Skip to main content

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.


Comments

Post a Comment

Please be respectful when posting comments

Popular posts from this blog

Radical Story-telling?

Public Domain   The Flight into Egypt  File: Adam Elsheimer - Die Flucht nach Ägypten (Alte Pinakothek) 2.jpg Created: 31 December 1608 Which of the Gospel writers include an account of the birth of Jesus? When were they writing, for what audience? Mark’s Gospel is almost universally considered to be the earliest Gospel and it’s understood that both Matthew and Luke used it as a source text. But Mark has no account of the birth of Jesus, he begins with John the Baptist and Jesus’ baptism. Only Matthew and Luke have birth narratives and they are different whilst sharing some common features: Mary and Joseph are to be married and there’s a miraculous virgin birth in Bethlehem. But that’s about it. Jesus is born in a house in Matthew’s account whilst he is placed in a manger in Luke’s because there’s ‘no room at the inn’. Mary’s thoughts and feelings are not mentioned in Matthew at all, whilst from Luke we get the story of the Visitation, Annunciation and the wonderfu...
2 comments
Read more

Anthem for Doomed Youth

What passing-bells for these who die as cattle? Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle Can patter out their hasty orisons. No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, – The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires. What candle may be held to speed them all? Not in the hands of boys but in their eyes Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor10 of girls' brows shall be their pall; Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds. Wilfred Owen, September - October, 1917 Wilfrid Owen’s poetry introduced me to the reality of war as a student at secondary school, along with Siegfried Sassoon and Robert Graves these were the writers that helped me see the sacrifice that we ask others to make on our behalf when we send them to fight for us. These writers showed us wh...
Post a Comment
Read more

Silence

Lent Study Group One of my top 10 books of the last 10 years has to be: 'A Book of Silence' by Sara Maitland. I first heard Sara talk at Greenbelt many years ago and I was fascinated then by who she was - an eccentric woman, speaking with intensity and insight, offering an alternative and captivating viewpoint on the human experience. In this book she explores silence in all sorts of ways: by living on her own; by visiting the desert; through analysing the desert traditions within early Christianity; and through attending to what happens to the body and the mind in and through extended silence and isolation. Her book begins: I am sitting on the front doorstep of my little house with a cup of coffee, looking down the valley at my extraordinary view of nothing. It is wonderful. Virginia Woolf famously taught us that every woman writer needs a room of her own. She didn't know the half of it, in my opinion. I need a moor of my own. Or, as an exasperated but obvious...
1 comment
Read more