Fr Mark Schultz

Dear Friend,

Our Office Gospel from John this morning can maybe appear a little strange…because it may seem, from our post-Nicene Trinitarian perspectives, that Jesus is arguing for the inferiority of the Son and the superiority of the Father in the economy of the Triune Godhead.

Now, I’m not going to try to explain here the mysterious nature of the life of the Godhead, in part because, as a Mystery, it’s impossible to fully explain…and I think explanations of the Trinity miss the point by assuming that the Mystery of God’s life is a puzzle we’re called to solve. I much prefer approaches to the Trinity that hold in tension our inability to speak the infinite or comprehend the incomprehensible, with our invitation (issued from the heart of the Mystery itself!) to be in relationship with the Infinite Incomprehensible, to know it through love, to allow the Mystery to move us to a place where we are willing to be comprehended (and subsequently to know as we are known) in love.

What I want to do, though, is suggest that all of the things that Jesus says about the Father and about the Son in our Office Gospel are pointing to some of the qualities of the relationship between the Persons of the Trinity into which we ourselves are called. Those qualities include mutuality and sacrifice.

Notice all of those action words that the Father is up to in relation to the Son: the Father loves and shows, the Father gives and grants. And the Son’s response to the loving and showing and giving and granting…is to do the same. If the Father has or gives life, so does the Son. If the Father shows wondrous things, so does the Son. If the Father gives judgment to the Son, the Son exercises that judgment according to the Father’s good pleasure. The picture Jesus paints of the relationship of Father and Son in the life of the Trinity is one of mutual self-giving. Whatever the Father is or has is given to the Son, and whatever the Son is or has by virtue of the gift is both returned to the Father and, importantly, passed on to creation as well. All of the giving here is both infinite and total—the Father gives of the Father’s own being and self unreservedly to the Son, and the Son returns the gift, infinitely, totally, unreservedly. The Lover gives to the Beloved all that the Lover is, and the Beloved gives to the Lover all that the Beloved is, and the mutual infinite outpouring, the mutual total self-sacrificial giving, is the Love between them. Moreover, all Persons involved, Lover, Beloved, and Love are what they are on account of the infinite unreserved giving and receiving and giving and receiving and giving and receiving that is the life of Love, the life of the Trinity.

And this is why creation is, why we are. Because God desired to share the divine life with what was not-God, with us. Because the nature of Love is to give and to give without reserve; so the Life poured out for us in creation and on the Cross (which makes of the Cross a sign of glory and the very throne of grace) is an outworking of the desire God has for us to receive God’s own life…and to pass it on.

To pass it on! Beloved Friend, we can be bearers of God’s own life to the world! We’re called to mutuality and sacrifice as well, because mutuality and sacrifice comprise the matrix of love from which we were made and by which we were formed! What life we receive, what love we receive…we’re not meant to hoard it, but (following the example of the Life of God), we’re meant to pass it on…and in passing it on, we’re meant to discover who we really are in God! As Tony Kushner famously explains in his play Angels in America, to ask for a blessing is to ask for “more life.” That “more life” doesn’t always mean a length or extension of days…its all the things that make life Life. It’s love, it’s goodness, it’s truth, it’s beauty. And the more we give of these things, the more we discover ourselves filled with these things.

Beloved, we are called to bear “more life” to the world! If you’re casting about for a Lenten discipline, there are few more appropriate than a commitment to engage in whatever practices of prayer and giving that would open your life to become a channel of the “more life” of God to the world around you!

Under the Mercy,
Fr Mark+