lives. Death gives way to life. Little wonder the Christian sees the transition from death to life as following a natural order.

In John we see Jesus predicting his glorification – and acknowledging that in order for this to happen he must first die.

We can talk about metaphor, analogy, simile, allegory – yet each of these cannot describe the reality about which Jesus was speaking. And further, that we who believe are invited into this reality, again by dying to self, are also called to life. In the first instance that life is like Maple’s: a dying to our past, and awakening to a new way of living; in the second, it is the physical extinguishment of life that leads irrevocably and irretrievably into a new state of being – eternal life, after life, heaven.

The language we need to express this transformation has been lost to so many of us, we avoid ‘death’, ‘dying’, ‘dead’ – we humans pass away, pass over or just pass and are subsequently no longer with us, deceased. For many death is a permanent state of nothingness, assuaged by ‘never forgetting’ or being ‘in our hearts forever’. Our faith, our knowledge, means nothing if that is where our understanding ends.

As Lent creeps towards Easter, we are firmly reminded, Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will preserve it for eternal life (John 12:25).

The happiness of Emmaus

I am an unashamedly devoted and besotted grandfather. The gift of my grandson has renewed that sense of elation that arrived with the birth of our own children. There are transformative events in our lives – moments that are celebratory and those that involve grief and pain. They are transformative because the change is permanent, it challenges us to the core, we cannot return to the state we were in before that moment: the loss of a loved one, falling in love, marriage, the birth of a child, separation and divorce, abuse, children (finally) leaving home. The negative events can and do leave us reeling – it can be incomprehensible, unfathomable and perhaps unacceptable. The positive ones can bring great joy, re-start an old and worn out heart and enliven relationships.

After the story of the road to Emmaus, Luke (24:35 – 48) recounts Jesus’ appearance to the disciples in Jerusalem. The disciples have been through a series of utterly traumatic events, Jesus’ arrest, trial, torture and crucifixion, and to totally confound them, his resurrection. His disciples are confused and anxious – having had to deal with the distress of his loss, then his missing from the tomb, and then the strange story of the travellers to Emmaus. And as if to affirm the message of those travellers, Jesus becomes present to them in flesh and blood: Writes Luke:

 … they were startled and terrified and thought that they were seeing a ghost. Then he said to them, "Why are you troubled? And why do questions arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet, that it is I myself. Touch me and see, because a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you can see I have.

Then following the pattern of the Emmaus story, Jesus breaks open the Word of God and he sends the disciples out to preach the Good News (echoing the liturgy we celebrate each Sunday). What then enables those disciples to move form their insecure fear to being confident, faith-filled proclaimers of God’s love? What is it within us that carries us from one place to another, from doubt to faith, from pain to joy, from loathing to love? What is the agent the causes or creates this transformation? Perhaps at the centre of positive experiences is happiness. Martin Seligman suggests that we are most happy when we experience pleasure, engagement, relationship, meaning and accomplishment. For Maslow our peak experiences occur through self-actualisation. The Christian view is that these profound moments are windows into the Divine, into the life to come, into the Kingdom of Heaven – a taste of what is to come. They are beatitudes.

 Pain and sadness, on the other hand can create a sense of disadvantage, loss, helplessness and sorrow, and if unchecked can lead to depression. And yet we are aware that from the depths of despair there arises a tiny sense of hope, a leaven that will ignite and transform our sorrow, into acknowledgement, tolerance, willingness and then acceptance. It is from here that the disciples move, and the leaven that breaks open their hearts is nothing less than the person of Jesus of himself. This same Jesus is still there and still present, waiting for an invitation from you to break open your heart and transform your life.

Good news to all: Damian of Molokai

But the man went away and began to spread the news everywhere. Indeed, he talked so much that Jesus could not go into a town publicly. Mark 1:45 

Despite the doom and gloom that regularly overwhelms our newspapers, there is good news aplenty. What we know is that bad news has much better currency. It reaches the front page in the blink of an eye. Good news on the other can wait, to be a filler for whenever it can be put in. Too much good news, on the other hand, brings the criticism of wearing rose-coloured glasses, being out of touch with the real world. Leprosy has, in various times and places, devastated communities. It is seldom heard of these days except in the context of the scriptures, or perhaps in the sense of social lepers, but it is, nevertheless, a formidable disease.

St Damian of Molokai, a missionary priest of the Picpus Fathers, spent 16 years with the lepers of Molokai (Hawaii) before contracting the disease himself. He was canonised by Pope Benedict XVI in 2009. As a life-long admirer of Damian, I visited his tomb in Louvain (Belgium) and remain astonished at the impact that this quiet, holy man had – not only on the lives of the lepers whom he served – but on the world in which we live. Damian’s admirers include US President Obama who asserted that Damian gave voice to the voiceless and dignity to the sick.

And so often in life, we meet or hear of Damians who meet head on the challenges that being human provides, whether in flood-struck south eastern Queensland, in the local chapter of St Vinnie’s, in the care provided by families for their eldery, sick, the disabled and who do so with so little support. They may not be heroes in the classical sense, but they are good news worth spreading. While not confronted with the image of leprotic disability, we are surrounded by the invisibles: the homeless, the illegal refugee, the mentally ill, the obese and many others who are cast out, the anawim, the poor of God who have nowhere else to turn to.

And so now we see this clear image of the lonely disfigured man who begs Jesus to heal him: If you wish you, you can make me clean. Jesus replies, ‘Be made clean.’ After healing the leper, Jesus admonishes him not to tell others. Yet this is news too good not to tell and he proclaims his good fortune to all who will listen. While it is easy to be confused about who needs the healing, the leper or those who have cast him out – the good news is that Jesus continues to heal those who seek him, still challenges the forces that seek to separate us from the love of God and from community with one another. The message is: Tell the good news to all. Be a Damian. Live it.