Showing items filed under “The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin”

He's Up

    Our Lady of Perpetual Responsibility Church had a new, young assistant priest who, like many young, assistant priests, was in charge of the youth group and an Easter morning sunrise service. So (of course!) he had T-shirts made for the occasion, showing Jesus on water skis. Underneath were the words: “He’s Up!”
    It’s corny, yes, but not, I think, irreligious.
    Easter’s been going on for forty days now, for about the two thousandth time commemorating an event that occurred once and only once. Long ago yet oft remembered, Jesus’ resurrection can seem like a moment caught in history, something unexpected and yet understood, like that World Series which the Cubs won—an event no one ever expected to happen. Yet even the Cubs had won the Series before, and every year there’s another. (Does it count if you win during Covid?) That’s how we understand historical events: by memory and by association.
    But Jesus’ resurrection should not be sticky in history that way. So to shake up the ruts of memory and remind us of the complete strangeness of the resurrection, why not put him on water skis? Indeed, there is excitement on the water! And life!             
    He’s up!
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    There is another sense in which Jesus is up: he has ascended into heaven.
    The feast of the Ascension is the poor sister of Easter Day. Easter gets lots of attention: eggs, chocolate, bonnets, even a non-parade “parade” on Fifth Avenue. But the Ascension is just as important. Jesus did not merely rise from the dead, he ascended in his body to take up his authoritative place at the right hand of the Father, where he sits as supreme judge over all earthly judgment even today.
    Read that last sentence again, and then try to say that the Ascension has trivial importance!
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    He is not here. He is, as theologian Douglas Farrow says, really absent. It is important to avoid sacramental sentimentality. The Real Presence of the Eucharist is not the whole story about Jesus and us today. We need also to reckon with the fact that we cannot see him, touch him, or hear him speak to us as an embodied human being. For that, we await his coming again at the end of all things.
    This is good news, even though every one of us would love to see Jesus in the flesh! It is good news that he has assumed his seat of authority; good that from heaven he has dispatched to us his Holy Spirit; and good that he will come again.
    All these good things come from that wonderful reality: He’s up!
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    Out & About. Trinity Sunday, May 30, I am to preach at St. Anne Episcopal Church in DeSoto, Texas, at both the 8 and 10 a.m. services.
    My sermon on John 15 was another opportunity for me to carry on about friendship. You can find it here (the sermon begins about 14 minutes in): https://www.facebook.com/StMatthewsCathedralDallas/videos/827108787895874

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

Here Friendship Ends

 In his dialogue on friendship, Cicero’s main character, Laelius, recounts a moment in a then-new play written by a guest and friend of his. In this play are two friends. One of them, Orestes, is condemned to death. The king, however, cannot carry out the sentence at once, because he does not know which of the two is Orestes. He therefore demands that Orestes step forward, but this does not work. Both of the friends arose at once, each declaring, “I am Orestes!”
   What was going on? Pylades, Orestes’ friend, did not want his friend to die, and so he stepped forward in an attempt to die in his friend’s place.
    Orestes, intuitively knowing his friend would try to do that, pushes himself forward, because he does not want his friend to die.
    In short, each of them would lay down his life for his friend. Laelius reports that when this happened in the play, “The people in the audience rose to their feet and cheered.” Although the audience, he laments, would lack the courage actually to imitate this selflessness in their own lives, nonetheless nature in them “asserted her own power” as they approved what they saw performed in drama as human greatness precisely in friendship. (See Cicero, Laelius de amicitiavii.24).
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    The willingness to lay down one’s life for one’s friend is exemplified not in a theater-play but in real life by Jesus. He in fact interpreted in advance his crucifixion as just that: laying down his life for his friends. (See John 15.)
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    We take on many people as “friends,” starting with that click on the Social Network. It doesn’t mean much. But don’t be deceived: the end of growing in friendship with other people is to be willing to die in their place. Friendship in that sense is inherently substitutionary.
    In the medium-range, where friendship is more than F*book but less than death, we know this is true. A friend will take you to your day-surgery and bring you home. A friend will come and help if your car breaks down. A friend will talk with you about things that are on your heart. And, in each case, conversely: you will do those things for your friends.
    The name the Quakers give themselves is the name that really belongs to any church, or indeed any society. We are, or are meant to be, a society of friends.
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    Out & About. This Sunday, May 9, I am to preach at St. Matthew’s Cathedral in Dallas: at 8 a.m. indoors, and at 10:30 a.m. on the lawn. These services are open to all without registration; at 10:30, bring a lawn chair or blanket.
    If you don’t yet have a copy of Friendship: The Heart of Being Human, and you can’t get it at your local bookstore, it is available at Behemoth and also Christianbook.com, bn.com, etc.

 

 

Posted by The Rev. Canon Dr. Victor Lee Austin with

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The Rev. Canon Victor Lee Austin. Ph.D., is the Theologian-in-Residence for the diocese and is the author of several books including, "Friendship: The Heart of Being Human" and "A Post-Covid Catechesis.: 

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