A Short Address by the Reverend Ivan Ransom

ET US UNITE our hearts together. Let us pray.

Almighty God, Whose son, Jesus Christ, wept at the grave of Lazarus, His friend, and called him back to life. By that same all-powerful word, which caused the light to shine from the darkness in the first hour of creation, call us, to the light of righteousness that we may live and reign with Him, where sorrow and sighing clear away and there is no more pain, through the same, Christ, Our Lord, who with you, O Father, and the Holy Spirit, ever reigns as God Eternal.

Amen.

It’s remarkable that some of the most beautiful pieces of Western music, as we’ve heard them this morning, contain within them two versions of that same great piece of Western liturgy of the Christian Church, the statement about God among us, Ave verum corpus, natus de Maria virgine — Hail, true body, born of the virgin Mary. What it speaks about is the reality that our God is not just a philosophical concept, not just something in outer space or beyond or in philosophical theory, but in reality. The Bible tells us that at the very beginning that we are made — each one of us, every human being — made in the image of God. It is this image of God that comes out when we see an injustice and we protest against it, or we see beauty and we appreciate it, or we wander in the bush and contemplate the anonymous trees and the timeless rocks and our soul understands that the reality of time is no time at all.

We have set within us, as the great saint of the Christian church, Augustus of Hippo once said, we have set within us a God-shaped void, something which needs to be filled and can only be filled with God. And we can seek after God high and low, and can turn every rock, as it were, to try to find God, but the reality is that God finds us. He finds us in our relationships with other people and he finds us as we contemplate that one person Who came among us and said, “I am the way, the truth, and the light. No-one comes to my Father except through me.” And it may seem to the rational mind that that’s an arrogant claim. And it may seem to the religious zealot that that’s a good excuse to brand everybody else as a liar. But those are words of great compassion for those people who have sought high and low and cannot find and have yet to turn to the One who conquered death, the One who took life and showed us the way to eternal life.

What does it mean to have that kind of life? It’s not a continuation of the present life, with all its imperfections, its weaknesses, its pains, its sorrow. It’s a grasping of that ultimate reality of perfect existence, it is that true fellowship with the eternal — the one who is the ground of all our being, the one in whom we live and move and have our being. And it is that to which Jesus invites us.

I mentioned in my prayer about that incident which is found in John’s Gospel — how Jesus’ very close friend, Lazarus, had been dead and buried for three days. And He called him back to life, and whatever we make of that incident we note this one thing: that the rules of life and death are not of just being “conceived” and “living” and then “disappearing”. The rules of life and death are only part of the game — the reality is something which goes beyond life and death — which starts before the world was made and finishes in the eternity of God’s purpose for each one of us.

Let us unite our hearts together in prayer.

LL MERCIFUL FATHER, Thy mercies are due to us every morning, fresh every moment and more than we can number. For the very gift of life we give You thanks. For the precious ties of kinship and friendship, for the joy of human affection and love, we praise Your holy name. Especially we give thanks for the spirit of our sister, Hazel Church, which has returned to Your keeping until the Day of Resurrection. Particularly, we thank You for her concern for other people, her love of what is beautiful, her sense of humour, but above all we praise Your holy name for the gospel of Your dear son. For while we are still sinners, dead in our trespassers, and condemned by Your righteous judgement, He purchased us with His own precious blood: crucified for our sins and risen for our justification, so that whoever belives in Him will not perish but has everlasting life.

Comfort us as we trust in this great salvation, O God of all comfort. Give us peace and believing, the garment of praise instead of the spirit of heaviness, that we may know that You are good and that Your mercy never fails. We ask this with the unspoken prayers of our hearts, in the name of Jesus Christ, our only mediator, who taught us to pray:

Our Father, Which art in heaven, hallowed by Thy name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us each day our daily bread and forgive us our trespassers as we forgive them who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For Thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.