The Sacrifice of Separation

The Sacrifice of Separation
Reflection on the Sunday after Ascension 2012

Unity within Christian understanding is a positive quality and ideal; we strive for unity and union with Christ and with one another as the body of Christ in the world. Separation is perhaps a more complicated and difficult idea. Separation might traditionally be seen as sin, for we are separated from God due to sin. Sin is death and means ultimately separation from life. Human separations are often difficult: divorce, loss of loved ones through death, people being parted by war, poverty, for economic reasons and so on. Separation therefore more often than not involves some kind of loss and accompanying pain. Personally speaking, this week I’ve been going through my own small separation from my children as I’ve got back to work and it’s not easy to separate from people we love or we care for. Think of the challenges for this parish of having two separate churches, challenges for our sense of unity and community. Yet, if we place our experiences of separation within the context of our salvation story, what happens?

TRINITY = separateness. Our God is one, and yet triune: the demarcation of Father, Son and Holy Spirit suggests some kind of separateness within the Godhead. In the incarnation this separation goes much further than that. For, the Second Person of the Trinity, the Son, is sent into the world, to communicate the Father’s Word. Jesus Christ comes to us and leaves the Father. He is separated from the Father in order to save us from our sins and our separateness from God. This separation of the Son from the Father, his journey into the world is the narrative of our salvation. Jesus’ ultimate separation from his Father on the Cross, his death and descent into hell is that action which creates the possibility of our return to the Father in Heaven. Jesus’ sacrifice of separation enables our return and unity with God.

The separation that God enacts brings new life and opportunity; it brings eternal life and salvation. Without the Son’s separation from the Father we would not be saved: we would not know of the extent and depth of God’s love for us. The separation was necessary.

-Because of this we know that the death of loved ones however painful is not finally desperate because we know we will be united with them again in Heaven. Jesus leads the way to eternal life; with him there is always hope.  

-We can also imagine that separations within our own lives need not only be painful but provide opportunities for the forming of new relationships and the making of new opportunities; sometimes separation is essential to our well-being.

St Andrew and St Mark, Surbiton

We soon will once again have two churches open, and there will inevitably be some separation due to some worship happening there and some here. It will be difficult for us to deal with this– yet in the two churches we have enormous opportunity -the two separate buildings are an opportunity for us to communicate in different ways the love of God that we know and experience. As long as we remember as Jesus did during his time on earth that despite his separation from the Father he was still deeply connected and unified with him we will have no difficulty. Jesus remained at one with his Father through doing the Father’s will; we will remain as one if we continue to remember our common calling to be unified with each other through the mission of God. It is his purpose and not our own that unites us.