My dear brothers and sisters

It has often been said that the first casualty in war is truth. It would probably be equally true to say that the first casualty in anything is truth. Truth is a disposable commodity in our broken world. And then the significance of that statement struck me. Jesus said, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." The first casualty is Jesus.

And in that statement lies the heart of the Christian faith: God willingly wounded for us. God wounded in the first word spoken - a wound in which creation comes to be and is cradled and nurtured. God wounded in the Word made flesh. Karl Barth said, "God is most God on the cross and most man in the resurrection." If that is true, then it is in the cry of dereliction that God is most deeply revealed. It is far more than a cry of human anguish, it is God's own cry of dereliction, "Why have you forsaken me?"

That is the mystery of the kenotic (self-emptying) humility of God. God willingly wounded for us for the salvation of the world. In the incarnation, God enters the pain and suffering of our world, and descends to the deepest layers of human reality. Pain is thus not something that just happens in spite of God, or worse, because God wills it. Pain happens in God, and the cry of dereliction bears witness to it. And through pain, through suffering, through death, comes resurrection.

Incarnation was not an event 2000 years ago, a 33 year interlude in history. Matthew, at the start of his gospel, reminds us that it is the story of Emmanuel, God with us; and ends his gospel with the promise of Jesus: "I am with you to the end of the age. Henri Nouwen puts it this way, "God in compassion, has linked herself for eternity with the life of her children." Incarnation is the ongoing reality of God with us in the unfairness and pain of life, in all its hurts. God incarnate in us.

When Jesus appeared to Thomas in the Upper Room, he said to him, "Put your finger here and see my hand. Put your hand in my side. Stop your doubting and believe." In resurrection, Christ's wounds are still open. The wound into which Thomas is invited to thrust his hand, is not closed and covered over, but open and deep and glorified. The wounds are there for all to see, but have now become a part of the unutterable beauty of the risen Christ. The marks of suffering and shame, now signs of glory - the kenotic (self-emptying) glory of God willingly wounded for our salvation.

Each time we celebrate the Eucharist, we are drawn into the mystery of God willingly wounded. The liturgy is realising and making real the work of redemption. Under the outward signs of bread and wine, we share in God's own life. Our emptiness is filled with the kenosis (self-emptying) of God's own life, our wounds are taken up into the open wound of Christ and the marks of our shame, are transformed as we are together incorporated into the Body of Christ.

The New Testament uses the words "Body of Christ" to refer to the person of Jesus, the Eucharistic bread, and the church. The mystery of the incarnation is continued in the mystery of the sacrament and the mystery of the church. "I am the vine, you are the branches." For this reason, the Church Fathers saw the offertory as the offering not simply of bread and wine, but as an offering of ourselves as the first-fruits of creation. "It is you in the bread, it is you in the wine." Even as the bread and the wine is changed into Christ's Body and Blood, so we too are drawn into the mystery of God incarnate and made new in Christ. The goal of life is for each of us to be "filled with all the fullness of God," until we can say, "It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me."

"Priesthood," says Maggie Ross, "is the eucharistic being of the creature in confluence with the eucharistic God." As such for her, priesthood is not simply the preserve of the ordained, but the call of the baptismal life. Priesthood is a commitment to a way of being, rather than a ministry. Our ordination is not first and foremost about ministry, but about being; we are ordained to be icons of the indwelling Christ. Our ministry is a fruit of our being in Christ. Any ministry that is not an expression of the indwelling Christ, any action that does derive from stillness, is mere technique and diminishes the life of those acted upon.

As we prepare ourselves for the renewal of our priestly and diaconal vows, let us commit ourselves to be icons of the eucharistic life. Let us give ourselves in Christ to be continually transformed into Christ's Body and Blood so that blessed and broken with Christ we might be sent forth in unity with all God's people to make visible the mystery of God's kenotic love. God willingly wounded in us, the Body of Christ.

May God bless you as you prepare to renew your vows.

+Brian

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