Remembering Alex

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Ecclesiastes 3 1-13; 1 Corinthians 13 Matthew 5 1-11

Ecclesiastes, this ancient text from the Hebrew Bible, tells of a time for dying? Isn’t this so evidently the wrong time? We so much wanted more time. This track, this song, wasn't over. But is there ever enough time? My Novice Master, Fr Herbert McCabe, taught that every human death is obscene, wrong, not in the sense of being unnatural, or untrue to our material, physical frailty, the vulnerability exploited by bacterial meningitis, or the corona virus, but wrong in the sense of being anti-social, inhuman, where our humanity deepens out in love, forms a community of friends, a communion of love.

Herbert was right. But is that more than cold comfort? That’s where we need to reflect on the Second reading today, that famous passage from the letters exchanged between St Paul and a group of early Christians at Corinth, that busy Greek trading centre in the early Roman empire. These people have been struggling to make sense of what Paul has been teaching them, to form a community that is more authentically human, more just, more loving, a place where people have time for each other. So, Paul spells it out; he goes to the heart of it in words that can resonate very profoundly within us, speak to us now. Love is patient, love forgives all things… The resonances are complex: they ring true as they match our experience; they have a lot to remind us about was so good about Alex, his values, priorities, his music. The resonances point to what lay within or maybe ran beneath that music, what watered it but was not yet a lyric or something for now to be asserted explicitly. That doesn't always make Paul’s words 'easy listening', or a consoling background music. They can also touch raw nerves, real anxieties in the face of a pandemic none of us has experienced before, but also the scars and wounds of past mistakes, hurts, and loss. They map two terrains – the humanity we have, and the fuller humanity we are made for.

What St Paul has been teaching these early Christian converts is that both are the gift of God to us. Both humanities - the humanity we have, and the fuller humanity we are made for - come to us through the one creative power of God, through the One John's Gospel calls the Divine Word, who became human in the person of Jesus, the Christ.

Take that back to Alex, to the sometimes happy-go-lucky humanity that was certainly his, but what was also so much more than that! It was undoubtedly his, but also a gift of family and friends, a birth, a nurturing, a raising, shared events, an unfolding education in living well, in love. In all of this St Paul sees the creative power of God mediated primarily, but not exclusively, through the Christian faith community, where people, despite their differences and short comings, are meant to bring their respective gifts into play.

What we discover in our third reading, from the Gospel of Matthew, with its beatitudes or sequence of blessings, is how the Christian community, for all its real failings, is empowered to act in this way, because blessed by Christ, blessed by Jesus whose life is already that of the beatitudes. What’s more, these blessings give us hope for Alex, and for our own future.

Jesus was ‘meek’, 'non-violent' we might say these days, when faced with the woman caught in adultery, whom He will not stone to death; Jesus brings peace between her and her accusers. He  mourns for his dead friend Lazarus; and out of that grief, that compassion, returns him to life. Even from the cross, Jesus shows mercy to the repentant thief, brings forgiveness. His 'purity of heart' is the singleness of purpose where love of neighbour has been hammered out in prayer to His Father in heaven, strong in the love of Father for Son, Son for Father.

And that takes Him to the cross. It takes Jesus to an early death, a life cut short. That's Good Friday. And pretty much everyone thinks that's the end. But that's not the end. The author of Ecclesiastes wrote that no human being can comprehend the work of God from beginning to end. Christians still struggle to make sense of what happened next. For Jesus rises from death on Easter morning.  His is the Spirit, the Holy Spirit, given to the apostles at Pentecost to preach this Good News. And He promises new life to all who share in His way of life. It is our hope, our confident hope, that the Divine Word, through whom all things were made, who has risen in glory, will also raise Alex up to the fullness of human life in Christ.  And may He give us that life also, raise us up also, to the full humanity we are made for, to the good company of friends, saints, that is never cut short, where the 'new song' of heaven resounds.