Rest a while

The house I grew up in as a boy had two doors.

The front door faced the street we lived on as a family.

The back door faced the neighbours.

The front door had a shiny brass doorstep.

I can never remember walking on the brass doorstep. I have countless memories of walking over it!

The back door was where we lived!

The verandah at the back door housed a well-used cricket bat and ball, a muddy rugby ball and other sporting paraphernalia.

The verandah was home to a pair of my father’s old shoes. Examining those shoes revealed the number of colours the house had been painted with over the years. There were liberal paint splatters.

The verandah was also home to a wooden clothes horse.

The verandah of the backdoor housed a sarcophagus type wooden container that had a menagerie of items that were important, however not worthy of entrance into the house (buckets and spades that still held seaside sand etc).

Visitors would knock on the front door and await entry.

Family and friends would walk around the side of the house (while avoiding being run over by a red tricycle travelling well beyond the speed limit); they would then negotiate the oddments at the back door, and walk inside.

Today’s Gospel, (John 14: 23 – 29) I suggest is a backdoor Gospel. Hear again the words from verse 23, “if anyone love me they will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we shall come to them and make our home with them.”

Love invites people to the backdoor.

There is no need of a shiny brass doorstep, your God is walking round the side of the house.

Your God uses the backdoor!

Nickel Creek was an American progressive acoustic music trio.

A member of Nickel Creek had written a song in which I see some resonance with this Sunday’s gospel.

The song is called “The Hand Song.”

Here is the story it contains:

A young boy breaks off some garden roses to give to his mother. Trouble is, she has  been tending these roses with great care and now he has pulled them to pieces. The thorns dig into his hands as he brings his present to her. She lovingly extracts these thorny reminders of her labour; the chorus goes

and she knew it was love.
It was what she could understand.
He was showing his love
and that’s how he hurt his hands.

Sometime later, sitting on her lap, held closely, the boy listens to stories from the Bible. He sees a picture of Jesus and cries out, Momma, he’s got some scars just like me; and the chorus,

And he knew it was love.
It was one he could understand.
He was showing his love
and that’s how he hurt his hands.

Finally grown up, the young man is called to serve in the Services. In the course of the war he throws himself in front of a friend to shield him from gunfire. He gave his life, a deed he had learned from the roses and the cross; and the chorus

But they knew it was love.
It was one they could understand.
He was showing his love,
and that’s how he hurt his hands.

Did the boy/man earn “glory” in the usual sense of the word? He learned what love was and he gave it on the battlefield. In the story there are no stadiums of people to give applause. And yet, isn’t love the very essence of human life? Jesus says so in this Sunday’s Gospel:

I give you a new commandment:
Love one another.
As I have loved you,
so you also should love one another.

The illustration contains a famous quote attributed to Jimi Hendrix, “When the power
of love is greater than the love of power, the world will know peace.”

This Sunday is designated as Good Shepherd Sunday and begins what is known as Vocations Week (May 11 – 17)

Shortly after he entered the Trappists, Thomas Merton wrote the story of his conversion and journey to a monastery in a book, Seven Story Mountain. It became a best seller that, among other things, caught the romantic imagination of his generation.

For years afterwards, Trappist monasteries were flooded with applications, not all for the right reasons of course, but many men did become good monks because of a romantic ideal that Merton’s story triggered.

Perhaps, the absence of this kind of romantic ideal is one of the main reasons why today, in the Western world, fewer men and women are responding to the call to priesthood and religious life.

We need again an ideal for priesthood and religious life that people can fall in love with, something that inflames the romantic imagination.

I sense that is absent today.

Our very sophistication, it seems, is killing us.

We are openly cautious, and at times cynical about these vocations.

No surprise we get few takers. “No romantic illusions allowed!” seems to be the catchphrase.

If we applied that criterion to marriage there would be few takers there as well.

I very much like an expression used by Marriage Encounter groups: “Love is a decision!” they say. They’re right. We can, and often do, make commitments out of naiveté, lack of opportunity, or romantic feelings, but we won’t sustain them long-term unless, at some point, we re-choose them in a new and purer way.

Maturity comes with that. We’re mature only when we choose to love, serve, obey and give over ourselves to someone or something because we accept that this is the right thing to do, irrespective of how we feel about it on a given day or what more attractive options might beckon.

But – that’s not true initially. First you have to fall in love. Every romantic, mystic or poet knows that. Married folks too know it. Granted, at some point after the honeymoon, love has to become a decision, but that’s not what initially brings you to marriage. First you fall in love. “All miracles begin with falling in love,” writes the Australian novelist Morris West. Most life-long commitments begin in the same way.

Maybe we need to put the romance back into priestly and religious vocations!
Vocations ought never be a numbers game, rather it is a question of attentive listening.

One of the facts that persons seem to dismiss from the equation is quite simply, “there are fewer persons to hear the call!” The average number of people per New Zealand household is 2.7 people, which has remained unchanged since 2006.

The word “vocation” is a descendant of Latin vocatio, meaning “summons.” Vocatio, in turn, comes from vocare, meaning “to call,” which itself is from vox, meaning “voice”.

Maybe, this “Vocations Sunday” we dare listen to the ‘voice’, calling – it may be that ‘voice’ is calling us to an entirely new way of being Church!

In early Christian art St. Peter was always portrayed with a rooster beside him.

A very early example sits in The Museo Pio Cristiano in the Vatican. The museum features a collection of early Christian sarcophagi, which were coffins or tombs used for burial, often adorned with Christian imagery and scenes.

One such display shows the front of a double-register stone sarcophagus dated around 300 – 325.

On the relief Jesus is pictured as a young man without a beard. He is handing Peter the scroll that represents his authority as a teacher, an allusion to his charge to Peter after the resurrection: “feed my sheep” (John 21:17).

At the feet of both Jesus and Peter stands a rooster; the reality of Peter’s denial of knowing Jesus (John 13:38, 18: 25 – 27).

The juxtaposition of each occasion is very evident.

Jesus is handing to the one who denied knowing him the responsibility of leadership.

The idea that “opposites attract” has roots in both ancient philosophical thought and modern psychology.

As Christians this was most graphically experienced for us in our Easter liturgies.

We read the story of Jesus’ Passion and Death, and twice we heard read that Jesus hung between two thieves.

And, we have given names to each of them: we have called one, ‘The Good Thief’ and one ‘The Bad Thief’.

Jesus has his arms outstretched between the two; is he, perhaps, attempting to bring the two together?

The act of crucifixion is after all an act of reconciliation!

Do I allow Jesus to hang between the “good” me and the “bad” me?

Do I allow the act of reconciliation take place within me?

The bishop of Hippo, St Augustine (354 – 430) reminds us, “This is the very perfection of a person, to find out our own imperfections.”