My children love
the story of the three little pigs, which is a great narrative about how to
build a secure life, how to protect ourselves, how to prevent our selves from
being victims. A similar parable is found in the Bible of course, the parable
about building a house on sand or on rock.
‘Everyone then who
hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built
his house on rock. The rain fell, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat
on that house, but it did not fall, because it had been founded on rock. And
everyone who hears these words of mine and does not act on them will be like a
foolish man who built his house on sand. The rain fell, and the floods came,
and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell—and great was its
fall!’ Matthew 7:23-29
The Gospel reading
for the Sunday after Ascension* gives us a very clear expression of how to
build a house on rock, for we listen into a conversation between Jesus and His
Father. Jesus’ prayer to the Father reveals the extent and nature of their
intimacy, founded on unity of will and of being. That
unity is at the heart of Jesus’ courage and sacrifice. He trusts the Father and
is at one with Him – he knows he must suffer and yet he puts his trust in Him
and willingly gives up His life.
The three little
pigs had to leave home, they had to grow up. Jesus also had to experience a
moving away from the Father to accomplish his will. Jesus’ vocation is about division
and separation in order that the work of reconciling the world might be
completed. So, their unity is not that which excludes others, a unity of
privacy and closure, it is a transparent unity, a welcoming unity, a unity that
is a model for others, so that we might be included: ‘may they be one as we are
one’.
Jesus’
adaptability, his willingness to move, to change, to become human, was
essential to his vocation, to his challenge; his willingness most of all to
give up the security of heaven in order to rescue the world. A journey of the
most extraordinary risk, involving loss on a scale we can only imagine: ‘who,
though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something
to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave’. Yet, we
realise that he hasn’t given up the essential security which is his
relationship with His Father.
Human beings seek
stability and security, yet to learn we must seek new environments, we must be
willing to adapt, to change and to challenge ourselves. Moreover we must give
up or sacrifice things in order that we live the life of love. For Jesus to
come to earth, he was giving up his safety, yet he knew that Love was and is
His Father’s identity. As Jesus contemplates his return to the Father his
prayer is for us that we might be protected because we are ‘still in the
world’. He prays that we might enjoy the relationship of unity that he enjoys
with the Father.
Jesus shows us that
true security can only be found in the depth of our relationship with the
Father, with our God. It is that only, the small still centre, which will
enable us to cope with, to move through the challenge of being subject to so
much change, at times so much suffering, so much challenge. The Father could
ask so much of Jesus, because He was His Son, they were totally united in will
and in being. God will ask so much of us and we will achieve as much as our
faith in God is strong: the rain comes down, the wolves come prowling, but we
remain firm, steadfast in the faith.
Unity then with the
Father is the way that unity is achieved between us as people. We need not
concern ourselves with what others are doing or not doing, but we need to focus
on building and strengthening our relationship with God. Jesus all the time
that he was on earth, continued to keep that deep and abiding link with His
Father, it is what enabled him to do all the things that he did.
If all of us
focused on our most important relationship with our God we may just find that
our human relationships are transformed. When we learn to wait upon God, we see
things differently. We begin to see the depth of the love that the Father has
for me as an individual, despite all my failings, all my sins, that we look at
our neighbour differently. Jesus looked at us on earth not as hopeless sinners
but as humans with the potential to be glowing with love – he saw that and
knows that the way to enable people to be transformed by love is not to condemn
them, whatever they have done, but to love them, to lift them up to Heaven.
The story of the
Incarnation, the indwelling of God on earth, the story of which is finished
historically speaking in the Ascension, is the story of God stooping so low so
that we might at the last rise with Him to Heaven, perform our own
feet-dangling in the air miracle. That was the purpose of that journey, the
journey from the centre of God to His other centre, his people, his creation.
*John 17:1-11 Jesus Prays for His Disciples
After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. I glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. So now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your presence before the world existed.
‘I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.
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