Sunday Reflection with Fr Robin Gibbon - 11 September 2016

image: National Park service

24th Sunday in Ordinary Time

For those of us who saw it on television as it happened, or who might have been close to the Twin Towers in Manhattan on September 11th 2001, this day will forever be a day etched into memory! Yet, in the midst of the horror and pain still present in people's lives, the aftermath of that day has been remarkable in other ways. From it flowed creativity and compassion, forgiveness and love, poems and writings, stories and images, all part of the human capacity to find meaning in a place of no meaning, to bring forth from chaos something of hope and love!

This is also the Christian story, rooted deep in our faith is that starkness of cruel death, of meaningless ending, of injustice meted out to the innocent, it is the story of Jesus hung upon the tree and yet it is the story of divine forgiveness and love. All the readings on this Sunday point to God's infinite mercy, in Exodus the Lord is seen to hear the prayer of Moses and has mercy on Israel's iniquities.

Paul in simple words tells us he was a great sinner, but that only shows how wonderful is the loving mercy of Christ. I am sure we can make Paul's words our own, that in us too the merciful 'Christ Jesus might display all his patience as an example' (1 Tim 1:16)

Luke gives us three contrasting but powerful images; each one has its own context of love and joy that comes from the experience of loss. In each case seeking and finding is linked to the mercy of God for the sinner who repents. There is the Good Shepherd who seeks out the lost sheep and on finding it is filled with rejoicing. The old lady who has lost one of her coins, one tenth of her savings similarly give thanks with friend and neighbour, and then that haunting parable of the merciful father who rushes to greet his long lost younger son and forgives him everything. All these are moments of redemption, stories of small events with a cosmic significance.

What does that mean for us as we remember 9/11? It's simple really; that the love and compassion of God will triumph over evil, for the Risen Lord shows us that in the end 'love is all there is'!

Spared, by Wendy Cope

"That Love is all there is,

Is all we know of Love...

"Emily Dickinson

It wasn't you, it wasn't me,

Up there, two thousand feet above

A New York street. We're safe and free,

A little while, to live and love,

Imagining what might have been -

The phone-call from the blazing tower,

A last farewell on the machine,

While someone sleeps another hour,

Or worse, perhaps, to say goodbye

And listen to each other's pain,

Send helpless love across the sky,

Knowing we'll never meet again,

Or jump together, hand in hand,

To certain death. Spared all of this

For now, how well I understand

That love is all, is all there is.

Fr Robin Gibbons is an Eastern Rite Chaplain for the Melkite Greek Catholics in Britain and Ecumenical Canon at Christchurch Cathedral, Oxford